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1. Seeing Chichen Itza . Incredible and definitely worth the long day 2. Windjammer changes. Always been squeamish about the lack of hygiene in the past

1. Meeting @CHRIS WONG and following his advice to achieve the next Club Royale level 😁🎲🎰 2. Windjammer remake .. I might go back again 😁😁

@WAAAYTOOO you always clear things up for me! Thanks so much, RCCL should pay YOU a stipend for your always amazing explanations. Your the BEST!! Cheers to YOU :)

1: Hard choice, but I’ll go with wandering around Nassau and Jamaica trying to find a light up Santa hat a few days before Christmas so I could fulfill a promise I made while slightly inebriated. 2: Relaxing with no responsibilities for awhile, and that first drink on the pool deck after boarding.

1-What is your favorite memory from your last cruise 2- what GOOD change are you excited for on your next cruise?? Here's mine: 1-Making friends with the Piano Lounge Performer and the other 2 dozen guests that regularly visited every evening. The Performer staying long past his set to hang out and extend our last night. 2-Muster drill revamp!

So my Iceland & Greenland cruise is officially canceled now, and I learned something very important that I wanted to share here. It appears that if you cancel a cruise that has been Lift & Shifted and you were past final payment when you did the Lift & Shift, you will be assessed the standard cancellation penalty that applied at the time the Lift & Shift was booked. That is, if you were in the first 15 days past final payment when you did the L&S, you would then be assessed a 25% cancellation penalty if you then cancel the sailing; doing the L&S between 15 and 30 days after final payment would mean a 50% penalty; etc. I was utterly unaware of this when I did the L&S, as was my TA at the time. I even had him call Celebrity before doing the L&S, just to confirm the cruise was still cancelable and to see if there was any problem with the fact I was already past final payment on the original booking. The Celebrity rep that he spoke with assured him the cruise could be canceled and said nothing at all about penalties. (likely because he hadn't yet gotten that particular memo) Now, I got really lucky. Because I did have my TA call Celebrity beforehand, and he was not informed of the penalty by their rep and had documented that person's response, he was able to call them and speak to a senior supervisor to get all penalties waived for my particular cancellation. I will actually be getting back 100% of my fully-paid-for cruise (after 60-75 days 🤑), for which I'm incredibly relieved. Otherwise I'd have had to take the FCC option to keep everything that had been paid, and had my money locked up with Celebrity for who knows how long before cruising actually resumes in any meaningful way. Please make a note of this if you have already done an L&S on a cruise you had. If you have an upcoming cruise that hasn't been shifted out, you have any doubts about whether it will actually sail, and you think you would rather L&S to the following year to be safe, do it before final payment if at all possible. That should ensure you can also get a 100% refund with no questions asked, although I would still advise to have your TA get that in writing / direct from a rep in some way in case they try to finagle a way to keep some of your money.

We spend a lot of time near the pool bar and by day 2 I know who my favorite bartenders are. I find a little friendliness and appreciation plus an extra $20 or so early in the cruise makes a huge difference. (We’ll usually give those same another additional tip near the end). Always good to have a friend or two behind the bar.

I actually hate Key West, don't get me wrong the drive there is beautiful. But I always seem to luck out and go when drunken youths exist. Then for the quality everything seems to be expensive. I wouldn't even go back if it was a port stop, that would be a ship day. I love a good train ride, did one from Germany to Switzerland almost a decade ago. It was beautiful and relaxing. Wanted to do another but more awesome stuff keeps coming up. Now with COVID, trains have become a better option.

I dont miss the phenomenon of all the clothing in my closet beginning to shrink by mid cruise! 😮🤣🤣

And my thinking was 2 cruises with the FCC, in the end I think you had the right idea. Go nuts on one cruise and get a suite I would not usually be able to afford. Although in February I'm getting a hefty raise at work and I want to start booking suites at some point. Anyway, I guess we'll figure out how to use the rest of the FCC.

going to bed on the last night, knowing when I wake up in the morning, the vacation is over.

🥴 Confused 🥴 like I said, confused.

If the cruise with the FCC applied gets cancelled, you will be reissued the original FCC in the original amount and any “new money” that you might have added to pay the cruise fare would be issued at 125%. But wait....there’s more ! According to the last change they made (if I’m interpreting it correctly), you would receive a new, combined FCC for the combination of those 2 amounts. This is slightly better than the old system when you would have received 2 separate FCCs. Now they are combining them so at least you only get 1 now. Of course, you can always request a cash refund for any “new money” and in that case, you would just get your original FCC back. If there is no “new money” then you’re basically back where you started. To the question that I think you were asking, no, they do not “double up” on the 125%.

I think masks are controversial because they are new to most people in the West. In the US the CDC flip flopped on masks. Initially in early 2020 they said masks were not needed unless you were in contact with someone known to be infected. I wonder to this day if they took that position due to the shortage of masks so that people wouldn't hoard masks like toilet paper and prevent healthcare workers from being able to get masks. In doing so they ignored science themselves and that is where they went off the rails. Later they flipped and said masks were beneficial. Anytime an agency like the CDC does a 180 it's going to fuel controversy. My personal believe is that masks are part of the solution but not the entire solution. The virus is still out there, it hasn't changed in how it spreads so easily since the first cases eight months ago. If a mask in public places gives me a 17% better chance avoiding spreading the virus that's good enough for me. Does it solve everything? No. Do I need to wear a mask in my living room with family who aren't known to be infected? No. If a family member was known to be infected you bet I'd be wearing a mask around my home and they would be wearing one too. If my mask isn't perfect maybe my chances of transmission drop to 10%. That's still enough for me to wear a mask. In my past I have driven a car in situations where I probably shouldn't have due to drinking alcohol. Over the years I've never killed anyone doing so, never even got in an accident of any kind. Yet the awareness that I could kill someone despite feeling invincible caused me to change my ways. Just take an Uber. Could be the best $15 I ever spent. It's a pain sometimes but probably the best thing to mitigate the horrible possibility that would come from taking a life in a DUI accident. Wearing a mask follows this logic. Of course if I felt sick I wouldn't go out and risk spreading it. The science tells us that you can be infected and contagious without knowing it. I don't ever want to be in a position to know I passed it along and caused someone else to die but I still need to go shopping and do things in public. When this is all said and done I want to be able to look back and know I did everything I could to not be part of the problem. So I wear a mask when shopping. My mask procedure isn't perfect but it's something I can do to be part of the solution. When others see me wear my mask it reinforces that they should too. That is when it is even more effective. Lead by example, motivate others without overtly calling them out, shaming them or confronting their choice not to wear a mask. Let my adult children see me do it so I lead by example. The virus hasn't changed in eight months with respect to ease of transmission. We need much of society to open, we need commerce. With the virus basically unchanged masks are a means to allow society to reopen in some limited ways that will improve our economy while reducing the chances of spread. If wearing masks outside of my cabin on a ship proves to be an effective mitigation that allows cruising to resume I will wear a mask on a cruise and proudly sport my mask tan lines. It may be the step that saves the cruise lines so it's totally worth it but we need everyone to get on board. If it's required to cruise it needs to be enforced and there should be ramifications for those that said they would do it but choose not to. If you won't wear a mask on a cruise I respect your choice not to sail for that reason but don't board a ship knowing you intend to violate the mask policy. That's just not cool.