Traveler

By the way , I want to reserve the CK for few days, how do I contact the concierge ? Should I get some email ?

I also found out that in the application set sail you do not see the Casino status but it does not mean you lost it, it's just mean RCL IT has done it again ?

Although it's our first time In GS we decided to try the royal up for almost all the possibilities (not biding on the Royal suite and Vila). Just saw that all my bids expired beside the pending crown loft suite , still full week to go. Anyway it encouraged me to bring up the bids on the second leg of the B2B , who knows, with all the cancelations maybe it's a good chance to try something else

I am back , sorry for not updating before but crazy days , lots of work to finish before the vacation (no that I will not be connect and have to join some meetings but still ) and some uncertainties during those crazy days. Still not sure if all the starts will aligned and we will be able to board the cruise , hope no issues with flight , C19 tests , hurricanes and other stuff , too many things so I decide not to think about it too much. On the other hand we still do all the required preparation , for example my spouse already prepared for the Caribbean: For the vacation prof I twit RCL asking regarding the PDF which is the only document we are getting here and here is the answer : "Hi there. Digital or alternate copies aren't accepted unless it's the standard way of getting the vaccine proof for that country guests are in, so you'll be fine." so I guess its also good answer for whoever travel from Canada to catch a US cruise. You can imagine my feeling when getting the B2B new protocol email , why of course change it one week when we are finally going on our first B2B ? , good that they fixed it and sent another email quickly, Plans for the first cruise : SAT 04 SEP MIAMI, FLORIDASUN 05 SEP CRUISING MON 06 SEP COZUMEL, MEXICO - Stay on the ship as Mexico is in the red list of our health department 07 SEP ROATAN, HONDURAS - Beach day , we love the clear water Rotan has . WED 08 SEP PUERTO COSTA MAYA, MEXICO - Maybe tour in the port shops THU 09 SEP CRUISING FRI 10 SEP PERFECT DAY COCOCAY, BAHAMAS - First time at COCOAY so planning to tour the it and we also booked jet sky there. SAT 11 SEP MIAMI, FLORIDA

Per RCL page it should be fine " Acceptable Proof of Vaccination In order to present proof of vaccination for our cruises, the guest must show eligible documentation on boarding day at the terminal in the form of the vaccination record issued by either (1) the country’s health authority that administered the vaccination (e.g., U.S. CDC's Vaccination Record Card) (2) electronic vaccination records where country policy requires the use of electronic documentation via app or health agency site (e.g. UK NHS App, NHS Certificate, Israel Green Pass, EU Digital COVID Certificate), or (3) a letter from the guest's medical provider that administered the vaccination, which meets the following criteria: The Proof of Vaccination must include the name of the vaccinated person matching the registered cruise guest with date of birth (DoB), the dates of the completed vaccination cycle, the administering physical or medical services provider, and the manufacturer of the vaccine issued. The full vaccination cycle must be completed at least 14 days before your sail date (e.g., received the second dose in a two-dose series such as Pfizer or Moderna or a single dose of J&J). The vaccine is recognized and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (U.S. FDA) and/or the World Health Organization (WHO)." " In that case the PDF is official from the health authority .. I am going first to present the PDF , if that will not work I will show them my electronic documentation from the app as they list the app we use here in one of the examples they gave.

Here is how it all started. It was duribg February 2020 what turned to be my last business trip (for now anyway). C19 was something in China with very few cases in north America and Europe (mainly Italy) but we knew it's coming (N Stark was warning us). I was "enjoying" Toronto February weather doing customer meetings during the day and searching the different stores for N95 masks during the evening trying not to freeze. Nothing like cold weather to plan for the next cruise , we had already a cruise planned for April 2020, 11 days in the Mediterranean but I was already sceptic it will happen. After browsing the site I found an Oasis cruise from NJ during September. Did some calls and reserved it thinking by September the C19 will be already a fading memory, little I knew (well like most of us). Nothing like playing where is my car in -20c Few month after and few cancelations I knew this cruise would take place so I just did the L&S for next year. After few months more I checked if I still have my annual cruise from spending time (and contributing to RCL revenue) in the ships casinos, I went to the site and to my surprise not just that I saw it was there but also a list of many other offers. That was first time for me as until now I never got any offer and when asking the RCL representative for the reasonhe he explained me that they can't have marketing offer for someone not living in the US. Guess there was some good things about the C19 situation. I saw two offers for JS during September and jumped on it , calling RCL and asked to book our first B2B cruise. The representative checked it and told me sorry , no JS cabins left for this offer but he can book a balcony for us. I said ok let's do it and he started to work on it. After ten minutes he came back to me and said it's approved and he just need my CC to book it, at that point the call was disconnected. I was freaking out , finally booked a B2B and now this ... I didn't give up and called again waiting 15 minutes more to get a new representative asking him to check if he can retrieve the reservation which was under process, he checked and didn't found anything, told me that we need to start again. I gave him the offers numbers again asking him to check the JS availability, he came back to me saying no JS only balcony but do I want him to check for grand suite ? I said yes and after few minutes he told me that are available for both cruise and the extra cost will be 450 $ asking if I wanted it. I thought about and told him I need few days to think about it and I would call them back .... No not really ? , I just couldn't say it faster "book it" ! Praying the call will not disconnected again, it wasn't , a YOLO moment and we had our first B2B booked .

