I don’t like cruises. Yes, I said it. I don’t like so many people packed in one place or buffet restaurants or bumping in to the same annoying people all the time. So how on earth did we end up doing this trip I hear you ask? Well daddy Lauling’s parents did a lot of cruises with him and the young Laulings really enjoyed the one we did in 2011. So I agreed on their request, as long as we went Royal suite class!
I go through the restaurants, activities and shows that are on the Harmony of the seas in a separate blog and focus on our itinerary in this one.
Prior to the cruise
Our cruise left on a Sunday and Easter break started on a Friday, so we flew out Friday morning from Newark to Fort Lauderdale to spend a day and a half at the beach before joining our cruise. I picked the Grand Pelican Beach Resort for two reasons; 1) it’s one of only a handful that are actually on the beach; most of them are across the road, meaning you have to trek over a busy street to get there and 2) because it is the only hotel with a lazy river. We took a Mears car from the airport because they provide car seats and I didn’t want to lug one around for our youngest Lauling. The main downside of the hotel is it’s not near any restaurants, so I did feel a bit isolated without a car. It was fine for 2 nights, but if you are staying for longer bring car seats so you can use taxis to get around, or rent a car.
Check in was pretty quick and our room was ready when we arrived around lunch time, which was a pleasant surprise. We had a deluxe ocean view room, which was on floor 7. You enter in to the master bedroom which has the bathroom off it. While it only had one bathroom there were 2 sinks which helped get everyone washed and teeth brushed in the morning. Through the other side of the bedroom was the living area which had a sofa bed and exited on to the balcony. We opted for 2 Queen beds and had the boys sleep in the same room as us, just so we didn’t have to open and close the sofa bed. My only complaints were 1) there were rocking chairs outside our room and people had a habit of sitting out there talking at midnight. Daddy Lauling and I tag teamed a few times to ask people to move on, and 2) there were only 2 elevators and sometimes you had to wait quite a while to get one.
The pool wasn’t huge, but was warm and big enough. The Laulings adored the lazy river, and first thing in the morning, we had it to ourselves! We never had trouble getting a ring for it, although the Laulings actually preferred just letting it carry them along without the ring.
It was a very windy day when we arrived, so the waves were quite rough and the sand was blowing everywhere so we didn’t spend very long on the beach, and day 2 the Laulings just wanted to be in the pool, but the loungers were plentiful with beach hands there to help set you up. There was also bean bag games on the beach.
There is a main restaurant and the bar restaurant. We ate dinner at the restaurant one night and lunch there twice, and the menu was pretty much the same. The food was good and the service was fine, but definitely you couldn’t have eaten there every day. Breakfast you had a choice of buffet or a la carte. For dinner the first night we ate at the small hotel next door, which was very informal and was more like a café, but at least was a change of scenery.
Day 1 Embarkment day
Mears did let us down a bit this day because they were 30 minutes late picking us up (11 am instead of 10.30). While they did contact us, there was no offer of a discount for the inconvenience and the operator kept telling me we would still make the boat in plenty of time, which I was of course aware of, but was hoping to board earlier than the masses. The traffic getting in to the port was bad, and took at least an hour for us to get from the hotel to the boat. We dropped our tagged luggage off and checked in. We were supposed to have priority boarding but got funneled in to regular boarding; that said there was virtually no one there so it was a pretty quick process
Lauling tip: You must check in through the Royal Caribbean app at least 3 days in advance of the cruise starting and take pictures of each of your party.
When we got up to the boat, it was heaving and I was starting to regret my decision to do a cruise. It felt like everyone had boarded before us. The pizza place and café promenade were full, Windjammers was packed, with a line to wash your hands before entering and waiting for a table. I realized after that we should have gone up to Coastal Kitchen instead, so if you are traveling suite class, definitely do that.
After a quick lunch, we headed to our room which was accessible at 1. It was a little weird that your room key is just left at your suite and I was curious how many times people went to the wrong room, but it worked fine. One really nice perk with the suite class rooms is you each get a ‘wow’ band, which is akin to a Disney magic band. The band acts as a key card to your room and allows you to charge things to it, which means you don’t need to carry anything else around on the boat. You do still need to bring your sea pass for getting off and on the boat however.
