When the alarm went off that morning, Graham thought it was still the evening, and this was the alarm for the laundry. He was very surprised that it was morning and the laundry was done. We got up and ready. Then we headed for breakfast. Graham had coffee, cranberry juice, toast, scrambled eggs, and beef patties. I had coffee, orange juice, peach yoghurt, pancakes with maple syrup, breakfast potatoes, beef patties. I could not resist one last round of toast with peanut butter and strawberry jam.
After breakfast, we headed back to our room to get our luggage organised. We watched the safety video on the Royal Caribbean app and then had a little downtime. Just before 09:00, we headed to reception to check out. Then I ordered an Uber. This arrived about five minutes later.
We got a nice clear run until we were getting close to Canada Place. We entered a tunnel that I hoped would bypass the chaos of port traffic. Sadly, the opposite was true. There is a whole city below Canada Place, and it was absolutely gridlocked. After all this, the tunnel did not even take us to the port, but we had to come back up to the surface and join the traffic for the port. Things started to look up once we were inside the parking structure. We got directed to a drop off right by the porters. We dropped off our luggage with the porters and were then directed to the lifts.
There was quite a line for the lifts, and everyone tried to pile into one lift when it arrived. While people were still playing lift Jenga, the second lift arrived. We got in, but nobody else headed in that direction. We ended up with a lift to ourselves. There was plenty of port staff around to direct people. The layout of the port in Vancouver is not exactly intuitive, and this was definitely needed. When we got to the area where check in was, we were directed straight to somebody with an iPad. We were given a green piece of paper that signified that we were checked in and then we were sent to security. The line for that was impressive, but it moved very quickly and soon we were on our way to immigration.
This was where we had an absolute nightmare last year. The experience this year could not have been more different. We bypassed the first area where we had lined up last year. The second area was roped off. We were directed straight to the final line for immigration. I had not taken our passports out of the document holder as I figured that I would have plenty of time for this. There were a few people ahead of us, but they had plenty of desks open. As soon as we had walked through the various switchbacks, we were directed to a desk. This really could not have been any smoother.
They had not started boarding when we came through immigration. We were directed to a waiting area where we sat down. Shortly afterwards the started to board by row, starting at the front. We were quite close to the back. I watched proceedings and was blissfully unaware that they had asked the last three rows to stand up. Fortunately, Graham had spotted this and gave me a nudge. We joined the end of the line. It turned out that they were trying to direct us to another waiting area to clear some space. However, Graham, who was slightly ahead of me, had headed straight to the photographers. They were not doing much business and were only too happy to have customers. We got our embarkation photos and then were directed straight to the ship. They scanned our barcodes just before we left the building. The gangway was the quietest we had ever seen it on a cruise and soon, we were on the ship. We headed straight towards our muster station, which was outside Giovanni’s Wine Bar. They scanned our barcodes, commented that we had already completed the safety videos on the app and then we were free to leave.
I had made a lunch reservation at Giovanni’s Italian Kitchen. As our official check in time was midday and based on our experience last year, I had booked the last possible time. I checked out the situation when we had completed our muster drill. They did not look particularly busy. I asked if they could seat us early. They were happy to do so. This worked out great for everybody as they got really busy close to our original reservation time and by then, we were done.
Our server brought us the menu and some water. When he took our drinks order, he brought us a plate with garlic bread knots with marinara sauce and some mixed olives. He took our food order when he came back with our drinks. Graham had a glass of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc, the meat and cheese platter as a starter and the Meat Lovers pizza. I had a glass of Moscato, crispy polenta with marinara and Alfredo sauce and chicken parmigiana with spaghetti and tomato sauce. I was pretty full after this little lot, but I could not resist the pistachio panna cotta with berries. Everything was delicious.
After lunch, we decided to check out some of the changes that had been made earlier this year. Most decks had one change or the other, but the highest concentration of changes were right on deck 5. Two of the changes, we had already seen. Giovanni’s Italian Kitchen used to be Jamie’s Italian and Giovanni’s Wine Bar used to be Vintages. Both changes were a definite improvement. We checked what else they had done on this deck. Another restaurant had changed. They used to have an Alice in Wonderland inspired restaurant with a rather excentric menu. This has gone and was replaced with a Teppanyaki restaurant. As part of the original restaurant concept, there was a huge chair that is best described as a throne outside the restaurant. I did wonder what happened to this or if they just left it. The answer was that this did disappear with Wonderland and had been replaced with a zen garden with a tree at the centre. I loved this.
There was one more change on deck 5 that was a huge improvement. Opposite Wonderland used to be the Bionic Bar where two robots mixed drinks. This was not only a total gimmick with the robots often breaking down and making a complete mess when they worked, but this also created a real bottleneck. This had been replaced with the Pesky Parrot Tiki Bar. We had encountered this concept for the first time last September on Allure of the Seas and I really liked this. I still could not imagine how this would work. I was positively surprised. I assume the backstage area for the Bionic Bar must have been huge. The footprint of Pesky Parrot was actually much bigger, but it was no longer a complete bottleneck. The final change was that an area that was previously taken up the photo gallery had been converted to cabins. I was not too sure about this as it has the theatre at one end and the Schooner bar at the other end. We wondered if the cabins are quite noisy. They are definitely cabins that I would avoid at all cost.
