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Greetings, RC Blog friends! It's me, Mrs. Regular, back again for another blog. This year we are leaving the Regular kiddos at home and making it an extended family affair! Follow along for preparations, travel, and semi-live updates from the Brilliance of the Seas! Background Info Picture it... Sicily, 1929... Just kidding. I'm in my Golden Girls era so I often channel Sofia when I begin telling a story. Picture it... my living room, November 2022. Alaska 2024 deployment would be announced and bookings opened within a few days. We already had cruised in the Mediterranean, cruised from NYC down to the Bahamas, and were booked for summer 2023 on the Mariner of the Seas for my 40th birthday. Generally we are a "one cruise at a time" kind of family but something struck me about the 2024 Alaska deployment that just felt.... right. Like it was the exact right time for Mr. Regular and I do book something for ourselves. A treat. A reprieve. Alaska has been on our bucket list for a long time and at first glance when bookings became available, the price was pretty good. I knew I couldn't just book something without speaking with him first, so I laid out all the benefits and trade-offs (small ship! leaving from Vancouver! Aft balcony! I just got a pretty sizable raise so I will foot the bill! He saw no tradeoffs, lol), and got his ok to contact the travel agent. YES! It was so early in the deployment I got to hand pick our room and with over 600 days to go, we started planning and researching. Eventually, our other extended family (mainly our parents) caught wind of our plans. We scheduled a mid-May itinerary for a few reasons, one of the best being our kids wouldn't be able to go. I know, we are Regular mean parents. But also because the likelihood of the ship being overrun by school kids would be lower. We love kids, we have two, we have kids in our family and extended friends group. There's nothing wrong with kids. But, we loved our experience cruising during a non-break time. The last two cruises we've taken have been with our kids during school breaks and they have been vastly different experiences. Not bad, but different. We wanted to return to those non-break vibes. But this time in Alaska. Anyway, our parents wanted to tag along and we were ok with that. Getting my sister to come rounds out our merry group of 6! The Intergenerational Regular Family Tree Me, Mrs. Regular. 40 years old. Working at a university full time and full time PhD student. I am finishing up coursework and successfully defended my proposal last month. This itinerary falls over the one break I have between spring and summer terms. I have been on 3 RC cruises and will reach Emerald on this cruise. Husband, Mr. Regular. 45 years old. Working at the same university and teaches snow sports on the side. He is bummed there will be no skiing or snowboarding while visiting Vancouver or Alaska. Has been on the same cruises as me and will reach Emerald. Regular Mom. My mother! 70 years young. Doesn't travel much, retired 3rd grade teacher. Has always wanted to go to Alaska. Will be her first cruise. Regular Sister. My sis! My best friend. 38 years old, never cruised before. Just there to show up and have fun! Regular Father-in-Law. Mr. Regular's dad. 79 years old, has cruised once before from FL. Certified renaissance man, he is an acrobatic pilot, flight instructor, motorcycle racer, and welder. Ran a multi-million dollar business but never earned a bachelor's degree. He is just so cool. Regular Mother-in Law. Mr. Regular's mom. 84 years old, has cruised once before from FL. Recovering from a mild stroke in January, she is a remarkable person. She's improved so much in 4 months mobility and speech wise. She's still sharp as a tack but just a little slower than before. In her 80's but acts not a day over 60. Why are we "regular people"? My username and the name of my cruise blogs came out of an observation that post-COVID restart, most people in the RC Blogs were taking their "revenge" travel trips and there was a run for a while of suites only travel blogs. No shade to the "suite snobs" out there or to those who are blessed enough to cruise frequently at the premium of a suite. But, while I am still fairly new to cruising I wanted to read more from perspectives that didn't go for all the extras or bells and whistles. Thus, "regular people cruising" was born! Not only do we not tend to travel in suites with the amenities, we also don't splurge on other luxuries like drink packages, unlimited dining, spa treatments, a lot of excursions, etc. Now, this will change a little bit this trip because I think Alaska affords some special opportunities. Our Itinerary My in-laws are flying in on their own schedule, but mom, Husband, Sis, and I are all traveling together from NJ on a direct flight to Vancouver on the 11th. Crossing fingers for smooth travels! We are all staying at the Sheraton downtown and will get brunch on the 12th before heading to Canada place to board our ship! Day 1 - Vancouver Day 2 - Inside Passage/At Sea Day 3 - Sitka in the afternoon. No plans other than walking around port and maybe going to the totem poles Day 4 -Juneau. Mom, Sis, Husband and I have the dog musher's camp excursion in the morning. Regular in-laws may or may not get off the ship, much will depend on how MIL is doing. She can do activities in small bursts but then needs time to sleep and recover. We will be done at the camp by 1 but the ship is in port until 7 p.m. so I am sure some sub-group of us will explore Juneau a bit. This night Husband and I have date night at Chops. Day 5 - Haines. We all have the White Pass Railroad excursion booked through RC. Most looking forward to this one! Day 6 - Tracey Arm and glacier viewing/At Sea Day 7 - Inside Passage/At sea Day 8 - Vancouver. The Regular In-Laws are staying at a hotel on Vancouver Island to relax for a few days and traveling home later in the week. The rest of us have a red-eye back to NJ. We will look into storing luggage somewhere and taking a tour around Vancouver before heading to the airport. Next Update: Packing! Packing! Packing!

