The Boardwalk Dog House!
(We had stopped by Park Cafe looking for a famous roast beef sandwich while in Central Park, but the lines were pretty long already, so we waited.)
TIP: The touch boards at the elevator banks will list the dining venues and how busy they are at any given time. They don't list the Boardwalk Dog House. So chances are you can always get a hot dog pretty quickly.
We checked out the menu - who even KNEW there were 7 varieties of hot dogs in the world? I got a Coney Island Dog and Chris got a Big Apple (chicken with apples in a parmesan/cheddar baguette). Mine was a hot dog. And that's all I needed at the moment. Chris liked his dog, but said the bread was extra hard and hurt the roof of his mouth.
We enjoyed it, and we stopped back by later in the week for another (different) dog each. I had the German (pork and marjoram in a caraway seed baguette). I thought it was good. I didn't get the saurkraut with it, and I'm sure that would have changed the flavor, depending on your liking.
Bellies full, it was off to Rita's. We checked in at the podium, and they took our reservation (selected night and room number), handwritten on a napkin. We kept checking our Personal Calendar on our TV after that (a few times a day) and never saw the reservation. We checked at the Guest Services desk one day and they said "those TVs don't always work right. You'll have to check at Rita's." So we went back to Rita's and asked someone. She said she was sure our reservation was fine, but she didn't have access to it so she would ask her manager to verify and he would call us later that night or in the morning. We never got a call, and the TV never showed it. When trying to make a new reservation on the TV, it showed sold out for our selected night. We'll see how that goes when we show up on Day 4.
Ok, so all dinner reservations made, we explored the ship a little and when it got close to 1pm, we headed to check out our room (and drop off our backpacks, change to swimsuits, etc.). This was our first cruise as Platinum members, and this greeted us:
It was a nice surprise. There was some kind of
There were a few other paperwork items, like our Cruise Compass, Meet & Mingle invitations, and maybe more. And there was a note with a refillable soda mug saying our pre-ordered drinks had been fully delivered. One problem. I had ordered and paid for 8 bottles of water. So when our room steward, Hopeton from Jamaica, introduced himself and asked if everything was ok, he said he would get right on it. He had to contact Bar Services. We left our room before the water situation was fixed, but left a note on the note they had left us, and by the time we returned to our room that evening, we had our water.
Time to check out our room. We had Superior Ocean View Stateroom #8624. Starboard side. Between the humps.
The room was great. On Oasis Class ships, the rooms alternate between bed by the balcony and bed by the closet. Our bed was by the balcony.
We loved everything about our room. Nice size. Clean. Easy to move around. Lots of storage. The view was great and the humps forward and aft did not obstruct the view. We loved being on Deck 8 - so convenient to Central Park and our favorite bar, the Trellis Bar.
Negatives: It was a long, boring walk from either the forward or aft stairs/elevators. After experiencing this, we would choose a room closer to the stairs. If you need to walk the length of the ship in that case, at least you can choose to walk it on a deck with some activity (promenade, Central Park, even the pool deck), rather than a long hallway full of doors.
The only other negative was that our "soap holder" (for lack of a better descriptor) was broken and wouldn't hold our toiletries. By about Day 3, they got that fixed and we were fine. Nothing really to complain about.
Now, for the moment we'd been waiting for...(I bet you can guess)
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