Grandeur of the Seas - Day 2 - Sea Day (Part 2)

Our first time on the Grandeur, we bought a 4 night dining package with the intention of trying all three restaurants on board and then returning to our mutual favorite on the last use. It was because of this package that we tried Izumi at all as Dad's idea of Asian food is the local Chinese takeout. The idea of eating sushi was so anathema to him. We each had the hot rock option that last time and the whole experience and food was great. He even joined me in eating the Crispy Philly sushi roll!

So I was really looking forward to returning to Izumi for potentially several visits because it offered me the chance to try multiple sushi options without making Dad go hungry. Grandeur does not have the hibachi option that Oasis had but they told us there was plans to add it. I'm curious to know where they'd put it as the venue is so small. One of the things Grandeur has that the ships with hibachi no longer have is the tableside hot rock cooking which is a fun experience of its own. Since Izumi is still a la carte pricing on Grandeur, having the Ultimate Dining Package meant we each had a budget of $35 to use. Anything over that would be charged to our onboard account. If your dining companion is willing, the totals can be combined so that if you wanted a little more than they did, the package would still cover it. We went for that option so we had $70 to "burn" basically.

Dad's excited for his hot rock meal to come

Tonight our waiter was Leonardo and things started out fairly well. This was the first time a restaurant had offered us the choice of ship water, bottled water, or sparkling water. That's something both Celebrity and Oasis did when they saw we were in suites. Several times on Oasis they even made a big point of grabbing bottled water for us when everyone else around us was being served ship water out of the pitcher. We've always been fine with ship water as they call it but I'm assuming they would have charged us for the use of bottled or sparkling water.

Leonardo brought over our complimentary bowl of edamame warning that it was super salty. We've never been fans of edamame but I tried one this night. It was essentially inedible because it tasted like a salt lick. I tried it on my other Izumi visits and it was never that salty.

I chose to try the Shrimp Firecracker Spring Roll from the Starters ($9) and was pleasantly surprised by how I didn't find it too spicy, even with the dipping sauce.

Next we just had to repeat that Crispy Philly from the Signature Rolls section. ($13) This time it seemed a little too breaded and too crunchy to really get the taste of a Philly cheesesteak. 

Dad ordered the Tonkotsu Ramen bowl ($13) which we thought was coming next. 

See a large Tonkotsu Ramen bowl in the above picture? Nope? We never saw it either.

Next came out our respective hot rock orders. Last time we had both ordered the beef tenderloin but this time Dad went with the Mixed Skewers ($19) and I chose Mixed Seafood ($18). Dad asked Leonardo if he could choose all beef from the list and he said he'd have to ask the chef. The chef of course had no problem with that. Last time, a waiter came over and gave us a lesson on using the hot rocks and did most of the cooking in front of us. All that was left was us to let it sit cooking until it had reached our desired doneness. 

This time, we were brought our own hot rock platters, got warned about them being hot, shown how to use these new comically large tongs, and left to our own devices. Because Dad's beef was thick pieces for skewers, they took so long to cook that his rock actually went cold! I was concerned about food safety for mine because my limited experience preparing seafood at home only knew that shrimp turns pink when done. Had no knowledge about how to tell when the salmon or scallops were done. 

We did try to ask Leonardo for help but once a couple Pinnacle members came in to dine with a couple officers at the table next to us, we were forgotten about. I watched Leonardo bring a hot rock to a woman at a full table on the other side of us and she wouldn't let him leave until he cooked it all for her. A task he didn't do a good job of hiding his annoyance over. After trying a couple bites of the salmon and scallops and eating the couple shrimp and (now overcooked) lobster tail, I gave up on my entrée. By this point, Dad was having such a hard time getting the beef to cook through, he had decided that if they brought the ramen bowl after this, he wouldn't want it. 

