MrB

We live local (25 miles or so) to Port Canaveral and park onsite. But that so far has only been for short cruises. If and when we are able to take longer cruises out of Port Canaveral (after spouse retirement), we would consider other parking or get someone to drive us (friend or Uber.) For now, for us, onsite is amazing. Get your bags, leave terminal door, see your car within 200 meter walk, start the car, go home. We would much rather pay for close parking than for a drink package. Reduces pre-and-post ship friction. Granted, our situation might be different. We have a very pleasant 45 minute drive along the ocean or riverfront, and then pull into the onsite parking and then walk through security and check-in. We want to make this as completely stress-free and un-airport-like as we can. Onsite parking is a big key to that. No shuttles, no waiting, etc.

I have been noticing this too. Crickets. Those numbers (98% / 95%) must be darn impossible to meet or they would have said something by now.

We've been waiting for months for clear CDC guidance. Well, we got it. Personally, I think it's great. It can turn cruise ships into the safest places on earth. Literally. The guidance is not without its issues: First, it might mean no children at all. There is no vaccine in the US approved for under 16, but that could change. This means Disney cruises are dead in the water, along with the the raison d'etre of a lot of the infrastructure on Royal ships. Second, those who can't get vaccinated for real medical reasons may not be able to cruise. My impression is that's what the 5% pax slop percentage is for, but management of that 5% is going to be crazy. It might be easier for the cruise line to say 100% vaccinated or no go. Exceptions like this are tough to manage, especially in the first cruise out of dock. Third, I have no idea what those people who have not been vaccinated will do. I have outlandish ideas of what might be attempted, but that's all they are at this point. What are your thoughts on the guidance? I'm excited, vaccinated, and ready to go!

I would agree with this. New(ish) to cruising, only used RCI to date, great experiences. Due to timing, itinerary, and maybe wanting to see what's out there, we booked a cruise on Princess. The website experience there is muuucchh better. We can plan all our activities, extras (food, drink, others), and excursions from one step-by-step page after booking. The room details, invoicing, and payments page is clear and available. Princess had to change ships - new one not finished yet, due to "things" in the last year or so. They rebooked us just fine, but our cruisin' buddies were relocated pretty far away. Telephone service was great, rebooked everything in one call. Note: RCI telephone service has always been great when we have had to use it. I would call that about even. Still love RCI, especially as they are big in our home port of Port Canaveral. Princess is Port Everglades (Ft Lauderdale), which is further away.

I'm willing to wait a bit for the more standard Itineraries. I'm spoiled, as I live in Central Florida on the East Coast. Port Canaveral (our closest port at 35 minutes away), Tampa, and Port Everglades are all easy enough morning-of-cruise drives. Miami is stretching it, but possible. Given these itineraries come all the way back to Coco Cay and not leaving out of Port Canaveral makes not much sense to my brain. Maybe that will change, but not yet. For me, the idea of adding international air travel on top of cruising is over my threshold of pain.

American has a flight in and out of Charlotte, which is their Southeastern US regional hub.

The US has had a precipitous drop in February from the crazy January. But.. those numbers have leveled off, and actually look like there might be one more spike before the vaccine numbers start to take over. That leveling off started about 10 to 14 days ago. I'm hoping we can avoid that spike, but it's looking like that's gonna happen. Yes, there is some optimism to be had here, but we need to be watchful and accept that there will be setbacks, both major and minor. I process the county-by-county numbers in the US everyday (I'm a data nerd) and have since I found my good CSV source in April 2020. It looks better now than it has since the summer of 2020. My issue presently is that in the counties that I pay particular attention to, including the county in which I reside, there has not been as drastic a reduction in cases in comparison to, say, Los Angeles or even other local surrounding counties. This recovery is not as wide-spread as the cumulative numbers suggest. That leaves some room for a resurgence.

This might have been OK, if annoying, in the "Before-Times". But now, this could be very problematic in COVID era cruising. Choke points for the purpose of choke points are now going to be seen as straight -up evil.

Functionally, these ships are amazing. Given their size, they could look worse - in fact some folks here have mentioned some egregious examples from other fleets. The RCI ships are about as good as these newer ships get. My issue is that all the cruise lines are having to do a lot of form following function, with various levels of success. A great example is the Airbus A380 vs the Boeing 747. The A380 was well liked by its passengers on the inside, and hated on the outside. That's one ugly plane. The 747 in its time changed its world. More than people would admit it, it's because of how freakin' gorgeous it is. To this day. This generation of cruise ship is not going to age well on the outside. It may matter more than you think. When I go cruising, I want something that looks as good as the 747.

