JasonL

Coming from Seattle in the winter, I think it's plenty hot to go swimming. Same from Boston I'd imagine. Someone that lives in Florida would probably have a different opinion though Aruba Weather averages MonthHigh / Low(°F) October90° / 80° November89° / 79° December87° / 77° More about this destination

I'm thinking his latest news about crew on Oasis getting corona will drop the stock price again on monday. I'm gonna set a limit to get my 100 shares if it reaches my mark. Also make sure yall are all using that new Zoom background cause I bought a bunch of shares of them at $114 as well 🤣

I almost did this. I originally booked the Oasis because it was SO much cheaper than the Harmony. Haven't pulled the trigger on the swap yet, but if the price comes down another $500 total for my family of 5 then I'll do it

TBD..... If there are Alaska cruises this year out of Seattle, I'll probably grab one on a last minute deal

I bought a little at $20, but didn't wanna do the full on 100 shares just yet.

I'd like to echo this, PLEASE don't jump into the stock market willy nilly! Timing the stock market is impossible and if you aren't invested wisely and with a lot of diversity it is extremely risky. Don't do options. If you want to buy some stocks right now please be doing a lot of research over the next couple weeks before making any decisions. Talk with a professional financial planner and stay away from day trading. Look for solid companies with a history of beating the S&P for the bulk of your investing. You can put a Little into higher risk, higher reward companies but that should also be diversified with many others and should be a small part of your portfolio. If you don't plan on keeping these stocks for the next 10 years then just DONT DO IT. If you just go with your gut you are going to lose, do your homework. Also please do not invest or stop investing in a company because of how you feel about them. Money doesn't care. Read their balance sheets. How much debt do they have compared to savings? What are their profit margins? ect.... God bless! Cruise and be Merry!

So in case yall didn't hear about this today, Washington governor put a ban on public gatherings with more than 250 people. This ban includes King County which is where Seattle is as well as 2 other major counties in the surrounding area. Schools are exempt from this ban for now, but after-school activities that expect more than 250 people are being canceled. Concerts, sporting events, large church services or anything else you can think of are all postponed until further notice. My kids choir, orchestra, camps have all been canceled. Many other events and small church services are also following suit out of caution even if they aren't above the 250 projected attendance. I really feel bad for the small businesses in the area that are being financially massacred by these crazy times. Many large companies are also allowing telecommuting to try and reduce exposure. I'd say 75% of people are going on as if nothing is happening, the other 25% are being forced to participate because of their job or are a little worried and playing it safe. This all to say, I have a bad feeling about the start of cruise season being impacted. Now let me say this. I live in one of the major counties being affected. I would have no reservation at all to go on a cruise right here out of Seattle or to go hang out in a crowd for that matter. Frankly I think this is all ridiculous and being way overplayed. I just wanted to give some insight since I live here.

i live just south of Seattle and would love more short cruises up here, but..... tuesday to thursday? I might as well take monday and friday off too and do a 7 night. I should take tuesday and thursday off and just do transfers for yall . haha

The stores in washington state are out of toilet paper and bottled water. people are overreacting like crazy right now. if you are elderly or in poor health than you have to be careful like you would with any cold or flu season, everyone else just needs to chill.

We took our 8 and 12 year olds on excursion to Dunn river falls. Super fun, highly recommend for everyone over the age of 6. Under 6 and it can be hard to navigate the falls. We left our 3 year old on the ship at adventure ocean and it went great. Sounds horrible at first but it’s the way to go!

