Traveler

Here we go , finaly a cruise we do not catch a flight to nor hotel. 5 days cruise which starts at Hifa , Israel and stops at: 1. Limassol Cyprus. 2. Rhodes , Greece. 3. Santorini, Greece. And one sea day. Lots of locals and first 5ime cruiser which is always interesting to see the reaction. Will try to do some short love blogs as it's can be a different experience.

The last minute "something warm" to wear,just in case, which I never use and always regret for packing.

To my opinion this is an issue created by RCL. I regular survey people tend to give 8 and 9 as good score an 10 for exceptional. If RCL consider a 9 or 8 to be a problematic score there should explain it in the beginning of the survey or in the CC otherwise they almost force the crew members to explain it ...

If you are near Paddington station you can take the Heathrow express train to the airport, it not cheap,around 25& pp but takes you there in 17 minutes...

Just to clarify, it's seems to be a cruise thing as Greece do not ask for even the basic vacation if you fly in.

Slot machines only accept Dollars. Table games will accept Dollars and Euros. Cashier will accept both but payouts will always be in Dollars.

Where are the genies when you really need them ... If you really want to see them , maybe you should come early morning just for this tour , take the tube to avoid traffic.

London is waiting, have a safe flight

The port is near the city , any hotel in the city will be no more than 20 minutes from the port. Rambla hotel even less but will cost more. Anyway most likely you would take a taxi as even the nearest port hotel will be 15 minutes walk.

I had two cruises in Wonder of the seas, both in Europe. In Wonder you have two Casinos the big one is were smoking allowed in some parts and the golden room which is smoke free. I went to the golden room several times to show revenue can come also from non smoking casinos, always it was empty and you could hear the crickets from the central park. Maybe it's because it was Med cruise which less people gamble due to long ports day but if Royal take statistics from this ship for sure I understand why they say they will lose revenue due to no smoking policy.

I love the new new system as it's gives us much more flexibility and ability to drink what we want when we want. The d system you had the diamond club full with people from 4:30 pm trying to get a seat and you could order alcohol from a very short limited list , no frozen drinks (no lava flow). Now we use the DL for the coffee, for quite place to relax and some time to grab a quick breakfast if we don't feel like getting a full one. Thank you Royal for upgrading the Diamond experience.

I wear a nice per of shirts and a button down shirt. During the first cruises I brought also a sport jacket and tie but have up on it very quickly to make space for extra t-shirts and shorts.

I use the C&A from time to time. On the last cruise we been able to push 11 t-shirts/Polos and extra socks underwear and two shorts , so from size perspective its not bad

Hello all. One of the Med ports with many options to choose from is Napoli. The port is very close to the city and to many attractions. One of the top attractions is the beautiful Island Capri. To tour Capri you have 3 options : Using boat tour (starts around 200$ PP without dinner) , use 3rd party vendor (around 140$) or tour yourself , I will focus on the tour yourself option. Even for tour yourself you can choose to take ferry tickets from the boat (99$ PP in the cruise planner) or to buy them directly (45 $ PP). When we decided to visit Capri RCL excursion for self Capri tour was already fully booked so we went and did it ourselves. There are two options when you buy the ferry ticket , one is to do it in the port or you can book them ahead of time , get a voucher and replace it in the port. We booked our ticket in https://www.capri.net/en/t/napoli/capri . When booking the ticket , please make sure you book the one that goes out of Molo Beverello , this is the fast ferry port and the one which adjust to the RCL peer. You will see many companies , but just book using the one that you like their schedule. We used LNG for the 8:35 am ferry going back at 16:30 PM, LNG have a very good advantage since they have special lines for online tickets. The ship is docking at 7 am so 8:35 is very doable. Since you need to convert the voucher to tickets , the safe time to go of the ship is around 8 am. If you want to buy ticket in the port take into consideration they are not accepting credit cards. Here is a "map" to the location : Since Capri is very poplar destination the key to enjoy it is to start the tour early morning before all the queues. We had some delays getting off the ship (our fault) so we only disembark at 08:18. It only 5 minutes from the ship to the ferry port. You need to go out of the port and cross the parking lot were many taxi driver will try to sell you a day tour to anywhere (I am sure if you will tell them you want to visit Rome they will say no problem). Before the end of the parking area go to the left were you will see the ferry areas and building . the first window is the LNG online ticket which I was happy to see as there was zero line and we exchange the tickets in no time. They also told us were to get the ferry and we got on it just on time. The ferry ride takes around 50 minutes. Once the ferry arrived Capri port you will see on your left side a small port were you can book a ride to the blue cave if you want or you can continue forward and right to the ticket booth were you can buy bus tickets to Capri and AnaCapri , funicular tickets or to take a Taxi. Bus and funicular tickets cost between 1.4 to 2 Euros PP one way. Taxi ride will cost around 20 Euros The ticket booth : We bought the funicular ticket to Capri , again since we came early their were no lines. To save some time we also bought tickets to the way back. The funicular entrance is 1 minute walk to the left to cave like entrench were you need to stamp the tickets and get in. The rides takes less than 5 minutes. The funicular will bring you near the main streets (if you can call it like that) of Capri were you can choose to roam around Capri or to take the buss near by to AnaCapri were you can take the chairlift (9 Euros both way) to the highest point in the Island. the chairlift takes around 10 minutes with a very nice view during and after the ride. Since we have done last time the chairlift we decide just to walk around Capri streets which some are located on the side of the hill . After that we went to drink some coffee in one of the coffee shops , Capri is very expensive but there are places which are more expensive from other , so please read the menu first if you don't to pay 7 Euros for espresso ... To Enjoy the view , we went to Augustus gardens in Capri (7 minutes from the funicular) , you pay 1.5 Euros and the view is amazing. It started to be hot and we decided that we would like to shorten the visit so around 1 PM we took the train down to the port and went to the ticket booth of the ferry to replace our 4:30 PM ferry tickets to something earlier . My spouse explain the situation to the lady in the booth using the Italian she learned long time ago and she happily replaced the tickets. Since we had time until we needed to board the ferry we went to one of the port restaurants (after checking the menu) and got a tasty lasagna and fresh salad , this plus two draft beer was around 28 Euros. When we went to the ferry docks we could see huge lines to the funicular and to the ticket booth , so again , come early Ferry ride back was 45 minutes and 7 minutes after we were back on the Wonder of the Seas. To conclude , going to Capri by yourself is easy and much cheaper if you direct buy the ferry tickets. The all on board was 7:30 PM which gives you enough time to do it without worries to miss the ship.

