SynEpona

Since the ship is in Barcelona on Sundays, and Rome on Thursdays this August -- are you looking ahead to 2025? I'll share in about 5 weeks how we liked our excursions at all those ports. We have tours planned in Rome, Barcelona & Naples, and a self-guided hike/train/adventure planned for Cinque Terre. Palma de Mallorca is still a bit undetermined for us.

We're flying in 4 days early for our Rome departure on Oasis next month. I know we need a day or two to adjust to the new time zone and we want time to see Rome before we board the ship. I would not enjoy anything about the experience if I didn't have at least a full 36 hour margin of anticipated flight arrival and cruise departure, the stress of the potential domino effect of delays would be awful. There's no time to recover and come up with a new plan if anything goes wrong.

us brand new cruisers are relying on blogs like yours to let us know what is typical in various suite classes. Without having read so many over the past 18mth since we booked, I would have no idea outside of the sparse booking confirmation what to expect.

Everything in my life is colour coded, and when traveling, I carry a snack size ziploc bag of coloured elastic bands from the dollar store with 3-5 of each person's colour. We use them on cups, bottles, sometimes on rolled up towels ... anything we can twist them around and it's the same colours as things at home. I got a bag of vibrant elastics in the right colours for our existing colour coding from Dollarama.

That was the problem! We'd looked before Oasis went to Europe, and while Mexican Night didn't look like my own fave, I did find at least one or two choices on that menu for everyone in my family. But when we looked again more recently, Mexican night was replaced with a more Euro theme meal.

We are doing a similar idea, but differently, as we're basing ourselves in Rome for several days ahead of our cruise next month, and using one day from Rome for a high speed train day trip to Florence. It can be a very long day as we don't need to be back to our accommodations by a deadline to depart as we would if it were a port day. It also frees up the day that had Florence & Pisa excursions for us to explore Cinque Terre.

I have 4 kids ranging from 10-17, and any time I've booked family photos, someone is having a rough day. Maybe it's bad hair, maybe they got sunburn, maybe they're in a bad mood, or as toddlers - sound asleep at the wrong moment! Having multiple opportunities across several days to get photos increases the chances of everyone having a good day at the same time and the whole family will be in multiple photos on many days. We'll take the digital photos and print the sizes we want when we're home. Our port days are more about adventure & we won't be dressed up at all, they're also pretty full & busy days when I don't want to carve out an hour and keep everyone clean until then, to take photos. If we were in ports that we visited more often or something it'd be worth considering, but this trip is probably the only time our family will visit Barcelona, Naples, Cinque Terre and so on.

We've planned 3 specialty restaurant dinners, and then CK for the balance, and I think my daughter has agreed that a sea day brunch will be adequate in MDR.

Thanks for the welcome! We board August 15, we booked very suddenly and did honestly not compare or research much beforehand, my husband is a rare soul that loves CATS, and we found a suite available that suited our family. Next cruise will be researched ahead of time, though I think Oasis is a good fit for all of us.

I'm newish here, been reading way longer than posting, and your live blogs have been incredibly helpful as I've figured out our family's first cruise that was rather impulsively booked 17 months ago for this summer - from Civitavecchia on Oasis. Looking forward to following along on your European adventures while I finialize plans for ours. We are fortunate to be near Calgary and have direct flights to Rome on WestJet, as we also try to avoid connecting in YYZ or even arriving there when visiting Ontario family.

It was that line about excluding specialty dining photos, as we've not cruised yet, I wasn't sure if the photos were at/near the MDR in some way, so yes, the location of where we would be dining - but it seems from your reply that it won't matter! I haven't seen the same type of port photos for European ports, and wasn't sure if it's just not a thing there or that there's just less people/ships in Europe, so less posts about the experience. I'll hope for some European Live Blogs in the next couple months to find out more.

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts! I appreciate the feedback and I think we've come to the conclusion that brunch on a sea day might be my daughter's moment to experience the MDR. Hopefully that satisfies her wish to have a meal there, as we couldn't come to a dinner or dessert agreement between the 6 family members at all!

We're going on our first cruise, so this question may be obvious once we're on board -- but for planning purposes -- we are staying in a suite, and I see that the photo package excludes photos at specialty dining. We don't plan to eat at the MDR for dinner at all (or maybe just once), will that limit the easy access to photo opportunities? We had purchased the photo package but I think I could cancel it if it's not going to be worthwhile. Also -- I see that in the Caribbean, there are port photo opportunities that can be part of the photo package selections. Do similar opportunities exist for European ports?

That might have to be our plan, as it's the only part of the menu I can see a clear winner for almost everyone. It's true, Taste of UK is very easy to enjoy for most of my kids.

Yes, I know, but I was hoping to find which other people have found 'best' and why, to give some extra opinions beyond reading the menus. They've all given their feedback on specialty dining already, this choice will not be one they're making as I already know they can't all agree.