Our friends Doug and Michelle McKnight (our favorite travel agent) recently went on the Allure of the Seas. While on board, part of their family sailed in Stateroom 9660, which is a Grand Suite 1 Bedroom. The stateroom is located Deck 9 Starboard (right) side midship near the elevators. The stateroom is 396 square feet with an 89 square foot balcony. It has two twin beds that convert to a Royal King bed and a sofa that converts to a double bed. read more
Our friends Doug and Michelle McKnight (our favorite travel agent) recently went on the Allure of the Seas. While on board, part of their family sailed in Stateroom 9654, which is a Grand Suite 1 Bedroom. The stateroom is located Deck 9 Starboard (right) side midship near the elevators. The stateroom is 396 square feet with an 89 square foot balcony. It has two twin beds that convert to a Royal King bed and a sofa that converts to a double bed. read more
Our friend Lauren Shields recently went on the Freedom of the Seas. While on board, she sailed in Stateroom 1264, which is a Grand Suite 1 Bedroom. The stateroom is located Deck 10 Starboard (right) side all the way forward near the forward elevators. The stateroom is 396 square feet with an 89 square foot balcony. It has two twin beds that convert to a Royal King bed an a sofa that converts to a double bed. read more
Our friend Lauren Shields recently went on the Freedom of the Seas. While on board, she was able to explore the Vitality at Sea Spa and Fitness Center. The Fitness Center is located on Deck 11 and the Spa is on Deck 12. There is an internal staircase to access one from the other.read more
Our friend Chris (@CHRIS_MAGIC_DCL) went on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas on August 3rd, 2021 and reserved the Owner’s Suite. The stateroom is located on the port side, mid ship, Deck 10. The room holds four people, has a queen size bed and a double sofa bed. He was kind enough to send us pictures!
Thank you again to Chris (@CHRIS_MAGIC_DCL) for the fabulous pictures! Make sure you follow him on twitter!
Our friend Chris (@CHRIS_MAGIC_DCL) went on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas on August 3rd, 2021 and stayed in the Royal Suite. The stateroom is located on the port side, mid ship, Deck 10. The room holds four people, has a king size bed and a double sofa bed. He was kind enough to send us pictures!
Thank you again to Chris (@CHRIS_MAGIC_DCL) for the fabulous pictures! Make sure you follow him on twitter!
Our friends Doug (from Rope Drop Radio) and Michelle McKnight (our favorite travel agent) went on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas on July 9, 2021 for a 3-Night Bahamian Cruise from Miami. They stayed in Category 4B Stateroom 7232, which is a Spacious Ocean View Balcony. The room is located forward on the Starboard (right) side of Deck 7. The room has a verandah.
You can hear about their cruise experience here!
The room has a queen size bed near the Veranda as well as a sofa placed in front of the television.
The closet is located immediately inside the stateroom entrance on the left, complete with a small safe.
The bathroom is located immediately next to the stateroom door on the right.
The verandah has opaque frosted panels to provide a level of privacy. There are two chairs as well as a small table.
More about Doug and Michelle…
You can subscribe to Rope Drop Radio via iTunes. Derek and Doug are two dads who love Disney. Their goal is help you navigate all things Disney from the parks to the cruise. They want to share tips and tricks, travel plans, and must see’s to help you have an amazing Disney trip! Make sure to follow them on Facebook and Twitter as well!
We have really enjoyed having Michelle (affiliated with Touring Plans Travel Agency) as our travel agent. It costs nothing to use her services because Disney or Royal pays her after we cruise. She was the one that got up at the crack of dawn to book reservations on our booking dates, to make requested updates to our room and dining preferences. We have booked over ten cruises with her, as well as recommending her to our friends! Contact her to see if she can help you with your vacation plans. (Note: Michelle does not sponsor Back To The Mouse, we are just satisfied customers).
While on a recent Royal Caribbean cruise on board the Ovation of the Seas, we got the opportunity to try the Windjammer Buffet. The Windjammer restaurant was located on the aft portion of Deck 14. We went to the buffet for breakfast one morning.
When you first arrive at the buffet, you will be directed to the hand washing stations located on the side near the entrances.
The buffet is set up as a series of island stations in the center of the restaurant, along with the kitchen in the aft portion. The sides of the restaurant contain seating for patrons. I definitely don’t think there is enough seating during the busiest times. We spent a long time looking for seating on the sea day morning that we decided to go to the buffet for breakfast.