Arden Religioso, the Izumi Manager stopped by our table thinking he was helping out by offering dessert. We shared our displeasure with the lack of service making sure to point out how this could be an undercooked food safety issue and how we never saw that bowl of ramen. Arden was very bothered by this news and immediately went over to loudly reprimand Leonardo. I have a tendency to immediately lose my appetite when there's bad service so we turned down dessert and asked to have our card swiped so we can leave. As it was, having to sit there trying to cook on this rock one handed positioned off to my side, left me with a very stiff and sore arm and shoulder by the end of the meal. Leonardo rushed our receipt right over and our total showed as $72, the total of all our items we actually were served plus the cost of the Tonkotsu Ramen bowl we never received. We insisted he take off the cost of the bowl which would put us under the $70 maximum covered by our package. Regardless of our meal and service quality, we would have paid that extra $2 if we'd gotten all we ordered. That change seemed to be out of his realm of knowledge and Leonardo and Arden had to both crowd around the machine to figure out how to alter our receipt. While they worked on that, we suddenly had the attention of five waiters rushing to clean up our table. Needless to say once we were given the corrected receipt to sign, there was no extra tip added tonight.

Back to the cabin for a quick pit stop and found that Moses had done something for us no steward has ever thought to do - we each had a towel animal left on our beds. Even on Oasis with a 2 bedroom suite we only got 1 towel animal. Yes I'm 39 but I still love seeing what cute creation they leave for us. Moses left us with the animals until it was time to make another one 2 days later (RCL seems to follow an every other night towel animal policy whereas Carnival will leave one every day). 

Tonight I had a dog and Dad had a bunny waiting in bed for him:

We headed down to the theater to see tonight's late show headliner, Bill Cook - an illusionist. We sat in the lower level back of the theater section reserved for suite guests. This section is manned by a crew member (usually from the activities staff) until 5-10 minutes before the show starts. Then they leave the ropes open and anyone can come use those seats. While most every other place that suites could go as an extra perk included pinnacles on the sign, this space did not. Yet we noticed several passengers showing their blue colored cards listing pinnacle level and being let in. While it never impacted us finding a seat since we always got there a little early, it just doesn't seem right since this space was not marked as including them too. And yes, I'm sure our treatment this time in the concierge lounge added to my disdain in the theater.

One of the other concerns I had about our reserved suite seating perk is the description in RCL's new Key Program that listed those passengers as also getting reserved theater seating. As you can see in the picture above, this section is only 4 rows of seats and would be impossible if also shared with Key passengers. It was a pleasant surprise though to notice that there's a whole separate section of the theater that they've reserved for Key guests. One evening we happened to walk in on the theater's upper level and found the same love seat style setup only without the suite designation. Off to the right side of this upper level featured a sign that reserved that wing of seats for Key guests. As always, there's nothing stopping any cruiser from sitting in any other spots in the theater if they so choose but we like the love seat style couches in the back. A little more room to breathe helps the fluffy crowd. 

That upper level of seats from the video screen on back is the reserved theater seats for Key members.

Bill Cook came to our seating area before the show to introduce himself and joked that we wouldn't get away with not being included simply because we sat in the back. He put on a relatively good show including those seated in the lower level and a couple people in the top balcony seats in a few tricks. 

It was still relatively early in the evening so we wandered down to the shops to see if I could find a specific RCL themed Tshirt I'd seen lots of people wearing. All the shops were open and there was a couple people manning the counter in the center of all the shops but there was no one manning the actual RCL logo shop. We and another woman walked in to browse and kept calling out to say hello and ask if anyone was working or if the shop was really open. No response, no one from the counter bothered to come in or respond to us. The woman joked that everything must be free then but turned to leave. I took a few moments to browse the limited RCL themed T-shirts they had on racks. Not finding the one I wanted and still having no one notice we were in an unattended shop, we left. 

On to Park Café for late night snacks and found that most everyone else had the same idea. Tonight's offerings included hot dogs and hamburgers in addition to nacho fixings and desserts. I went with straight cheese nachos and they weren't too bad. 

As we headed back to our cabin, we noticed that we weren't the only ones who'd felt a lot more motion as we walked through the ship. The barf bags have been put out along the stairwells!

Earlier at our trivia, it had been announced that from then on, the Progressive trivia sessions would be moved to 9AM so that a regular morning trivia could be held at 10AM. When our newly minted Progressive team member Cori heard that, she declared that 9AM was too early for them to bother getting up and she and her husband Allan quit our team. Thus for the next couple sea days, our "Made Up Team" was made up of just Dad and I.

With an early trivia time, we set our alarm for an even earlier breakfast and headed to bed.