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The part that really concerns me is medical evacuation from the ship or foreign country. I've heard costs in the $25,000.00 range. Even hospitalization in a foreign country could be very complicated and costly. I told my wife if I needed that, just push me overboard. She said "ok, don't have a problem with that". I don't sleep well at night...

A quick FYI: I did get confirmation (in writing!) today that the "note" in my file will NOT prevent my wife from purchasing drinks on the cruise and that it only serves as an explanation fr why the operator was willing to sell me a single package. In other words, i got exactly what I wanted!

I hate to extend this topic but I must comment. My wife has had hip replacement and needs a soft mattress otherwise she gets cranky the next day. And yes, we have an air mattress we take and we have also taken a memory foam topper with us. Most likely will take it again. I've been married too long to argue about luggage space. You remember the saying "If the wife ain't happy, then nobody is happy". Consider it self preservation. Don't tell her I said this. I'm scared of her....

Really I can't think of a reason you would want to book a cruise out of San Juan so soon. Having one booked and already past the refund date is one thing, but to book a last minute cruise and go there at this time seems ill-advised.

I've been working on it for 5 years, since I had some medical issues. To be honest, I am not looking to lose all that much weight. As for the Cardio, that is more of my habit. I walk to and from work, If it's in my end of the city (Toronto, East end) I walk if it's just me. It's less of an "exercise" and more of a habit. My doc is researching metabolism stuff with me, and I am okay. I spent a year adding more strength training, and to be honest I hated it. The extra protein made me bulk more, and that is more of an issue than the weight increase. This isn't a weight loss blog though, so I'll refrain from getting much more into it. Needless to say, it's being worked on. I am happier and healthier than i have been since high school, and that was 24 years ago. Just trying to build a buffer zone for my inevitable cruise weight, when I order lattes without low fat milk/stevia for a week.

No deals for me (March/April Eastern Caribbean). But if folks on February cruises are seeing some deals, gives me hope that next month (maybe Thanksgiving weekend?), my ship will finally come in. See what I did there?

I don't know of a low fat menu....there are always lots of options and choices in the mdr or the buffet for making healthier and low fat choices based on my experiences.

Hey Friends, Just wanted to give a heads up that I am seeing some really good sales in the cruise planner for my February 2018 sailing.

I had bought the insurance offered by Royal (via my TA, seems to be what they use by default). But on closer inspection, this does not cover pre-existing medical conditions and I realized it also doesn't cover the flight portion of any cruise. So going to be canceling that for the Eastern Caribbean trip I have scheduled in March and will see what I can find on tripinsurance.com. Just get the multiple quotes, and then search through for the ones that explicitly cover cruise, airfare, pre-existing medical conditions, Acts of God, etc. Too many oddball circumstances with me and my family to take any policy that offers less. Only complaint I have with tripinsurance.com is that you have to specify the total dollar amount of your trip up front. How am I supposed to know that before actually booking the flights? My TA said she won't be buying the plane tix until January or February, so I guess I hold off buying the trip insurance until final payment date on the cruise and just SWAG the total cost based on currently published ticket rates?

Ha! So, don't drink the local water and never rent a scooter. Also, the ships have medical facilities on board that can handle most emergencies. Did you know if someone dies on a cruise, they will keep the body in the "morgue" on board until the ship gets back to the main port? Actually had a client die on a cruise once. They were in Europe.

I eat an extremely clean diet and have a strict training program pretty much year-round. I exercise on the ship simply b/c I would be grouchy otherwise. I also love that there are so many healthy options in the Windjammer and in the MDR. I indulge on the ship with wine and cocktails, and I tend to have dessert at dinner. I bring protein shakes and bars for in between meals, so I'm not starving and so that I don't overindulge at meals. As someone else mentioned, between walking around the ship, taking the stairs & shore excursions, there's plenty of ways to burn off those extra calories. The main reason for me chiming in on this topic, though is this ... traveling in general tends to make one retain water, especially flying. No matter how well you eat or don't eat, you will tend to gain 5-10 lbs of water weight. (I can gain 7 lbs of water overnight if my sodium intake is too high in one day or if I have a couple of glasses of wine.) Typically, the day we get home, my weight will be down or stable & then 2-3 days later that extra "weight" shows up on the scale. It's not fat, it's water. And, as soon as I get my diet & exercise back to normal, that water weight slides back off. My best advice? Just stay off the scale for about 2 weeks after you get home. Otherwise, you get discouraged & give up on dieting altogether. It's an unhealthy mental game.

