Allure of the Seas arrived Port Everglades very early this morning. We picked up the harbor pilot at 3am, and were tied up alongside around 3:45am, a very early arrival. Reason: All 2,000 plus crew cleared customs and immigration before the guests as this was the ship’s first U.S. arrival in around 6 months. Guest clearance began around 6:30am, and we walked off right at our scheduled tag number time, 9:30am. Easy, and made better by a little sign that said “Global Entry.” Quick blog post coming on that soon. In any event, our Global Entry cards got us moved to the front of the line, and we were on our way to the airport.

Overall Impressions

Allure of the Seas was a great ship for a crossing. The ship is enormous, and there is no shortage of things to do. That said, Allure is designed for the 7-day Caribbean cruise market, not a 12-day Atlantic crossing. One can only take so much trivia and napkin folding. I’m glad I brought a couple of books to fill in some time. I will prepare a standard cruise review at a later date.

As I’ve noted before, the demographics of my fellow cruisers leaned older, and that’s not surprising or a knock on anyone….it’s just the truth. I enjoyed some great conversations in the Diamond Club nearly every night, and it’s fun to hear about the travels of more “experienced” cruisers. With so many days at sea, there is a lot of time to catch up on missed gym visits, jog, spa, do absolutely nothing, and yes, we spent some quality time by the pool. We cruised with friends we haven’t seen for a while so it was a nice opportunity to visit with them too. In short, it was a good time.

We did have some rough seas the first 3 days of the crossing. Honestly, I’ve been through worse seas, but these were the most persistent. I’m not personally bothered by motion sickness so I wasn’t negatively impacted. I can’t say the same for MrsMJ, though she did not get extremely ill like a few did. We were on open ocean, and a very large north Atlantic storm reached down and touched us. It is what it is. Not something that bothered me, but something for you to be aware can happen if you’re considering you’re own trans Atlantic sailing.

Would I Do it Again?

That’s easy – YES! But not next week. By that I mean that I enjoyed the trans Atlantic experience immensely, including all those sea days, but it’s not the kind of cruise I would seek to do frequently. I tend to cruise for the ships, MrsMJ for the ports. For me, the extensive string of sea days was really not an issue, but I can’t say the same for her. With that, I think our perfect cruise might find us in a port every other day or so. An itinerary with more ports on either end of the crossing might have been more ideal too. In the end, we did it because we wanted to try a trans Atlantic crossing, and now we have. And then there were the sunsets……

Sunset at sea - © 2015 Marshall Jackson

Sunset at sea – © 2015 Marshall Jackson