Here are some of our pictures from the breakfast buffet. I certainly couldn’t capture everything, but there was no shortage of breakfast items. The usual breakfast meats, cereal, eggs, toast, and fruit were plentiful.
Today was our last day in Seattle. We had decided to get to the airport early and get breakfast there. We ordered an Uber to take us there. We probably arrived around 8:20 AM or so for our 10:20 AM flights. Nancy’s flight was on time, so after breakfast, she and my younger daughter headed to their gate.
My flight (along with our older daughter), wasn’t until 11:20 AM. We started getting notifications soon after we got to the airport that our flight would be delayed. We already had a tight connection in Denver, so I was worried we wouldn’t make it.
We decided to go wait in the United Club. I asked the desk agents what we could do if our flight was delayed. They said we would have to spend the night in Denver if we didn’t make our connection because there were no additional seats leaving Denver going to Dulles.
Luckily, our flight took off and made up time on the way to Denver. Nancy made it to Chicago and had a 3 hour layover before continuing on to Dulles.
We landed in Denver and ended up running to our other plane, making it with about 5 minutes to spare before the door was closed. Once we landed at Dulles, we got a text from Nancy telling us she had landed about 15 minutes before us. She met us at our baggage claim where we picked up our bags. We jumped in a taxi and returned home.
We had a great first time trip on Royal Caribbean! Alaska is one of our favorite travel destinations and it was nice to be able to enjoy the natural beauty from an affordable verandah balcony. You can read about our comparison between our Disney cruise experiences and this Royal Caribbean experience.
Today was the last day of our cruise, disembarkation day. We arrived back in Seattle very early, but we still had quite a long time to go before we would get off the ship. We had arranged to stay over in Seattle an extra day so we wouldn’t have to rush off to the airport. Once we’d given this information to Royal Caribbean, they gave us the latest disembarkation group.
We had been assigned luggage tag #33, which meant we would be in The Royal Theater and wouldn’t disembark until 9:50 am. That did allow us to get up late and get a light breakfast from Cafe 270. After we finished our breakfast, we headed to the Royal Theater to wait for our luggage tag to get called.
While I was excited to get a late disembarkation group (so we could sleep in), it all came crashing down as we exited the ship. Why? Because we were at the tail end of a LONG line to get a taxi. We had a hotel in Seattle to go to, but needed to take a cab there. Instead of getting a porter for our bags (who had a much shorter line), I thought it would be easier to carry our own bags and wait for a cab. Big mistake. We ended up standing in this line until almost 11:30 am. In hindsight, a porter would have had us on our way in less than 15 minutes. Eventually, we did get a cab and headed off to the Olive 8 Hyatt.
Our initial thought was to drop our bags off with bell services and then head out to get some lunch. I approached the desk at the Olive 8 and asked to check in. The gentleman that was helping me looked up my reservation and said our room wasn’t ready quite yet, but asked that I wait a minute. He looked on the computer and said he had a room that was available now, but it would be a slight increase in cost. In the interest of getting into the room and dropping our stuff off, I agreed to the charge and he handed me the keys. He smiled and said to let him know if I liked the room.
What he had upgraded us to was the presidential suite, which was awesome. Nancy and the girls were definitely impressed. The room opened to an enormous dining room table, with seating for 10.
There was a smaller four person table at the other end of the room.
There was a living room area as well with a television and three couches, one of which folded down to a bed.
The kitchen had two coffee makers, a wet bar, and microwave.
The separate office had a computer and multi-function printer.
The master bedroom was located in the back of the suite with a king size bed. There was also a dresser and television in the suite as well.
The most impressive part of the suite was definitely the master bathroom. The mirror has a television in it.
There was a wardrobe closet complete with a pair of robes. (No, we didn’t have enough clothes to fill the closet.)
There was also a tub and shower, complete with rain shower head.
After looking around the suite, we grabbed an Uber and headed for the nearest Teddy’s Bigger Burger. During a trip to Hawaii, we found the burger chain and loved it. I don’t know that it is that much better than any other burger chain, but we associated it with all the fun we had in Hawaii. Once we discovered they had a few franchises in Seattle, we knew we would have to visit.
We got dropped off at the Teddy’s location in Greenlake and had a great lunch. Then we decided to take a walk around the lake and see the neighborhood. We walked most of the way around the lake before we gave up and got an Uber back to the hotel. We ended up ordering dinner to the hotel and just relaxed for the rest of the evening.
