Traveler

4 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Oh, I completely agree. By "just roll with it" I meant there's not much point to complaining, just don't eat there if you don't want to pay extra.  They are just following suit with everyone else so it's no surprise.  But people must be paying for it because they keep adding specialty restaurants....

I do not have problem with specialty restaurants , we are even eat in one or two every cruise. but I feel I have good alternative with the complimentary options if its the WJ the MDR and sometimes park cafe.

In this case we are talking about eating after 10 PM which , lets face it , you do not have many good options (if at all) unless plastic taste Pizza or cold sandwiches (which I like by the way) is enough for you.   

So maybe a good solution would be to have the regular menu during the day as a special restaurant , who know maybe there Hamburger will be so good that I Will even try it, during the night it would be nice if they offer special night menu  which will offer cheaper deals 

54 minutes ago, JLMoran said:

T-minus 3 days until embarkation...

Right now, with everything packed, last-minute jobs taken care of, and our flight not until 2:45, I can only think of Tom Petty.

"The waiting is the hardest part."

Are you planning to eat lunch at EWR  ? they used to have nice stake house at terminal C but than everything change and now it is one big restaurants , same vendor different names  and IPAD to order from.

9 hours ago, JLMoran said:

Did online checkin for my hotel in FLL, and was able to select my room. Made my first (and I'm sure not the last!) cruising rookie mistake -- I didn't check which room would give a view of the port so I could see the ships coming and going, and more importantly so I could see our ship coming in on Saturday morning. I'm sure the room will be nice, but instead of a view of the port and the excitement that lies that way, we're instead going to be looking at 17th Street from our window.

And if you thought that you were done getting ready for the cruise when your suitcases were packed, think again! Lots of chores to do that only just got wrapped up a short time ago:

• Getting the cats' feeders and fountains all cleaned out / set up
• Making sure the bills for the coming two weeks are paid / scheduled with the bank
• Getting the light timers set up
• Making sure that we all have whatever movies we want to watch during the flight downloaded to our devices
• Going over the packing list one more time to make sure I didn't forget anything (headphones for the flight!)
• Checking through the fridge and making sure all the perishables we won't have with breakfast are cleared out (including 1 bottle of trippel and 3 bottles of porter; hey, someone had to fall on that sword!)

And now there are only 3 days until embarkation day...

Do not forget of buying four bottle of wines 

And for sure I am following

Have a wonderful vacation and cruise 

2 hours ago, twangster said:

I was thinking the same thing. 

Again , it will be all about how much people will agree to pay.

Currently beside Pizza and cold sandwiches there is not any other option to eat after 10 PM so I Guess they are mainly targeting the "I really like to eat something with my drink" people (which I am one of them) , if enough people will start to bring pizza and and sandwiches to this bar maybe they will get the hint and start lower some of the prices . hopefully they will not do the opposite and band food from the outside/limit the time Sorrento is opened ... 

19 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Does this (plus the addition of Playmakers) mean that Sabor is gone completely from Symphony ?

Very sadly , no Sabor on Symphony , not sure why (maybe because the needed the space) as it was very successful restaurant , specially for this blog community    

For sure I will miss there excellent guacamole . 

56 minutes ago, CGTLH said:

Hunch is that was included by mistake. Think it has been mentioned before that it will be complementary.

 

I hope so , it is actually showing only snacks food currently so it make sense they still have did not upload everything and they have some errors , but who knows , they might consider it something like JR. 

The offers are :

Tacos - Beef, pork or chicken.

Burritos - Beef or chicken.

Nachos & cheese

Quesadilla - cheese or chicken

few desserts (Tres Leches , flan , Chocolate Dulce de  Leche).

And it says : 18% gratitude ...    

Its a shame since it replaced a complementary option , and no guacamole 

The good thing is that food will be available until 2 AM ...

35 minutes ago, twangster said:

Here, let me fix that for you...

"21 days to go until I will be able to enjoy the ship (and send A LOT of pictures)"

We can't wait.  Seriously, we can't.

We even finally got back our old Canon SLR so I hope for some better photos

21 days to go until I will be able to enjoy the ship (and send some pictures) 

Can't wait.

Wow , calling it "some bumps" is really good example of using euphemism.

Some bumps is to drove on a new road which still has some small holes in it which you feel from time to time , what they have done here is to divert everyone to a new road that someone forgot to build a bridge over a 1000 feet abyss which exist on the first mile.

1 hour ago, JBC1 said:

I cannot login to Crown and Anchor site if I also try from RC main page comes up with ''Bad Request'', any tips, please.

Thanks

john

Try to clean the cache . 

Sometime it helps with the bad request message.

The site continue to improve  . 

Now I am getting actual link for the cruise documentations and the countdown was added to the dashboard 

Make you think on the future of the smaller ships , 

Currently we can see in the plan for the next 5 years ships from Voyager class to Oasis, nothing else 

So for the next five years some of the small ships will pass almost 8 years from the last time they were updated . 

