Kiar Family Christmas Cruise! Day 1 and 2

It has always been a dream of mine to do a big family vacation, so this year, we decided to finally do it. Who knows when we'll all vacation together again, so we did it up big, and booked a 7-Night Western Caribbean cruise on Royal Caribbean's newest ship, Allure of the Seas over Christmas - December 19 - 26. Since I work for Royal Caribbean, I have been on the Allure for work, but not for vacation. None of my family had ever even seen an Oasis-class ship, so I was excited for them to experience it first hand. I knew it would be an incredible experience, but nothing could have prepared me for the absolutely amazing time we had. I have so many pictures, I am going to have to do this blog in a few parts.... so here it goes.

I coordinated the whole thing, and even went so far as to order matching shirts and Shrek ears for everyone, which we wore on embarkation day. Don't we all look so cute? The first day, I took everyone on a tour of the ship, so they would get to see everything at least once. I loved seeing the expressions on their faces as they took it all in. Everyone was blown away.


The Allure has the DreamWorks experience onboard, which is a bunch of onboard events that include the characters from different DreamWorks movies like Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon. The first DreamWorks event we went to was a character breakfast. Here we are with King Julian from Madagascar. As each character came out, they along with all the wait staff had fun choreographed dances. Then they went table to table to visit with everyone. We had a table right in front, and had a perfect view.


Our stateroom was an interior facing balcony. The Allure has an outdoor area called the Boardwalk, which looks like Coney Island and has a carousel, several restaurants, and stores. It also has the AquaTheater, which an outdoor amphitheater that they use to perform incredible shows. Here is Brianne enjoying the view from our balcony. Every morning, she would go out on the balcony and waive at the servers at Johnny Rockets. From the second morning on, all the servers came out and waived back, which thrilled Brianne.


We checked out the Adventure Ocean area. They have a big area called "Play" which has a bunch of toys, and things to climb on. Brianne enjoyed running around in here a lot.


Later, we saw the Move it! Move it! parade on the Royal Promenade, the city street that runs down the middle of the ship. All the DreamWorks characters were there, along with singers and dancers and acrobats, but Brianne nearly fell asleep on her Uncle Scott's head. She had had a busy morning!