spiralqueen

Lol that restraint brought to you by me annoying my friends and coworkers with how much I talk about this upcoming vacation and showing them pictures of various things.

Now that it is officially single digits until sail away, I figure it is not unreasonable for me to get this live blog started! (though I AM endlessly amused by the people who have recently started their posts far in advance of their sailings. *cough @StayFrosty @Lovetocruise2002 @Matt cough*) I will be transparent in that, since this is my first live blog, I can't guarantee I will be able to stay on top of it the way I might like, but I will be doing my level best to share with all of you for multiple reasons. First and foremost, I have gotten so much out of other's live blogs and genuinely want to give back to this community in any way I might be able to. But it isn't ALL altruistic. I think, if I'm able to stay on top of a live blog, it will make a great memory in a bottle of my trip to allow me to revisit wistfully on extra stressful days. I think I will start with a bit of background organized in a format that I'm shamelessly stealing from one of @Lovetocruise2002's blogs. Pre-cruise report: Sailing: May 12-19, 2019, Allure of the Seas, 7 Night Eastern Caribbean cruise Sailing with: Me (32), and my parents (not my age to tell) Flying from: PHL to FLL on Southwest and returning on American (boo baggage fees, yay nonstop flights at reasonable times) Pre-cruise hotel: Ended up with Holiday Inn Express Ft. Lauderdale Cruise-Airport (the one on 17th Street) We cycled through many different hotels before we ended up with this one. Like the sane person I am, I would check on hotel prices about once every 2 weeks starting 8 months in advance and if I saw a great price at a hotel that looked convenient or interesting I booked it just to guarantee the price. At one point I had 4 hotels booked at the same time. You may be starting to get the impression that I take as much enjoyment from planning my vacation as actually taking it. You would be correct. And thank you kindly for enabling that! Other hotels that were considered and discarded: Drift Hotel - liked that it was close to the beach, disliked that it didn't seem to have as many amenities as other hotels, such as having someone there to hold our luggage if we got there far before check-in. Holiday Inn Express & Suites Ft. Lauderdale Airport/Cruise - liked that it had 2 queen beds (not doubles) for a good price. Disliked that it didn't seem very walkable Hampton Inn Ft. Lauderdale Airport North Cruise Port - this was the #1 hotel until the price recently came down for the Holiday Inn on 17th Street. I liked that it had the normal things like a free airport shuttle, concierge, pool, but it also was across a smaller side street from a shopping center that has restaurants, a Big Lot & a liquor store where my dad could grab some wine. But you just can't beat the convenience (from what I hear) of hotels in that 17th Street strip so while this hotel was walkable...the Holiday Inn Express won out. The itinerary is as follows: Day 1 – Fort Lauderdale Day 2 and 3 – At Sea Day 4 – Basseterre, St. Kitt's Day 5 – Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas San Juan, PR Day 6 – At Sea Day 7 – Nassau, Bahamas Day 8 – Fort Lauderdale We have booked a third party excursion on St. Kitt's through Thenford Grey. I've heard good things about him on here and elsewhere so I'm excited for this tour. We were originally slated for St. Thomas as a stop, but as many of you have probably already seen, Allure is having some propulsion issues and we will now be stopping in San Juan. There are many people in my sailing's FB group who are devastated by this news. While I respect that reaction, I don't want to start letting negativity seep into my vacation before it has even started. So goodbye trip to Secret Sands beach we had through Royal and hello to last minute research into self guided walking tours through San Juan. I'm actually legit excited about this change as I would prefer getting to know the history and culture of a place than simply laying around on the beach all day. And that FOOD. So time to dust off my super rusty 14 year old spanish lessons and go with the flow. WEPA! And for Nassau, we have been before and my parents have no desire to get off the off again. With a ship like Allure to explore and relax on instead, I will not be arguing with that. Cabin: We have a hump balcony Junior Suite on the 8th floor. Very much looking forward to "having" to walk through Central Park to get back to the room. ~*~WOE~*~ Pre-purchases: Besides the excursions which I covered above, we will be trying out The Key (I see it as a great little upgrade to Sea Class) and my mother and I have the refreshment package. Since my mom doesn’t drink, my dad gets the 2 bottle of wine allotment to himself and will supplement that with the occasional beer here and there. Nowhere enough to warrant a drink package for himself. The last time we were on a cruise, he would decant half of his bottle of wine into an empty (clear) water bottle from the room. The moment he proceeded to do this with his bottle of red as well was the moment I was mentally buying him a portable wine tumbler for this trip. None of the crew members said anything, but seeing him walk into the MDR with a clear water bottle full of dark red wine was not our proudest hour. Though if you asked him, he would quip that Jesus paid him a visit and turned that water into wine. *facepalm* Random Pre-cruise thoughts: I am going to take as many pictures as I can remember to, though it’s not ingrained. Please let me know if there is anything in particular you would like me to check out or take pictures of for you. I am open to requests. I will make sure to detail how easy or difficult it was for me to get reservations in Coastal Kitchen as a Junior Suite. That is something that seems to have very mixed results so I’m curious how it will work out. Ideally we would have reservations there every night except for the night we have Giovanni’s reserved. If all goes according to plan, I shall be running a completely unofficial and entirely arbitrary “Allure’s Best Steak” competition since I plan to have steak in Chops (Key lunch), Coastal Kitchen, Giovanni’s, and the MDR (Key breakfast). I will be sure to let you know my thoughts. I will also make sure to note how I am liking the Key since that’s such a new feature and it seems to vary wildly from ship to ship. I have reached the point in trip antsyness where I’m overthinking my packing and buying unnecessary things from Amazon to help. Because buying a toiletry bag is the most important thing in the world right now! I promise future posts will have more pictures!

