JasonL

You'd be pretty hard pressed to find anything worse than Grand Theft Auto Our oldest(10 at the time) watched Mama mia with us and we just talked to her afterwards about how the family values of the play don't reflect ours. And boy is the story of Mama Mia stupid. That said, we still really enjoyed the play because the singers and actors did an awesome job. I won't take my younger children mainly because they will be annoying the whole show.

I'm an Idiot, I could fly to Florida for less. Ok I know why I'm the trailblazer on this. It's pretty spendy to fly on Seaplanes apparently. Would definitely have to consider it as a really expensive excursion. Looks like about $1000 for both of us to fly round trip Lake Union to Vancouver($500 each)

Hey yall, I live just south of Seattle Washington. I LOVE cruising and try to do a 7 night Caribbean once a year, I would do more if I didn't live so far away. So, there are 2 cruise ports fairly close to drive to : Seattle(45 minutes) and Vancouver(4 hours). The sad part is, there aren't many cruises out of these ports except 7 night Alaska cruises. Alaska has a lot of similar scenery as Seattle though, and if I'm gonna take a week off I gonna fly somewhere warmer. It's way too expensive and long to fly to Florida for a short cruise. I would however love to do some 3-5 night cruises from one of my home ports. The problem with that..... there are hardly ever any available with RCCL. In fact, there are 0 that leave from Seattle in the next 2 years. I had told my wife before the new schedule was released that I was just gonna book every single weekend cruise from Seattle that was available because I think they are a great value for a weekend getaway. Well I did book every single one... which happens to be NONE. Sad! My second option is actually the main reason I'm posting this topic. Sailing out of Vancouver. 4 hours is annoying when Seattle is so close, but that's my only option. My lovely wife doesn't think it's worth driving to Vancouver with the border crossing and all that. Well, we could drive to drive to Seattle and take a 1 hour flight into Vancouver. It's still going to take the same amount of time to get there with checking in, security check and driving 30-45 minutes to the cruise port. This is all doable and although it's risky I could probably easily do this all the morning of the cruise. My wife doesn't love this option either just to do a short cruise out in our own backyard. Being the Cruise addict that I am, I will not accept defeat! So I'm thinking about trying to make the journey to the port more exciting. I just thought of this so I'm still working out the logistics and would love any input from someone that has done this(or has a something to add to make it more fun). I have a feeling that I'm gonna be the trailblazer on this though as most of you are not from this area. So, my idea is to take a Seaplane from Seattle to Vancouver. They take off and land from a Lake or Sea and are small planes that I think would be pretty fun to fly in. I think it would make the anticipation of the flight more exciting that the headache that is normally encountered with the standard airport.Harbor Air Seaport actually lands right next door to the Cruise terminals, less than a 1/2 mile walk to the cruise pier. You are only allowed to have 25 lbs of luggage per ticket, but that should be pretty easy for a short summer cruise. The flight is about 1 hour 5 minutes and because it is a small terminal it requires less time before and after your flight. Still have to do customs on way back into the U.S. but I'm told this is a pretty quick and easy process. Maybe this info is useful for someone else that wants to fly into Seattle, see the sites here then fly on an seaplane to a cruise leaving out of Vancouver. Could make for a fun excursion before or after the cruise?

I like meeting people, so I think it would be a great way to make relationships on the cruise. I'm super excited to try it on my next cruise

Aug is cheaper than June and July usually, but still should have good weather(relatively speaking, it is Alaska). I say YOLO book it

Hmm, this thread just made my head spin. Not sure what I'm gonna do on the next one now. I think we'll stick with late seating in MDR(we are from seattle so with the time change it works well). We actually have always had a great experience with MDR, but we usually cruise with friends so our table is full with our group. The only time we were disappointed with the MDR was our last weekend getaway that we did without the kids. We had a 2 top table and the waiter was so busy with the larger tables that we seemed like an afterthought.

So actually, it's all coming back now. They were closed from 5-7 SO THAT they could take the kids that were there for dinner to the windjammer. If you brought your kids at 5:15... no adventure ocean until 7. You had to have them there by 5pm so your kids can eat with adventure ocean. Again though, not sure if they still do this.

I'm glad we are having this discussion so I can set my expectations correctly, because we may have been under an old system. I don't know if it was a thing only for Allure at the time or what. Here's what we experienced though. The afternoon session ended at 5, but they allowed us to re-sign them in for adventure ocean for dinner. They would take the kids through the windjammer (1 teacher for every 5 kids) and eat together there, then head back to adventure ocean after that. This was the case for my 2 girls ages 6 & 10. Furthermore the nursery allowed us to do the same for our toddler. At sign in they asked what he would like for dinner(same answer every night... chicken nuggets and apples). Someone would pick it up and deliver it to the nursery for the children there. We used this system every night for our toddler and only a couple times with our girls as they ate at the MDR sometimes. I know I've seen advertisements now for kids eating with parents for the first 45 minutes at the mdr and then getting picked up by adventure ocean staff. something like that? It certainly is worth an ask though when you get on board to see what they currently offer. I know I will because eating fancy dinner with a toddler is not always my favorite. I'm interested to hear anyone else's feedback on this.

Awesome post. Thanks Steve

Oh ok, that's good to know, it must be different depending on the ships? Our last trip on allure, there wasn't breaks

@SDanielT Thanks for this! I'm really horrible at technology, but I was able to take your file and adapt it slightly with a Star on ships with water slides. We have started cruising with our kids and they now think they are getting ripped off if there isn't water slides on board. So now when I'm searching for the right family cruise I look to see which ships have water slides. I can't be the only one, so Here is my contribution. @Matt I love all this content, it is such a great resource. I totally understand if you think this is unnecessary, but can I make a suggestion. Sometimes it can be hard to find the Gems that this community puts together. For example this ship flyer or the Cruise director list or any of the sheets and lists that people put together(i read a post earlier where someone had a packing list that everyone would love to have). They are such great work, but they can disappear in the thousands of posts. So my idea is this. Make a locked topic where these can be easy to find, and maybe make a sub to this topic where people can submit their work. That way it's clean and easy to find. I hope this comment is received as I intended, as I am not great with words and sometimes am misunderstood in writing. Thanks again for this great community you have created. RCLShipsSlides.pptx

I live in the Seattle area, so I thought it would be a cheaper cruise to price out since I wouldn't have to fly..... Nope It is cheaper for me to fly my family of 5 down to Florida and stay in an Ultra spacious Balcony on Symphony in February than it is to stay in my back yard and do an Ovation summer cruise in the cheapest rooms available. Bummer cause I'd like to try Ovation

So. Much. Content. Proud to be able to support such a great site. Thanks Matt

Are you wanting to do it on night 1, because that is the only day it opens at 7pm? Every other day adventure ocean will take your kids from morning till night.

I feel like I'm slowly becoming a Specialty dining person the longer I hang out with Royal Caribbean Blog and I've never even done a specialty restaurant before. I've always enjoyed building relationships with the people at our MDR table and our servers, but the longer I listen to Matt talk about food the more I want to try some others. I better start budgeting in for a dinner or 2...