karl_nj

14 minutes ago, TBruce77 said:

True, I had to switch browsers few times, for some reason it kept giving me errors in Edge and kept reconnecting. I installed Firefox and now it said this is not compatible, I just copied and pasted the link from Edge to Firefox, and it worked on 1st try because link skips the "incompatible browser" message.

 

Hmm... eMed is claiming it's an AWS issue.

On 12/14/2021 at 9:33 AM, Matt said:

Get the at-home test for the fully vaccinated. Couldn't be easier or faster.

 

Except when the Navica website crashes... (like it has been for the past few hours...)

On 12/19/2021 at 9:13 AM, Bubba Hotep said:

About 50 mins later we pulled into the Tulum archeological area.  The ruins were great.  The guides knowledgeable and friendly.

I'm glad you were able to pivot and manage to figure out a solution to being able to see some Mayan ruins, which was a major reason for the trip!

I've also noticed some customer service issues on another ship sailing after the restart (Oasis of the Seas back in October.)  I'm hoping things improve sooner rather than later.  I have some extended family members that may never want to set foot on an RCL ship again because of some of the issues we ran into on that trip.  Which is complicating my plans for a big family cruise in a couple of years for my wife's 50th birthday/our 20th wedding anniversary/son graduating high school/daughter graduating middle school trip I want to do.

Some of the other points you brought up have been issues even pre-pandemic.  RCL doesn't really do "anytime dining" very well, if that is what you would prefer, best to go with NCL.  Or just stick with early or late dining times (which is my preference).  Then your table/wait staff is guaranteed.  

Formal night has been a mess for years... we still usually dress up because we like to and because I want to get a family photo done.  But you can certainly think about dialing it back a bit if you are going to get annoyed about the loose enforcement (and I can certainly see why that is annoying!)

Celebrity "forced" us to do a ship-based excursion to leave the ship back in August, which reminded me of why I stopped doing them.

Sounds like you had one of those vacations where a bunch of "little" issues kept on piling on and on... making it quite difficult to try to overlook them.

On 12/16/2021 at 3:53 PM, Jax said:

 First Negative Test 

Just got 3 negative rapid antigen tests!!! OMG what a relief especially when we have a 16 year old that is hard to keep in a travel bubble  lol 

 

haha—I totally know what you mean!  I woke up at 6am today to get my son's test out of the way (we sail on 12/24) -- he went to see the new Spider Man film with his friends (and apparently the rest of the known universe) on Saturday...

On 12/20/2021 at 12:26 PM, Lovetocruise2002 said:

We went to deck 15 for a closer look and noticed they looked real. It’s beautiful. Hubby now wants to try the Edge. Told him we will see lol. 

It's a very nice ship—I sailed her back in August (my first cruise since the pandemic started).  Though that "rooftop garden" area you noticed could use a little more shade.

On 12/12/2021 at 11:27 PM, MattG said:

 

Adventure Ocean was fully booked this morning, so this was one day we HAD to have the kids. Ugh. Breakfast at Windjammer again, then we decided to check out the pools first thing. We traded our towels for new ones, and made our way outside. It was windy! And a little chilly! Our youngest was having fun running around terrorizing anyone he could find, our middle child wasn’t interested in the pool, and the oldest couldn’t stop vibrating because she wanted to get in so bad. I joined her in the “tornado” pool for a bit, doing laps and chasing her around. We then all migrated inside to the indoor pool which was a bit warmer and calmer. Everyone made their way to the wading pool, and had a good time splashing around. We did get a talking-to by staff that our youngest wasn’t allowed in any of indoor pools due to his swim diaper. When we asked “Well, what pool CAN he use?”, we were directed to the “swim diaper pool” outside in the H20 Zone, next to the “wave pool”. 

Guys. It’s a 10-foot diameter circle with a single water feature. This is great for crawlers or someone learning to walk, but for it to be the ONLY pool a 2-year old can use is kinda lame. I completely understand the need to “contain the poo”, but it’s 70 degrees outside, windy, and the water’s a bit tepid. Plus, the “wave pool” is closed, so to play here means splitting up the family because this isn’t big enough for all of us. I don’t understand the wading pool in the indoor area if it can’t be used by the kind of kids that wading pools are designed for? A fellow live blogger sent over photos of the swim diaper area on Oasis, and it’s much larger, has a water slide, etc. This was one thing that got my wife real worked up and will be a mention in the survey. 

 

So I hesitate to post this, since I fear it makes me sound like an old curmudgeon (which isn't my intent) but hopefully it's not that bad.

My kids are older... a teen and an almost-teen.  I've been traveling via cruise ship with them for 14 years.  My youngest finished her second cruise before she turned age 2.

I would have killed for a "swim diaper pool" on a ship back then.  There was nothing.  Crazy people on "cruise critic" would post about bringing along a tiny inflatable pool so their kid could play in some water.  I'm still not clear on what you were supposed to do with the water once they kid was finished playing.

QM2 had an an area that, I think, i was supposed to be one.  But there was still a sign that basically said no swim diapers/potty trained kids only.  I kinda think that maybe someone screwed up the design and it used the same 'system' as the main pool nearby, but that is just a guess.