I think the refreshment package is a great value IF you get it on sale. To me it seems silly to buy full price since it regularly is discounted to something around $18-20 depending on the ship. If you are getting virgin frozen drinks it can add up SUPER quickly but those are all covered by the package.

Agreed! I think my parents might be a bit disappointed since they love a beach day, but I am very into history and experiencing the culture of a place. Ever since I found out we were switched to San Juan I've had the Piragua song from In the Heights stuck in my head ?

How far out is your cruise? Excursions tend to populate oddly in that you never quite know when they will show up, but it's safe to say that if you are around a year + away from your sailing, the majority of excursions won't be showing quite yet.

If it works the way it has in the past, you can go to the shore excursion desk when you first get on the ship and just tell them that you reserved a cabana and would like to choose which one you will be in. I’ve heard people say to wait until the rooms are open so that you can go up with the voucher/handout that will be left in the room for it but that’s not needed. Just give them your room number and they can look up all needed info.

Which kind of places have you bought "fresh" beans from when you visited? I really enjoy baking and I was looking forward to picking up various forms of vanilla when I'm in Mexico.

I’m cautiously optimistic for you that your Cuba cruise will still sail! I have no actual evidence behind this belief, but I have a feeling further out sailings are more in danger than close in ones. And yes, I managed to snag a Chill Island cabana for $339 but I’m keeping and eye out because I’ve seen the Oasis Lagoon ones go down to $319. But without fail it seems both the chill island and oasis cabanas go to $399 during the advertised sales.

Another fun thing I’ve discovered in my cruise planner price stalking on Cococay Cabanas is at least on my sailing the cabanas are cheaper mid week or at random times than they are for the CP sales that are advertised. Part of this might be because my Nov sailing is still too far out for these sales to apply, but I just thought it was funny.

Just so you know, even though they ask you to select all the people using it, the clamshells are the same as the cabanas in that you only pick one person's name and they are priced per unit not person.

As people have mentioned, the sale at time of booking will be changed if you rebook, but as long as it's within 30 days of Next Cruise booking, you can keep the reduced deposit and OBC that they offer you. When I was on a sailing that began Black Friday 2018, I booked a random sailing in April 2020 that I wouldn't mind going on knowing full well that Royal would release their May 2020 offerings within the 30 day window. When I got home, I told my TA( @michelle) that the Next Cruise booking was just a placeholder so she would be aware that I was going to come to her to change it as soon as the new dates were released. I was able to change my ship, sail date, and cabin type within the 30 day window without issue. There was an instance where I later asked her to reprice the sailing due to a random price drop I saw and the OBC dropped off, but she was able to call them up and straighten it out quickly.

