Oasis has lots of areas to be active, or watch others being active, as well as some nice spots to just relax poolside.
In order to provide light for the Central Park and Boardwalk areas, and make all those "interior" balconies possible, the top decks of the ship are split into two sides, with just a few "bridges" connecting them. This means the main pools are smaller than you might expect, but we found that to be really nice---it broke the crowds up and also allowed different pool using styles to be going on simultaneously without interfering with others (so, the beach pool was for lounging, but the sports pool could be used for laps or volleyball).
There is the "main pool" and directly across from it, the "Beach Pool." I really liked the Beach Pool area. There was lots of shade, an area with just ankle deep water to cool off in and fun beach style music playing at all times (often piped in, but also a steel drum band played fairly often during the day). It was the most fun pool area I have encountered on a ship:
There was a fun little contest to build a sailboat on board and compete in a regatta, those boats sailed in this pool:
Back in a shady corner there is the "sports pool" which is set up for laps in the morning hours and had volleyball games and the like most afternoons:
The main pool:
There is also a kids' pool and sprayscape area called "The H2O Zone:"
There were many hot tubs scattered around near all the various pools, as well as two big cantelevered ones between the main pool deck area and the adults only Solarium Pool and deck area:
The Solarium, for ages 16 and up, is huge (two stories) and has sweeping views of the ocean (finally! somewhere on the ship looks out), two hot tubs and a bathtub warm little pool for just relaxing in, plus tons and tons of seating, much of it in shade (hurrah!), a bar and the Solarium Cafe (which serves healthy options as a buffet for breakfast and lunch and becomes an upcharge restaurant at dinner time).
This is the best solarium area I have seen. We saw a pod of dolphins one day as we lounged in the hot tub, which was a real treat. Mostly, I liked all the shady spots. I would have liked to have seen more of those circular loungers--they sure looked comfy, but we never managed to snag one for even a few minutes.
The little pool
upstairs seating and bar
one of two identical hot tubs
the much in demand circular loungers on the main deck
Those seeking more activity can generally find it in the aft section of the ship.
The ship has twin rock walls to climb, and one or the other was open for most of the day on each of our many sea days. Rio and I both climbed a few times. This ship uses an automatic belay system, which felt freaky to me--it was hard to trust a machine to keep me from falling, but I did, and it did bring me down slowly and safely (with a bit of a "gulp" inducing drop right at first) once I reached the top and rang that bell and let go of the wall.
Up top, still aft, are twin Flow Rider surf machines. One was used for boogie boarding and one for stand up surfing and they ran for many hours every sea day. It was a lot of fun, and also fun to watch others try. We didn't like that the lines were in full sun, but that is a small issue. You also have to have a wrist band showing that you have signed the release form, in order to ride. So, you either wear it all cruise, or stop at the window for a new one each time you go up to give it a try (we cut ours off and got new ones as needed).
In the rear area there is also a little snack cafe (the Wipe Out Cafe). This is the place for made to order Omelettes at breakfast time. This is a very good little thing to know (if you like fresh omelettes anyway)!
I failed to take any photos of the sports court (where games of basketball, soccer, etc were played) but it was nice. There is also a little 9 hole mini golf course that Rio and I enjoyed playing in the evenings. It is open 24 hours, with soft lighting at night. I never went out in the daytime to get photos, but it was nice and the best part, a stroke of pure genius on the planners' part was an extra "green" with little clubs, colorful frog and duck statues and lots of holes, much more appealing to young ones than the "real" course, so it gave them a place to mess around without hindering actual play :).
Hmm, I seemed to have missed a lot of photo ops in this category (sorry all). There is a zipline that goes far above the Boardwalk. It is HIGH--which was rough for me (but I did do it--no one was there to photograph, sadly). It is short, so goes very quickly and the thrill was not worth a repeat to anyone in our group. You have to wear tight fitting closed toed shoes (which for Rio and I both meant putting on our gym shoes) and wait in line, so the bother of making a special point of wearing certain shoes and waiting was not worth the 30 seconds of fun for us.
Also in the same area are ping pong tables.
Other active things are a shuffleboard court back behind the Aqua Theatre, the nearly half mile long walking and jogging track I wrote about in a prior post, a full gym (open to ages 16 and up) and the ice skating rink (a very small rink made available for free skating sessions once in a while. You must wear long pants and socks--again, the fun of skating was not great enough to hassle with changing into our jeans, yes we are LAZY on vacation lol).
I was really happy with how often everything was open and available to us on all of the sea days. For our group, the pools, rock wall and Flow Riders were the really fun things worth multiple visits.
I think I am just about done with my write up of the cruise, so I will throw in Marika and Rio's impressions of the teen club here, as it never really fit anywhere else.
Sometimes my kids love teen clubs and other times not so much. A lot seems to depend on the staff running it on any given cruise.
On Oasis, the kids were very impressed with the space on day one. It is big and has lots of nooks and crannies and seemed inviting. They went up for the initial meet and greet and met some kids and thought everyone seemed nice. So, things got off to a good start.
Things went a bit downhill when the kids were told there is no "teen compass" (schedule of activities) on Oasis. The schedule is made on the fly each day and posted on a chalkboard--so they have to go up to the club to find out what will be happening.
Hmm, well, yeah. Okay, that probably works great for lots of teens. Mine happen to like schedules and prefer not to miss something on the normal schedule while they head up to check if there might be something better going on in the teen club. So that right there was enough to cause them to not spend loads of time in the club.
As is, the schedules that were made ended up being about 50-60% "video games" of one sort of another (Wii tournaments, free arcade time, Minecraft, etc, etc). I thought the kids were exaggerating and started checking the board myself (it is visible from the hallway). They weren't. It was very video game heavy. Niether of my kids much care for video games, especially when they can be doing more group things on a cruise, so Marika and Rio ended up just hanging out with adults most of the trip. Which was fine.
Up next, photos of the staterooms from our cabin crawl :)
--Hadley
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