tallpaul86

This is a superb find - you could do quite a few drinking games with that list!!

Quick question - is anyone who is a vegan had any issues eating in the Main Dining Room? Or were you essentially forced to eat at either the Windjammer or the cafe on board? Asking on behalf of a friend

On the one hand I'm so jealous about people booking these Genie suites however some random person scheduling stuff for me?? I like my vacation schedule to be like : -

Does anyone know (roughly) when in March the rest of the deployment schedule will be released? Trying to gauge if #QuantumUKTime2020 will have possible 2019 plans interfering with the savings plan!!

So when Royal Caribbean decide which ship to homeport in Southampton, I think that should give @Matt a good reason to sort out a Group Cruise for 2020!! Just sayin'

My favourite things to do are as follows: - 1) Get a drink or two 2) Start making passive aggressive comments about how long it takes to have the room ready 3) Indulge in comfort eating to suppress said passive aggressive behaviour 4) realising you have no patience, normally after the 3rd or 4th drink from the bar despite having done 3 cruises already and this is no different from any other cruise you've done 5) thanking yourself you got the drinks package otherwise passive aggressive tendencies are going to be expensive on this trip!! 6) breathe a sigh of relief as you find the room is ready 7) attempt to sober up as you find out its almost dinner time and you have to look and act respectable Exclusively in that order I find - probably an unhealthy start to any vacation but I guess I'll just have to work hard til I get to high enough status for priority boarding like yourself!

Small wonder there was no similar article for Disney Cruise Lines eh? But yes interesting article nonetheless - especially the last part, regarding names etc Good find @Sabrinaklai

I'm just thinking won't Quantum be due for a dry dock? Granted she's relatively new however by the time 2020 comes along she'll be getting on for 6 years old

And here was me thinking I was relatively hardcore...

Granted it's 2020 but that is a WIN form the UK Thank you Michael Bayley

Woop Woop!!! That is all!!

Cabin number 6277 and 6677 in the deck plans there - man I'd be pissed if I bought a guarantee room and ended up there... Can't imagine the noise (and smell) pollution finding its way into those rooms!!

Do we know yet which of the new eating options are complimentary and which are speciality? I’m talking about: - El Loco Fresh Hooked Seafood Sugar Beach Playmaker Sports Bar

I’m glad to see this thread is entertaining folks as much as it made me spit out my drink whilst reading it!! on the up selling point, are people who board cruise ships THAT terrified of crew members offering stuff? I mean the crew members who are up selling things are, in my opinion, timid and rather gentle in their approach... I mean it’s not like I’m in the Windjammer and then the Izumi man rushes in, throws my plate away and shouts at me to buy Izumi Sushi until I’m verbally submitted to saying Yes its amazing in 2018, the word No is so difficult to say

This guy gets it!! Clearly Disney cruises cost more and must include complimentary therapy sessions form your children when they realize a privacy curtain isn't sound proof and therefore not all that private!! #Ewwwww