It's great to see someone else from this blog on the same sailing! I kept seeing references to people on the sailing after us but never someone on my sailing. I honestly think we will be fine and I am choosing to go with positive thinking. But yes, I also am very VERY much looking forward to this trip.

I saw something new in the dining section during my practically daily Cruise Planner stalking and thought I'd post about it here. It's a new package that is for Chops along with any other specialty dining restaurant. I see it in both my Nov Grandeur sailing and May 2020 Harmony one. The below screencap is from Harmony, but Grandeur has pricing at $59 pp. It looks like they would make you dine at Chops on night 1 and then you can pick any other night for the other restaurant. I wonder if this is a follow up to reports of Chops being excluded from packages on certain ships (Allure being the one I hear mentioned most often). Also I just noticed this in the terms and conditions "Second dinner of package may not be redeemed in Chops Grille. "

We don’t know much information about them yet as I havent seen talk of them being open for use yet, but according to the map, they should be where I circled by the pool.

You can count on Royal IT to keep moving forward!

You can on the ships that support it though it doesn't have push notifications so you have to open up the app to see if there are any new messages. Right now it is only on Allure and Harmony, though they are supposed to be expanding it to other ships at some point in the vaguely near future. Since my sailing that I screencapped is on Allure, when I am connected to the ship wifi (even if I haven't bought Voom) then I can tap on the little speech bubble with the ellipses in the upper right hand corner to launch the chat feature. Tapping that now just tells me that I can use it once connected to their wifi.

I'm only just now seeing this live blog, but I'm so happy that you are doing it. The ship looks GORGEOUS and I'm loving seeing the differences between a Royal ship and a Celebrity one.

It should be right around the 90 day mark. Keep in mind that when it goes “live” with cruise details, it will be populated with sample activities that might be different from the ones on your exact sailing. You’ll see an activity that mentions they are finalizing their schedule.

There’s a ton of people on this board on your sailing! I keep seeing everyone mention it. Lol It’s like a mini group cruise! I’m going to try my best to live-blog for the first time so let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to check out for you.

@Danaboy7591 I'm on the sailing right after you and would love updates on how she is sailing and feeling!

Another thing about needing plugs and not understanding people who use electronics is that everyone's idea of a great vacation is different. I personally love to read with my kindle by the pool or listen to a podcast with bluetooth headphones while relaxing. I also enjoy the ability to share my vacation in real time with friends and family. All of these things need charging and it's amazing how quickly the plugs get full, especially once you factor in cabin mates. I understand that some people enjoy disconnecting or using very few electronics on a cruise but it's a pet peeve of mine when someone uses their personal preference to look down upon other's choices in how they choose to spend their vacation. I'm not saying anyone here is doing that, but I HAVE seen that condescension elsewhere and it's incredibly uncalled for, in my opinion.

Was the great deal that you got because of a casino discount? That's the only discount I'm aware of that MyVegas isn't compatible with.

Welcome @scanman18! Whereabouts in PA are you from?

I BELIEVE that the virgin frozen drinks go for something in the realm of $7-8 each. All I remember is I asked the bartender how much my round would have been if I didn’t have the refreshment package and he said $10. I had gotten a frozen daiquiri (should be same price as piña colada) and a bottle of water. By the way, the aforementioned time limit in between drinks doesn’t apply to bottled water. Bar tenders won’t blink if you ask for a drink and a bottle of water at the same time if you have the drink package. One swipe of the sea pass card and you are on your way. I found the value and the convenience of grabbing water bottles throughout the day to be an undersung benefit of the drink package for me.

Yes, virgin versions of the frozen drinks like pina coladas or daiquiris count as mocktails that the refreshment package covers. When you order a couple of those a day the refreshment package very quickly starts to pay for itself.