Leaderboard

The vaccines are 95% effective, which is excellent, never has it been said that the vaccines offer 100% immunity. No vaccine in history has offered that. What they do guarantee, 100%, is you wont end up in the hospital fighting for your life. I work in a hospital. Today is our first day since March 2020 we do not have any COVID patients. In the past 3 months every patient in the hospital, some of whom died, were guess what? NOT Vaccinated. What the Celebrity Millennium demonstrated was the effectiveness of the vaccines at stopping spread. 2 patients (who were vaccinated) tested positive but asymptomatic, and not 1 other crew member or passenger tested positive. That's 2 people out of about 1300. Amazing results.

Anyone able to confirm that no caskets are being taken off Freedom following the test voyage?

I'm a vaccinated sinner who wants to live to laugh and sin another day!

Symphony passed the buoyancy test in Miami.

Joey Tribbiani: If he doesn't like you, then this is all just a moo point. Rachel Greene: Huh? A moo point? Joey Tribbiani: Yeah, it's like a cow's opinion, you know, it just doesn't matter. It's "moo".

Never won a RoyalUp bid. You’ve been waaay luckier than me !

Unless I missed something, it appears that you just checked all the same boxes. ?

I think this is a Troll post. User only has 2 posts and of course, uses the "key words" I see on every anti-vax, anti-mask, etc post from bots/trolls...."experimental vaccine" (usually aimed at mRNA vaccines, neglecting the fact that the J&J is MUCH MORE traditional), "see, masks even say on the box they don't protect you!" (which is my favorite, no one said masks protect you from others, it reduces YOUR spread), "Florida did GREAT"....the checkboxes just check themselves. Hopefully this gets removed. Florida still has amongst the highest case rates in the country and always have...bang up job they did. But, to the original point. This is a troll.

When we were moved to different ship and received our room assignments (had 12 of them in 2 different categories)...I immediately called Royal groups dept (I had booked through them since we had so many people/rooms). The agent rebooked all our rooms while I was on the phone and looking at a deck plan online and choosing my own. As noted I did not use a TA for anything (I just love doing all the legwork myself). I have friends who used a TA and they cannot do anything for themselves...have to call TA even to get a lower price via sale! Sometimes being your own TA is good...sometimes it's not. But in the case of needing to move a room (or several!!) it seemed much easier doing it myself through Royal. Just my own opinion...no disrespect to any TA's reading this blog or otherwise! Your hard work is definitely recognized!

It depends on cruise length. The crazy Voom pricing this year that some cruises seem to "enjoy" in the cruise planner is also a factor so YMMV. With a cruise planner price of $18.99 for a diamond you are better to buy it on board for anything less than 8 nights. With a cruise planner price of $14.99 for a diamond you are better to buy it on board for anything less than 4 nights. With a cruise planner price of $11.99 for a diamond you are better to buy it in the cruise planner. The age old trick of waiting to buy Voom until the morning of day two on board still works, assuming you don't need Voom on day one since the ship is in port most of day one. With so much going on and the ship departing at 4pm or later do you really need Voom on day one? This approach changes the statements above by a few days in each scenario.

Why did summer split up with winter? They had a fall-ing out.

Amazing that there's a national public health agency with its head more in the sand than the CDC

Good to know! I called RC and they can't do anything about it (plus the 8/15 saling doesn't even come up for them) since I went through a TA so I'll just have to wait and see what the TA can suggest. Did you book directly with RC?

I would go with c. I also agree with cruisellama that cleaning is important, but I think we can all agree that RC has been VERY good at keeping things clean even pre-pandemic. I think that at some point, we will all need to go back to weighing individual risks whenever we do any activity, whether it's going on a cruise or crossing a street. The vaccines are protective, so if I'm vaccinated, I don't much care who else is or is not.

I'll be really mad if Symphony doesn't pass the buoyancy test...we're scheduled to sail Sep 18. ?