I would never use a bag that had previously been used with firearms or ammunition of any kind. Just too many things can go wrong. Sniffing dogs, for example. Why add that risk of suspicion and attention.

I booked Wonder on Aug 11. Wanted to do the 4th but it was on the naughty list. I did upgrade to GTY neighborhood balcony for $146. Taking my youngest son as a special dad and son trip since I’ve previously booked up all my wife’s PTO

I saw that story about the ammo and was like wow. But 12 years seems excessive.

I’ve never even thought about requesting location…just the 2-top. Now I will definitely add on window or edge near railing. I hated being smooshed in between a bunch of other 2 -tops. They might just as well sat us together they were that close. Jane

You do not want to be caught with ammo there. Apparently it carries a 12-year prison sentence. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/turks-and-caicos-ammo-prison-sentence-american-tourists/ Ironically (or Google shenanigans), that story popped up in my Chrome newsfeed today.

Oh..I forgot to mention this last cruise but they did kick someone off the ship in Grand Turk and today on the Facebook group we got this explanation.

Ok. I’m gonna try and upload these Ocean World photos. Wish me luck. I know this is hard to read but it will give you an idea of the content of the Park. It’s much bigger than I would have thought before I saw it for myself. Again, maybe not so easy to read, but some idea of the show schedules This is the only photo I got of an actual dolphin since the dolphin encounter wasn’t included in our excursion. I will say though, they make it very easy for you to watch all of the interactions/encounters, even if you haven’t paid to participate. The shows are all readily visible from a distance. You just don’t get to interact with the animals if you haven’t paid for the excursion. Lots of opportunities to observe. We (at least, I did not. Dan watched a bit) did not watch the dolphin show but this is a photo of the dolphin show area. As you can see, it’s pretty easy to watch a show from this vantage point even if you’re not directly involved. Fresh water pool Dan actin’ the fool. This is by the kiddie area of the fresh water pool. OBTW, the fresh water pool was COLD They have 2 bird houses. This is the macaw area. Beautiful birds. The second bird house was for the smaller birds, primarily love birds. No explanation needed for this one… …or this one… The snorkeling area had a couple of plexiglass viewing areas. Lots of fish and coral to see. I really enjoyed snorkeling in this area but we were fortunate enough to have done this early. Later in the day it was crowded and chaotic as there were kids in there who had no idea how to snorkel and were thrashing about maniacally. I’m sure it was very disruptive to the fish. Glad I missed that… Bizarre photo of Dan in the snorkeling area. Actual arms and reflections of arms. Yikes ! This is a rather crappy photo of the shark encounter area. It’s actually quite large. The sharks in this interaction are nurse sharks and the are extremely wimpy as sharks go. They ran and hid in the rocks once the snorkelers entered the water. When this photo was taken (before the snorkelers got in) the sharks were just looking for a free meal. They know when the chow is coming out ! Moving on to the sea lions. Here is Dan about to get a kiss. While I was taking this picture, I had an employee telling me, “Sorry, no photographs allowed”. I just ignored him and took this one but put my phone away after that. I had no interest in seeing the inside of a Dominican jail. After the encounter was over, photography wasn’t a problem. This was during an actual sea lions show which was open to the public Obligatory balancing-the-ball-on-the-snout photo. Heres the sea lion (I can’t remember his name) giving mouth-to-mouth (or boca-a-boca, depending upon which narration you were listening to) to an unfortunate member of the staff who nearly drowned when this SAME sea lion pushed him off the rocks, moments earlier ! Scene of the crime… Welp, that’s all of the exciting things we saw and experienced at Ocean World. If you get the chance to go when in Puerto Plata, I do recommend it.