My Review of Liberty of the Seas Quick background info. This is my 6th or 7th Cruise, all but 1 was with Royal. The other was with Norwegian. We live in Washington state and my whole family loves cruising and usually love most things about Royal. Gonna hit a few of the details that I think would be useful to someone traveling with kids, if ya don't mind. Ok so we picked this cruise because we were looking to spend a little less this time around. Airfare is a large portion of our cost so flying to a closer location brought this number down on airfare. That was the reasoning, but it didn't really work out that well. There is a much longer distance to travel from the airport to the cruise port so the money we saved on airfare we spend on ground transportation. Getting a shuttle or other ground transport was similar to the price to rent a car for a week, so we opted for the convenience of a car rental. We have a young family and we needed 2 carseats, but didn't want to carry more junk on the plane so we just bought a new booster and booster with back from walmart(4 miles from houston airport). We had to drive a few miles without the proper seats for the kids but it only cost about $52 for the 2 carseats and the car rental company would have charged about $250. All said and done it ended up being a wash, but atleast the flight was a couple hours shorter which is nice especially when traveling with small children. The other cost we thought about was the Cruise itself, which is cheaper to sail on a little older ship to the western caribbean out of Texas. The ship looked pretty good and we were very happy with the pool, kids waterplay area & waterslides. I did not feel like it was a ship in need of an amplification on the pool deck, although i'm very interested to see it's upcoming changes. The Galveston cruise terminal on the other hand could use some upgrades(yes I know they are coming). Embarkation was really easy, but we arrived at the cruise terminal by 9:30(yea that's super early). It looked like the design of the transportation drop off and porter set up was not ideal and had we shown up during peek time I bet it would be a madhouse. Disembarkation was slow and the ground transportation a mess. MDR service was FANTASTIC as it usually is, and the Windjammer was a chaotic disaster as usual. After the first couple days we avoided the windjammer like the plague. I think the Windjammer food is usually decent, it is just so stressful to eat there. Although this time I thought it lacked a variety of edible food. Day 2 it seemed like everything in the entire buffet was cooked in Fish oil. Wasn't impressed all around. DISCLAIMER - a lot of this feeling comes from eating there with 3 small children, it isn't nearly as bad when it's just the Wife and i. The main thing Liberty should get in an amplification is food venues. If you miss the dining room hours for breakfast and lunch there is only the EVIL Windjammer or Sorrento's pizza. I thought the pizza was very good, but it's basically the only thing we ate if we missed the main dining room. No I didn't forget about the Promenade Cafe, they don't have food that anyone actually eats. Just a couple of doughnuts and a salmon bagel sandwhich for breakfast. In general the customer service was very good on the Liberty, but Adventure Ocean staff this time around wasn't very good. Usually we love Adventure Ocean, but this particular staff just didn't seem as good. The kids didn't want to spend much time there as they usually do either. That brings me to the 2nd most important thing Liberty should get in dry dock... Adventure Ocean remodel. Ice show was good, but it fell short after seeing the FANTASTICALLY AMAZING show on Mariner last year. Singers and Dancers were not very good on this sailing. The comedian was the worst I've ever seen. The comedian juggler was great and we Loved the Piano Lounge Singer in the Schooner Bar. Cruise director Cory was decent and we enjoyed to trivia and games. Casino was a casino. I gambled for a few hours on a few nights and ended up ahead $100. Smoke drifted quite a ways, a better ventilation(or no more smoking) could definitely be nice. Also, I'm so over smoking on the pool deck. Sorry to all you smokers out there, but they should restrict smoking to an area far away from the crowds. On sea days a lot of time the only seats open were on the smoking side. Post cruise we had time to kill so we took the kids to Pleasure Pier for a few hours. This is a small amusement park on a pier over the ocean, It was small but it was mighty. I thought it was gonna be like a parking lot carnival with sketchy rides, but I was really impressed at the quality of the rides.They are built in quality rides, not the tractor trailer death trap style. There isn't a lot of rides but it's a great way to kill a few hours. Best part is my 8 and 12 yr olds could go on every ride and they had 6 or 7 little kiddie rides as well that my 3 year old enjoyed. I honestly wasn't that excited about the Western Caribbean itinerary(probably because of rumors) but we ended up really enjoying all 3 ports (cozumel, grand cayman, falmouth). Overall we had a great time, and anytime I'm on a cruise it's better than when I'm at home working. I did feel like the Liberty had the crappy leftovers as far as shows and performers go. It was interesting to see Texas and Galveston and I'm glad we sailed from this port once. I think once is enough though, we'll keep our Caribbean sailing out of Florida from now on. We have Oasis OTS scheduled for next Thanksgiving(this sailing is priced very reasonably!) I would have liked to do the Group cruise on Harmony that same week, but the price was just so much higher. Hopefully the wife and I can leave the kids behind and sneak off just the 2 of us to an Alaskan cruise between now and our Oasis cruise. I hope this is useful to someone. Happy cruising! ~J~

We just got back from Liberty OTS cruise a few days ago. (post cruise blues)We did the Dunns River Falls in Falmouth through Royal caribbean which was indead paired with the Caves. This was a really cool excursion and we could have spent all day at Dunns River Falls. In Cozumel we did an ATV ride to the Jade caverns. The ATV's were really fun, and because we did this before Falmouth we also thought the jade caverns were cool. Falmouth caves were better though so we could have skipped the one in Cozumel

There will be lots of people packing around luggage on embarkation day until 1pm when the rooms open. Some people don't even use the porters and choose to drag their luggage around themselves until their room is open. If you choose to do this you won't be the only one, but i think it's completely unnecessary. A roller bag is totally normal though

congrats, you're gonna love it!

airplane and cruise are 2 seperate setups. I pack first for the flight as normal, then make a few changes at the hotel before heading to the port. Take my snacks and reading material out and put in swimwear, sunblock, wine, electronics, cruise paperwork and a small toiletries bag and medications. I purchase wine after the flight and my wife buys hair product if we are doing carry on only on the plane. Wifey doesn't use the mystery soap and the 3 or 4 ounces allowed on a plane of hair product isn't close to enough to get her through the week oh... this stuff i keep on the cruise on day 1 is usually done in 1 or 2 backpacks that the wife and I lug on. everything else goes to the porters to be brought to the stateroom in a few hours