@smokeybanditI went back and looked at the study. The CDC is the sponsoring organization. It was the Greek Health Ministry among others that provided the data and did the analysis. They are credited in the study. TBH, after going back and reading it, I'm not really clear on how many pax and crew were on board. If you look at Appendix 1. I'm lead to believe that there were 383 positive cases on board among all passenger and crew - the specific number not named. In the abstract, it says there were 383 crew members on a 2000 person capacity ship so ????. Admittedly the abstract leads you to believe there were 123 cases of COVID among 383 passengers and crew. Is it just coincidental that there were also 383 crew and the exact number - 383 - cases? I don't know. Despite this confusion, the data demonstrated at R(0) of 2.6 on board a cruise ship with naïve hosts as pax and crew and limited (masks and hand hygiene) mitigation measures in place. I'm more interested in this figure than I am the confusion over numbers of passengers and/or crew although I grant this is not unimportant. After re-reading the study, I didn't get that it was a 40 year old passenger ferry on a work charter. Admittedly, I assumed it was a cruise ship. I'll also defer to your view that nothing can be taken from the study although I disagree with that assessment. There is ongoing debate on this forum and elsewhere about the degree of risk that sailing on a cruise ship presents to passengers and crews. There are many who say the risk is small such that it is no more risky than getting in your car and driving to work. I don't think the evidence supports that view but it is widespread. If you are among that group, I'm not going change your mind. The problem with debating it is that it is hard to define the system for the debate and deal with all the variables in an on-line forum. From retrospective data we have available, I do think it is safe to assert that cruise ships can and probably do produce higher rates of SARS2 infection, among naïve hosts, over a defined time span than other congregate settings (by CDC definition). That is just because of the nature of living, eating and socializing aboard a cruise ship. Assessing the risk to one's health of that higher infection rate is much more complicated. I'll leave it at that. Here's the study: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/7/21-0398_article

Not to mention a cruise like this where your objective is determine what the occurrence rate of COVID is among passengers and crew on a cruise ship without any mitigation measures v. SARS2 would be unethical. Yeah, it would be interesting with that ship as a control group so to speak but if you're actually going to set up a serious study, it goes through peer review among a panel that is part of the sponsoring scientific organization, e.g. the CDC, JAMA, Science and Nature, Lancet. Here's some useful data that we already have: I linked to a study, released just this month I believe in JAMA, in another thread that looked retrospectively at this using a cruise ship sailing out of Greece and Turkey in early March of 2020. Recall that the WHO had not yet declared a pandemic and most countries in February and March hadn't imposed any mitigation measures or if they had done so they were limited. It had roughly 3000 passengers and crew. The estimated R(0) following the first detected and reported COVID case was north of 2.0 before the ship was quarantined in a Greek port and sick/asymptomatic infected passengers were debarked. This means infections on this studied ship grew at an exponential rate very quickly ...... doubled (X2), then X4, then X16 and so forth. If I remember the data over 30% of the pax and crew on that ship became infected within a matter of days from recorded case #1. Infections were highest among crew that had higher rates of per-person face to face contact among each other at their bars, clubs and quarters than paying passengers. A cruise ship with zero mitigation measures and a passenger manifest of unvaccinated naïve hosts would be a SARS2/infectious disease nightmare. Even now. Infections are infections even though we are dealing with them much more effectively than we were 18 months ago. if anything, the virus has become more transmissible over time. I have heard that there are on-going studies looking at large gatherings and trying to model a safe vaccination rate. Is it 50% of 1000 people, 80% of 2000? Hard to say but that's being looked at. My gut tells me the cruise lines have an idea of what vaccination rate produces and acceptable level of positive COVID rapid antigen tests over a range of numbers of pax on a ship's manifest. Variables are hard to control but one could come up with something to go on that is better than nothing.

OK so I'm on the 8/15 sailing out of Galveston, which was initially on Liberty, and now switched to Indy. FINALLY got our cabin assignments on Indy today. We had two cabins, and one change I'm 100% fine with (same category, just a couple doors down from the original one), but the other one... not really. It's the one my teen daughter is booked in (and will share with her friend). They were in 8275 - which is a promenade view room halfway between midship and the forward elevators. Got moved into 9415 which is an Ocean View at the very forward port corner of the ship. With the bridge overhanging it. She's not at all happy with this, and I don't blame her. The room is kinda weird shaped, and has far less counter/desk space compared to the interior promenade view (not to mention the nifty little sitting area in the window of the promenade view rooms which has no equivalent in this new room). I have asked my TA if they can be switched back to the interior PV room. What are the odds of that happening? I mean, I get that it's an upgrade in category, but it's as far from the kids activities as possible (they will have to walk the entire length of the ship each time), and it's not the view they wanted, so it's not really an "improvement" to them.

Because we travel multiple times yearly (like most folks here) both domestically and internationally, we are looking at Allianz Travel Insurance to obtain an annual policy that covers any and all trips we take. While they have some solid looking plans at reasonable rates, does anyone have any experience with them in regards to their customer service should we have to file any claims? Comments are appreciated. ?

While consolidators don't have all the available cabins and RCL holds some back, two web sites I frequent, just checking out of curiosity wrt your question, both of them show 3 of 4 Odyssey sailings in August show sold out. The only one on offer is the August 28th sailing out of PEV. I think its a safe bet that if RCL hasn't already sold all the cabin space they want to sell for August sailings on Odyssey, they're close.

Ok so what i really need is Canada to accept antigen tests...or require no tests by Dec! ?