I'm with you. My old favorite just left the fleet - Majesty of the Seas.

I'm sure that being on the ship will be fantastic, but I'm not in love with any of the Quantum / Ultra ships. The Odyssey of the Seas new extremely large name livery on the starboard side screams billboard, rather than "I'm so classy, you known who I am." More than other classes, these ships look like a low barge with a sideways high-rise hotel on the top. Yes, this is the trend and there are some very good reasons why this is the case, but there is a proportions problem with the boat part and the hotel part. Some other cruise lines have this problem and make it worse by painting the lower boat section a different color than the hotel section. For reference, take a look at Carnival Mardi Gras. So I will concede that the RC all-white livery does help it in this regard. Always has. The back end looks kind of weird and boxy in a bad way. Sort of looks like the back of a container ship. I'm sure that some folks love, love, love, the design of these ships as the cutting edge and the future of cruising. I get that. Right now, I might like sailing on it, but I'm not loving looking at it.

Not a requirement. Norwegian has a US flagged ship that wanders around the Hawaiian Islands only. The idea being you fly to HI and then cruise around the Islands for xx days and then fly back to US mainland. Given the archipellago's isolation, there is no opportunity for foreign port of call. The US would not (maybe could not) grant them exemption, so NCL did the work. They took an existing ship, certainly not built in the US, and flagged it.

Not unexpected, and it makes economic sense, but it saddens me. Been on Majesty for 3 cruises out of FL, and always enjoyed the (now) smaller scale. I would walk around that ship for days and could decide to go anywhere at any time because nothing was that far away from anywhere else on the ship. Also, I could use the stairs for almost all inter-deck traversing, because most things were between deck 4 and deck 11. Thanks, Majesty, for my introduction to cruising. You will be missed and appreciated.

Yeah, this is a dream itinerary for us. We live 40 minutes away by car, and our cruising buddy is even closer - 15 minutes away from the port. We were thinking pre-pandemic about leaving out of Baltimore or Cape Liberty, but we aren't even considering any cruising that entails flying. Not until everything is figured out. Luckily for us, Port Canaveral, Tampa, and Port Everglades (Ft Lauderdale) are easy morning-of-cruise drives. Miami is juuuust that much farther that we normally don't consider it. This is not a short cruise. RCI's other Bermuda itineraries are 5 and 6 day. There are several (<10) Port Canaveral - Bermuda cruises listed now.

6 positves out of a very small ship of 100ish total people. That's pretty bad. Anyone thinking about getting on a boat with 2500 passengers (50% capacity of a big boat) and 1300 or so crew is pretty much taking a huge risk. Even with testing. What we need now is complete capitulation until a) this Northern hemisphere winter wave recedes AND b) a vaccine is in place and distributed to enough people to start knocking down the infection rate, not just protecting those that have the vaccine. Both of those things look like it would take until at least 3rd quarter of next year, possibly longer. If cruising at scale is started up too early, it will be forced to be stopped again, this time until everything is completely worked out. So patience and capitulation is the key.

