On Sunday morning, we all woke up excited and ready to get to the port. However, Royal Caribbean had another plan. They stagger the boarding times by boat deck, so we were assigned a 2:00 entry. It did make check-in go a lot more smoothly, but it gave us a long morning of anxiously awaiting getting on board! We enjoyed a buffet breakfast at the hotel and then returned to our room to pack and watch some Wimbledon. The girls watched a movie on our iPads. After awhile we headed out for a delicious lunch at Bubba Gumps. It's one of my favorite places to eat so this was a great way to pass the time!
After lunch, we did a little more waiting, but finally it was time to board! Once we checked in we headed to our room. As Lily looked around, she asked "Mommy, did you mean to order such a small bathroom?" Ryan and I cracked up and explained that most cruise ships have pretty small bathrooms even though she was remembering our Disney cruise a couple of years ago that actually had two bathrooms in it. From there we explored the boat, did the muster drill and then started the cruise for 7 nights. It was wonderful!
I have a ton of pictures to share. Because they were coming from three cameras (mine, Ryan's and our water camera), there's really not an order here. These are just things we did on the boat. We didn't even take pictures of everything! The pictures from our excursions will be in another post. Also, I'm not really putting many pictures of the boat on here. Allure of the Seas has plenty of photos they are happy to share on their website. So, off we go...
We stopped by to register the girls for the Adventure Ocean kids clubs. Mia was in the Aquanots group while Lily was in Ocean Adventurers group. Each of the days we were at sea all day and a couple of the evenings when they had fun themes going, the girls went to their camps. They absolutely loved it! Lily has said multiple times that her favorite part of the cruise was making new friends here. Some of their themes included pirate night, superhero night, circus fun, ocean exploration and color explosion. This was so much fun for them!
Cut outs by the Mexican restaurant at a little playground. We never ate at this restaurant but the girls always love these face cut outs.
On our balcony (on the left) and on the back of the boat (on the right) ready to sail away! I bought these "Bon Voyage" shirts from Crazy 8 months ago. Couldn't get any more perfect.
Mini golf has now become a new fun family activity.
Posing at one of the holes.
They liked these little creatures.
They were so excited to have a bunk bed in our room. They alternated who slept on which bed each night. The picture on the right shows what we saw each evening. They had a blast every day but they were worn out by the time they got to bed!
So we quickly found our way to the cupcake bakery. Yum!
Allure has an ice skating rink on it where we enjoyed a couple of shows. The first one had sort of a Monopoly concept to it. It was neat to watch.
The girls chose to spend the money they had been saving on these stuffed animals. It was like a build a bear shop where they picked the animal, stuffed it, put a little token inside and then picked a shirt for it. Lily picked a dolphin and named her Royal. Mia picked a whale and named her Splash. While I wasn't thrilled they picked another stuffed animal, it fit their budget so we let them get them; they have actually really loved on them since buying them so I'll say it turned out to be a good choice.
Royal Caribbean partners with DreamWorks which made for some fun character appearances, movies and parades. Here we were at a parade which featured characters from How To Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, Shrek and Madagascar.
We also went to the How To Train Your Dragon ice skating show which was actually really neat. We all enjoyed it! Since How To Train Your Dragon 2 recently came out, there was a lot for this particular movie which was fine with our kids; they both love it! They played it in the big movie theatre on board one day so we went to see it which was fun; we also saw The Lego Movie and Epic while we were on board.
There is a Boardwalk area on board, so the girls had a lot of face painting this week.
More face painting...
And more face painting...they couldn't get enough!
I took the girls to a kids cupcake decorating class which they both really enjoyed.
Showing off their finished products (fish swimming in the ocean!) before the best part - eating it!
Both girls had a lot of fun at Pirate Night with their camps (I'm sure more face painting had nothing to do with it). Mia's group performed on a stage up in the kids' area which was really cute. The leader would ask a question such as "What's a pirate's favorite letter?" and the group would respond "Rrrrr!" Our little pirate had a pretty good time. At one point though, the kids turned around to shake their "booty" at the audience but Mia wouldn't do it and she looked a little upset. She told us later she didn't think that was nice so she didn't want to do it. Love this sweetheart!