You are right , This point we still considering if to take it and how to reduce the risks (using the early hours options from the hotel , using mask even if not requested , and limit the visit time). Also waiting to see the results of the booster shot in preventing infection in the next two weeks as more and more data are coming.

Yap , I will give it a try although almost forgotten how to write a cruise blog. First why did I choose this name ? I guess it's quite obvious no one really knows what will happen during this crazy times so it's hard to plan. What we are planning is to be as flexible as we can and have lots of plan B/C/D and even E if needed mainly to try and have fun with whatever will be. Regarding the name , I wanted to call it "cruise to the unknown" but that unfortunately already taken here (remember the days people were cruising and written blogs about it ?). Why started now ? Two weeks looked like a good time to start and beside while writing this first post I am seating at one of my favorites beach near my home and what is better place to start writing a cruise blog if not here ? What is the plan , in high level 1. Try avoiding cathing COVID-19 in the next few weeks . Take a c19 test 3 days before the cruise. 2. Fly to Orlando (cheaper ticket than Miami) 3 Visit Universal park 4 Drive to Miami and get on Symphony. Convincing the check in people to accept our vaccination paper (the vaccine card here is a pdf file which we need to print but it contains all the information RCL asking for) . Both of us already got the third Pfizer booster shot this week so I hope no issues. 5. Do our first B2B , first time in grand suite. 6. Fly to the West coast to meet some family ( stopping in Vegas for few days) 7. Fly back home More information to follow , for now going to seat back relax and enjoy the breeze and sunset here

I guess most people are doing the pre cruise while in home were they are mostly on a non vacation environment . Then you have Fe day before cruising which is done in less safer environment were people can be infected before boarding .

Currently not changing any plans , we do not know when the C19 will go away (if ever) so for now we need to learn how to coexist with it.

Thanks , I guess its sold out for the August dates , that's why its not appearing

Good question, did SYO test cruise happened at all ? Can not find anything about it . What I can see is that that no ability to book it before September.

No protocol was sent yet , just the survey if we are vaccinated or not . I even sent a query to check if RCL will acknowledge our Pfizer vaccine documents as our official certificate comes as a PDF. No answer yet. I think anyway RCL have not decided on the protocols yet , waiting to see the new numbers now with the delta is around. Hope for the best.

I am planning to blog it , so many things need to happen for us to be able to take the cruise as we are flying over to the US , hopefully no new rules and things will improve soon everywhere. It's going to be our first B2B and we can't wait for it to start

This is a cruise RCL is prohibited from cancelling ? it's our second part of the B2B

With out taking any side , just from doint the math , its not really 50/50 if we look at the numbers. Lets say they found 6 people with C19 on an RCL ship , 3 are vaccinated and 3 are not . we know that the current capacity is around 30% more and less , around 1000 in the Voyager class and 2000 in the Oasis. We also know that RCL reporting at least 90 % (if not 95%) are vaccinated in there cruise . Therefore the real calculation should be : 3 people out of 100 people on the ship which are not vaccinated and found with C19 = 3 % 3 people out of 900 vaccinated people on the ship that found with the C19 = 0.3% Or after normalize the numbers its around 91% of the people that found with C19 were unvaccinated and only 9% were not.

Thanks , Just did my check in for September . Good that I was not waiting for RCL email to let me know when the check in is opened ?

They offered her to take second test she refused unless she can supervise the lab during the process... I guess that's actually Alo e will prevent from anyone to take her case

I will not count on getting rid of the mask during September although I do hope it will happen. Just take a look with the too vaccine labs , UK and Israel who started quite early , in both the number of cases are rising including people with the vaccine (although still less comparing to non vaccine) . The good new is that until now the number of people who require to get hospital treatments are not rising with the same factor. Some claiming the antidotes are going down after half a year but nothing is certain yet. For cruise industry , if the same will happen in the US I think it means masks are here to stay for extra few month , I do hope I am wrong

Sorry I missed the not there ? they do not do ,

I believe they do not the deep nasal swab anymore for the PCR test (at least that's what happened to me in the three test I have done as par of my US travel a week ago) I think it will be deeper if it's a secondary test to eliminate false positive in an antigen test as someone describe in other thread.

Make sure you choosed the UK RC site as only there they will show the only UK residents cruises

The problem is with - "original vaccination record" as many countries just have a pdf file or a printout , this is the official one . wonder how they are going to handle it ? , Maybe they will have a book with example from all around the world ? (like some state police have a book with examples of all international driving license).

Very simple:

Here also we only get PDF document with name , passport number, dates of shots and vaccine batch numbers. It's working well for countries which request prove of vaccination (Mostly in Europe) but could not test it entering US as the US not require it but just PCR testing (which only checked during the check in and not in the immigration). As I sea it , currently RCL is asking for prove of vaccination which issued by you government. In that case , since this is what the government issuing it should be enough. Hopefully will be able to confirm it at beginning of September during our next cruise.