I go through USAA but you have to be a member. I've heard of many use Insuremytrip.com but I haven't used them (I think I priced it out and USAA had slightly better rates). I also used the cruise line insurance and found it is more expensive for us than other sites. The one thing is for it to cover pre-existing medical reasons the plan needs to be purchased within 30 days of deposit. We are traveling with my MIL on our next trip so really wanted to make sure of this as it wasn't something I ever thought of before for us. Trip insurance shouldn't be thought of as only cruise insurance but also consider it for all-inclusive vacations and other expensive trips where there is upfront costs. OP, sorry to have this happen to you. I really hope that in the next month you can make some progress on your insurance and house where you feel comfortable enough to go and get away from it all.

The cruise is in November. I immediately contacted them after the storm to see if they could work with me and they said no. Thank you so much I appreciate it. I am going to try and enjoy myself.

I had the same experience this morning except that I actually did make the purchase. Some are saying they will require proof at the port which I find impossible to believe since the operator neither required it nor told me I would have to provide it later. My bigger concern is that since it is a "note" in my records that will prevent her form purchasing individual drinks during the cruise. But as a software developer I doubt it since I suspect it is quite literally a "note" and not a "flag" that could be tripped when a bartender tries to ring up a charge. As long as they don't actually mark her card somehow I think we will be fine. Before we get into the same arguments I have had on FB today I am NOT trying to pull a fast one. It has always been my intent to buy the drink package for just myself and to PAY separately for drinks for my wife which will be limited by her pain killers. That is still my intent. I will not be trying to get her drinks on my package. It simply makes no financial sense to buy her a package given her limited drinks

I hate to say, but in this day and age of very unpredictable weather, terrorist attacks that can shut down a city or entire region, etc… trip insurance is about as mandatory with vacation planning as health insurance is to daily living. Its generally not that expensive ($200-$300 for a policy that covers just about any Act of God situation, preexisting medical condition clause, etc. you can think of), at least relative to the cost of your vacation. And while you may not need it 19 times out of 20, knowing it’s there on that 20th time is, as the credit card ads say, “priceless”

Day -4 Bangkok As this city exist in some of the south Asia Royal Caribbean routes I think it fair to writeabout it. As I wrote before this was my first visit to Bangkok, the reason for stopping two days in Bangkok was mainly due to the fact that I could not found a direct route to Hong Kong with the award miles but found out this route to work nicely for us as it also a good city to buy some cheap T shirts for the cruise J (One can identify me on board by the shirts with the elephants and I love Bangkok 2 $ T shirts) We landed very early and I arrange that we will be greeted at the gate by the hotel representative who took us with a buggy car bypassing the immigration lines, I took this idea from Episode 183 - Making a memorable Royal Caribbean cruise , while passing the long lines I could not avoid quoting in My head Mel Brooks “It’s good to be the king” For hotel we took the Grand Sheraton (using reward) which is very nice located on Sukhumvit road and 2 minutes from the MRT (local subway). The Funny about the Sheraton reward program is that much of my points did not came from the room staying but from the fact that they give you allot of points if you decide not to use the daily clean service (and not replacing towels), you can actually do it up to 3 nights every time. They call it the Ecological choice, since I practice all my childhood (and my spouse will claim it continues also this days) not to make up my room I became very good at that and for sure I don’t mind to get some reward point for it. Now only if I knew then to explain my parents it was all Ecological choice …. Here is a picture of the hotel very nice tropical swimming pool. After settling down we started to walk around to the nearest mall for some shop browsing and eating early launch, we picked some local restaurant and order a Pad Thai and Green Papaya salad. Since we are after all in Th ailand we went for a foot massage , which was very very good and cost around 10 $ for a full hour. Regarding the Sukhumvit road, this is one of the famous tourist roads and many chain hotels are located very close to. Not sure I would take small kids to stroll around this street unless you want to practice your “bee and birds” talk and try also to explain them what are all those plastic replacement body parts which are presented on every second stand (and no , I ddont meant they sell prosthetic arms and legs).Every second other stand on the street also sell many different famous prescriptions drugs which I can guess are authentic as three dollar bill. You will need to forgive me for not uploading pictures from the street as it is a family prove site and also I had the feeling that if I would try to take picture over there I might find myself staring in one of the next episodes of National geographic,” Locked up abroad” describing the Thai jail daily routing and talking about my only friends over there there,a rat name Pinchi and a trained cockroach. Tomorrow we will catch a flight to Hong Kong.

Happy to report that after complaining and escalating to supervisors and their supervisors and being on hold forever they finally took off the gratuities. It's very sneaky and shady though because if I was not so Type A and check my account info regularly I could have totally missed it. They basically just tacked it onto your account and if you are not paying attention to your final balance owing it would be easily overlooked. Makes me wonder how many other people out there had it added on (without credit back) and if they don't call and complain would it just be left like that?....

