Not Another Inaugural Live Blog...Utopia of the Seas sailing 7/19/2024

Later Nassau!  See you in September.

I spy X Reflection creeping out after us.

as a fan of baja eggs myself, those looked weirdly loaded down with onions.

…troublesome. 

Well…bailed off early.. self assist. There were quite a few of us, but went nice and quickly. Home by 7:30 and right to work.
    Been ashore a day or two and will say we miss her. Great ship. All the tweeks to wonder that add a nice touch. Pesky truly hit the mark.
       Great seeing old friends working onboard. Karaoke bar needs more love during the day. Stop by and have Jesus make you a margarita. He misses working in cantina fresco. He is awesome! Nice people can tell him Jim and Sherri sent you. 

     Great coffee machine in crown lounge and chocolate croissants for all my friends…(hopefully they restock wonder in Sept) @OCSC Mike zoom pic below…

Deck 16 midship had some nice semi shaded areas that were pretty awesome and vacant to hang.. with all the activity on 15…pics

Gotta love new dock lines. IFYKYK…

  Anyways this posting thing has been a fun challenge.. but have to say when on vacation we just disconnect from everything… 

few pics.. we are the ghosts in the machine..lol

We’re outta here! @AshleyDillo  Amazing.. Love to read all of it. Not sure how you do it. Keep it up!! Maybe we’ll catch up to you next time in person.

On 7/20/2024 at 11:00 AM, Lovetocruise2002 said:

word on the Genie street is that they will all have to rotate at some point. Hence all the movement in the last 6-7 months in the Genie world.

Yup,  Berty said this exact thing on his last contract on HM and boom he is now on a 4/3 ship. I wonder how many people end up doing B2B’s….that would help a bit.  I know I will request the same genie on our upcoming 4/3 on Allure and Wonder.  

We got a call last night about our Royal Railway reservation, which is for 6pm on the last night of the cruise. We had called and booked it over the phone when everyone started seeing it on their Cruise Planner.

The way it is set up there are only tables of 2 and 4 available.  We are a party of 3.  They told us since we didn't book on the ship that they couldn't put all 3 of us at a table together. They offered to switch us to the 8:30 one but it's a 2 hour experience and we don't want to eat that late, especially on the last night of the cruise.

I wasn't the one who answered the call so I have no idea if that means one of us is sitting alone or with a stranger or alone. Should be interesting. 

6 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

since we didn't book on the ship that they couldn't put all 3 of us at a table together.

Translation:  They never got the reservation from shoreside until it was too late to seat you all together.

Enjoy your meal in the corner - alone.

7 hours ago, Jax said:

Yup,  Berty said this exact thing on his last contract on HM and boom he is now on a 4/3 ship. I wonder how many people end up doing B2B’s….that would help a bit.  I know I will request the same genie on our upcoming 4/3 on Allure and Wonder.  

He said the way they decided to handle the rotations is by grouping the cabins where it makes sense location wise. 

They're going to have only 3 Genies so one will have 4 rooms on each rotation.  They're grouping it Royal Loft, UFS, and Solarium suites with one genie and then the starboard aquatheater suites with one and port aquatheater suites with the other. 

16 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Enjoy your meal in the corner - alone.

My preference to be honest.  My brother gets to deal with my mother and a new menu

If I knew I would be alone for sure I could recruit someone to join me.  There's plenty of demand of folks that couldn't get a spot and I could have picked my stranger

48 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

He said the way they decided to handle the rotations is by grouping the cabins where it makes sense location wise. 

They're going to have only 3 Genies so one will have 4 rooms on each rotation.  They're grouping it Royal Loft, UFS, and Solarium suites with one genie and then the starboard aquatheater suites with one and port aquatheater suites with the other. 

That's a lot of walking for the ATS Genies.  

33 minutes ago, twangster said:

That's a lot of walking for the ATS Genies.  

The crew stairs are right there. Wish they'd let the Star Class guests use them too

I am now looking forward to the Royal Railway shenanigans. 

On 7/20/2024 at 9:50 AM, AshleyDillo said:

Berty found out we were doing a B2B and told us to request him in the survey

We had Berty on our last 2 cruises on HM and he was a great genie for our family. Very detail oriented and organized and actions any requests right away. 

16 minutes ago, Jax said:

We had Berty on our last 2 cruises on HM and he was a great genie for our family. Very detail oriented and organized and actions any requests right away. 

My mother has known him since the concierge days.  We found out he has our room for one leg of the B2B so hopefully he can trade around so we have one Genie for all 7 nights..I know it would make it easier on him to not have to learn a whole new family.

Lots of storage in this room..found a use for it.

We had Giovannis for lunch today.  It was meh. We had a better experience on Icon a few weeks ago. The food was hot on Icon and it was mostly lukewarm today.

Their pizza oven needs some more time to get properly seasoned.  The bottom had zero color.  I would have rather had Sorrentos.

Other than that we did absolutely nothing today.

Matt's photos from his Omakase experience finally convinced my mother it's not for her

In case you missed his review...

https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2024/07/24/trying-japanese-omakase-restaurant-royal-caribbean-review

She was able to get the concierge to cancel her reservation. My brother and I are still going.  

39 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

Their pizza oven needs some more time to get properly seasoned.  The bottom had zero color.  I would have rather had Sorrentos.

Typical inconsistency. Had GK pizza for the first time on Wonder last week and it was pretty crispy, especially around the edges.

Sorrento's continues to surprise me with how crispy it has become. Still just a late night snack for me with limited options but I've had no problem with it recently for what it is.