Jill

7 hours ago, jticarruthers said:

I think they went to straight everyone vaccinated over 12 to cut down on the complication of having to think about what cruise goes where.

Ok that’s what I thought. 

12 hours ago, AshleyDillo said:

If the ship doesn't visit the Bahamas or the US Virgin Islands (St. Thomas) then they will allow unvaccinated provided they pay for the extra testing and travel insurance. Cococay is in the Bahamas so falls in the vaccination required rules and it's hard to find a ship that doesn't stop there.

When you read the protocols though for sailing out of Florida, it states everyone 12 and older have to be vaccinated. It doesn’t state exceptions. 
 

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/the-healthy-sail-center/getting-ready-to-cruise

12 hours ago, cruisellama said:

As we're in Sept, any recent sightings?

He’s currently on Odyssey. He’ll be on my Symphony late October. Not sure when he’s changing ships. 

It’s no longer on my October 23 symphony 

23 minutes ago, twangster said:

It seems Optum is equally sleazy.  Frequent flyers have been trying to use the same tests for international travel.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33468753-post110.html

This user eventually received a full refund from Optum after they received tests with just 2 1/2 months of expiration with an apology acknowledging the uncertainty in expiry dates. 

It seems like Abbott manufactured a bunch of these earlier this year but didn't sell a lot of them so the stockpile in the warehouse grew.  Along comes the delta variant and suddenly their tests are in demand so Abbott is shipping old product to their partners.

It would be nice if short dated tests were sold at a discount. That’s wishful thinking in the current environment  

I’m glad I’ve got several of you ahead of me to iron out the kinks in this new requirement. However by the time I sail in late October I’m sure it will change again. 
 

I do feel testing will still be required at least through the holiday season and possibly into early spring. 

My category for May Alaska is sold out so no price drop for me I shouldn’t gripe though because I’ve gotten almost $2400 on my other cruises. Just that Alaska is super more expensive. Even my 12 night Holy Land/Greece on Odyssey is way cheaper than my May Alaska 

On 2/20/2020 at 12:17 PM, Psycho and Barb said:

We try to be the first off the ship and hurry to Nellie's Beach...Its our favorite spot.  Close to a restroom and a bar...Our two requirements.  It does get full so get there early.

I like your style! That’s our checklist too! Restroom and bar! Lol Available shade is nice too. That’s the Trifecta of Labadee 

54 minutes ago, Matt said:

Is that a personal record for you @Sharla?

That's awesome!

Nope! I’ve got almost $2400 that @Sharlahas saved us just since June! June sale + WOW sale = mega bucks!  

It looks like this. @PG Cruiserread my post above. Wait a minute, pic won’t post

On 8/23/2021 at 9:03 AM, Matt said:

In looking quickly, I don't see it either.  So it's not you.

Something I need to research a bit since most of what you see here is straight out of the box

@Matti figured it out the other day. Click on your profile icon and your profile pops up. Scroll on down and you find all your notifications 

48 minutes ago, Jmccaffrey said:

I don't think this will impacts Cruise lines at all. As I recall, NCL sued and it is currently hold on by the courts. So i would say this is a Moot topic.  

Fingers crossed it is. 

How is this going to pan out for the cruise lines? The fines haven’t been imposed up to this point and now Royal is vaccinated only out of Florida along with other lines. I thought we possibly had gotten past this point. What a soap opera. 
 

https://www.news4jax.com/business/2021/09/01/ask-for-covid-vaccine-proof-face-a-5000-fine-in-florida/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=snd&utm_content=wjxt4&fbclid=IwAR09AZ9bhAGOQ8V1CQnekaVR34GQiRZxSr1ojAC72uPNy9DCR697WJmo3bQ

Well since your cruises have not met the final payment date, your deposit is at risk unless it’s refundable. So if you know you won’t be able to cruise, I’d just cancel now. Do you have refundable deposits? 

I just read on the Odyssey facebook group that next week has 3,000 passengers. It was on facebook so it has to be true! If it is true, the crew better rest up! 

Daily vouchers are here to stay

I’m in several Royal groups on Facebook. General and ship specific. 
 