I just checked to see what the prices are for my 1/21 Oasis cruise, and am pretty disappointed that the prices haven't dropped a bit. So, if I buy the package I have to get two, but the prices are still nice and high. My wife couldn't drink that much alcohol in a year, much less a week, and I'm sure it's that way for most folks. Regardless, I'm still gonna have a blast on my cruise, but this certainly dampens my expectations.

Sounds exactly what they did with Grandeur earlier this year ..... mostly internal, below the water line, things done ...... The one thing that I noticed when I was on her a few weeks ago, a new paint job. Outside of that, no real changes from what I could see. I would assume the same will probably be the case for Serenade.

Their thinking probably was "we'll try this test, but we already know what we're going to do regardless of the test results".

I'm about 99% certain we'll be on the Nov 19, 2018 11 day sailing next year. There is a group of rum-enthusiasts I belong to that did a sailing on Adventure in 2016, and are planning one on Serenade next year. :)

Just checked for my March 31 sailing on Freedom, I see the same thing now. So they've decided this is how they're going to roll, huh? Going to email my TA and see if she can either juggle the listed occupants of each room so we have one adult and one child in each. My wife doesn't drink, so if she can't do that and we can't finagle another way, they just lost a package purchase. And if that happens, you can bet I'm going to be drinking less now myself, because I'll just bring my allowed four bottles of wine (for the two rooms), have a couple glasses with dinner and more or less leave it at that. Especially it's already established that the pubs on all but Anthem so far have no selection of beers that I like. I don't even know if I'd buy a refreshment package for myself; I don't drink soda at all (not for a couple of decades now), and since "specialty coffee" just means lattes and other espresso beverages, I can stick with regular complementary coffee. Only other thing I drink is water.