This is a really good read of a TIme Magazine reprint of an interview with Celebrity's CEO, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo done by a pay-walled web site, Leadership Brief. I'm not a subscriber but the web site presents interviews with top CEOs and business leaders. After Michael Bayley, long time Celebrity CEO, moved on to RCI, Lutoff-Perlo took up the CEO role at Celebrity Cruises. Bayley, for a long time, resisted change in Celebrity cruise lines that involved up-scaling the brand to compete with "Luxury" (loosely defined) lines and trends across the cruise industry. The Chandris tradition of X was strong, appealing and filled ships. But as the Celebrity fleet modernized with Silhouette class ships in the early 2015-17 time frame, Lutoff-Perlo arrived on the scene (2017) with a pretty aggressive plan to change all of that. No question her approach was to appeal to a higher spending cruise cohort, something most of the major lines were doing in some form or the other. I didn't like that. some of my favorite and traditional X experiences vanished - the Golden Era of Cruise lines themed specialty restaurants disappeared when ships went threw refurbishment. More high rent Concierge Class cabins were added, suites were lavishly updated, restricted restaurants for suite guests and most recently restricted access areas in what Celebrity calls The Retreat showed up on Edge Class and the latter Silhouette class ships on refurb. Cabin pricing rose substantially with the lowest cost suits not much differnt than a balcony cabin and penthouse/two story suites fares out of the realm of most people's sensible vacation costs ..... but the money is there to be spent and right now, as cruising returns, there's a lot of it to spend and people are spending it on cruises in these phenomenally expensive cabins. Celebrity, as an RCI brand, is really well positioned for the surge in cruise spending over the next 3 years as the company tries to pay-off the huge debt they took on to survive and return to the golden years of 2019 profitability. Lutoff-Perlo deserves credit for that. Here's the article: https://time.com/6073915/celebrity-cruises-ceo-lisa-lutoff-perlo-covid-19-travel-rebound/

Confirmed that she is in port at least partly to vaccinate crew.

Looks like she is back in Port Miami.

I don't think the FL lawsuit matters at this point. at least for the "early restarting cruises". I think the lines have a plan in place and they will work that plan. Maybe they increase capacity some, but they have already canceled so many cruises that if they suddenly start those same ones it would be a PR nightmare. Our 7N Allure from Canaveral was canceled and we moved to a 4N Freedom from MIami, so i know we would be pretty upset if they re-offered the 7N we were on. Not sure we can change the flights again, unless Royal was able to offer some real incentive to offset the additional costs.

Awesome! Thanks!!

You are 100% correct @ChrisK2793. The constitution does not say that ..... not even close. The point of that portion of my post was to demonstrate how foolish the CDC's attorney's made themselves appear by taking stands like this in oral arguments before a very constitutional law savvy federal judge. How much authority the 2020 CDC had to issue the NSO and the CSO was determined by case law going back 150 years. That is all in the 124 page Merryday ruling. In summary, before the 1930s the feds largely left it to the states to regulate free pratique (ships coming and going from US ports). During the 30's and beyond Roosevelt's New Deal programs shifted PH programs from state control to federal control - this mostly a result of federal grants to state run PH programs and the emergence of expansive federal entities such as the NIH, and now the secretariat level HHS. The net result was more federal presence and "guidelines" but, according to Merryday's review of the case law, not more statutory authority. He concluded that HHSS/CDC simply assumed they had the power to issue what Merryday characterized as inappropriate defacto laws governing free pratique that violated separation of powers provisions in the US Constitution between the legislative and executive branches of government.

The answer is... it depends on the price in the cruise planner and on whether or not you can hold off until day two on board to purchase by making use of shoreside connectivity on day one. @twangster posted some brilliant price comparison charts for this that show you exactly where the sweet point is for one device (it likely wouldn't be much different for two devices). Maybe he can chip in with the link? Alternatively, I saved them so could probably upload them as PDF files, although I don't have access to them right now.

Shareholder Benefit | RCCL Investors (rclinvestor.com) Everything you need to do is in this link.

No, it should let you buy it as a solo cruiser. It may be a glitch. I think I saw some folks find a really cheap price for the UDP but when they went to purchase it, it wasn't available. So it may be a glitch.

Obviously a gag order is in place. Good reason to choose employees as test cruisers. Hopefully all is going well and CDC representative(s) is blown away at the execution of the protocols. ?

According to MarineTraffic.com, the Freedom left Coco Cay and will return to Coco Cay. That’s a great test cruise!

I'd love to see a poll of the members of RCBlog, asking whether people, if given the choice, would choose: a. a fully vaccinated cruise ship b. a mixed cruise ship, vaccination status not required c. a 2019 cruise ship, run exactly the same as a pre-pandemic cruise.

Supposed to be on SY 8-21-21. Hopefully she will be ready to go !!

???

Symphony is currently testing and hopefully confirming the theory of buoyancy.

NEW VLOG! Day 4 of quarantine. ENJOY!

