Welcome to the Royal Caribbean blog podcast, a weekly look into the world of Royal Caribbean

cruising. I'm your host Matt Hodgeberg and this is episode number 329. It's been a while

since I had a cruise preview podcast episode, but this week I'm sharing a look at what I have

planned for my upcoming Royal Caribbean cruise on the newly refurbished Oasis of the Seas. Here we go.

This week I'll be going on Rail Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas, not once but twice,

and I wasn't really ever planning on doing this cruise originally.

Next week is Thanksgiving, and I've done a lot of Thanksgiving cruises over the years,

and I thought, well, since we did Thanksgiving on a cruise last year, and I think the year before that as well, I figured we were overdue to spend actually Thanksgiving with my family.

But as it ended up being, my sister had gotten married actually the week before this particular cruise, two weeks before the cruise, I should say.

And so my parents basically called off Thanksgiving saying they were going to do anything special.

So I think this is an opportunity or an excuse depending on how to look at it to book another Royal Caribbean cruise.

Now, originally, we were booked on Harmony of the Seas.

And I love Harmony of the Seas, right out of Porcan River, Florida.

You know, it's easy.

It's for the whole week. And, um, you know, it's what,

it is my favorite ship in the fleet. And since my kids do get off for the entire week of

Thanksgiving, doing a seven night cruise just makes a whole lot of sense. Well, that was the

plan. And then we got closer to final payments that I realized the price of that cruise was a little

more than I was looking to spend. And I was looking at a couple different options.

There were some interesting choices, like Allure of the Seas, even Adventure of the Seas,

was offering even an, I believe, an eight-night cruise, if not mistaken.

So there were some other choices I could have gone on, but Oasis of these drew me to Thanksgiving

...