We live quite near Port Canaveral (Orlando) and have gone on four Royal Caribbean cruises so far. Not the most experienced cruisers in the world, for sure. Royal Caribbean has been a fantastic introduction to cruising. We loved leaving the house, driving less than 45 minutes total door to door, parking the car in the port garage overlooking the boat, and getting on the boat in about an hour from leaving. Shockingly good experiences all the way around. We are smaller boat fans (Majesty and Enchantment) because we look for simpler, calmer trips. Basically an hotel room that moves around on beautiful water. I can't tell you how well RC does this. Here comes the "but...". Everything out of Port Canaveral ends up in Coco Cay and Nassau. We are getting to be not fans. As we are local to Florida, and not coming from a colder climate, we don't neccessarily need to bake in the sub-tropical sun, as we can literally do that in our backyard. We actually have to wear lots of protection against the sun on a daily basis1.This is not a knock at all on Coco Cay. It is great and fulfills its purpose very well. Nassau is, well, Nassau. I know that RCG really needs to pay off Coca Cay and that it works unbelievably well at an Orlando adjacent port. Absolutely understand why they can't chase our particular needs. Just very sorry to see RCG go for now. It was an amazing introduction to cruising. Thank you. We looked at a Carnival itinerary out of Canaveral, going to the Amber Cove (DR) and Grand Caicos. But then we saw a detailed ship tour video of the selected ship, the Carnival Elation. Oh my gosh, it was a horror show. Bad Vegas meets Scary Clown. So glad I caught that before booking. There is a big difference in style - not in good way for Carnival - between RCI and Carnival. Very coarse decorations, not sleek, and bars everywhere. Ended up on a Princess Cruise on a yet-to-be-delivered boat (Discovery Princess) that is an out-and-back from Fort Lauderdale to Grand Caicos with a full cruising day on each side. Looking at Princess boat tours online, it's crazy to think that there is any connection whatsoever to Carnival. So now we have to drive almost 3 hours (oh, the horror ! I know, I know) to get anything that makes sense for us now. We always check for new itineraries out of Port Canaveral, but everything is private Island and Nassau on shorter trips, which is where we are until full retirement. 1 - Addage I heard from my doctor about living in Florida when looking for lesions on my nose: "If there's water, it's got alligators. If there's a bump on your nose, it's skin cancer". Right on both accounts at our house.

I remember on a recent(ish) cruise on Enchantment of the Seas (2018) that the ice machines and IIRC the Freestyle machines were staffed and you handed them your container. I can't for the life of me remember for sure if this was the case on my last cruise on Majesty December 2019. I remember the Freestyle machines in 2018 being staffed as that's the best place to get water and ice refills for your own containers. It's filtered to Coca-Cola's specifications. That's actually a big deal. This staffing might be a possibility, but the cup would have to be cleaned in some fashion to transfer back and for between the parties. Not sure if that would be useful, but much better than 5000 of your closest personal friends and minions attacking the machine independently without supervision. In 2018, It could have been that because we had no drink package, they wanted to dispense the water and ice as a loss prevention. Because people will do that.? Just like having every occupant of the room has to have a drink package. Because people.

What it tells me is that until a) better testing or b) effective and pervasive vaccine, there's going to be insurmountable problems. Either the cruise lines wait until a) or b), or they have to base their decisions on whatever information they have, however fallible it may be. The other alternative is up to us. We can just wait this out for a year and don't blame the cruise lines for what they have to do in the interim.

No specific recommendation from experience, but when in Jersey, look for Jersey Diners. I know that they are a dying breed, but they still do exist. Look for 24/7 (before the pandemic) joints. Two that pop up on a quick search are the Broadway Diner and the Liberty Diner. I would suggest this over IHOP.

Doing your part in RCG's non-governmental aid package. ?

The political environment of the last several years concerning the ability to cruise to Cuba indicates to me that RCG and the other lines should be loath to put too much capital into it at this time. I am assuming that there are myriad other restrictions concerning investment in Cuba that we may not be privy to.

This is basically a sea-going timeshare. You could be a permanent 12-month per year resident, but their calculators on the site default to 3 months per year. I see little or no incentive for the operators to keep up high levels of service once the entire boat is purchased. Yes, they do have all-inclusive monthly fees, but the incentives would be at best to keep it barely better than acceptable. A regular cruise line has to earn every cruiser's trust and $$$ every time a ship embarks. Not so here. They got you, because you already bought into this. Literally. Could it work? Sure. But you would be taking a huge financial and life-altering risk. Oh, and BTW, you better be very healthy.

My spouse was military (USAF, Lt Col Retired). They had a couple of these outrageous itineraries. Let's just say yours was limited by navigatible waters; theirs were not.

As one who is living here at the moment, I agree with YOLO. It's not the right time to be here. Hopefully, situations will improve. Try my hardest to keep this as neutral as possible. But not now. Wait.

Just to gloat a little bit, I live in Central Florida on the East Coast. That's a cruise day's morning drive to Tampa, Port Canaveral (Orlando), Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale) and Miami. Though I will admit that Miami is starting to stretch it a bit. But then again, the Florida peninsula is way more isolated from the rest of the country than you normally think. For instance, if we need to evacuate for a storm, it can take almost 350 miles to get somewhere safer. When we purchased our most recent vehicle, one issue was that we would need 500 miles of range on one tank of fuel, just in case.