mom2mybugs

When we went on our first cruise this year (Alaska) the excursions were cool but as we learned later you can do some of them on your own at a lower price.
We have upcoming cruises to the Caribean, Bahamas and Bermuda. Caribbean we got good RC excursion prices for dolphin/stingray, into to scuba and Tulem ruins so being it's out first time to Grand Cayman and Cozumel with teenage kids we figured we'd go the RC excursion route.
For Bahamas we are doing a foodie tour in Nassau (not RC) and splurged for a cabana on Cococa (RC)
Bermuda is the one I am currently researching and all of the excursions are $$$$. I'm taking the whole family (7 adults, 2 under 5) so I am currently looking to plan our own excursions. One day I want to take the grandkids to zoo/aquarium/caves and next day do the beach. It would cost a fortune to do this with RC. For example, admission to zoo/aquarium is $10 for adults, kids under 5 are free. Total admission for 9 us is $70. Caves are $22 for adults so $154 total. For the two I come up with $224. The RC excursion price is $126 for adults and $118 for kids or $1,360 and total time, including transportation back & forth is only 4 hours. I think I can find transportation for 9 of us for under $1,000 and go at a leisurely pace.....

Never compliment @monorailmedic or feed Gremlins after midnight. The result for either is the same.

You can each bring two bottles since you are in different rooms.  Jane

Some of us are anxiously tracking the development of the Royal Caribbean app.  I thought it would be a good idea to track the features and updates in this spreadsheet.  With the spreadsheet in Google Sheets format, other like-minded ones can also contribute.  Updates can be found via the changelog when the app is updated.  However, app users may notice a capability that may not have been specifically announced for the ship they're sailing on.
Column A contains the features.
Cells B1-Z1 contain the ship names.
Feel free to add new features as they're announced.

Oh ugh...go blue!  I graduated from Michigan lol.  But this is such a great community, I will like you anyway!  Jane

It truly stinks when a family member becomes ill and you have to cancel a trip.  And my heart goes out to you that you had to go through this. 
However, I have been through an a insurance nightmare.  Speaking as someone who didn't expect her daughter to get sick, whose insurance didn't cover her mental illness, who had to pay the entire trip anyway and fly home, I Still don't blame the insurance company or the cruise company and would still buy insurance next time.  Life happens.  I assumed nobody would get sick and still bought the insurance!  These companies are businesses and they have to operate as such.   
I have to have a negative comment here.  Has anyone noticed that these types of rant posts are usually done by someone who has 0 posts and who never comes back?  Are they legit?  Again, sympathy to the poster if it's truly an accurate post and hope you buy insurance next time.  It makes a difference most of the time.  Also remember refundable deposits, cancel at any cost insurance, and be glad you at least got some money back.  Jane

So much for my ever getting diamond!  I often book a smaller ship because they are so much cheaper.  It is crazy how much less rhapsody is than allure...the difference covers my airfare so that is what we are doing March 2021.  Guess I will just have to watch...it’s not like I’m racing up the c & a board anyway lol!  Jane

Bask in the glow of your Pinnacle status here ?

It truly stinks when a family member becomes ill and you have to cancel a trip.  And my heart goes out to you that you had to go through this. 
However, I have been through an a insurance nightmare.  Speaking as someone who didn't expect her daughter to get sick, whose insurance didn't cover her mental illness, who had to pay the entire trip anyway and fly home, I Still don't blame the insurance company or the cruise company and would still buy insurance next time.  Life happens.  I assumed nobody would get sick and still bought the insurance!  These companies are businesses and they have to operate as such.   
I have to have a negative comment here.  Has anyone noticed that these types of rant posts are usually done by someone who has 0 posts and who never comes back?  Are they legit?  Again, sympathy to the poster if it's truly an accurate post and hope you buy insurance next time.  It makes a difference most of the time.  Also remember refundable deposits, cancel at any cost insurance, and be glad you at least got some money back.  Jane

It truly stinks when a family member becomes ill and you have to cancel a trip.  And my heart goes out to you that you had to go through this. 
However, I have been through an a insurance nightmare.  Speaking as someone who didn't expect her daughter to get sick, whose insurance didn't cover her mental illness, who had to pay the entire trip anyway and fly home, I Still don't blame the insurance company or the cruise company and would still buy insurance next time.  Life happens.  I assumed nobody would get sick and still bought the insurance!  These companies are businesses and they have to operate as such.   
I have to have a negative comment here.  Has anyone noticed that these types of rant posts are usually done by someone who has 0 posts and who never comes back?  Are they legit?  Again, sympathy to the poster if it's truly an accurate post and hope you buy insurance next time.  It makes a difference most of the time.  Also remember refundable deposits, cancel at any cost insurance, and be glad you at least got some money back.  Jane

-Day Five Morning-
Today I Got Up And Went To The Windjammer And Saw This. A Waterspout 

@Matt See My Grandma Supports The Blog.