In a general sense, federal judges have enormous power to interpret the law and make sure it comports with the US constitution. In this specific case (1) Judge Merryday interpreted the current laws governing Free pratique ..... essentially the license given to a ship to enter a port on the assurance that she is free from contagious diseases. (2) He ruled that HHS/CDC is neither granted the extent of power they usurped by imposing the CSO on the cruise industry in the US Constitution or by congress (3) He concluded the CSO is a defacto law and CDC can't make laws. Congress does. Next on the basis of the argument above, he enjoins the CSO then suspends it to July 18th giving the CDC a chance to clean up their act. He has leverage. He sets conditions including a demand that the CDC present an updated CSO that contains requirements that are within the law that limits what the CDC can and cannot do. He adds that the CDC can't just come up with requirements that aren't based on the current science, something they did in the CSO and have done frequently since the start of the pandemic. For example, the CDC offered a lot of stale science (i.e., not accounting for vaccines) as the underlying basis for many of the non-sensical regulations they imposed on cruise ships. The judge is not making an "interpretation of the science" he is applying accepted standards that determine if a study is scientific. For example, the CDC presented as evidence to the court a report that a cruise ship is 62% more likely to experience a COVID outbreak than similar congregate settings like a prison, nursing home or a hospital. That study was not in the public domain or published, had not been peer-reviewed, two of several requirements for a study to be properly identified as scientific. It's simply not valid as proof or fact under those circumstances. On the role of the judiciary: if you have the time and are interested you can go here and brush up on your civics. https://www.crf-usa.org/images/pdf/challenge/The-Role-of-the-Judiciary.pdf

We’ve seen a group of bikers bring their Harleys on a cruise and they were off loaded in port so they could ride and loaded back on for the next port.

Zero. FL has the CDC on the ropes if not down for the count. But I'm not ruling a compromise out. Judge Merryday made it clear the CDC has a role in protection of the nation's public health and the case law is pretty clear that it does. I don't think he wants to emasculate the CDC. They just have to act within the law that involves issues of separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government. i.e, Congress writes the laws and the executive branch carries out implementation strictly within them. CDC didn't do that out of the gate. In fact, Merryday makes a huge point of this failing. Has the CDC been chastised? No question. Can they get up off the mat? I think this will say a lot about Dr. Rochelle Walenski's leadership skills. Good leaders get up when knocked down and keep fighting. Things the CDC does - the good parts - are worth fighting for and regaining the public's trust. Right now CDC's rep is in the shitter and not just with it's management of the cruise industry as it relates to the public health. Long way to go to get out of that spot. It starts right now. Let's give it a couple of weeks. I don't think the public has the degree of interest in this that we do so, maybe the CDC can skate even though they've screwed up a lot in the Pandemic. But among us, their cred is shot all to hell and Judge Merryday just affirmed FL's and our views that they aren't the agency we want telling the cruise lines how to operate safely and healthfully. The Healthy Sail Panel is an entity to be trusted in this matter, IMO. The problem with that is the Healthy Sail Panel is not a congressionally empowered agency like the CDC is. It really is too bad the CDC made such a mess of this.

I would add a 3rd ship to the poll ... completely free from vaccine consideration ... I would be onboard without reservation. To quote Billy Joel: "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun" ??

We ate at Jamies on our Harmony cruise May 2019, last cruise since Covid ?. We had an excellent experience, our server was beyond excellent. She asked us if she could pick what to serve us, why not? She then asked us some questions about our preferences. Holy Cow, it was our best meal. She just brought out things and we ate family style. The food was great but a think what tipped it over to excellent was the server.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone! She's already working another manga competition; this time the manga can't contain any dialog, nor any discernible writing that could convey plot or meaning. The whole thing has to convey the plot, emotion, and meaning purely through the artwork in each panel. Amusingly, she prefers this; she hated coming up with the dialog and having to lay out the artwork in a way that would leave enough room for speech bubbles. Now she can focus entirely on the artwork. ?

TMo worked for me for years at both CocoCay and Nassau. Some Sprint phones didn't have the required LTE radio frequencies so that may have been part of the issue.

Pigs follow mask protocol and social distancing.

Testing an animated image file to see how it works in this older thread.

Landed safely back in Miami. Check out my journey flying back to America to join a cruise ship.

Not going to lie. I actually like this change and would be happy with it as a long term solution. For years people have complained about diamond lounge crowding. The ONLY time and ONLY reason it is crowded is during happy hour because of the open bar. This problem has now been solved. Well played Crown and Anchor. This approach also keeps the lounge open the rest of the day when crowding is never an issue including in the morning when the special coffee machine is available.

I think they are trying to avoid crowds at happy hour. I would rather have the all day drink vouchers myself - also more choices at $13.

Awesome!! It's almost cruise day!! Also a huge fan of Danny @ Harr Travel, no doubt the best at ship tours out of anyone I have seen. Can't wait to see this one!