Day -5 some general information. We landed safely in Bangkok and got our hotel room , I have some time to elaborate om the background regarding the cruise and some answers while waiting for my spouse to get ready for a stroll around the city. So why this cruise? - this is going to be our fifth cruise (finally becoming platinum) , the other routes we done so far is two western Europe cruises, one east Caribbean and one west Caribbean all for 7 nights. We were looking to cruise somewhere new and found this cruise to take us places we never visit before (Taiwan and Vietnam). For sure one important condition was that it should be a Royal Caribbean cruise The cruise was not that expensive (for the room we took) and also the timing was perfect for us to take vacation . My concern was of the ship itself, please try not to laugh at me but I really hope that I will find the Voyager of the seas big enough J you see our first cruise (and the one that made us addicted) was with Liberty of the seas following by Allure, Oasis and Harmony of the seas … (Hey, an idea for Royal Caribbean , special award for people that cruise in all of the ships of a certain classes) Yes I know, the Voyager is a big ship and should have enough activities , but I am afraid the Oasis class (and mainly Harmony of the seas) spoiled us , its not that we can do all the activities/special restaurant on the Oasis , its just good to know we have the option if we want to (same answer which I give when people ask me why I love leaving in a big city and not in somewhere quite). I sure hope I will find this concern not to be true, working on convincing myself to avoid and compare the ships while I am enjoying the cruise. Stateroom : Virtual Balcony – since we book the cruise very late (not going to tell how late but lets just say we had to pay the all amount while booking it) the balcony rooms and even the sea view rooms where very expensive So we decided to take the VB room which will be first for us. For me, the room is for rest and taking a shower between the different activities so it should be ok (Wow , I almost convinced myself). Internet: Yes for sure , how else I will be able to update the live blog , whatsup pictures for friends and family that will make them jealous (very important part from any good vacation) and yes , do some emergency work if needed (but only from the sundeck). We took one device package which we will share between our devices (we done it in the past, its working quite well as long as you have one device connected at a time and as long as I make sure my spouse is slipping while I am trying to use the internet). Drinking package – no, although we like to drink from time to time we do not drink as much to make it financial worthwhile so we will pay per drink plus the two bottles of wine we can carry with us on board . Special restaurant – Yes for sure, we order the first night done right (which I hope we can use as the set sail for the ship is 23:59), Chops girls for one of the sea days we also consider maybe the chef table and of course at least one visit to Johny Rocket. Unfortunately, No Sabor on the VOS so I will have to attend my crave for guacamole somewhere else. Shore excursion – we actually booked 4 shore excursion, one for each port, all are organize by Royal Caribbean as it is new ports for me in countries which the number of words I know to speak are less than five (and none of them will help me find my way back to the ship) I decided to play it safe. Thanks for this wonderful site I could have catch the 20% discount on many of the excursions (just canceled and rebooked them again with the discount when it became available). For Thailand (not in the route), Singapore and Honk Kong we will do our own excursions as we already visit them more than once (well beside Thailand which I never been but my spouse visit in the past). Pre and pro cruise hotels where booked by me using reward points. Before the cruise we took two nights (just to be on safe side) same for the post cruise. Visas – here we are touching a sensitive subject, the only country at this cruise, which we need visa to enter is Vietnam (same by the way for most of the passport holders beside some countries in Europe like UK). On the tickets documents we got for the cruise it was state that Royal Caribbean will help the passengers to obtain visa on board which will cost around 6 $ PP. I was very happy to read about it this info also align with what I have read in other sites. Now the plot thickens, few weeks ago RC send us email stating that all visas and other documents should be ready before we set sail and one that don’t have the requirements might be not allow to embark the ship. I tried to understand if this is like the standard email which RC sending before any cruise but it did not seemed like that. I decided to try my luck and call RC to ask them about it, not sure if anyone here tried to ask RC Visa questions, let’s just say that trying to get clear answers from RC about visa is harder than to get honest answer from a politician. The words: “Maybe , better to check by yourself , we are not sure and better you ask the embassy” raised up many times with different representative. I know they cannot tell me if I need visa or not (nor that I expected to) and this is not what I asked, all I wanted is to get is a strait answer if they are going to take care of the visas on board the ship or not. Mow, before Matt will jump and say “Hey this is another good reason why its always better to book using TA , they could have answered this question” I must say I asked special TA that is dealing with RC and cruises , she got the same answers. Although I was almost sure that based on the past cruises such a visa will be obtained on the ship I just did not want to take even the smaller risk that we will be denied to the cruise. After a quick check I found out that the Vietnamese Embassy is about 15-20 minutes’ walk from my home and they can do the visa on the spot for extra charge, I thought by doing that I will kill two birds using one stone , first I will be able to sleep better knowing that this issue is covered , second, 20 minutes morning walk each way will help me do my steps quota and more important prepare myself for the windjammer. To make long story short , after quick walk and 10 minutes waiting I said bye bye to around 200$ (around 100$ for each passport) and came back with multiple entry visas for Vietnam. In few days I will now if that was the best thing I done for the cruise or I just spent (in cruise money language) two chef tables or two nice shore excoriations , ok , and half drinking package. Tomorrow still in Bangkok, will share more Bangkok updates , for now here is some taster, this picture is not of an sea urchins that walked in the sun too much while forting their sun screen at home but of a crazy relative of Lychee (in taste anyway) called Rambutan : And the inside of this sweet fruit :

Oh good, I was afraid I was the only one who felt really uncomfortable with the implied undertones of those comments...

Sorry, but your frustration seems to be based upon comparisons to normal sets of circumstances. If you watch Snapchats and Periscopes from PR since the hurricanes, you would know how bad it is there far beyond what the main stream media is reporting. If you spent time in this community and on this blog, you would know that RC is not immune from criticism here. You would know that issues pertaining to RC are treated fairly, and yes, the vast majority people here are frequent cruisers with Royal and love the company, because it consistently doea the right thing especially when there are circumstances beyond their control. As a mass market cruise line, they have mastered the art of mass customization. Despite the catastrophic conditions in PR, you will find that your experience on Adventure will be wonderful unless your practice in life is to criticize every adverse situation that comes your way. If you are any kind of a planner, why don't you simply seek out a plan B for accommodations on the island? It appears you didn't use a travel agent. Why didn't you do that? I won't touch your sanitation comments. They are just bizarre.

As a newer member myself I don't think this site has trouble attracting new members. I've found the posters here all to be super helpful and I enjoy reading everyone's posts and especially enjoy the overall tone on these boards. Speaking only for myself - I totally understand the frustration of the OP and OP has every right to his/her own feelings. Your $$$ trip is up in the air. There just seems to be a lack of empathy and maybe a little disassociation with the whole situation. My frustration with your post is that I'm with you for the most part but then you use words like "savior" and "humanitarian" and how maybe your trip is more important than people getting food/water/shelter.

Who's going on the 7-night Freedom of the Seas June 12, 2016 sailing?

We just went on her in November. I love the Freedom. Trying to talk the wife into taking another before our December cruise. Only thing is we don't book much during hurricane season. If we do, its a short lead time so we know if a storm is heading our way.

We will be boarding when you are departing the Freedom. Hate those days, departing I mean.