It's time and I am jazzed! I start this blog on the front sun deck area up front deck 12. It's my second blog and hope to share enough info to help others and just maybe entertain. 
We embark from San Juan in about 5 hours which has lent itself to be a very relaxed time. We arrived at the port at noon and from handing the bags to the porters to walking on board was ten minutes max. I assume we slid in right after the call of all those that were waiting for the ship to be cleared to board. The windjammer seemed  quieter possibly again because there is so much time before the muster drill. No sense of a rush to get food before they close. 
We are coming back to Freedom from our first trip on an Oasis size ship. Honestly I was surprised that my first impression was that this ship seemed small. I remember how I thought Freedom was gigantic just last year. Well,  not to fear, after walking around during the past few hours, it is feeling large again.  Plus it helps being next to the Disney Wonder which is a good deal smaller. 
I will recap the full day later but will leave you with some pre departure thoughts.
- San Juan airport was very busy with the taxi line being about a 30 minute wait. No Uber from the airport. 
- We stayed at a nice boutique hotel, the San Geronimo, but it's more european style than American. It is less than a mile to the port and about a mile and a half to the center of old San Juan. 
- fortunate enough to have been here for the San Sebastian festival in old San Juan. Good music and fun but very crowded. 
Hope you enjoy following and feel free to ask questions. I will try to track the answers down!

 

Final thoughts: 
I really loved the Symphony. She is very similar to Harmony, but I love these Oasis class ships and was glad we chose to go on this trip. These are not complaints, but more observations: 
1.  The chair hogs were out in full force. I know this is something difficult for RC to manage as if someone is in the pool and have there stuff on a chair I think that is fine. But when people just leave a towel on the chair and are off eating lunch or doing whatever that is just rude to the other guests. 
2.  There was a huge company group of about 1200 people on this cruise. Many times they had different areas of the ship reserved and off limits to everyone else such as the boardwalk one night, the solarium one night, and others. I know RC is in the business of making money and I am sure this company paid a good amount to reserve these spots. It is just a bummer for everyone else on the ship when you go to do something to find out it’s closed. 
3.  The food and service in the MDR I thought was a little worse than what I experienced on Harmony last year. 
Those are not complaints as I didn’t let any of it ruin my vacation and I still had an amazing time and would book this ship again. It is now time though to really start planning our Alaska cruise in July. I am looking forward to being on a smaller ship(radiance) to see the difference between that and the Oasis Class. If you are thinking of booking this ship, YOLO, DO IT! 

Day 7 continued:
we rushed back to the ship as it was getting close to all aboard time. There was a long line to get on the ship. We weren’t even at the end of it and we didn’t get on the ship until about 3:45. I think with such a short time in port it is tough to get everyone back on by 3:30 as I think a lot of the excursions all end at the same time. When we got back on decided to go to Park Cafe for a Kummelweck sandwich. I think everyone had the same idea as it was packed. After that we decided to go start packing before dinner. I think I must have been really depressed as this was the last picture I took:

Day 7 - Nassau
we had a short port day scheduled for Nassau(10-3:30).  If we had longer I probably would have booked the water park at Atlantis, but felt this wouldn’t provide us enough time to enjoy it. Instead we booked a Segway tour at Blue Lagoon Island. I had never been on a Segway before, but it was pretty fun and relatively easy to figure out. The downside of the tour was we were given a 1:30 timeframe for the tour which was supposed to be 45 minutes to an hour. However, we had to be back on the ferry at 2:15 so we were very rushed to make our ferry or we could have been left stranded. And yes we booked through RCI, but they still rushed us. The island is pretty small but absolutely gorgeous. The aqua color of the water was just amazing!  
Atlantis:
Our ship is bigger than your ship!
Probably the funniest part of the whole trip. As I mentioned we were in a hurry at the end of the Segway tour, however my Uncle decided he was going to try and hurry and get a picture of his daughter on her Segway while we was still on his. Lesson learned, this is why you don’t text and drive a Segway...

