Here is the video I put together of our trip:
We were in no hurry to get off the ship since our flight was scheduled for 9:15pm. However, they require you to be out of your cabin by 8am. We just hung out at our departure spot (main dining room) until the line leaving the ship looked to be shorter. There was a little bit of a wait after we got off the ship to getting to the luggage area. But after that, we just had to pull our mask down to have facial recognition confirm us at customs and we were free to leave. There wasn’t any paperwork for us to fill out before leaving the ship like we had in the past.
Like I mentioned, we had a late flight scheduled so we had time to kill until we needed to be at the airport. From ship we took an Uber to the airport Hertz car rental to pick up my reserved SUV. We decided to get a large vehicle to store our luggage while we found things to do in Fort Lauderdale. We did toss around the idea of other options like RC post cruise excursion on the air boats in the Everglades or getting a day pass at a hotel to relax. The Everglades sounded fun but still got us to the airport by 3pm and it was more expensive for 4 of us over renting a car. The day pass at a hotel just sounded like it might be boring. After picking up our car, we headed to check out a mall. The first one we went to didn’t have any stores we really wanted to look at so we drove to mall number two. This one had a Target attached so we knew there was at least one store we could walk around and look at stuff. We ended up hanging out there for quite a bit. It was there that we saw our flight was being delayed. I’ll discuss that more later. But after we had enough at the mall, we drove back toward the Las Olas Blvd. There we walked up and down the coast taking in the local culture.
Now the details about our flight home. While waiting around at the mall earlier in the day, I saw others from our trip post that their flights were being delayed and some cancelled. I hadn’t looked at our flight yet in the morning since we checked in the night before. When I looked in the Southwest app, I saw our flight was delayed until the 11 o’clock hour which also meant that we wouldn’t arrive until sometime after 1am in Kansas City and I still had to drive about 2hrs home. I wasn’t too pleased to see this but the news only got worse as the afternoon went on. The delay kept jumping around reaching as late as departure at 1:30am. I started to look at our options in case we need to change our plans. After seeing a lot of people having their flights cancelled after having delays, I just wanted to know if we will have a flight or not. I checked to see if there were other flight options and with all this chaos, there were not flights out on Southwest until after Tuesday. Being Saturday at the end of Spring Break, my kids had school on Monday and really don’t need to be missing days. I then checked if we should just rent a car and drive the 20hrs home to get home late on Sunday. Not surprised, all the car rentals were already taken. To make the situation more complicated, I currently had a car rental to be returned later in the day. If I knew for sure our flight would be cancelled, I would ask to extend the current rental. If I turned it in and then had a cancelled flight, I would be without a car option.
We decided to just drive back to the airport, turn in the car, and see what happens. At the Southwest terminal, it was packed with people scrambling to get their flight home. Apparently there was a computer issue overnight that started a Southwest issue in the morning. The issues were compounded by the fact that there were storms in the southeast causing flight issues. We sat and watched terminal after terminal get their flights cancelled and people heading to the ticket counters to find a way out. Our flight continued to show on the board as delayed but still going. When the plane finally arrived it had to wait to land for the weather to clear. It landed sometime after 10pm. Our flight was pretty rough in the air due to the storms but we made it to Kansas City and after getting our car and driving home, we pulled into the driveway around 4am. We have another cruise this summer and I think we will be driving to that one.
Cabin 11229 review
We chose this room on purpose when booking. We really like these Central Park rooms right next to the living wall due to the fact they have double the balcony of the other rooms. We also had this room on our Oasis 2018 cruise. In addition to the 2 chairs and table, we also have 2 loungers. Combine this with our kids having the room next door, when we open the divider we have a really big place to hang out and relax. The evening in Central Park is very relaxing. It is pretty quiet with great mood lighting and earlier in the evening, there will sometimes be instrumental music being played. Late at night, you just hear the cricket sounds being piped in through speakers. At least I think it is through the speakers and not real crickets. There are living salamander/lizards in the greenery and on occasion there has been birds that will come along for the ride.
We have not had a regular ocean balcony or Boardwalk balcony yet so I can’t directly compare this to them. However, given the choice each time on an Oasis cruise, I keep choosing the Central Park cabin. The Boardwalk seems cool because you can see the ocean, the aqua show, and movies being shown in the Aqua Theater. The downside is that if the show or movie is happening at night, the balcony is no longer peaceful despite being entertaining. As far as a regular ocean balcony, I didn’t know if it might get a little boring since you can’t people watch and there’s nothing to sit on your balcony and watch. Plus one big thing that draws us to keep booking these Central Park balconies, the extra big balcony rooms.
Cruising Tips
Here are a few things that we bring along on our cruise that you might find useful. First off is the shoe holder for the bathroom door. This becomes a common item for those that cruise multiple times as you quickly find out that there are not a lot of places to put thing, especially small bottles. We choose to hang ours on the inside of the bathroom door so the person in the bathroom has access to all their toiletries. I have seen others that put it on the outside of the door. Ours is fabric but the plastic version would work too.
The next item is what we do for all our travels to hotels too. We bring pump hand soap. I do not like to use bars of soap for cleaning my hands, never did. We always pack a bottle of soap for each sink so we can scrub our hands throughly when on vacation.
A new item that we purchased right before this cruise was new magnetic hooks. Almost all walls, doors, and ceilings in a cruise cabin are metal and work with magnets. I bought new extra strong hook magnets for this cruise. I couldn’t decide between the 2 varieties so I bought both. Here they are doing the simple job of holding our laniards, but they are strong enough to hang clothes on. We actually didn’t get our swimsuits wet on this cruise (due to the cancelled Costa Maya), but I was planning on using them to hang damp clothes from.
Another organizer essential for us is the popup hampers. They fold up flat for travel but work great to corral the dirty clothes you accumulate over the cruise. We had one in each room. Actually we usually just get 2 of everything since we’ve always been doing the 2 room option with the kids.
We brought a shoe hanger along but did not use it much this cruise. Some shoes were put in there but I got lazy and tossed mine on the floor or bottom of the closet this go around.
Keeping your electronics charged can be a bit of a challenge on a cruise. The rooms (especially all the older ships) only have a couple outlet plugs in the room. The cruise lines ban power strips and extension chords. Since we really don’t have anything to plug in that is not powered by USB, we opted for multi-plug USB blocks. Since they do not have any regular AC outlets on them, they are not at risk of being confiscated. In the kids room, they actually have a 4 port version of this same thing.
The other item that is new for this cruise is these battery lights. I actually got them for our house to be used on our basement stairs. They charge by USB and can be set to only come on by motion at night and then stay lit for about 10-20 seconds. The cool thing is they are magnetic which is how you can remove them at home to charge them. They come with a metal plate you stick to your wall at home for that purpose. I just removed them from that plate and brought them along. I did find out that their magnet is not strong enough (due to it being recessed a bit) to hold the light securely to the wall. Luckily I had some cheap black magnets packed and I stuck them on the back of the light then to the wall. Worked perfectly. These lights come in handy at night when you may want to get up and get something or go to the bathroom. If placed in the right spot in the room, as you leave the bed, the light comes on and shows your way. There are 2 brightness setting to allow the right amount of light for its purpose.