Lily's group also performed but they first paraded through the Promenade on the main deck. She had a blast!
Ready to have fun a the pool! We got to the pool each morning right about as it was opening at 8 (my kids are incapable of sleeping in even when they are up late the night before), and we would stay for a few hours. We practically had the place to ourselves which was really nice. Around 11:30 we would head over to lunch and then find other things to do on board (there was no shortage of activities) as the pool was more crowded.
Mia loved the water canons!
Lots of pool fun pictures coming up. While here, Mia learned to snorkel and fell in love with it. Now, she doesn't want to be in a pool unless she can snorkel. Lily also learned to snorkel but more so, learned to hold her breath long enough to dive down for things. I tell you, this is major improvement for both of them since even the beginning of summer. Finally, we are a pool ready family!
Ping pong was a fun thing to try. We were never really able to get a rally going, but it was fun to try!
Oh you better believe we had room service a couple of times! We had no interest (or clothing) for a formal and semi-formal night at the regular restaurant, and you know how much we love room service so this made sense. Ryan and I would sit on our balcony to enjoy the sunset view while the girls had fun sitting inside talking.
We did go to Johnny Rockets for lunch one day. The milkshakes, hot dogs, fries and onion rings were all enjoyed; top it off with watching the waiters dance and we had a great time!
The ship has an "aqua theater" at the back of the boat. They had a show called Oceanaria that they performed a few times throughout the week. It was spectacular! It was a diving show that was truly amazing. It was choreographed to music, there was some comic relief and it was simply awesome to watch.
I put this picture in to show that one of the boards (it's lit up) was 90 feet above the pool. A guy dove from it twice!!! He has to be crazy. Most of the diving was from one of the two platforms closer to the pool, but that was breathtaking to watch.
Allure has a levitating bar in the middle of it so we had to ride it. Of course, we went during the day when they weren't very busy. It was a neat experience.
The girls were thrilled to get balloon creations on the boardwalk one day. Mia got a monkey hat to wear and Lily got a mermaid hat that happens to look just like Ariel but since the cruise line doesn't partner with Disney, well, it's just a mermaid.
On our last evening, we went to a performance called Blue Planet that was similar to a Cirque du Soleil production. There was beautiful singing and lot of acrobatics. Pretty neat looking tree in this picture, right? It's almost all made up of actors who come apart to perform.
This was the first of many, many carousel rides on the boardwalk.
While the girls were at camp one evening, Ryan and I went to a fountain show at the aqua theater. It was really neat to watch. It was only about 15 minutes long, but it was very similar to the fountains at the Bellagio in Vegas. They had them all choreographed to beautiful music. It was very relaxing to watch, and we both really enjoyed this.
Mia with her superhero cape from camp one evening. This was probably her favorite night.
My favorite picture from our time on the boat. This was taken on our balcony one day, and I just love it. Not only are the girls adorable, but look at that water behind them. Amazing!
I didn't put any pictures in of our dinners at the regular restaurant which were all pretty tasty. Our waiters, Bien and Geraldo, were very kind and great with the girls. We met a lovely family from South Carolina at the table next to us which was nice. We stopped by the library which unfortunately didn't have a kids' section; Lily was a little disappointed by that one. They have a donut shop on the boardwalk in the mornings, so we enjoyed that a couple of times or we would head to the Windjammer Café for more options. Overall, the food worked well for us. One evening Lily did get sick in the middle of the night. I think it was a combination of exhaustion and not eating great but she recovered quickly. Ryan enjoyed watching the Germany versus Brazil World Cup game on the big screens at the aqua theater. We did glow sticks in our room before bedtime one night which the girls loved! We watched people try the Flow Rider waves but we weren't brave enough to try it ourselves (or the zip line nearby). We had fun watching a belly flop contest and the girls can now tell you that judging for this is based on pain. We did a family art camp for a couple of hours where we attempted to build a catapult and a tail for Toothless. The girls and I went to a Barbie fashion show one day and also went to a face painting and balloon animal making class. So that is pretty much how we spent our time on the boat. It was truly a wonderful time away. I'll put pictures from our excursions up in the next post because that was pretty great too!
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