The 2 bedroom Grand Suite
Wow, what can I say; what a suite! This was like a proper apartment; a very spacious living area with a sofa bed, expansive balcony with 2 full sun loungers, 2 chair loungers and dining table for 4, a master suite with an attached bathroom with full bath, a second bathroom with a shower accessed from the living area, and a second smaller bedroom that can sleep 4 (1 double bed and 2 pullman beds). There was so much storage that we could comfortably unpack and put the suitcases away in the closet in the living area and under the master bed. Our room attendant was super attentive, and adorned us with different towel animals each day which delighted the Laulings. The only negative was because the smaller bedroom wall was against the corridor, the Laulings sometimes had trouble sleeping with people talking or running down the hallway.
We explored the different levels of the boat and checked out the pool for half an hour before the mandatory safety drill and then washed up for dinner at the Hibachi, which I review in the other Caribbean cruise blog.
Day 2 At Sea
Day 2 consisted of swimming, mini-golfing, climbing, riding the carousel, gym session for mummy and daddy Lauling, and just enjoying relaxing on the balcony. My youngest Lauling and I saw a pair of dolphins from our balcony which was just gorgeous to see (wasn’t fast enough to get a picture sadly). We did breakfast at Coastal kitchen, lunch at Johnny Rockets and dinner at the main dining room. We rounded the day at the Fine Line Aquatheater show. You don’t need reservations when you travel suite class; we turned up about 20 minutes before show time and there were 2 rows reserved for suite class residents. We got a prime view right in the middle.
Lauling tip: Book for the aqua theater in advance if you are not going suite class, and get there at least 30 minutes before show time for a decent seat.
Boardwalk 
Day 3 Labadee
Labadee is Royal Carribean’s private island, which we’ve done before. We did breakfast at Windjammer, which was pretty busy, and then exited the boat around 8.45 (people started exiting at 8.30). We had a 10 am reservation for the aqua park, so had time for a pit stop at the splash area, which was pretty quiet at that time in the morning. We then walked down further to the aqua zone area. Sun loungers and shade were pretty plentiful at that time which was about 9.30, but that was not the case when we came off the aqua park at 11. We checked in to get wrist bands which was a fairly smooth process, although it was clear the staff didn’t understand me ! Here was the issue. The info about the aqua park says those under 48 inches can go on if they are supervised by an adult, but when you book it you have to verify that everyone is over 48 inches. My youngest Lauling is not, but I booked him a ticket anyway, and then checked with the suite lounge concierge whether he was OK to go on and they told me no, so I cancelled his and my ticket, but when I looked at the tickets it verified he could go on with an adult. So I asked to reinstate the booking when we checked in. I still had 4 tickets though, even though 2 had been cancelled, so they just gave me 4 bands anyway! I guess all’s well that ends well. When we got up to the park it actually says those under 48 inches are supposed to stay on the first set of inflatables, however no one stopped my little guy going on the bigger ones. He’s a huge dare devil and would have been very upset if he wasn’t allowed on them!
We had a great time on the aqua park, but my knees did get pretty scraped up and it’s not easy pulling yourself up on some of them- it was quite the work out! My eldest Lauling and I did a slide down the water slide after, but it was super slow so don’t waste your money on it.
There is a suites only area on Labadee where lunch is served, so after the aqua park we headed back there. It was very full and we had to pull some rather dirty and sad looking loungers, but there was still shady areas to put them. The line for lunch took a while, and there weren’t enough tables to sit at, although we were lucky enough to get one. I don’t know how it would compare to the other eating areas for non-suites guests as when we went a few years ago we did an excursion and got to lunch close to 2 pm (it was quiet at that time!).
We stayed building a sand tower (because we forgot our bucket and spades!) until about 4 pm before heading back to the boat to shower and have dinner at Coastal kitchen.
Day 4 Jamaica
The boat docked around 10 am in Jamaica, so we did breakfast at park café for a change and I had time to do a gym class before we exited the boat. We actually went to Jamaica for Spring break the year before we did this cruise trip, so we had already done Dunn’s falls and Mystic mountain previously. I also knew from that trip that multiple boats dock in Jamaica on Wednesdays so all the excursions get very full. So instead I decided to do a non-Royal Caribbean excursion and do a resort for the day at Jewel Runaway bay. In part it was because I had flip flopped between staying there and where we ended up, which was Hilton Rose Hall and wanted to see what it was like. The only tricky part was finding the mini-bus to take us, but the info desk was able to direct us to the parking lot where it was waiting. There was another family and a few couples also doing the trip. It was about a half hour ride to the resort. Check-in took a bit of time because only one front desk girl seemed to know what to do, and we ended up at the back of the line.