We chose this cruise because I'd cruised Royal Caribbean twice before, loved it, and have eagerly recommended it to others. Now I'm genuinely embarrassed that I've influenced others to choose Royal Caribbean. Here's what concerns me. THE HARD SELL On Royal Caribbean, here's the first impression. Passengers embark to find crew barking at them to browse tables of plastic do-dads and cheap water bottles. I was completely taken aback by this. On Disney, passengers enter the ship to beautiful music playing. An announcer says excitedly, "Disney would like to welcome the SMITH family!" as uniformed crew members clap and cheer. The difference in the Royal Caribbean experience is jolting. After our disconcerting onboarding experience, the hard sell got even WORSE. You could not take a step on the ship without crew interrupting your conversation with your spouse to loudly and aggressively hawk drink and dining packages. A terrible first impression for passengers. Then it got worse. At the ship's "Welcome Event" in the Platinum Theater at 2:30 pm, the hard sell continued. There was no entertainment, no music, no comedy -- just a bare stage with crew in polo shirts hawking more things that passengers could buy. I'd brought a first time cruiser on this trip, and I was embarrassed. The "hard sell" continued through the week, with crew members hawking their wares 12 hours per day from tables and storefronts on deck 5, where most passengers had to pass to get from one end of the ship to the other. The saddest thing about the "hard sell," though, was that the fun daytime activities I remembered from previous Royal Caribbean cruises were nearly all gone. Instead, each day's "Cruise Compass" was filled with shopping presentations, art auctions, and sales events urging us to spend more money. Come on, RC. Even an informal get-together for moms of teens in the "On the Air" Lounge would have been an improvement over that, and could have been done at a low cost with zero crew involvement. When I asked crew members when Royal Caribbean changed from a very classy vacation experience to the continuous, barking hard-sell, they told me sympathetically that it had happened "in about the last six months" (since approximately September of 2016) when the cruise line's top management began putting extraordinary pressure on those below to increase revenue at all costs. How many passengers will RC lose before they realize that this strategy will not work? One of the biggest topics of conversation among the passengers was: "What's a better cruise line for us to chose next time? Which cruise lines are not doing this?" Next time, I'm trying Norwegian. PARENTS WILL NOT HAVE SEX If you are parents traveling with a child or teen, be aware that you will NOT HAVE SEX the entire week you are on Liberty of the Seas. Unlike Disney, which thoughtfully puts the kids' bunks on the other side of a curtain from the parents' bed, Liberty has your child or teen(s) sleeping in a bunk directly above your heads. There is zero privacy for parents in bed. In addition, every time a teen shifts his weight in the upper bunk parents are awakened by loud squeaks and bangs. Stateroom privacy for parents, even in small interior rooms, is doable and should be an A-1 priority on every cruise ship. In addition, and very annoyingly, the corners of Liberty's king size beds butt directly up against the stateroom's cabinetry and couch. This makes it impossible to walk around the bed to the left and right side. Adults must crawl into bed from the foot of the bed. How are elderly and disabled people able to do this? POORLY DESIGNED WINDJAMMER BUFFET The crowds in the Windjammer Buffet on Deck 11 were downright scary, even for a healthy adult woman. I can't imagine how it felt for the 1000 children on board, or for the elderly or disabled. The problem was especially troublesome at the end of the buffet, where steam tables were set at odd angles to the buffet. The buffet traffic caught and swirled around these steam tables in such a way that passengers were hard-pressed to even SEE the food, let alone get close enough to spoon some onto a plate. Crowds clogged the narrow areas between these tables during all open hours. Imagine waiting with a plate of cold eggs until four people in front of you help themselves to bacon. Then do the same thing at the toast station. Because of the crowds, every meal eaten in the Windjammer includes cold food that was supposed to be served hot. This is the second 3,700 passenger ship I've cruised on. I much recommend 2,700 passenger ships, where crowding at meals is not such a terrible ongoing issue. The saving grace of the Windjammer and the formal dining rooms was the dining staff. So friendly, so willing to serve, so prompt, so ready with coffee and whatever else was needed. I felt sorry for them. BAD SHORE EXPERIENCE IN BELIZE Imagine being told that tendering into Bellze takes 40 minutes, but you won't be allowed to leave the ship until 11:30 am. Do the math. If by a miracle there are no lines and you are able to arrive on Belize at 12:10 pm, you will still have to be back on the ship at 4:30 pm. You will have just about four hours to spend on Belize. But wait. You're told that the tenders are very busy between 3:30 pm and 4:30 pm. So you'd better be back by 3:30 pm. Now you have just three hours to spend on shore in Belize, in a place with NO BEACHES and little scenery. I hastily switched my day's plan to an expensive Royal Caribbean shore excursion so I could guarantee that the ship wouldn't leave me behind at 4:30 pm. You can see my disappointed review of my Royal Caribbean shore excursion below. VERY BAD ROYAL CARIBBEAN SNORKELING SHORE EXCURSION I'd dreamed of snorkeling in Belize my whole life, and I was excited to take my 17-year-old son along. Sadly, on our guided tour snorkeling excursion of Rendevous Caye, there was sandy bottom and coral, but only cloudy water and almost no fish to be found. The guides leading the excursion tried to act as though this was NORMAL. Snorkeling without fish was NORMAL. When I asked a sympathetic assistant guide what the problem was, he said explained that Royal Caribbean had sent three tours of 140 people each to Rendevous Caye that day, and of course all those crowds had driven nearly every fish away. My advice is DO NOT take a cruise shore excursion that features snorkeling. Crowds are incompatible with seeing beautiful fish. My best snorkeling was in Roatan, Honduras, where I asked a local taxi driver to help me find beautiful fish. He took me to "Paradise Beach" where I negotiated with a private boat driver to take us to "the blue channel" for some of the most beautiful clear snorkeling of my life, all at a fraction of the price of the Royal Caribbean snorkeling excursion. PIANO BAR PIANIST KNEW VERY FEW SONGS Piano bar pianist Phil Anderson knows a few songs very very well. He must have been great in his Royal Caribbean audition. He can play Billy Joel's "I'm Moving Out" very well. We heard it over and over again. But Phil is obviously not a singalong pianist. He asks for requests, but he doesn't know any Beatles, no James Taylor, no songs from Grease, and very few other commonly requested piano bar songs. To nearly every request he replies, "Try again." When he did play requests he frequently did not know even a fraction of the words. Phil is clearly a gig musician who has memorized a small number of songs and is simply not interested in expanding his repertoire. Someone needs to tell him that it's possible to get a "fake book" for his iPad and just pound out any song anyone asks for, and that the words to every song ever written are readily available online. This was a real disappointment to me, a person who loves to sing along in the piano bar. TEEN ACTIVITIES STAFF WAS DISAPPOINTING My 15-year-old daughter laughed at our dinner table about how enthusiastic and fun the teen staff was the night their supervisor sat in. That night, the staff were up and dancing alongside the kids, having a great time. The rest of the time, she said, they pretty much sat and watched the kids. A far cry from what Disney does for teens. And the much touted flowrider, ice skating rink, and rock wall? My teens didn't even ask me to sign their liability waivers for those activities. "MY TIME DINING" MEANS "NO TIME DINING." I wasn't aware that I needed to make a dinner reservation in the main dining room for each night. By the time I figured it out, all the times were taken. The only times left to eat resulted in our party of 5 missing sunset up on deck and the headliner show each night. Our poor waitstaff ran frantically, but still took 2.5 hours to serve us our meal each night because of being so overwhelmed with diners. Don't get me wrong -- the servers were all WONDERFUL especially Dane Aaron in the Rembrandt Dining Room. It's the timing of meals that needs improvement on Liberty. WHAT I LOVED ABOUT LIBERTY OF THE SEAS The staff was consistently wonderful. Every server, the dining room captain, and my dear, dear stateroom attendant Willeed from Egypt were all fantastic. I also loved the gym and the sauna and showers, and the beautiful hot tubs and comfy brown chairs in the solarium on Deck 11. The Viking Crowne Lounge was beautiful, the food and decor was fantastic in the Rembrandt dining room, and the Cruise Director was very funny in the Love and Marriage Game Show. But sadly, it's my last time on Liberty. And it's the last time I'll be recommending Royal Caribbean to my friends and family

