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First class! 1F, which isn't ideal, but FIRST CLASS!!!! Everybody is still boarding and they've already served us drinks. Bonus- my bags made it onto this flight! Philadelphia bound, then MIAMI.

when the humidity is a wet blanket, i stay indoors with AC. no desire to practice my drowned raccoon impression.

ALRIGHT! I'm home and settled in from my adventure on another cruise line, and now I can get all caught up with the live blogs, starting with yours! Sounds like a fun one, I have also never done a solo cruise, but wouldn't hate it. This last one was as close a I'll get- no kid and the wife relaxed in the room for about 1 1\2 days, so I did wander around a bit on my own. OOOF- 97degrees and 90% humidity sounds like literal hell... get off early, get wet early and stay wet!

2 days to go. I was able to check in for both my flights and hotel this afternoon. Surreal. This is actually happening! Very excited to go CVG - ORD - MIA tomorrow afternoon FIRST CLASS. If I wasn't so flipping tired right now, I think I'd be giddy. This 6am-12am stuff is for the birds, I'm too old for this. *fist shake* People on the FB board are posting photos of their drives and flights to Miami already, making me INCREDIBLY jealous that I still have to work tomorrow before I can travel. There's also a Bengals/Patriots game going on here right about the time I need to get to the airport, so this should make the roads interesting. Interesting observation today: we were in a conference room and saw police directing traffic on the street below us. Couldn't figure out why until we heard a whole bunch of Bollywood music and saw a HUUUUUGE Indian wedding party in the street with someone being led through the throngs of people ON A HORSE. Brightly colored clothing, lots of dancing, great music, and the person on a horse - again, jealousy reared its ugly head because that looked SO fun compared to where I was! Wish I would have taken a picture. Also interesting, but in a disgusting way: PDCC is supposed to be 97F, 90% humidity, and sunny when we're there with Symphony on Wednesday. I'm going to die...or only go ashore until 8am. I *did* start the rum intake early though.

You guys...

There are no reservations for WJ on any ship in the RC fleet or any other mainstream fleet that I’m aware of for their respective buffet

Now for the important information. Are you still in First Class ?

I sweat like crazy. Part of the reason I brought a whole bunch of extra clothes is because I sweat like crazy and I knew I was going to be in the Caribbean in September!

I don't blame you. I'm not sure I've gotten off in Nassau in at least a decade and you know I only get off at PDCC for the food (and b/c vouchers work there). I let myself get too hot in June and it wasn't all that enjoyable (my brain was so fried I never even got funnel cake). In July I made sure to take far more frequent dips in the pool to cool off and drank tons of flavored water from Chill Grill (along with a couple frozen drinks of course) and it was far more bearable to me. I would probably still get off at PDCC first thing like we normally do and then see how bad it got but I can totally understand skipping it in that weather. As you know from my blogs, we've mostly only been getting off at one port besides PDCC per 7N cruise so PDCC was built in as our 2nd "excursion" just to break up chilling on the ship. On a shorty, I could easily not leave the ship at all.

@OCSC Mike and @Ampurp85, I'm really seriously reconsidering what I want to do in both Nassau and PDCC. If the heat and humidity or that bad, it might be safer to stay on board! Thankfully, I don't have any short excursions purchased.

Matt posts all of the menus here. https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2024/01/09/royal-caribbean-menus As for Taste of Royal History and A Taste of the World they have been offered for a while. I found the documents. I have attached these menus!

That would make me consider skipping Snack Shack... and you know that's saying a lot, lol. It was bad in June/July but not THAT bad.

Y'all I almost got found out. I caught Mr. Regular looking at RCB this morning. We were doing some planning for the cruise (he wanted Hooked lunch, ok!!) and I was showing him around the deck plans. I always have the app on my phone but he will delete it and re-download between cruises. So we were looking through menus, etc., and I was telling him that we may want to skip French night in the MDR and just dress fancy at Playmakers to watch the Bills game. He saw the word "Arcade" and immediately got his phone to Google what games Playmakers has. He loves bar arcade games like pinball and PacMan or Donkey Kong and Galaga but hates when the arcades are redemption that you have to pay to play and win stupid prizes Dave & Buster's style. So anyway while I am booking our Hooked lunch, I glance over and there he is browsing these message boards! I almost jumped out of my skin. Now I know how @SweetPea feels when Batman nearly catches her. I said "What are you doing?!?!" and he goes "I Googled 'Playmakers Symphony of the Seas games' and this is what came up." I made sure he read through the thread and then closed it out once he got his answer. He knows I use RCB as a huge source of information and will post our trip reports and read others' but he's not super aware the, ahem, *extent to which I write our reports, lol. I don't need him getting wise to all my tricks and schemes Two weeks from today we'll likely be eating breakfast at some diner near Newark and then making our way to the port!

