Experience Review: Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas

A panorama of Nassau, Bahamas taken from the ship!

I just went on a 7 night cruise with Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas and oh man, I’m so in love. For what the cruise was actually like, check out my blogs which will be posted throughout the week or check the “OotS” tag!

For Spring Break, I was invited to cruise off of Fort Lauderdale to Nassau, St. Thomas, and St Martin during a 7 night trip on the Oasis of the Seas, also known as the largest cruise ship in the world. (Insert drum roll tapping sounds here.)

Overall, it’s been amazing. This is my first cruise and I’m totally in a daze that it’s already over. From the food to the service, to the crew, everything is high class – even if you aren’t a diamond member. I’ll break this blog post down to all different categories for easy reading. No this isn’t a sponsored post (but if RC happens to see this, please do sponsor me, I’d love another cruise) but yes I am 110% encouraging you to cruise on the Oasis of the Seas.
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It was soo good!

The OotS offers all different restaurants, our reservations for dinner were always in the same restaurant at the same time. We had dinner at 6pm in the Silk, with Olano and Wilson as our waiters. I’ve never had such a fine dining experience not only because the food was prime, but because our waiters were so personable. During dinner, we asked to have a plate of rice to accompany our main courses because that’s how Vietnamese food is and what we’re largely used to, and not only did our server do that but the following nights he surprised us with Vietnamese vegetable stir fry, fried rice, and Erick (the server/manager in charge of that area) even tried his hand at making stir fried noodles with Vietnamese Sea Bass for us! How kind is that?! I asked around and everyone agreed, the OotS has the most personable and friendliest crew. (Request Olano if you can. He is the nicest and most accommodating server ever!)

During the last dinner, our waiters sang and danced for us!

For breakfast, lunch, and snacks, there were various restaurants located throughout the ship. The food was fairly similar in the 24/7 areas but on deck 5 in Café Promenade, there were these coconut ranger cookies that are soooo delicious. They’re crispy yet chewy with the most subtle coconut flavour.
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Activity wise, the ship was packed with a ton – if you were an adult. There’s night clubs, evening shows (ice skating, water/diving shows, comedy shows, etc), comedy clubs, dancing, spa treatments, and a whole plethora of other things to do. For a teen though, there was a central teen lounge for us to hang out around. There was also Flow Rider, this water surfing simulator kind of area. There was a rock climbing wall that is massive, about 3 decks high. My friend Phil said he rarely comes across a wall so difficult to climb but this one stumped him. There’s also a sports court, zip lining, ping pong tables, and a handful of pools, hot tubs, and a kids water zone.

My main complaint though is that the teen lounge wasn’t open that much, especially on at-sea days. My friends and I were talking about this, there are 2 dinner times: 6 PM and 8:30 PM. Yet the Teen Lounge is closed from like 5-7 or something like that. It made no sense because during the free time we all had, we couldn’t congregate in the lounge. Things worked out of course but it’d have been to have the lounge open for the majority of the day. So RC, y’all should fix that.c

St. Thomas is so beautiful!

Besides that, It’s a ship that’s totally packed with things to do. I didn’t get to experience all of it. I had enough time but I favored spending time with my friends over doing that stuff. Though my friend and I did get to ride every animal on the carousel…maybe we had too much time. Haha at least the crew didn’t kick us off.
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Speaking of which, I love this crew. In the teen lounge, we had 3 main crew members that I love messing with. But the stars of the crew, in my eyes at least, were the photographers. I had gotten the premium plus photo package which meant that we got all professional photos printed and on a CD, so we decided to get our money’s worth and casually have 1000 photos taken. You think I’m kidding. (Edit: We only took 508 photos…that’s still a feat to beat though!)

I got a selfie with Ruslan!

My favorite photographers are definitely Aleks from Serbia, Mark from South Africa, and Ruslan from Russia. I’m 90% sure that I see a flash of fear and exhaustion flicker in their eyes whenever my friend(s) and I walk up to them because we take so so so many pictures. But each of them are so kind and funny. Ruslan never talks when he asks us to pose, he uses his hands to gesture us around which is the fastest way. We did get a chance to talk to him for 20 minutes about Russia though.

Turns out living on a cruise ship is awakening in some sort because there’s a sort of globalization throughout the continents. Ruslan explained that because we all see one television and watch the same things, we’re all becoming one civilization. Everywhere he goes is the same now. Not to say that the world isn’t culturally vast and beautiful, but we’re slowly morphing into one civilization through a tiny screen that you’re using to read this post. Maybe I’ll develop that more into a post for later…

The cleaning department has it on point too. Every day, I had my room cleaned twice (which was so nice) and whenever I came back at night, I would have a towel folded into a cute animal on my bed. Plus, whenever I was walking to dinner or back to my room at night, there were two stewards (is that what you call them?) that would always say hello and make small talk. I’ve had a few people tell me I remind them of their daughter or little sister which melts my heart because being on a ship for 6 months away from family must be rough. But they’re always happy and nice and in return, I’m grateful.

But anyways, the crew is wonderful. The photographers are all so nice to talk to and so real. There’s plenty of painted smiles I’m sure, but hell, they do a damn good job of it so kudos to them. If I say go on the Oasis for anything, I’d say go for the photographers. They’re the coooolest. (If yall do, track down the names I listed above. Their photos came out sooo well.)

I met some really interesting people. There were a handful of kids around my age and I traded numbers and social medias with them to ensure we keep in touch.

Only a handful of the friends I made on the cruise. (I did buy the pictures, I’m just too lazy to upload them. I promise.)

Going a week without internet connection is so refreshing. I’m going to have a lot of catching up to do but I feel rejuvenated after a week offline. For a first time cruise, I am very happy and very sun-burnt. (I have to buy a new foundation because I swear I’m 10 shades darker than before.)

Pretty much, I’m trying to tell you that you need to try this cruise line. I thought I would die without wifi but I didn’t even take that many pictures. Turns out some moments should be experienced and not captured.

I miss it so much now, till next time Royal Caribbean! I want to come back to the Oasis so bad.