Dose it meant RCL decided to abounded anything smaller than Voyager and focus only  the big ports ? 

17 hours ago, J_Keeble said:

I had been monitoring my April 7th Sailing and the rooms were slowing disappearing. being a maiden voyage I would presume it is sold out.

Yes, I saw that the 14 cruise came back and the 7 is sold out , 

So things looks better for now , please do not delay the ship back to Barcelona on the 14  

If you see anything not working well make sure to tell them to fix it .

Any most important have a wonderful cruise.

47 minutes ago, twangster said:

Has anyone noticed that some Labadee excursions have recently increased in price?

Since 2016 the advance cruise planner prices for the zip line and jet ski were $96 each ($110-$115 on board the ship).  I used to get them both on sale for ~$76.  Now the advance cruise price is $105 and $109.  They have introduced a combo of the two for $194 - basically the old regular price for each.

New Combo:

At 2,600' with a price of $105 that is $.04 per foot. 

I think I heard CocoCay zip line will be 1,600'.  At Labadee per foot rates that comes out to $64.

 

They will keep increase until the point they wills see decrease in the number of sells ... basic strategy when you have captured customers.

I also book the zip line and the jet skies for 76 (zip line) and I Think more and less the jet , but weather did not allow us to use it so it was cancled 

Did not decide yet what to think about it , first I never been to CocoCay (most of my Caribbean cruises were on Oasis class) 

I Do like water parks  (I was in Atlantis 3 times and planning to come back again) , not sure I liked them part of a cruise , but I can choose if to use them or just stay on the ship/go somewhere else on the Island so I not really mind.

Regarding the price , I Guess there will be two level of price , one for the 7 cruise nights which will be from 60$ and up  , just think about combo of water slide + water park + maybe zip line price ?  also you can compare for the price of getting to Atlantis water park  (although you are getting also to see the aquarium). 

to get there money back I think they will also sell and all inclusive weekend gate away , maybe some bundle of 3 days around food , Alcohol and the water park ...  not envy the cruise stuff (mainly the cleaners) that will have to work on one.

5 hours ago, mworkman said:

For those of you that have ever watched that TV show...RCCL has taken some pointers from there to incorporate into marketing strategies, for example.

1.  List sale event on cruise planer....only to find the day after sail ends....it's still the same price..thus..... How did they do that? ?

2.  Upgrade website to version 2.0 (Notice similarity Matt to Twangster bot 2.0 ?) Downgrading from older version that worked occasionally (Main complaints from customers) to new version...that works....after not working for 1 week ? to it's current state of working but major downgrades of features.....currently customers now elated of w working site.....How did they do that??

They are getting very good at that , but again it is all targeting new traveler , sadly they now that whoever is loyal to royal will not leave them due to such things , 

By the way , usually after sells planner sells ends there are few days the price stays the same but then it will raise again until the next "One time sell" ...

The good news is that now cruise planner is working from the new site , the bad news the online check in link stopped working . 

So I have checked in using the old site and it was fine but know in the new site under room details I see that now only my spouse appears under the next month reservation .

Hey I guess we can not have it all ... 

Sorry , but this letter is even worse .

Saying that the problems are due to people having  duplicate accounts can not explain the useless UI , nor the fact you need to give your cruise details every time you want to access cruise planner or starting online check in.

its just an insult to our inelegance 

4 hours ago, PrincipalTinker said:

When is your cruise?

14-April from Barcelona 

1 minute ago, twangster said:

Can you attach a screen shot?

I just go to the main Royal website, select "Already Booked" then "Online Check-In".  From this page I enter my name, reservation number, ship and sail date.  No issues.

Thanks, 

I tried it again now and it went OK , 

Still do not find how to go to my cruise documents but I guess , online check in will be enough. I wanted to look on it as I am on guaranty room and when I got the email which indicate mu documents are ready I thought they might assign me the room already 

got an email few hours ago that my cruise document is ready and a link to download it.

The link brings me to the new login page and from there I do no have any clue how to get to it , any idea ? 

(I tried also to do online check in but got error message) 

Regarding why they are not rolling back , it might be they already pass this point , meaning the new DB already have new customer records and they did not plan how to migrate it back to the old DB.

But I start to think something else happened here , I think they not really planned to start and use the new site but some disaster happened to the the old DB and records were deleted , moving to the new DB was the work around.

All the required adding information we are being ask to enter leading me there.

Anyway this just my theori , hope I am wrong

1. Wonderland - love the short ribs and the desserts 

2. Giovannis - the best filet on the ship.  

3. Sabor - should I really need to explain.

4. Izumi

5. Chops - if it is crowded the service can become very slow and annoying (happened to me twice on different ship)  

6. JR