spiralqueen

18 hours ago, SMOKEY0202 said:

for me i used the private driver(Leo Brown) that was recommended by Matt and many others on the blog.   he is reasonably priced and you cant go wrong with him.  he will definitely make your day enjoyable and EVERYONE there knows him as if a celebrity no matter where he took us that day.  each visit i always contact him because he makes the day that rewarding.  he can even accommodate big groups which is cool.  its all how you want to make your day.  in december i took a friend on the memorable day with Leo and he still talks about the great time he experienced.  i am headed there again in 2 weeks and cant wait to see him again.

I've heard great things about Leo! Does he normally charge per person? For the day? I keep seeing people talk about how the drivers in St Martin are reasonably priced, but I've never seen a range of what that means. 

I've been wondering - what is the rough cost to hire a private driver there? I know exact prices will need to be hammered out with the driver, but I'm just looking for an orders of magnitude idea. 

10 hours ago, MommaMcLovin said:

Back from our experience with our South Beach Cabana - it was perfect!  Loved every minute of it!  Our attendant was awesome, you are right on beach, close to floating bar, bathrooms, food, drinks, everything you could ever want.  Plus the weather was amazing!  We definitely had our perfect day at CoCo Cay!!

Thank you so much for reporting on your experience! Do you remember if the SB cabanas had ceiling fans in them like the chill island ones? I can’t tell from the pictures I have seen. 

Oh hey! I’ll be on this sailing too! I’m doing a “girls trip” sailing with my mom and it’s over my birthday which is San Juan day. I admit I haven’t planned a ton for it yet, but I had done some rough research about the ports and potential excursions.
 

If you have never been to St Kitts before, I can’t recommend Thenford Grey’s tour enough. Great deal, super knowledgeable and professional tour guide, and nice comfortable transport. It helps you get a really good feel for the whole island and you can end it with either a couple of hours at the beach or going back to the ship a little early. You can find my recap of the main island tour when I went last May. It starts around halfway down this page. 

I have no idea what we are doing in St Maarten or Antigua (likely a beach of some sort???), but St Lucia my mom and I are going to do the land and sea tour with Spencer Ambrose because it has great reviews and looks like a ton of bang for your buck. Since I figure it’s unlikely I’ll be back to St Lucia, I want to make sure to see the Pitons and do the volcanic mud baths. It just seems so unique to the island! San Juan will be strolling around sightseeing/shopping/having dinner since it’s a later port of call. Probably going to one of the forts for the sunset because that sounds wonderful. Love San Juan because I can use my data for free (TY, US territory) to use google maps and find places to go so it’s very easy to DIY. 

Look forward to sailing with you and I hope your anniversary is super memorable! The best part of a vacation is spending time with loved ones. 

When I had a chill island cabana in Nov it was a dedicated attendant all day. From what I could tell, each attendant had a set number of cabanas to take care of and they seemed to be in blocks.  Very similar to state room attendants. 

2 hours ago, JennyJenny said:

I keep hearing about the Viking Crown Lounge. Do I have to be a certain level of passenger to go into that?

Not on Grandeur! Some of the other ships have converted that space into a suite lounge or other restricted access space, but Grandeur has it open to all passengers. 

4 minutes ago, Gears said:

+ Can't get a drink...yet everyone else has one

Well clearly THAT is the worst one on here!!!

6 minutes ago, Gears said:

They took all my clothes during a Quest

Lol I’m sure there’s been someone that hasn’t been a dream for too! 

I also use Travelpro, but I have the 21" expandable crew spinner one because the 4 wheels make it WAY easier to navigate with. Also this one has magnetic wheels that helps the bag roll straight without any effort from you to keep on it on track. I bought it back in 2016 and while I don't travel a ton, I've been on at least 10 flights since then and checked it half those times. It's still going strong. 

So I should now know better than to fall asleep relistening to podcasts about cruising. I just had an “awful” nightmare where I somehow slept through pretty much all of the first 2 days of my cruise and only woke up at 4 am when nothing was going on. I started to panic when I realized that I missed both my Grease and Aquashow reservation as well as my Coco Cay cabana and that’s around when my alarm started blaring. So I know I can’t be alone here. Who else has had literal panic nightmares about cruising? Bonus points if they are low stakes but seemed like the worst thing in the world in the dream realm. 

The best way to tell the difference is if the location is listed as “Starbucks” on the deck plans and cruise planner then it is considered a stand alone one and not included in the drink package. If it’s something like Cafe Lattitudes or some other coffee shop on the smaller ships and they happen to have a sign posted saying “we proudly serve Starbucks coffee” (or similar) then it IS included. 

