Boston Babe

I did it folks.  Just like I said I would.
I went to a bar, drank a beer and ate a grilled mahi sandwich.  
In retrospect reading CDC guidance I realize my life is now over.  I didn't wear a mask for the entire meal.   I ate bite after bite, drinking swig after swig of glorious food and beverage indoors at a bar.  Even though I'm fully vaccinated and even though I left a nice tip my life is over per CDC guidance.
Apparently I vaccinated for no reason. 
In case I am whisked off tomorrow and placed on a ventilator you'll know why I haven't stopped by the message boards.  
At least I'll go knowing the CDC saved me from a cruise ship given their guidance didn't save me from myself.

We got ours for 26 June 21. Retreat Royal Suite. Happy, happy, Joy Joy! Airfare to St. Marten is outrageous, though.
Benefit of a great TA.

Booked for July 3rd!!
What are the odds they’ll shoot fireworks on the 4th while at CocoCay? 
 

You guys...I am so sad reading this thread, you have no idea.  FOMO is real. ?
Someone else will have to blog this summer.  I am headed to the mountains.  We won't be vaccinated in time.  Hubby is getting his tomorrow but most of Canada is spacing the shots out 4 months apart.  I might be May at the earliest so summer cruising is a no go.  

Because @Lovetocruise2002 is stuck in Canada and isn't going. 
Otherwise she would have started one a month ago before Royal announced it.

Apparently interior and oceanview are available but with my Crown and Anchor discount a balcony was the lowest price.   YMMV.
 
 

My TA booked me this morning!
https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2021/03/24/new-adventure-of-the-seas-sailings-out-of-nassau-bahamas-now-available-book

Yeah.... I'll be chatting with Tyna this evening .... as for cabin .... we'll gladly take the broom closet in Steerage...... anything to get us back to Bermuda (or any ship for that matter)
I would really like to know the available dates though..... the later into the summer, the better.

Spoke to the missus, her response was a very firm, "YES!" Well, as far as getting a hold on a cabin and seeing what the prices come out to.
We're really constrained on what dates we can sail. Basically a 2-week window between when our younger daughter leaves for Japan and comes back home, right in mid/late July. So it's probably gonna be expensive. But after such a long vacation drought I'm hoping we can just say, "YOLO!!!! YOLO!!!! A thousand times, YOLO!!!"
Email sent to our TA requesting a hold on a 2B / 4B balcony cabin. Yeah, that's probably gonna have a premium with balconies in such short supply, but I want that sea air and cobalt blue water up for view.

I love this Itinerary, stay in beautiful Bermuda before cruise, stay after cruise, lots of sea days and CocoCay!  Bonus is 2 hour flight from East Coast!
 

I'm not sure they really "hate" the cruise industry per se.  I think it's more of a fixation on the cruise industry b/c, as @twangstersuggests, the cruise industry is the only thing they can fully control.  Even if their control isn't having any positive effect on the plague (which we really can't quantify one way or the other), they can pretend to be busy keeping us safe while essentially, doing nothing.  It gives their lives (and jobs) meaning.
It doesn't help that the cruise industry became an obvious and immediate target at the beginning of this nightmare.  The American airlines and other modes of domestic and international travel exact influential lobbying pressure so their limitations were minimized but the cruise industry does not have nearly that same level of political pressure.

The Biden Administration implied the Super Bowl was a SUPER SPREADER event,  among other events. ?...Never Happened.  
So I personally would say to the CDC  "COME ON MAN?" .
 

Please don't tell anyone, but we also booked the follow-on to this cruise with the first VY CAN/NE cruise (9-18-22).

Remember how we said that Freedom prices in 2021 were ridiculous?  Well Adventure in 2022 is even worse!  That being said, I did book a short sailing on Adventure for the end of July 2022.  It's more for sentimental reasons.  It will be our 20th anniversary and we started on Adventure so I could not resist.  Really hope the price on that sailing drops along the way.  It already dropped $150 since booking lol.

This is the best advice you will get.  Star Class, by its very definition, is designed to be a personalized experience.  While the overall "rules" are fairly consistent, the specific amenities do tend to vary by ship and even among Genies on the same ship.  A very good example of this is that some ships allowed Starbucks to be delivered to the suites and some do not. Whether this is a Genie-thing or a ship-thing isn't readily apparent to me. I've never asked for this service so I don't know the particulars.
On the other hand, it never hurts to learn from others what THEIR experience was and then you at least have some idea of what to expect.  But as @Lovetocruise2002said, don't let your expectations turn into disappointments if you find that something you have heard about from the past does not come to fruition for you.
What the Genie absolutely will do is help you with planning your days and nights (if you want help !!) with things like specialty dining reservations (or even MDR reservations if that is your choice), entertainment venue seating, help with onshore excursions (this will be dependent upon how shore excursions are organized when cruising returns) and personal escorts onto and off of the ship, as needed.  One of the most important (but hopefully infrequently used !) services that a Genie can offer is related to onboard charges.  If you have a charge on your account that you have a question about, your Genie can help sort it out without you having to go to Guest Services.  My last Genie (Jan 2020, Oasis) told us that she would be personally insulted if she caught us in the GS line.  It was a joke, of course, but she was making sure that we realized that there was nothing related to GS that she could not address for us.  It CAN be a huge help.  We had an issue with our credit card on one cruise a number of years ago and the Genie took the issue all the way to the Chief Financial Officer onboard before it got fixed.  The ship's CFO came to our suite personally to apologize for the problem and make sure we knew it had been solved.  Interestingly enough, that last story actually involved 2 different Genies onboard that ship.  Our Genie had originally addressed the issue and thought it had been solved and then we found out later that day that the issue had NOT been solved so we marched down to GS (hoppin' mad, BTW) and one of the other Genies recognized us as SC guests and asked if he could help.  It was actually that second Genie (Sebastian) who escalated the issue up to the top and finally got it solved.  So you don't JUST have 1 Genie....all of the Genies onboard are there to help if you need it.  What a great feeling !
I've never had a bad Genie.  Going along the lines of what @Lovetocruise2002mentioned, each has their own strengths. For instance, the best, BY FAR, party-planning Genie that we have ever had is Reyno.  He LOVES a party and he is really good at it.  We've had him twice as a Genie.  Yen Lee has been our Genie twice and she is excellent.  I believe Yen is now on Quantum, but I am not 100% certain of that.  Our last Genie was Joyce and she is a HOOT !  She is by far the most fun Genie we ever had...she is a ball of energy and very very personal...in a good way.  She's a chatterbox and you will get a lot of juicy ship scuttlebutt from her.  LOL  Sebastian is all business (as is Yen) but also a very good Genie.  We did not have Sebastian plan a party for us but my guess is that he would have been great at it.  Probably our favorite Genie was Charlie, who no longer works for Royal, unfortunately.  He had the most attention to detail (which I find to be a strong Genie trait) of all of the Genies we've had.  Any time we had room service he would make sure that the table was properly prepared with table cloth and cute little personalized place cards and left small little personal gifts everywhere...even the seats that he reserved for us in the theater.  Indirectly we had Alexandra (I think that was her name).  She was the Genie for friends that we were cruising with on one of our cruises where Reyno was our Genie.  They worked together to plan some dynamite parties.  OMG, that was a party cruise !  Unfortunately, Alex is no longer with Royal either.
Anticipating a Star Class cruise is easily as exciting as actually being on a SC cruise.  You will have an entire month of direct comm with your Genie before you board.  That is the time to let them know your wishes (exception being the Cabin Crawl party that we discussed in another thread).  The Genie will give you a good indication of which wishes they can accommodate and which they cannot.  Keep in mind that there may well be changes to the Genie program when cruising resumes.  While I do not have any knowledge of how things might change, it is my impression (gut feeling) that having a Genie in the future is going to be an even bigger advantage than it has in the past...but that's just a guess.

HI All, Is the supposed announcement tomorrow by RC probably cancelled sailings to Canada?  I'm asking as I had B2B booked on Freedom, 5nt Bermuda May 13th (and we know that will also be cancelled as there's no way everything will be in place by then, and then 4 nt Halifax May 18th.  My final payment is tomorrow for the Bermuda segment and I am truly not prepared to pay it as i know Halifax will be cancelled.  Should I just wait till tomorrow before I start making calls.  Thank you!

[Please forget that I just said, 2 days ago, that I would not book any new cruises]
Just booked the 9-4-22 14 night Voyager out of Copenhagen repositioning to Boston.  So excited about going to Norway, Iceland and Greenland !  It's expensive but I was able to get a casino discount so that helped quite a bit.

http://www.creative.rccl.com/Sales/Royal/Accessible_Seas/10017348_AccessibleSeas_Brochure.pdf
 
I hope this helps.  We are in a grand suite and Scootaround never mentioned width of door, the one we are looking at is their lightest and smallest. Looks maybe 15 inches wide.

Feb 7 was a terrible anniversary for us.  It was the date of our last cruise (Anthem Feb 7, 2020).  Of course, that is the cruise that ended up being delayed by 3 days due to an erroneous COVID scare...so the true anniversary of our last boarding will be on Wednesday(Feb 10).  Hard to believe it's been a whole year.  This truly sucks.

It’s sad to say but early 2020 was the grand finale to cruising as we all know it. I know there are plenty of people that will get on a cruise with all the stipulations but IMHO this is hardly a vacation. This may never change. I’m thankful for YouTube and the RC Blog to serve as a look back at what cruising once was. I can’t imagine being on vacation and having to reserve a day/time to sit by the pool with my mask on or have a drink while playing slots in the casino. At some point it’s just not a vacation anymore. 

And Barbados is such a beautiful island too, great place to stay before or after the cruise! 

Probably will have to. ?

Breaking news, on the phone with RC now, 4PM, they will announce Cruises Cancelled Nov 1-30,2020

it was so funny, she was checking my Freedom cruise for May and we were chatting and she said yes, we cancelled till Nov 30th.  She said they announced it at 4PM.  Looks at clock, whoops it's only 3:45PM!?

Breaking news, on the phone with RC now, 4PM, they will announce Cruises Cancelled Nov 1-30,2020