When My MEI-Travel agent is "out of pocket" for whatever reason (and I think there are valid reasons) she has a fellow agent back her up.. The only time I have reached out to the backup, she was quick to respond and handled. I am very pleased with @michelle and I know @Sharlaas one of the principles only keeps great agents in the group

Some TAs charge for their services, including cancellations. MEI-Travel never charges any fees at all, the only fees you would pay would be the supplier (Royal Caribbean) fees if they charge.

It's great weather in Philadelphia. 1st class snacks are amazing too.

I didn't realize it was going poorly, lol. That would explain why the bars were pretty quiet when the game was running as I passed them. I felt like a salmon swimming up the wrong orange stream walking around this morning.

YES!!!!

Showed up at the airport, checked in, dropped off my luggage, went through security, and as I got to the concourse, I get a notification that my flight to Chicago is delayed by 3 hours. That means that flight was going to leave an hour after my flight in Chicago is supposed to leave for Miami. That's not going to work. As I was speaking to the American representative in the airport, I got rebooked. Thankfully, still getting into Miami tonight, now I'm just concerned that my bags get transferred over to the correct flights. I'm really glad that an American has a great functioning baggage tracking thing in the app, and they did take all the information to make sure that the bag gets pulled from the other flight. It's actually situations like this that make me really glad that I make my bags highly ugly and identifiable! So, I'm leaving Cincinnati a half hour after I thought I was going to, but I'm still going to get into Miami at about the same time that I initially was supposed to. Fingers crossed that everything goes the way it's supposed to. Must be a football game going on or something.

Those menus popped up on our next cruise, too. Have a great trip.

I can attest that in May on Freedom there was a 98 I believe day at PDCC and my brother got off. He loves the heat. He said people were collapsing from the heat and the birds were cuckoo bananas. He said the shade was almost nonexistent and the water was very warm. I remember trying to do my walk on the deck and just suffering the humidity that I gave up and went back to the cool casino. It sucks because you can't get food before 10:30/11 and that is probably when the heat will start to be at its worst.

Yes!!!!!!

I have yet to see anyone get dress-coded since the mid-2000s.

Are both legs of your flight FC? I have flown to a cruise about 3x in FC (funny enough 2 were after a conference)and it does make for a more enjoyable start.

Bummer. Thanks Tony. Were moving from Tx to the space coast and were hoping to make the most out of he drive.

Well my TA is the group leader, as it is her 30th wedding anniversary. Oh she has also stated that once onboard she is off the clock as my TA. Well I got news for her if I have a problem I’m calling her.

my preferred method of entry into the pool is the majestic belly flop.

Time for a new TA if you have a TA that charges for anything above and beyond what the cruise line charges.

Go talk to guest services. It is always best to deal with an onboard issue while still on board.

If you are unhappy with the service then by no means should you feel obligated to give her a top rating. I wouldn't.