When you suppose to get the certificate , is it on the last day ?

when we first stat to cruise one of the nice thing was to open the day watching the morning shows. The morning show was always interactive and funny , lots of running gags and interactions between the cruise director and the activities managers. That was true for several of our first cruise. On the last few years its seems it all changed , not sure if its because we already took many cruises and everything is repeating itself or something is different. Its all very informative and "dry" no more interactions , just the cruise director with some not interactive "interviews" , also much sorter. Not sure if it is due to C19 or just we were lucky on our first several cruises , still missing it. Anyone lately experience fun morning show ?

Not sure how big its going to be but I guarantee you Icon 2 will be bigger and Icon 3 will bigger than Icon 2 .

If you just want to see the outside its very easy you can take a taxi or walk to the Metro. If you want to get inside you can always buy online tickets or private excursion from one of the online sites.

More likely someone from the RCL IT team was asked to publish the first numbers ... Now they checked it again , but what is 30% here or there

Not sure if it was already been asked or not. I had some OBC FCC that I asked now to apply to one of my future cruise. I call RCL and they applied it (also got an email about it). The only issue is that I can not see it in the cruise planner . Usually when OBC is given it can be seen in the cruise planner , anyone know if it is not the case with OBC FCC ?

I thought like you that all the EU the same but in this site - https://www.italia.it/en/covid19 They are saying : "The certification of vaccination is valid for 9 months after completion of the vaccination cycle or administration of the booster dose." I guess this is why currently RCL ask for the same. I do think it will be change soon by the end of the month as the booster in Europe will also expire soon (older than 9 month). Maybe its jus wrong translation

I saw lots of discussions around Europe cruise vaccination requirements so I thought to try and summarize what is known so far. Most of the Europe countries dropped the requirements for testing if your are fully vaccinated. Fully vaccinated in the EU considered that your last shoot of an approved vaccine is no older than 9 month (270 days) . That is unless you got your booster shot which in most EU countries currently dose not have expiration date. But , one of the most "cruised" country , Italy , counts the 9 month rule even for the booster shot , so if for example you got your booster shot at Sep 2021 and you are planning to cruise at July you consider to have "expired" vaccination status. Royal Caribbean , apparently decided to go with the Italian system , meaning they consider two kind of vaccination status : 1. Up to date one , your last shot including the booster is not older than 9 month. (the important date is the disembarkation date). 2. Non update , you have done the required vaccination but the last shot is older than 9 month. Who ever consider as "up to date " one , you can take a test 2 days before the cruise (not including the boarding day) and you do not need anything else. For non update - You need to take a test One Day before the boarding day and You will need to take a test before going to the port ,This test can be taken on the ship for the cost of 55$ , not sure yet if it is antigen test which good for only one port or the PCR that is valid for 3 days and might be OK for 3 ports. You can also use the EMed test. People with the non update status might want to consider and take a PCR test even during the boarding day (beside an antigen a day before) so at least they will be covered for the first two ports. Royal also claiming that if you will take a booster shot one day before the cruise that will still consider as if you have up to date vaccine (that I did not understood but I guess its better than waiting 14 days). Please mind the rules are based on the current Italian rules which currently until April 30 , so things might change after that , (They must change as most of the Europe booster shoots were admitted around Sep-October) If you want to check the requirements for each country you can use this link - https://visiteurope.com/en/covid-19-information-page/ Lets hope that soon RCL will drop the requirements , but this is were we are currently.

Will see if I can cancel my cruise in three weeks , or better , move to CLS

That's reminds me , let's not even start with the auto flash toilets ... Thankfully they are not in RC ships yet

You are right , happens to me many time that I struggle with the automatic water and soap dispenser while it seem to be working for others. By the way it's general issue with this devices not just in Royal