Chad in Tennessee

Independence of the Seas

I was wondering if it is possible to book 2 rooms for a family of 4 on a Royal Caribbean ship. The rooms don't have to be adjoining, but they do need to be next to each other. If we book 1 room with myself and son and another room for my wife and daughter, will they care if my kids sleep in the 2nd room (they are teens.) Also, do they remove the "balcony dividers" for connecting rooms? It is cheaper to book two balcony rooms than to book 1 Jr. Suite. 2 Rooms give us more space, more privacy, and 2 bathrooms. I just want to make sure what I am considering is acceptable. BTW - We would tip the Room Steward extra for taking care of both rooms. Thank you.

Does Royal Caribbean cancel excursions for "Lack of Participation" or do the "3rd Party Tours" cancel them? I will be very upset to find out that the excursion took place but that RC didn't want to do their part in coordinating it.

I've been on 6 previous cruises, 5 Disney and 1 Carnival. We just got back from a 7 night Southern Caribbean on our first Royal Caribbean cruise. The months of reviewing excursions, waiting for online discounts, and preparations for our activities was all wasted. All four of our excursions were canceled, usually the night before. One was canceled due to weather (on a bright, sunny day in St. Thomas) and the others were canceled due to "lack of participation." So....no trip to Trunk Bay, no Snorkeling and Maho Beach in St. Martin, no bus tour of Aruba, and no Semi-Sub in Curacao. Be warned, excursions on the ship are priced higher than on the online Cruise Planner. Plus, we booked with 25% - 30% discounts. RC wanted us to rebook new excursions at only 15% off the "cruise rate." For instance, our canceled excursion in St. Thomas was listed as $84/person and our new excursion was listed at $74. Guess what, they charged us $40 dollars to rebook a cheaper excursion after the cancelation! The people at the excursion desk couldn't understand my issue (language barrier....) but their supervisor Adriane did give us some extra credit. All in all, we ended up doing 3 islands on our own and had a great time, but I much prefer what we originally had booked. We ended spending quite a bit more out of pocket than we planned as well. I have never had an excursion cancelled on any other cruise line. We even took an excursion with only one other family on my last Disney cruise, no cancellation due to "lack of participation." Is this normal on Royal Caribbean? Any chance it was "intentional" to get us to book at higher costs? Either way, it was highly annoying but certainly didn't ruin our vacation. It just added new levels of stress and uncertainty, along with a little disappointment that we never got do things we had been talking about for months.