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

Day three brought our first port: Labadee. Royal Caribbean’s private island. Labadee is basically one big beach. Well, a handful of beaches but you know. It’s a beach. There’s a roller coaster and zip lining. I’m sure there’s some other stuff there but for all intents and purposes, you dock at Labadee and you go to the beach.

If you haven’t been following my family’s travels, lets lay some groundwork here: I don’t like beaches. I like pools. I don’t like being in the ocean. I like being on the ocean. If you give me the option between a beach day or a historical sightseeing tour, I will choose the tour. Stephanie is the exact opposite. Beach over pool, in ocean over on ocean, beach over sightseeing. So it comes as no surprise to anyone that the one thing that Stephanie was looking forward to more than anything else on this cruise was this day in Labadee. She Googled the best spots on the island to spend the day in. She booked an Over the Water Cabana at Nellie’s Beach once our shore excursion window opened. And the morning we docked at Labadee, she rose with the sun.

I’m not even kidding.

Stephanie legitimately woke up and then woke everyone else up before the sun was out. Because once the ship was docked and the gangway lowered, Stephanie wanted off this ship and onto the beach.

In her effort to get off the ship as early as possible, Stephanie ordered us a room service breakfast the night before. For a 6:45 am delivery. I refused to get out of bed until the room service attendant was in our room setting up our breakfast on our balcony and there was a carafe of coffee waiting for me.

Once I had a good cup and a half of liquid caffeine in me, I could fully appreciate the experience of dining on the balcony. It’s not something you can really do on Carnival – the balcony tables are too low on Carnival and the balconies, themselves, aren’t really deep enough for a dining table. But sipping my coffee as Haiti came into view was just beautiful and a really peaceful way to start our day.

With breakfast down, our swim gear on and our bags packed, we headed up to deck 16 to take some island pictures before heading out onto the island.

We were off the ship and on Haitian ground by 8:45 am. The photographers were much pushier than the Carnival photogs are — one of them literally grabbed Stephanie and told her they were going to take a picture. That aside, our first impressions of Labadee was that it was really freaking hot. Like super hot. And the island looked pretty, but it was holy-crap-we-just-got-off-the-ship-and-my-shirt-is-already-sticking hot.

It’s a long walk to Nellie’s Beach (where our cabana rental was), so we took a tram out there. The trams are complimentary and run frequently.

Cabana check-in was a bit disorganized, but that might have been because we were off the ship at the crack of dawn and were amongst the first people on the ship. Part of the reason Stephanie wanted off so early was so she could get the best cabana, but we found out when we checked in that they were pre-assigned.

So there’s two different kinds of cabanas on the island: there are the hillside cabanas, which are behind the beach, and the over the water cabanas, which offer patrons the ability to bypass the busy beach by providing direct access to the water via private staircases. The cabanas also came with two plush loungers and towels, a shaded indoor cabana area with a couch (which was perfect for Mom to hang out in), access to the upgraded buffet that suite guests have on their private beach, water mats, bottled water (in our case, four large bottles of Evian in a cooler) and a cabin attendant who will fetch you anything you want. Our cabin attendant, Ronald, checked us in, set us up with our wristbands for lunch and our mats, and then checked in hourly to make sure we had everything we needed.

For a more detailed look at the cabanas, I put up a short tour video on YouTube: http://youtu.be/06RhsyVbSVc

And then we slathered on copious amounts of sunscreen and Stephanie and I alternated between lounging and floating (well, I floated. She pulled me around the water since I refuse to touch ocean floor) while Mom read and played Sudoku on her iPad.

I scraped my toe coming in from the water trying to maneuver myself onto the ladder without touching the ocean floor. The ladders are up against rock and they’re pretty jagged. While I took some time out of the sun to read and snap pictures, Mom and Stephanie went out towards the shops. Despite the heavy layers of sunscreen (did I mention Stephanie bought a heavy SPF at her dermatologist’s office before she left and we were burning through that?), her skin was lighting up, so she wanted a tee shirt to swim in and some swim shoes (there were large patches of seaweed in the water). She came back with both (surprisingly decently priced) and a bottle of heavy duty aloe.

While we were taking a time out from the water and sun, Stephanie took a time lapse video of the beach: http://youtu.be/k73Nj-xmICI

We headed towards the suite area for what we thought was an early lunch, but it seemed everyone else had the same idea. I know there’s debate right now over whether an upgraded lunch is currently included or not, but I didn’t think lunch was a selling point of the cabana. Here’s the thing – while lunch for cabana-holders is held on a private part of the beach that’s only accessible to Diamond and Suite guests, it was still incredibly crowded and there were people without wristbands constantly sneaking in and out. There weren’t enough tables for everyone and table hogs were out in full force (like, one person saving a table for eight with a half empty cup of Coke and an empty bottle of beer and then ran over to shoo away an elderly couple who tried to sit down with their food), and the line was incredibly long and slow moving. And the food? Y’all, it wasn’t that good. Yeah, they give you steak and shrimp at the upgraded buffet, but it’s steak and shrimp that’s cooked offsite and brought in. The burgers were better than the steak. Everything else I tried was better than the steak.

We walked around a bit after lunch to see Adrenaline Beach and some of the other facilities.