I go between here and Cruise Critic forums so that I’m immersed in the world of Royal Caribbean and Cruising in gene and reading everyone’s subjective take on things is the single most fascinating and yet totally whimsical (in the grand scheme of things of course) “short comings” that can happen Yet despite this, I don’t normally tend to remember any the following day after reading them... However this forum post on Cruise Critic has quite literally cemented itself that I just had to share it. It is literally the best thing I’ve read in 2018 so far (if this is what cruisers deem as an expected standard for lines to uphold them the reviews themselves will make for entertaining reading!) Below I have posted this “review” for you to see word-for-word - can provide links or screenshots for authenticity... Have a guess as to why this has garnered over 200 replies

Thank you @Sabrinaklai yes it was flatbreads (same thing really!)

This guy gets it!! THE way to start a Royal Caribbean cruise is with a Lava Flow

Definitely worth it, especially if you're wiped out and can't be bothered making an effort (whether it be smarty-smarts for formal night or getting pumped up to wrestle children out the way... I mean go to the Windjammer) I had the burger and it was just as good as Johnny Rockets in my personal opinion... The quality was MUCH better compared to my room service on Navigator in May 2016 and the $7.95 is trivial enough for me to forget about it

Ive been on 3 cruises so far (all Royal) and with each ship it was better: - Navigator (via Cafe Promenade) was OK Anthem (via Sorrento's) was good providing they made you a fresh one there and then (when we went in January 2017, the place reeked of fish!?! Unsure why that was but hey ho) Freedom (via Sorrento's) was the best damn pizza I've had........ On a cruise ship Now bearing in mind I've had the real deal from the actual town of Sorrento in Campania, Italy absolutely NOTHING will beat the real deal however I just don't get the inconsistency regarding pizza at all Is it any better from Coastal Kitchen? I know they do a relatively fancy one

Symphony of the Seas September 30th 2018

Quick one Matt - that review of Anthem of the Seas, what board/section would i post that on?

That seems to be the main difference between US bookings and, say for example, UK bookings Price drops (and subsequent amendments of bookings taking advantage of price drops) simply doesn't happen over here Granted I book my first 2 cruises through Royal direct however the 3rd cruise I did in September 2017 was through a travel agent and there were no notifications of any price drops... It is essentially the price you see is locked in and that is it Either that or I've totally misinterpreted what these infamous price drops are!!