As we were all the way forward, we decided to check out what the situation was with the lifts. As people were getting on the ship midship, the forward lifts are often quieter on the first day. A lift came and did not look too busy. I got on but then noticed that Graham had not followed me. I waited for him on our deck, but when he did not materialise, I headed to our cabin. I got our key cards, used the bathroom, and unpacked my hand luggage. Then I headed back downstairs. I eventually found Graham on the chairs outside Café Promenade. He was enjoying his first cup of Royal Caribbean blend. I joined him as it is a bit of a tradition to have a cup of Royal Caribbean blend soon after boarding. I also went to Boleros to get my cup for the soda package. At some stage, we both needed the bathroom. The closest bathrooms to where we were sitting are by the midship lifts. We headed there and noticed that the lifts were not particularly busy. We made use of this and went up to our cabin.
At some stage, I decided to put up our magnets. I noticed that our suitcases had arrived and I brought them in. I also met our stateroom host Albert. Graham started to unpack as soon as we had our suitcases. However, the Welcome on Board trivia was coming up and I was not sure how busy this would be. I headed downstairs to secure us some seats and asked Graham to join me once he was done with the unpacking. The trivia took place in Sound Cellar, which was also one of the venues that had changed during the dry dock. This used to be a venue called Music Hall, which was split over two decks. The main area was on deck three and there was a balcony area on deck four. What was on deck 3 was converted to a no smoking casino. They added a floor to the area that was previously overlooking deck 3 and also incorporated a former shop, the photo studio, and an area with vending machines. I much preferred Sound Cellar to Music Hall.
I had no issue finding a couple of seats and Graham joined me soon after I got there. There is a strange rule while a ship is docked in Canada. They are only allowed to have one bar per deck open. The bar at Sound Cellar was closed. However, they had roving bar servers. We were offered a drink. Graham had a virgin pina colada and I had a margarita . I had my first indication that all drinks were not created equal on this ship. I was not impressed with the margarita. The trivia was fiendishly difficult. Unfortunately, this set the scene for the remainder of the cruise. A lot of the trivia question were very obscure. We scored 90 out of 125 and the winning score was 110. This sounds a lot more impressive than it was. There were 20 questions and each answer was worth 5 points. There were also some bonus questions accounting for the seemingly high score.
After the trivia, Graham headed back to the cabin. I was not far behind, but there was a photo I was hoping to get. We were docked next to Celebrity Edge. I went on a work trip on this ship in 2019 and I wanted to send the photo to a friend who was also on that trip. It is not the best photo as Canada Place is in the way, but I am still glad that I got a photo.
When I got back to the cabin, I quickly unpacked. Then I got changed for dinner. Graham was not showing much enthusiasm. I told him that I would get some photos and then would come back to get him. They only had two backdrops up that evening, so this did not take very long. There was nobody in the area outside Giovanni’s. I made use of this state of affairs to get a quick photo of the hanging sculpture. Then I headed out on the promenade deck to get a couple of photos of the Vancouver skyline.
After this, I headed back to the cabin to get Graham. Royal Caribbean had recently added a middle dining seating at 18:45. That sounded good to me. For years, we had been doing My Time Dining as the early seating is often insanely early and the late seating is too late. However, we often made reservations around 18:45 anyway and this sounded perfect.
Ovation does not have one main dining room, but has four different restaurants. Initially the plan for the Quantum class ships was that each restaurant had a distinct menu and theme. This was very much aimed at My Time Dining, but people who preferred a fixed seating had something that was very similar to rotational dining on the Disney ships. I actually liked this when we got to experience this back in 2016. On the whole, this was not a hit though. When we next went on Ovation in 2018, they offered My Time Dining plus early and late seating with the same themed menus that any other Royal Caribbean ship offers. The two restaurants on deck 3 are used for fixed dining times and the two restaurants on deck four are for My Time Dining. So far, so good.
Our key cards had the deck and our table number on them, which did not set off our alarm bells. I figured that there would be one podium and people would then be directed to the relevant restaurant. Sadly, that was not how it worked. There were two different lines. I took a judgement call and got into the closer line. Fortunately, I made the right call as we were indeed in the restaurant that the line was for. This was Grande. When they were dabbling with rotational dining, this was the dedicated formal restaurant. I had always loved this space, and I was happy that this is where we ended up. Early seating had overrun that day, and we had a bit of a wait, but once the line started moving, it moved pretty quickly. We were directed to our table. We lucked out there. We were in the final section of Grande and one table removed from the window. We also had a great serving team. Both of them were from Indonesia.
We both had a glass of Chateau Ste Michelle Riesling. Graham started with the crispy crab cake with Old Bay sauce and cucumber tomato salad and then had the pan roasted fish fillet with sweet peppers, snow peas, corn, creamy potato leek gratin with a saffron butter sauce. He liked the crab cake well enough, but was not too impressed with the fish. This was a shame as he quite often has fish when we cruise and he normally always enjoys it. I started with the roasted tomato soup and then had spaghetti Bolognaise for my main course. I finished off my meal with Boston cream pie. I enjoyed everything, but they were rather safe choices.
After dinner, we headed briefly back to the cabin. I wanted to pick up my iPad. Then we went up to the solarium to watch the sail out. The light was just starting to fade, and I got some nice photos of the skyline of Vancouver and Canada Place. The reason I wanted to watch the sail out was that we had to go underneath the Lionsgate Bridge. I was so captivated by this that I forgot to take photos. Once we were clear of the Lionsgate Bridge, I was done. I was exhausted. Graham wanted to stay in the solarium a little longer, but I headed back to the cabin. I got ready for bed. I had just settled down when Graham came back. Soon we were both asleep.
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