@JennyJenny Wow, I am in awe of your strength and bravery to save yourself and your daughter from what sounds like a nightmare of a situation in the past. I’m really happy that you guys are thriving and that you have decided to give cruising another try! This can be like your phoenix cruise (rising from the ashes)! I was on Grandeur this past Thanksgiving and loved it. What a great little ship with such an attentive crew. When I was on, the Solarium bar staff were particularly great. They always remembered what I liked to drink and had some great suggestions for me. And I absolutely know what you mean about a vacation for relaxing. Grandeur is great for that. I also recommend checking out the Viking Crown lounge because it has some great views and comfy chairs! Also there are very few left in the fleet so it’s nice to see it while you can. 

Enjoy! Looking forward to seeing your liveblog.

I haven’t been to the beach club or overwater cabanas, but @bossdog421 had one in his live blog. You can start reading about it on page 5 

They are pre-assigned now. Did you book them at the same time? If so, chances are they will be together because, as I understand it, the cabanas are assigned in order based on time of booking. You can check with the shore excursion desk upon boarding to ask them what numbers you have just so you are prepared. But either way, you will find out the night before you dock in Coco Cay because your room steward will deliver the tickets and instructions on where to go to check in. 

I have never been, but Matt recently did a spotlight on it and iirc, he enjoyed it. 
https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2020/02/05/vip-blue-lagoon-island-beach-day-shore-excursion-review
 

So I just went back in my family Whatsapp chat from our last cruise when we did the British Colonial Hilton in Nassau. We had a 4:30 all aboard time and my mom and I left the hotel around 3:15. Now mind you, we did make a pit stop to pick up some alcohol for her coworker, but that was about  5 mins total as they didn’t have what she wanted. We made it through security and to the gangway by 4:04pm which was far too close for comfort for me. There was a bit of a bottleneck at security so I would definitely leave yourself at least an hour to get back and through security just to be safe. It didn’t help that there wasn’t the most organized line at security so if you weren’t assertive it was very easy for people to cut in front of you. 

Really looking forward to this blog! I’m extra interested in your thoughts on the Key on Harmony, especially on where the Key show seating is and how the final debarking is (is there an escort?) since I’ve heard mixed things. Also looking forward to your specialty dining reviews since we also have the 3 night dining package on Harmony. Have fun and thanks for doing this! 

Looking forward to following along! I’m going to be on Harmony in May with the same ports so I look forward to what you guys end up doing there as well as on the ship! 

3 hours ago, Matt said:

Photos from last week

Thanks for the pictures Matt! I can’t tell from this angle, but did you happen to notice if these cabanas had ceiling fans too?

We were dining at Giovannis on the night we were celebrating my mom’s birthday (it was a week before her actual birthday, but I wanted to celebrate her on the vacation so I went with the one week before). I swung by the Giovanni’s hostess station a couple of days before to mention to them that we had a reservation and wanted to celebrate a birthday but wanted it to be a surprise. I tried to get them to have carrot cake which is my mom’s favorite cake. They said they weren’t sure if they could make that happen, but they would try their best. It turns out it wasn’t available, but our waitress wanted my mom to have something special so got her personal favorite dessert on the ship and brought over the passion fruit cake from 150 Central Park with a candle.  It was really sweet of them to bring something over from a whole other specialty restaurant. They really will try to go out of their way to make things special for you if you give them advance notice. 

Someone on CC posted pictures of the South Beach cabanas from when they were wandering around. 

11 minutes ago, JLMoran said:

On both of my Anthem sailings to Bermuda, North Star opened up about 45 days out on the Cruise Planner. But, you could only make reservations for sea days. They held reservations for our two port days until people were onboard; then it could be booked through the Royal app,

If you made a reservation for a sea day online were you able to also make another one for a port day on board in addition?

11 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Don’t forget that there are 30 cabanas in the beach club that hold a max of 8. That alone is already approximately  240 people.  Add 200 passes in there and you have over 400 already. 

Ohhhh true! Maybe that’s where the discrepancy is coming from. 400 total cap, 200 day passes?

I’d be really curious to hear the number Royal says for the beach club limit too because the uncited number I had seen was 400. I wonder if that is per day and the 200 previously mentioned in this thread is per ship assuming 2 are docking that day? 

Ok I don’t know why it’s not letting me quote and type new stuff, but @bossdog421 for that picture you posted of the towel station with brown and white towels, are those just for the cabanas or are they for everyone who has a day pass too? It would be really nice to not have to remember to grab a towel beforehand or wait in the towel line when disembarking.