Al Horner

About three years ago we also won a cruise through Royal Caribbean bingo. Everything takes time. After two weeks, I would be calling them. Hopefully, you kept a copy of your certificate in case it gets lost. Ultimately, we did use our certificate with an upgrade and had a very nice, very inexpensive nine day cruise.

Thanks, I thought you reserved seats.

Yes. I'm assuming they show you a layout of all the seats. Do they identify which seats are eligible (and available) to be reserved if you have the Key? Thanks.

One of the reasons I bought "The Key" for my upcoming cruise was so I didn't have to make reservations for entertainment. I checked my Cruise Planner and that has changed. I haven't had to make reservations before (this is my first Oasis class ship) and entertainment has not opened up for reservations yet (108 days to go!). My question is, do the entertainment venues show where you can reserve with "The Key" when you go to make those reservations? Thanks!

Couple of questions: Are wow bands water proof or do you have to take them off to go in the water? Do they have the time on them or do you have to wear them in addition to a watch? Is it true that in order to pay for a drink, you have to take the Wow band off and give it to the waiter? How about at stores on the ship? Can you use the wow bands to pay for goods and/or do you have to take them off for that too? I don't think I'm seeing the value of the Wow band for me personally.

Nice thing about Germany - they have excellent beer all year long! Also, he will be able to drink beer legally which may (or may not) be a good thing for him. Tell him to approach it slowly and don't try to keep up with the Germans. They've been practicing their beer drinking skills since they were kids!

I'm always surprised how few German beers there are on these ships. Typically, they have a Weiss beer which is not actually beer according to the German Purity Laws of 1516. How about a nice Spaten, Hofbrau, Hacker Pschorr or a Paulaner? Any of those in a nice lager or Oktoberfest would be even better. Now those are beers that would make any cruise a complete success!

If Royal Caribbean really wants to build five new private islands, they should probably start building the piers now.

I just checked my Cruise Planner for our May 18th voyage on the Symphony and "The Key" is no longer offered. I assume that means they hit their quota. It would be interesting to know how many were sold.

Just a thought - wasn't Jimmy Dean's big hit, "Big John" or "Big Bad John"?

Speaking of Chops.... What are people's opinions about the best piece of beef they have had at Chops? I'm talking about from the regular menu. I know everyone has a different opinion when it comes to food but I want a really good piece of beef and I would appreciate your opinion!

I've purchased the Key for my cruise on the Symphony OTS in May 2019. That includes "Voom Surf and Stream 1 device high speed internet." I am one of those guys who gets on the ship, puts his Verizon cell phone into airplane mode, turns off the cell phone, sticks it into the room safe and doesn't look at it again until I charge it up the night before we return home. Now, my wife and I are each going to have Voom and, sad to say, I'm not sure what that means. Is this just internet? Does it involve my Verizon phone calls? I've heard that there is some way to use our phones to (text, message, fill-in-the-blank) communicate with each other? I've heard horror stories where people get home from a cruise and have hundreds of dollars in bills for international roaming charges. Can anyone help clarify this for me? Thanks.

I was just "chatting" (on Face Book) with RCL and they said the pier for Cococay is now scheduled for completion in March 2019 but they would let their customers know if there was any further delay.

We purchased "The Key" and will have our embarkation lunch at Chops. I don't know who else it will be open to.

I spent nine years on top of an M60A1 - all of which is irrelevant to having a post removed with no warning or explanation. Again, I understand they have the right to do that but I do find it disappointing, particularly when I don't know what was so offending about my comments.

I fully understand that freedom of speech does not apply to a private blog like this but I am still surprised that my comment on this post made at 12:41 p.m. on 1/24/2019 was deleted out of hand with no notice or opportunity to change the "offending" section. Pretty disappointing.

For years, I supervised a bunch of lawyers and contract managers who wrote and negotiated multi-million dollar deals. Many of our customers were foreign so one of my instructions was that our contracts had to be written in clear, concise and easily understandable English. The language above would have failed.

Sometimes we just have to lighten up. These posts come and go. Let's not kill a good thing with an overdose of political correctness.

OK, I must be a Cruise Planner illiterate. I am on the Symphony of the Seas in 115 days. I have the four meal specialty dining package. I (think) I understand that they will book a meal on day 1 or 2 of the cruise and if I don't want that I can change it, once I'm on the ship. In the meantime, reservations for other specialty restaurants are now possible through the Cruise Planner. BUT!!! It appears that I can not make reservations for specialty restaurants based on my specialty dining package and (??) I have to wait to get on the ship to schedule those specialty meals? So, particular restaurants on particular dates and times may already be sold out by the time I get on the ship. This makes it kind of hard to plan. Throw in trying to get My Time Dining (which I did get) and, because I can't plan the specialty meals in advance - I scheduled MTD for every night which evidently screws up trying to schedule anything else. So, I'm getting ready to go back in and cancel MTD. Now, I know that I really am not a computer genius but this does seem to be overly complicated.

Go to the Dec. 4th blog and there's a review of The Key that includes a menu for the Chops embarkation lunch.

We're going to be on the Symphony in May and we are also going to do the All Access Tour. Great review so far!

We don't have children cruising with us so losing the DreamWorks characters is actually a plus.

Sorry for the follow-up but here's a question. I originally signed up for traditional dining but then I purchased the four night specialty dining package. I figured I would switch to My Time Dining for the remaining 2 or 3 nights. I can't find anywhere on my Cruise Planner where it would say what dining plan I have. I called the RCL customer service and they said (eventually) that they had switched me to MTD. I still can't find anything that says it was changed. In the meantime, my Cruise Planner now says I can purchase (for 0$) MTD but then they want me to schedule it by the day. First, that's not exactly what I envision for MTD and 2nd, how can I schedule MTD when I can't schedule the specialty dining nights until I get on the ship? This is not easy.

The vast majority of my cruises are on Royal Caribbean but occasionally I will cruise with another line. Recently, I booked a cruise with Norwegian Cruise Line. I was utterly amazed when I looked at my cruise summary on their website. It was wonderful! It listed all the details, payments, addons (like promo drink packages, specialty dinner packages, etc.), trip information, ship information, and so on. Basically, it had all the information on my cruise laid out in a very user friendly way, the way that Royal Caribbean used to have it. I knew I wasn't happy when RCL changed to the Cruise Planner and now I know why. I wish RCL would, at least, go back to the cruise summary information page the way they used to have it.

We'll be stopping at Cococay in May 2019. I haven't booked any excursions for that stop because I have no confidence any particular section will be finished. The pier is important to us because my wife does not like to tender. If the pier is not ready yet, we will stay on the ship.