All I’m gonna say is there are A LOT of uninformed passengers out there because they haven’t bothered to visit the website and see what’s currently required. 
 

“Hi! I’m cruising Sunday. Do I need to be vaccinated?” 
 

“I’m Diamond Plus, are masks required?” 
 

These type questions are asked multiple times a day. I always suggest a visit to the website and recommend becoming VERY familiar with the protocols as people have been denied boarding. 
 

Ignorance is not an excuse. 

1 hour ago, Chadster said:

If I could find a way to efficiently and economically pull off the flight, I'd definitely do a one-way. As it stands now, though, I've got a round-trip 7-day planned for May of '22 that's supposed to include several glaciers.

I booked our flights through Air2Sea for our Southbound Radiance. $812 “round trip.” That’s Florida to DFW to Anchorage. Then Vancouver to DFW to Florida. 
 

Cheaper if we went through Atlanta but it was a 4 hour layover. 

Not sure where in Jax you are, but I’ve had good luck with the Walgreens in Green Cove. More rural. 

It’s gone from my October 23 symphony 

On 8/26/2021 at 10:55 AM, Jacqui said:

Haven't done this excursion, but we are signed up for it too and I believe you're on the same cruise!  Oct 23 on Symphony.  My cruise planner says it's 3.5 hours so should be done by 2.

I cancelled the sea lion swim Our friends that we are traveling with couldn’t book it. It was sold out so I canceled ours and now we’re all doing the champagne catamaran cruise over to St John

It’ll be interesting to see what Royal does. Richard Fain said earlier this week that Delta has impacted bookings. You add a more strict indoor mask mandate and take away a Covid test day and I’d imagine there will be more cancellations. There was just a round of cancellations due to St Thomas/Bahamas vaccine requirement. 
 

Fares right now for September and October are absolute rock bottom.  
 

Some ships are practically ghost towns. I think Odyssey just sailed with only 900 passengers. 
 

39 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

No, it's not an option, it's a CDC recommendation to either request vaccinated have a test in the 2-day window prior to sailing or they can get one on embarkation.  

Basically they still want the unvaccinated tested at the pier and they want them to be tested prior to coming to the pier, but they're giving them 3 days since they're going to be tested again.  I guess they feel they're giving the cruise lines a win to not have to test as many people at boarding this way. 

It's on the cruise lines to give the OPTION for the vaccinated to just get tested at the pier if they are going to abide by these new screening requirements.  We will see how Royal decides to do handle this for the September and October cruises. Previously they have been taking the stance to go by the CDC recommendations as they've made it clear they're honoring the CSO guidelines to sail, even though the CDC added the language that the CSO is non-binding in Florida.  

I think the CDC exists in a vacuum where they don't realize that this type of screening testing isn't as widely available all over the country as they might think, especially with the surge in cases.  PCR is a type of NAAT, but you don't find many places that offer quick results on that one, but that's the most widely available type of test, at least from my experience.  But again, the lack of testing really isn't their problem.

This change means even the 100% vaccinated cruise lines will require testing before sailing, although I think most of them already did. The ones like that I know of actually provide the tests at boarding at their cost already.

This is exactly why the CDC has done this. Testing 2 days out will make it 75% harder to cruise. That’s their goal. Pretty soon all women will have to be a 32A to sail

1 hour ago, wordell1 said:

Per Matt's write up, the CDC has some new recommendations on Masks.

CDC wants cruise lines to reconsider mask policies on cruise ships | Royal Caribbean Blog

I sincerely hope that RCI ignores these recommendations.  I am not willing to wear a mask at all times while on the ship (which is what it sounds like the CDC wants) - this would cause me to reconsider future cruises.

Yet another CDC attempt to discourage cruising. Hope the cruise lines give them the middle finger on this one. 
 

There has not been a problematic “outbreak” on any ship to resort to this new “recommendation.” CDC trying sooooooo hard to remain relevant. 

4 hours ago, PG Cruiser said:

Is the goal here to add you your alcoholic beverage allocation?

Yes. I would use my vouchers and hubby would use his vouchers to gift drinks to me. We’d buy a DBP for him to use and I’d buy the refreshments package (and use the 8 vouchers between us for me)