I’m so glad you got new dance shoes! As a dancer I love dance heels. Regular heels or even shoes in general no thanks. Dance shoes yes please

It's a solid seabed, but had no issue walking in bare feet. It's not sharp and very few sudden drops.

Oh my word! Checking and double checking our back packs, they do in fact accompany us to the range on occasion. So sad for this man, what an unfortunate and horrible mistake. I'm glad the particulars were shared, just wow!!

If I'm remembering right the 45 day or less mark is when all unsold blocks given to TAs have to be returned to Royal so they have a chance to sell them. Impossible to know if it will happen again because demand is kinda high right now.

On Adventure, no it would not dispense water. I'm not sure on other ships because I never checked on other ships.

Here it is....

The more the merrier when it comes to excited countdowners!

Looks like Dining is back up in the App…..can see menus for restaurants but not bars. Now I can plan when I’m going to book my Specialty Dining, CK or Main. YAAAAAAY 22 DAYS TO GO!! (Sorry @PPPJJ-GCVAB if I stole your countdown thunder)

I'm glad they are starting to offer it in the cruise planner. The fact you have to call to book it is archaic.

I usually ask for a 2-top, by a window if possible. I don't care what window and it's not really a big deal if we even get a window, we just want a 2-top, but since I'm already bothering to make a request, I figure I might as well. I wouldn't bother being more specific than that but to each their own.

Thanks. It's very "resting bitch face" while doing everything in your power to NOT look at your partner. Right! I loved my Capezios. That was exactly my thought. These are designed for west coast swing, so the toe box isn't blocked for stands and the soles and heels are thinner. Other than than that, they feel just like my old Capezio pair. So we met up at the dance shoe store and we both bought a pair of shoes. I'm not sure what happened, but somehow a new practice skirt made it into my car as well. They had a cute tank top, but it wasn't meant to be. We have a west coast swing class tonight, so we'll try to break the shoes in. DH will have to get used to the different feel of the more plastic-y soles for sure. Keeping this a cruise live blog and not a dance journal...I also dropped off a little bit of dry cleaning. The at home laundry saga continues as well. We can ALL officially start packing now too.

Yesterday we had a mysterious bottle of “champagne” show up in our room. It had an apology note with it from C&A so we assumed it was due to the fact that they royally screwed up our loyalty gifts twice on both of our turnarounds. I bumped into @JustMeJoe this morning and he asked me if we had received our bottle and then explained that (apparently) everyone that was B2B on that last leg got a bottle. You may recall that our TAD was something of a Charlie Foxtrot due to the number of Guest Services “issues” on the 4-14 leg (those that were disembarking) and that disembarking and reboarding were delayed for over 2 hours that day. One thing that I failed to mention in that discussion was the weirdo fact that we actually checked in for our new muster station BEFORE we even left the ship on our turnaround ! First time that’s ever happened. It just so happened that our new muster station was in the Star Lounge which is also where we were assembled for rurnaround…so we scanned our new Seapass cards and completed the muster station requirement before we even departed the ship to go through CBP !

If I'm being honest, I will say that the shark encounter was the least interesting of everything we did yesterday. They are nurse sharks, and they are quite boring, TBH. Big ? Yes. ....but they run and hide in the rocks whenever people are in the water. This is maybe one of the only species of sharks that doesn't have to continuously swim to keep oxygen in their system, so they go to the bottom, sit and hide. I totally understand the concern for SHARKS ! ....but these are wimpy, totally benign sharks. They look more like big catfish !

I didn't see if @WAAAYTOOO mentioned it; but to give you an idea of what a cluster TAD was; yesterday they delivered an apology note along with a bottle of champagne to all of the B2Ber's.

Yeah, I think you’re right. I sort of felt like that the last time but was thinking maybe it was due to less energy with the audience being so small. I do think in general for shows and small events they could be marketed more through the app. For this specific show they should have different questions pretty often. I mean there’s at least an hundred different questions you can ask any married couple. There’s so many newlywed board games they can borrow from. Some of the entertainment is based on the participants, and if the host isn’t pulling information out of them to get a story the show can become very dull.

For me…once you’ve been to a few of them…you feel as though you’ve seen them all! Almost always same or very similar questions. Just not entertaining enough to sit through.

There are discussion forums like this for Royal but for Disney that might get you more information - I've used https://www.disboards.com/ before. There is a whole strategy also around (if you want to stay on a Disney property) bidding on Priceline or Hotwire to get a better deal, but usually only at certain times of year. There are tiers of on-site properties, value/moderate/deluxe, so there are options and trade offs for different budgets. I'd pop over there and take a look at their hotels section.