You'll find this advice in various blog posts, threads and just about everywhere. Yesterday while traveling unrelated to a cruise I saw some unfortunate cruise guests learn this lesson the hard way. My own travel was changed three times due to a canceled flight and then separate delayed flights for my alternate itineraries. This has become a new normal occurrence on more and more of my air travel recently. I'm well used to misconnects and delayed flights as a former business traveler who used to take over 250 flights per year, year after year mostly domestic. Yet I'm experiencing it more now and the time to recovery is greater than it ever was back in my hayday of being a very frequent flyer. Yesterday as I was in the process of working with a gate agent to find new alternatives for a delayed Seattle flight I saw two separate groups explaining to other gate agents they are going on an Alaskan cruise and now they were going to miss their cruise. There was nothing the gate agents could do, there was no alternative flights to put them on. Our plane broke to the point they took it out of service and they were working to find us another aircraft. One party stated they had bought travel insurance. That was wise but they are still missing the cruise, a cruise they probably spent a lot of time preparing and planning. Getting some or all of your money back through travel insurance softens the financial impact but insurance will never make up for the time invested and the disappointment of not sailing on a cruise you've been excitedly waiting for a long time. In my case they re-routed me (again) through a different city but I followed the progress of that delayed Seattle flight and it didn't work out well for any cruise passengers looking to sail yesterday. I heard one gentleman ask the other party impacted "they'll give us our money back right?". That's when the other party stated they bought the travel insurance so they'll get their money back. The blank response from this person told me he hadn't bought travel insurance. You could see his mind doing the math to calculate his losses. Many years ago I learned this lesson myself the hard way. Flying from Denver to Houston the day of a cruise involves a short direct flight. Southwest had five flights that would work and I was on the first one. What could go wrong? We got on the plane right on time. Fully boarded we were ready to depart on time. That's when I noticed they hadn't closed the boarding door. Then we didn't depart on time. Then they cancelled the flight and asked us to deplane. No problem right? Four more flights could get me there. I was solo. I just needed one seat. The best Southwest could offer was the same flight the next day. All of their flights were already full. By that point the ship would be well at sea. After a prolonged battle with my travel insurance provider I did get all of my money back, eventually, but I still missed the cruise. So as tempting as it is to save the cost a hotel room, just don't do it. Don't fly in the day of the cruise.

MDR menus just loaded on the app for my 9 night Greek Isles cruise on Odyssey in 2 weeks. I’m familiar with most of the menus but 2 stood out that I haven’t heard of. Are they updating their menus or have these been offered before?

We’ve booked a b2b on Allure 2025 out of Barcelona. After the first week, back in Barcelona port, what are the protocols for us to disembark to tour the city, and then Re-embark when we want to? tia Annette

PHL is not laid out in any semblance of normal (to me). Why is 25 so far from 22 but right by 32????? On my next flight. Miami bound!

I also came in 9th on the free slot tournament. $100 in free play.

Here were the clues that I received.

Doesn't look to directly affect cruises at this point but could affect cars parked on low levels in Galveston.

Say hi to the cheesesteaks and pretzels for me (and @ScottD). Safe flights!

Steer clear of angry Bengals fans. Home loss to New England? Oof!

YEP!! This guy included... I do try to throw a pair of khakis or dark jeans in the bag for Formal night, but 5-6 nights, I'm showing off my pasty whites!

I can do paper or plastic because I am bisackual. Beer is like duct tape. It fixes everything. When I was younger and single I found out two things. Kitchen sex can be wild and exciting. And the staff at McDonald's were quite narrow minded. By the time you're 80 years old, you've learned everything. The problem is remembering it. I married my wife for her looks. But not the ones she's giving me lately!

I get there are valid reasons,but if I have an issue on the same boat as her,I’m not going to call an 800 numbers back home i should be able to ask her.

Intercontinental Miami and Kimpton EPIC Miami are my go-to’s. No breakfast and I just Uber it.

Well, Gadget, Im trying to keep from doing a belly flop because Id never get up! And thank you Tony for the info.

We got drinks and WiFi included too but would like to upgrade both, especially WiFi Also now considering cancelling my 3 night specialty dining and just reserving outright. Only $12 more total to book restaurants individually. Thats worth not running around on embarkation day. I’ve been waiting for the 3 night to get a better sale ($170 p/p) but there’s been nothing

There is a plethora of decent choices. What we use, every time, is Radisson RED. Free shuttle from the airport, and a shuttle is available to the port, for an extra cost. Nothing decent will be reasonably priced, so I just stick with what works very well for us.

You are allowed to wear shorts in the MDR, regardless of age. You will see tons of them.

4 days to boarding. I had a guest visit my room this morning...on the 15th floor of this building. I'm so glad this was something like 9:30am and I was just working in my room and DRESSED. Earlier would have been a disaster. Conferencing is long. I'm so ready to be on a ship. Looks like the tropical storm/weather that everyone has been worried about is not going to affect our ship/area, so all is well there. Royal has sent about 2067029 emails to remind me that the CP will be closing for purchases tomorrow night. I'm SO excited to do the first class flight on Sunday! Just need to get through 2.5 more days of this...

Wonder of the Seas for us...End of September...The 29th to 6 October.

Bermuda expects to be back to normal operation tomorrow, just in time for Vision to visit.