49091B3F-C894-49A7-BA67-F96ACDA8B12C.MOV

Day 6 - Sea Day
It was a little windy today so wasn’t great for relaxing out by the pool. So today we just relaxed and walked around checking different things out. My wife and others in my party decided we would take stairs all the time instead of elevators. One thing it allowed was for me to get some pictures of the neat artwork in the stairwells. I don’t think I got all of them, but pretty sure I saw all of them at one point or another. Here are some:
I really didn’t know what to think of this one:
It was the second formal night so we decided to eat in the MDR for dinner. 
As seemed to be routine on this trip I was really bad at taking pictures of the food before we ate. I did manage to get my French Onion Soup. As you can tell, this one looks much better than the one I had a few days earlier. 
I’m not a lobster fan so I decided to pay the $16 extra and get a Chops Grille Filet. It was really good. 
After dinner we had reservations to see Flight. I was really excited for this show after reading @twangster‘s review on it, and it did not disappoint. I was really impressed with the props they used for this show. This was probably my favorite of all the shows onboard. 
It was then bedtime. This was awaiting us:

Day 5 - St. Thomas
In my opinion this is the best island I have been to so far in the Caribbean. It was just beautiful. We had to get off the ship first thing in the morning as we had a zip line excursion booked. This excursion was high above Megan’s Bay and just had some amazing views!  Our tour guides were two young females and they were both informative and funny. 
Our guides said this island behind Megan’s Bay is for sale for $25M. You just can’t build commercially on it. I’m thinking as soon as I win the powerball I’m buying it and a boat to get back and forth to St Thomas to get my food and I’m out of here! 
iguanas were just hanging out everywhere 
And another shirt I just had to take a picture of. We did a little shopping after our excursion and then headed back to the ship. We had no shows booked for the evening so it was going to be a relaxing night. Trying to decide what we were going to do for dinner I stopped up to check out the buffet. After seeing this dessert table and the red velvet cake, I was sold. Windjammer it is!
Then just took a few random photos:
Central Park at night
Solarium at night
Piano man spotted in the elevator 
I noticed this on day 1, but decided to take a picture this night. Our room was 9253. The one sign was in the hallway by the stairwell, and the other was in the room corridor. The room numbers on the stairwell sign were wrong and it was quite confusing the first time or two going to the room
Since we didn’t really have anything planned for the night we just watched the family fued show in On Air, and then went to Love & Marriage in the theater. Both were pretty funny. I have heard several people talk about Bobby the cruise director on here. My opinion was he was just ok. I felt the live & marriage show probably could have been a little better with a funnier cruise director, but he was ok. 

From Apple Maps:

Anthem had some on the NY cruise. They even had red velvet cheesecake. Did I eat all the cake?

We have cruised Liberty of the Seas twice and in 2 weeks will board for a 3rd time.  Our first cruise Chops had Mississippi Mud pie on the menu.  It is hubby's favorite.  On our cruise in 2017 it was not on the menu but hubby mentioned to our waiter that he was disappointed it was gone.  A few minutes later the waiter brought him a piece and joked that he ordered it from Amazon just for him.  Hubby is hoping that even though it is not on the menu he will still be able to get a piece.  I figure he got lucky last time and they still had some since it had not been off the menu long.  Has anyone heard or sun Mississippi mud pure being available in Chops recently?
On a side note I have been lurking for a while and I have been impressed the friendliness of this board. Reading cruise forums is part of my fun when waiting for our next Cruise.  I had always used another forum that seems to be slowly dying.  The friendliness of this forum is so refreshing 

Actually, for a "modest" investment in RCI you get to name one of the new islands. Sorry, I can't divulge that amount nor the name of the island I came up with. 

I will be there March 30th can't wait!  Enjoy for those of us that are still stuck at work please! 

Jane I think your troll-dar has locked on to a target.

It truly stinks when a family member becomes ill and you have to cancel a trip.  And my heart goes out to you that you had to go through this. 
However, I have been through an a insurance nightmare.  Speaking as someone who didn't expect her daughter to get sick, whose insurance didn't cover her mental illness, who had to pay the entire trip anyway and fly home, I Still don't blame the insurance company or the cruise company and would still buy insurance next time.  Life happens.  I assumed nobody would get sick and still bought the insurance!  These companies are businesses and they have to operate as such.   
I have to have a negative comment here.  Has anyone noticed that these types of rant posts are usually done by someone who has 0 posts and who never comes back?  Are they legit?  Again, sympathy to the poster if it's truly an accurate post and hope you buy insurance next time.  It makes a difference most of the time.  Also remember refundable deposits, cancel at any cost insurance, and be glad you at least got some money back.  Jane