We headed back to the cabana to relax for a little while longer, and Stephanie and I crowded onto the couch with Mom. Despite our frequent applications of SPF 30’s and 50’s (and despite the tee shirt Stephanie bought that morning), the early morning sun was intense and kissed our skin with hues of angry red. By 2:00 pm, we were ready to call it a day. We packed up our gear, tipped Ronald and headed out.

Ronald arranged for a golf cart to escort us to the security check point, and we got a nice little tour of the beaches on our way back.

Royal Caribbean’s security check is in a small building at the pier instead of on the ship. I found this much preferable, as it really kept everything moving. We stopped to take a few last pictures and then headed back to the ship.

Here’s where Royal Caribbean really gets it right: they have two gangways open for guests – one for guests with aft cabins and one with guests with forward cabins. By opening up two gangways, dividing passenger traffic and moving the security checkpoint from the gangway to portside, it allows for quick entry onto the ship when you feel sweaty, gross and tired. You scan your Seapass, they squirt some sanitizer on your hands as you step onto the escalator (because they take that stuff seriously onboard) and you’re quickly whisked away into a world of air conditioned bliss.

We headed straight to our cabins to shower and change. I tried to take an ice shower (a shower on the coldest setting possible) and the coldest setting possible was a few notches above room temperature. Our shower just did not get cold. I napped while Mom and Stephanie took their showers and then we all headed down to Sorrentos for a snack.

We’d given high marks to Sorrento’s regular pizza slices, so we were excited to try their create-your-own option. They have around 10 toppings you can choose from, and an attendant will build your pizza in front of you, give you a number and then deliver your creation to your table.

My pizza was simple – mushrooms and olives – but it was delicious. The crust was doughy, the cheese was perfectly melty and the sauce nice and tangy without being overpowering. Mom and Stephanie echoed similar praise for their pizzas. I know Sorrento’s gets mixed reviews, but we really enjoyed it throughout our trip.

We were going to cap off our snack with some ice cream, but Wipeout Café was packed, so we ditched our plans for ice cream and headed down to the jogging track to sit and look out at the island.

The jogging track was one of our favorite places on the ship and we found ourselves out there almost daily. One of the criticisms of the Allure is that there isn’t a lot of places to see the water, and coupled with the fact that the ship has such fantastic motion stability, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that you’re on a cruise. The jogging track is littered with wooden chairs and it’s almost like a private verandah…just one where people just happen to go running past you every few minutes.

After some island gazing, we headed back to the room for a bit. All the sun caught up with me and I took another nap, and Mom and Stephanie took some quality balcony time. And then? Dinner time.

We had mixed reactions on dinner. Mom raved over the eggplant parmagiana (John insisted on bringing her one when she couldn’t decide between the eggplant and the shrimp). I thought the strip steak was overcooked and flavorless. We all agreed that the desserts were top notch.

Caprese Salad

Antipasti

Arancini

Creamy Roasted Garlic Soup

Chilled Strawberry Bisque

Chicken Marsala

Garlic Tiger Shrimp

Eggplant Parmagiana

Aged Hand-Cut Manhattan Strip Steak

Sticky Bread and Butter Pudding

Tiramisu

Dessert Sampler

Beyond the food, the service continued to impress. John and Daniel were attentive and friendly and paced our meal perfectly. Miguel, the head waiter, came over to chat for awhile and continued to stop by throughout the week. Meeting him was a highlight of our trip. He’d tell us about his job and his previous jobs (he used to spy on the competition!) and he’d talk to us about our lives and jobs. When we told him Mom’s birthday was the following week, he jotted down our room number. And then, right before we left? The wait staff broke out into a melodious round of O’ Sole Mio, waving napkins around above their heads. It was almost like I was on another ship in another dining room listening to That’s Amore 😉

After dinner, we walked along the promenade and took our time perusing the shops.

I’m pretty sure my shoulders were radiating enough heat to warm my apartment through a Chicago winter, so we headed back to the room and I doused myself in aloe and sat out on the balcony for awhile.

With no shows reserved for tonight, we decided to play it by ear. Our first stop? Central Park. Every night, they had live music out in Central Park and people would grab some wine at Vintages and sit out. It was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip.

After Central Park, we headed to deck 16 to look out on the lights of the lower deck. Sounds kind of lame, but it’s gorgeous up there at night.

Our last stop? The Boardwalk. I don’t know why, but the Boardwalk was just never busy. I assumed it always would have been because there’s so much out there, but it was just never busy.

Since we couldn’t get ice cream earlier in the day, we headed into the ice cream shop for a scoop before the water show.

We were talking to the girl manning the shop when we spotted a butterfly in the ice cream shop. As she scooped our ice cream, she explained to us that her father died when she was in fourth grade and at his funeral, a butterfly kissed her on the cheek and ever since, butterflies follow her around.

The ice cream was modestly priced but was just decent. I’m a sucker for sprinkles, but in all honesty, the free soft serve was better than the for-cost hand-scooped ice cream.

After our snack, we went to grab some seats for the water show. It kind of reminded me of the show they have at the Gaylord Opryland with this choreographed show of geysers and colors and music, but the graphics they put up on the screens were borderline bizarre.

After the show, we headed back to the room and watched the Love and Marriage show on TV. Family friendly? Not so much. But incredibly entertaining. We thought Ken Rush was a fantastic show host and cruise director. We had another port day to follow, so we settled in with some movies before we headed off to sleep.