The resort was great though. It was MUCH quieter than Hilton Rose had been, which surprised me for Easter break. We had no problem getting sun loungers at the beach. At the Hilton we had been running down reserving them in the morning. The beach was small, and definitely no better than the one at the Hilton. We spent about an hour or so there before having lunch at the grill which is behind the beach. We could have gone back to the lobby area and eaten at the buffet or the pizzeria on our day pass. Alcoholic and non –alcoholic beverages were all included too. After lunch we headed over to the water park, which was a great set-up with slides, a splash area and a lazy river. There were an abundance of floats for the lazy river. We didn’t do the slides as the Laulings weren’t interested, but they were pretty quiet too.
The bus was coming back for us at 4.45, so we packed up but were sad to leave. I could definitely see ourselves staying there and would definitely recommend it as an alternative to the other shore trips.
Dinner that night was at Jamie’s Italian, reviewed in the other blog.
Day 5 At Sea
Day 5 consisted of Coastal kitchen breakfast, a pilates class for me, mini-golf, Boardwalk arcade, pool time, climbing area and carousel rides. I managed to get my oldest Lauling down the Abyss. The hardest thing is getting going in the slide, but once you’re on your way it’s fast and fun, with glowing lights and spooky sounds inside. We saw the skating show, which we all enjoyed before having dinner at the Mexican.
Day 6 Cozumel
Day 6 we did the Royal Carribean excursion to Tolum, one of the Mayan ruins. There is also a trip to Xichen, but everything I read said that’s really far and not to attempt it as a day trip. One excursion I read up about after the fact was Xcaret adventure park, and I’d definitely look at that too. For most of the excursions you have to take a ferry from the port to the Costa Maya Riviera (takes about 45 minutes) and then a bus from there, which took another half an hour or so. It was REALLY hot with no shade at Tolum. I enjoyed it, especially to learn a bit about the Mayans which I really knew nothing about. but it was a bit too much for the boys. They did enjoy spotting the iguanas and Coatis though. After about 2 hours at the ruins, we took a short trip to a beach area with a restaurant for lunch. The tacos and ceviche were fabulous and then we had about an hour and a half at the beach. There was a lot of seaweed which didn’t make swimming look very appealing, and it was all piled up on the beach, but the Laulings didn’t seem to care and enjoyed building more sandcastles. We didn’t get back to the boat until close to 6 and had a Coastal Kitchen reservation at 6, so for any all-day Cozumel excursion, don’t book dinner for earlier than 6.30. We got down to Coastal kitchen around 6.30 and they still kindly accommodated us. We checked out the mow town show that night, but my youngest Lauling was pooped, and slept all the way through it!
La Playa beach 
Grumpy children at Tolum
Day 7 at sea
We had a leisurely breakfast at Coastal kitchen again and our usual itinerary of mini-golf, pools, climbing area and carousel. I got daddy Lauling down the Abyss and we watched a dog’s journey at the aquatheater screen too as well as the day time aquatheater show (nowhere near as good as the one earlier in the week). The daily itinerary lists what movies playing- we caught a bit of Spiderman earlier in the week there too. We wrapped up the day with dinner in the main dining room and the sad part of the week; packing. Cases need to be outside the room before 10 pm.
Day 8 De-embarkation day
We did a last breakfast at Coastal Kitchen, a last game of mini-golf and then got ready to leave. When you are suite class, you can pick one of 3 leaving times, and head up to the concierge lounge to be escorted off the boat. It was still a bit of a process. We picked the 8.45 slot which was supposed to have us leaving the boat at 9, it was closer to 9.15 before they started the process. What was good was they can hold the elevators so they didn’t stop anywhere else, so we all got loaded in to elevators and sent to the exit deck. From there we were walked off the boat to collect our luggage and exit through customs. We were done before 10 am. Our Mears taxi was already there and it’s a short 10 minute drive to the airport. We had a 1.30 pm flight and definitely could have done an earlier one. It did give me time at the United lounge at the airport to start looking for our next cruise in 2021 however ;)!
I will also say that the weather was perfect every day; not super humid and up in the mid to high 80s. It was a perfect time of year to go, you could really enjoy the outside areas of the boat which we weren’t able to do out of Bayonne. I also saw a decent mix of families, couples and solo travelers. I would totally recommend this itinerary and boat for those looking for a mix of activity and down time.