OCSC Mike

So jealous of that inaugural WJ spread. Hope you all enjoy! You know I love the Mason Jar brunch but not as much as steak and lobster and everything else at no additional cost.

Between the larger group and kids and itinerary, totally makes sense. I really am looking forward to your review but my post was mostly for humor's sake. My CocoCay/Nassau cruises are 3/4 B2B's on Utopia and we're totally fine going to CocoCay twice and not getting off in Nassau. I had a similar scenario to yours last October. We had a 5N CocoCay/Labadee itinerary but Labadee was changed to Cozumel due to weather so we wound up going to Nachi Cocom instead of spending nothing at Labadee. To make matters worse, we didn't love Nachi, but that's OK. It gave me an excuse to try Paradise Beach in Cozumel this summer.

Same deal here. Although we earned most of our points after marriage, she sailed with her parents several times as a kid while our honeymoon was my first cruise.

Great, something else to potentially tempt me away from just staying on the ship and using my vouchers and eating the already included food (especially when I justified my CocoCay/Nassau cruises with the logic that we would be spending zero on excursions). Looking forward to the review.

No issues logging into the website here and the app hasn't kicked me out.

Some have suggested the logic is to sell 10 at $3000 rather than 20 at $1500. FWIW (not a ton, lol) they do include unlimited bottled water. There’s a large container of ice with a bunch of bottles waiting for you and your server will refill it upon request.

Spending extra time on the ship during an inaugural isn't the worst thing in the world. We left CocoCay earlier than usual last month (lack of sleep and heat are a bad combo) but it didn't ruin our cruise of course. I won't let it happen again though, lol. Back to taking dips in the pool and sitting on the underwater bench under the palm trees where the big iguana lives for me!

Well when you have enough luggage for three people... . I kid, I kid.

Maybe he went back and just selected 4 passengers to check.

Some of us were eagerly awaiting pics of "unique Mexican goodies" but don't let that sway you.

Yep, same here. I don't have a super strong reason why when I'm indoors but I still get my own drinks. I think the only time I really order from a server is if we're in the MDR and I didn't grab a drink to bring in (although the assistant waiter isn't really the same thing as a pool deck server) or if we're seated early for a show. Oh, and I order from our server at specialty dining but that's back to the MDR thing.

Agreed. Exactly what I did for my long-winded live blogs.

Where's the "Booooo!" emoji? Then again, if you never leave your cabin...

Don't try the inaugural, you can see that from your actual booking. Here's August 2nd's 3N cruise for example, and brunch is there... https://www.royalcaribbean.com/account/cruise-planner/category/dining?bookingId=000000&shipCode=UT&sailDate=20240802 This doesn't mean it will be available for the inaugural, of course, I was just saying that it does appear to be available on other 3N sailings so there's a chance it will be.

Funny you say that. I remember liking Effectors (not loving it) the first time we saw it. Like you, I reserved it for our 2nd Wonder cruise just for the heck of it and we wound up going... and for some reason we didn't like it that time except for the ending. Maybe b/c we had already seen it. Who knows? Going forward, we'll only see Adult Comedy, the headliner depending on who it is, and possibly the ice show which we love but I'm not sure how many times I'll want to see it even though we loved it.

Perhaps it isn't available yet or it's because it's the inaugural? I'd keep checking. My wife and I were discussing this over the weekend since we have a few Utopia B2B's booked in the future. There's a tool someone from that other forum created that lets you see cruise planners for future cruises even if you're not booked and I saw brunch offered for whatever random 3N dates in August I chose. You can't see what days it's available but I'm assuming embarkation day since there are no sea days. Here's the link if anyone is interested... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ukT6gOPcu7coL92LuDcyDaWXQfO88u5kN9FEdHRj5bM/edit#gid=0 You just have to enter the ship and date then use the links to look at whatever you want. Oh yeah, and YOU MUST BE LOGGED OUT OF THE RC WEBSITE to use it.

Yes.

This isn't true in my experience. There are standby lines for every show. We had reservations for the ice show (my favorite) on Wonder the week before you sailed and decided to go on a different night. We showed up 30 mins before the show and walked right in (they let us in early for whatever reason, normally standby is let in 10-15 mines before the show). Adult Comedy is the only one that may be tough to get into standby b/c the venue is smaller. FWIW, other than comedy, you didn't miss a ton, IMO. We hated Voices and Effectors II has some neat special effects but it's kind of slow for most of the show and more geared towards families with the superhero theme. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Marvel fan, but it's not that.

Mattresses can vary on the same ship let alone from one ship to another. We had 3 different cabins on Indepedence in a 4 month span a couple years ago... one mattress was very hard, the other two were not.

Sure, it's seafood!

We sit by the Oasis Pool in between the Oasis Bar and Chill Grill. I used to walk up to the back of the Oasis Bar and it was busy but no real issues. 2 weeks ago I got my drinks from the little bar window inside Chill Grill and liked that better b/c it seemed like there was A/C in there so the frozen drinks were even more frozen. It was also less busy. I'm not a fan of using servers, especially outdoors, between the wait and the melt factor but they are constantly walking past us and service seems reasonable there. Hope that helps.

No worries. That's how my trip reports and live blogs have always been. You do you! Being long-winded while doing a live blog was bothering me though (started to feel more like work and less like fun) so I forced myself to make a bunch of shorter posts with a few pics instead of long daily recaps for my recent one. The change was for me though, not anyone else.

I wasn't either, I only ordered them b/c my wife liked it and so of course I had to get one too... especially when Bezos was offering 5% off for buying more than one, lol. I am now though. We used them a lot more than I expected. Succumb to the FOMO and peer pressure... all the cool kids have them!

It only works after check-in b/c you don't have your set sail pass until then.

I don't blame you. I'm in the board ASAP group as well. Hopefully I didn't jinx PC. Boarding has gone very smoothly in addition to beginning early for a while now.