Key Largo, Montego, Baby Why Don’t We Go (Or, a Week on The World’s Largest Cruise Ship): Part Onefeatured

We’re backkkkkkkkk.

I’ve got photos (over 2,200). I’ve got video. I’ve even got those Compass things everyone’s always looking for (they’re called Compasses, right? We still call the activity guides on *every* ship we go on Capers. Carnival doesn’t even call them Capers anymore). And with 14 cruises (I think…) under my belt, writing this trip journal up might be the largest task I’ve ever undertaken on this blog. The biggest cruise ship in the world calls for, well, the longest review.

And it calls for a lot of planning. Planning for this trip began back in February-ish for us. Our trips usually begin randomly — one of us says that we miss being on the water or we want to be somewhere warm…we want something to look forward to…and one thing leads to another that leads to us calling and booking a trip. This one began with a bit more purpose. Mom was diagnosed with (thankfully cureable) skin cancer on New Years Eve. Her surgery was planned in February and we booked as she recooperated as a means to give her something to look forward to. Mom was also set to celebrate a milestone birthday this month, and we couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate than to take a week on the water. What would have been grandma’s 92nd birthday fell a few days before we left and…it felt like the year to do something special. So we started looking at itineraries and cruise lines.

Our natural start was with Carnival. We’re platinum and being platinum, we’re comfortable on Carnival. We know what to expect from the moment we step on the gangway to the moment we walk through customs. But with that…that’s also the reason we deviated from Carnival (for this cruise, at least) — while we would have been offered a familiar and relaxing cruise experience, cruising with Carnival (for us) has gotten too familiar. We went on, what, 13 cruises in eight years? And at some point, they all started blending together. Nothing was new. Nothing was different. Nothing was changing. At some point, you start to crave something new. Something different. Something exciting. And as a writer, I was craving something new to dig my teeth into. An experience that would inspire me to write again. I think part of the reason I allowed myself to get carried away from writing about my recent Carnival travels was that they all mimiced the one that came before it. There’s only so much you can write about a Welcome Aboard show that hasn’t changed in years or the tiramisu cheesecake (which I still maintain, by the way, is amongst the best things I’ve ever tasted at sea). There’s only so many pictures you can take of the Bitter and Blanc. We’re Platinum on Carnival, yes, but at the end of the day when there are groups of Carnival Cheerleaders and Loyal Royals and…I don’t know what loyalists of other lines call themselves…but at the end of the day, we aren’t loyal to anyone but ourselves. We craved something new and different and so that’s what we sought. Why Royal Caribbean? Process of elimination. We tired of Carnival. We didn’t like Princess when we sailed years back (we’ll give it another chance eventually), so that one was out. Holland and Cunard felt a bit too…mature…for Stephanie and I. So it came down to Norwegian and Royal Caribbean. The Allure was bigger (and had a bit more fanfare) than the Epic (which we’d still all love to sail on at some point), so we settled on Royal Caribbean.

We called Royal Caribbean’s booking service on a random Saturday about a week after Mom’s surgery while Mom and Stephanie were visiting me and we were sitting around my apartment. Our booking agent was incredibly knowledgeable and helpful, but we knew what we wanted: the biggest and splashiest. The best Royal Caribbean has. The Allure offered an Eastern and the Western route. We chose the Western route because it offered two ports we’ve never been to before: Labadee, Haiti and Falmouth, Jamaica. And that afforded me an extra special opportunity…

Some people have lifelong dreams to see the Eiffle Tower, or to cook their way through The Joy of Cooking. Some people dream to learn five languages or cure an impossible disease. Me? My lifelong dream is to visit every place in the song Kokomo. It sounds funny. It is funny. But if I accomplish nothing else in life, all I want (beyond health/wealth/happiness/etc) is to take it fast and then take it slow all the way to Kokomo. So we have…
Aruba
Jamaica
Bermuda
Bahama
Key Largo
Montego
Kokomo (which technically doesn’t exist anymore in the state it was written about in the song)
Port Au Prince
Montserrat/Martinique

And in 13 cruises, we’d crossed out…Bahama. The Western itinerary would give me the opportunity to cross out Jamaica (and an extra opportunity to cross out Montego in the process, if we wanted to venture out on an excursion to MoBay) and since the cruise left out of south Florida, if time allowed it, we had the time to drive down to Key Largo and get that crossed out, too.

We booked a cruise on the Allure of the Seas’ Western route and proceeded to spend months obsessively planning. We read reviews. We watched YouTube videos. We poured over activity guides and menus and excursions and options. I asked a million questions on Cruise Critic and in return, I promised to pay it forward when I got back from my trip by asking any question I could that was thrown my way and attempting to write the trip journal to end all trip journals.

So this is my journal, my review, my chronicle of events and my attempt to pay it forward. I’m going to start a thread on Cruise Critic and if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer it either there or here. And I promise promise promise to try to get this written in a timely manner that aligns more with my Miracle reports than my more recent reports.

I also promise x4 that the pictures will start in the next post. In the meantime…here, have a picture of palm tree: