twangster

Emerald nets you 15% off. Diamond gives you a free day of Surf or a $22.99 discount. On shorter cruises or if you just need to cover sea days this can start to make it cheaper to buy on board. If traveling with another Diamond member you both a free day. Many couples will share these two free days.

Not all itineraries are going to change. Route planning and forecasting for cruise ships is more complex than most people appreciate. Skagway geographically is at the end of a long channel. It's not like you can just happen to sail past Skagway. It's like driving to the Florida Keys, they are not on the way to anywhere else, they are the end of the line. That impacts the overall cruise itinerary. Why would they change? For several years they haven't been permitted to enter Glacier Bay. It's awarded by contract. Now they can go to GLBA they can spice up Alaska cruises. Many of us have done Royal to Alaska year over and over and welcome this new area to explore during a cruise.

It pays to be pinnacle :)

Harmony has great Voom but satellites are always impacted by bad weather and such. In some cabins on Harmony the HDTV displays are tight against the wall and you can't even reach the HDMI inputs, in some cabins you can. It's complicated. They are Samsung TVs so sometimes you can get a Samsung device to mirror to them.

Check out this blog post: https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2015/08/25/using-your-cell-phone-royal-caribbean-cruise

Personally I find Surf and Stream the best value. Typical speeds are ~4Mbps down and 2Mbps up per plan. If you have a Voom plan and your spouse has a Voom plan, you each get this speed. There are differences between ships. Royal's Freedom, Oasis and Quantum class use newer satellite technology. Princess is rolling out this same technology to some of it's ships, they call it MedallionNet instead of Voom. Older ships use older satellite technology. You can still stream but will likely see some more buffering at times on the older ships. Until you climb up the Crown and Loyalty program you are best buying Voom in advance in the cruise planner. Buy it whenever you want but keep checking for price drops. If the price drops, cancel your purchase and buy it again at the lower price. Cruise Planner sales freeze ~ 3 days before sailing so don't leave it to the last minute or you'll be forced to pay higher rates on board. I've watched live football games on my iPad in HD like quality. A couple times over the 3 hours it paused or glitched but for the most part it works pretty well, so much better than the internet I experienced on Carnival ships. The ability to use the HDMI input on the cabin TV varies by ship but generally speaking they don't make it easy. Internet is over satellite so it isn't perfect or exactly like at home but for ship internet it's usually pretty good and often better than hotel internet. WiFi calling works fine for me. Make sure wifi calling is working at home before boarding and use airplane mode once on board. What ship?

Sadly I think Old San Juan and the area near it should be avoided right now, until the civil unrest is over. Freedom uses the PanAmerican terminal away from OSJ on the other side of the harbor so I could see embarking/debarking going normally as long as you don't try to visit OSJ. Stay in or near your hotel, avoid OSJ and go to the ship. When debarking just go to the airport. Hopefully though the protests will end soon so it won't be a problem to experience a normal OSJ visit. The same could be said when Barcelona had some unrest in year's past.

As a former Carnival cruiser I'll take a shot at this... Royal Caribbean in general doesn't have the chaotic boarding day experience that I experienced nearly every cruise with Carnival. Royal boarding is a breeze compared to Carnival even when I had no status with Royal. After experiencing my first Royal cruise I felt like Carnival created chaos on day one then created FTTF for purchase to overcome it. In general, even on the largest cruise ship in the world with twice as many passengers Royal boarding is not the chaos I always experienced with Carnival. Royal's My Time Dining offers reservations for everyone. Anyone can make reservations that work. You don't have to buy The Key to get this perk. I rarely ever call or visit guest services on either line so FTTF's dedicated phone line had no value for me. The value of The Key lies in the benefits beyond boarding day even though it does come with day one perks. If those are not a value to you, you don't need The Key. On Royal cabins are ready by 1pm at most home ports. Luggage will be delivered anywhere from 1:30pm to 5:00pm with 2pm to 3pm being average. This varies with home port, some dock conditions at some ports are less efficient. I purchased FTTF six times I think, starting when it was $39 if I recall. Every year it went up by $10. My bags never arrived with priority despite being tagged F2F. This was on Breeze, Magic, Dream, Miracle, Freedom and Valor (twice). Priority FTTF tender on Miracle in Cabo never happened. When I sailed smaller ships like Imagination I wouldn't buy FTTF because boarding day was tolerable on Carnival's smaller ships, FTTF didn't have value for me on the smaller ships. The only thing I really ever got from FTTF was walking past the chaos of boarding lines on day one. The rest didn't do much for me. When the price hit $70 I refused to buy FTTF, it's too much for what you get. The Key provides a lot more than that but you don't need The Key to have a great experience on Royal.

Welcome to the message boards! Did both you and you ex-wife earn Diamond "naturally" - each earning the points to qualify? If so then you both now have Diamond on your own merit and as you go forward in life you could declare someone new in your life as being in a relationship with you. The litmus test for that starts with the current 'couple' sharing a common home address. However simply sharing a cabin with a non-Diamond does not elevate them to your status. If you took your sister, or brother, or niece or a lady you met at a bar last week on a cruise, they would not qualify for Diamond match status.

They already have that. It's called the Diamond Lounge.

No cruise ships in port for two days. That's gotta be hitting local businesses pretty hard.

Living in Colorado the craft beer market is wide and deep with too much variety to try them all. They could never try to carry that sort of selection on a ship. By definition craft beers come from small microbreweries producing small batches in contrast to the big name large scale breweries. Few microbreweries can produce the volume of beer to fill 26 ships week after week around the world on a consistent basis. Even some of the larger local microbreweries here struggle to keep their popular products available week after week. Some craft beers just aren't my thing, it's like they got stoned and threw a bunch of stuff together that has no business being in a beer. That sort of weirdness isn't going to work well on a cruise ship, only the more popular crafts would and they can't keep them on their own shelves let alone supply a mass market.

NOAA's NHC (National Hurricane Center) produces frequent "outlooks" discussing the probability of development and if a region is favored to develop or less likely to. Basically go right to the source that many other companies get their data from. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ Once the outlook is favorable for development a simple area of thunderstorms can develop into something more. This usually (but not always) takes several days and then several days after that they can begin to model a track projection. When you see formation is not expected for 5 days at this time of year you generally (but not always) have nearly a two week window before a storm could strengthen into something serious. Once ocean temperatures have warmed up over the summer months development often occurs faster. That is why September is often peak hurricane season. The NHC outlook as of today: (bolding mine) Tropical Weather Outlook TextTropical Weather Discussion ZCZC MIATWOAT ALL TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMM Tropical Weather Outlook NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL 200 PM EDT Wed Jul 17 2019 For the North Atlantic...Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico: The Weather Prediction Center is issuing advisories on Post-Tropical Cyclone Barry, located over Ohio. Tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 5 days. && Public advisories on Barry from the Weather Prediction Center can be found under AWIPS header TCPAT2, WMO header WTNT32 KWNH, and on the web at http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov $$ Forecaster Brown NNNN Later in the season and into September storms can develop into something serious more quickly.

Not sure, possibly. Or it could be all of them are coming at nearly the same time and the Chops can't properly handle everyone at once.

In many cases the bank or credit card has it own rules for how long a charge remains in the pending status. This is more obvious with debit cards since the bank really doesn't want to be a in a position of prematurely releasing a hold only to find the charge goes through but the account holder drained their account in the interim. This tactic is why pending charges linger, because crafty people figured out how to scam the system. Royal can release the hold yet it remains posted in pending status for days after because the bank keeps it that way. This is why some people have this problem and others don't - different cards or banks follow different practices.

Yes, but you may need to log out one device before logging in on the next device. Once you reach your maximum allowed devices it will report an error trying to log in another device. On some ships you are given the option of kicking off an existing device. On some ships you must manually log out a device before trying to log in on another. Visit logoff.com or logout.com to terminate the session on one device then log in on the next. Remember to logout a device when done with it if you plan to leave it behind. Say you have a tablet logged in in the cabin then you grab your phone and head to dinner. If your tablet is still logged in resting back in the cabin you might be denied trying to log in your phone in the dining room. With a multi-device plan you are better to get in the practice of manually logging out otherwise it might kick off someone else's device and they don't realize they've been disconnected and they aren't getting your text messages.

Not sure you can, but you can always email [email protected] and let them know that you forgot to mention someone. They accept compliments as well as complaints ;)

I went to the Bahamas as a kid and later returned as a teenager doing a marine ecology summer program where I spent a few months on Great Abaco Cay. I distinctly remember being schooled to use key, not cay. It was a point of discussion even back then (several decades now).

Hmmm. Have to think about this for January. It will be my 4th time seeing it, but I'm already looking forward to seeing it again.

Harmony just called off it's call to San Juan, will add a sea day.

Supposed to be a 5pm protest again today. Harmony is approaching San Juan right now and word from on board is that they will make a decision by 12:30pm.

It is likely due to the numbers involved. Rather than turning people away or telling them to wait by moving lunch to the MDR they can serve the same Chops meal to all Key guests at once.

Confirmed. Painkillers... the rum based drink. After a few the SPR assailant will be in the pool joining in the festivities.

Igloo is nearly melted leaving them displaced. By the time the cruise is over snow will have returned to Canada and the igloo lifecycle can repeat.

As far as pics, from the Symphony TA: https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/topic/9684-symphony-ots-live-transatlantic-oct-28-2018-coming-to-america/&do=findComment&comment=89937 I can't imagine they have a different day one offering. The soft tacos are the real star of El Loco Fresh which I also found to be true on Navigator. I didn't like the Quesadillas as much.