Anthem is one of the few ships (other than QM2) that has an indoor pool that kids are allowed to use.  Some ships have no indoor pool at all -- others, it's limited to 16+ (or 18+).  I was so excited when I realized we were going to have a ship sailing from NJ that had an indoor pool my kids could use.

However, i'm sure "survey comments" are one of the reasons ships now kids in swim diapers have any areas in which to play in water... and indoor pools that kids can use—so, yeah, it's probably worth mentioning in the survey.  And I do totally get your annoyance about the situation.  If cruise lines want families with young children on their ships, it's  something they need to continue to make progress on.

19 hours ago, MattG said:

 

- Staff has been great. Main Dining Room last night was a little slow on service, not sure if that’s the norm or just day 1 jitters. 

 

Yeah, that is pretty normal for a cruise... Day 1 MDR is a bit of a mess.  I've pretty much noticed that on every cruise, on multiple cruise lines.  Not entirely sure why that is.

Gift cards for carnival brands are way more useful.  Disney too - their gift cards can be used for anything Disney. 
 

Can you return it?

45 minutes ago, XtremeGK said:

Yikes. Where in CA? I'm a little bit surprised because there's a good bit of competition on the NYC-CA routes (especially EWR and JFK).

I live in NJ and find domestic flights out of EWR to generally be somewhat more expensive compared to LGA.  UA sort of has a monopoly there, so they can charge whatever they want.

On 11/24/2021 at 4:38 AM, Cruise2021 said:

 

I find it incredibly wrong for me to have to wait at guest services to correct the amount that should be left 

 

Obviously this means you should lower your tip to 15% to make up for this lack of service. 

4 hours ago, MattG said:

Kids schedule, you say? I would love to know where I can find this elusive, magical schedule…

I have a copy of the teen club schedules from Oasis this past October, but unfortunately I didn't get copies for Adventure Ocean, as my kids are older then yours.

And any copies I do have are on the older side of things, from a few years ago, so they are likely not relevant in the current covid climate.  Maybe Matt has some.

4 hours ago, MattG said:

I 100% acknowledge things are different during COVID, especially around the cruise population still unvaccinated. I also know the cruise industry is under hyper-scrutiny and is being super conservative so as not to agitate the CDC and regress in any policies. 
 

My post was a concern about the conspicuous absence of a LOT of family-oriented programming. 

 

Yes, I do agree with you. But there is a conspicuous absence right now of a lot of programming for all age groups.... e.g. Quest, Oasis class garden tours, C&A party for anyone under diamond plus, etc.

I was just trying to point out that if Adventure Ocean is severely limiting occupancy right now due to Covid, it's unlikely they are going to run "open house" events in that space.

• Family Storytime with an Elf
• Family Holiday Ornaments

These two are special holiday events, maybe they will start doing them after Thanksgiving?  I'm not sure when they normally start doing these.

• Family Muffalo Potato
• Family Science
• Family Talent Show

These were special Ocean Adventure activities that were opened up to parents also participating.  You would seem them listed in both the kids schedule and the normal schedule.  They would also run other sessions for kids only, and you would only see them on the kids schedule.  It's quite possible that due to covid, they are trying to limit the amount of people participating in the kids club right now.

Short answer -- things are different now due to COVID.  Hopefully things open more more next year.

From the NYTimes:

Last week, the chief executive officer of Royal Caribbean, Richard Fain, said he expects an update on vaccine protocols for children soon, but no changes have been announced yet.

“I think we’re moving in the direction where every cruise will have 100 percent of the crew vaccinated and 95 or more percent of the guests,” he said at a media event on board Odyssey of the Seas, a cruise ship owned by Royal Caribbean.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/travel/disney-cruise-vaccine-mandate.html

On 11/12/2021 at 7:43 PM, SummerRose said:

Interesting.  I wonder what the engineering dynamics are behind that??

I don't think it's anything other than the fact that water is heavy, and heavy on the top deck of the ship can be a problem.  Don't want the ship to capsize.  

When they added more decks to QE2 they had to use aluminum, to cut down on weight.

The "story behind" the AquaDuck water coaster on Disney Dream is that they wanted to do a lazy river on the ship, and then they realized that much weight was going to be a problem.  So they made a water coaster instead.

I do know there is a Vegan menu that is now available onboard, if that could be an option.  I'm not Vegan, but I do know a family that is, and they really enjoyed the Vegan MDR menu on their cruise (right before the COVID shutdown).

I was so paranoid that my kids were going to lose their vaccination cards as we all marched though the 15 checkpoints in Bayonne a couple of weeks ago...  I think I need to look into one of these solutions for my December cruise.

Anyone notice that Royal now has a song/video added to the onboard rotation, similar to Wash Your Hands?  It explains that in order to continue going on cruises, you need to social distance... apparently you "gotta stay apart to be together..."

It's certainly not as catchy as Wash Your Hands.

1 hour ago, TexDog said:

 

I learned my lesson, tho. Shoulda done whatever necessary to download the pics while still on the ship.

There doesn't seem to be a very good way to download them on the ship.  At least on an iPhone.  You just get a webpage and you have to click on every single photo, download it, and then hit save to photos.  So you would need to do this 50 or 100 times, depending on the package.  It's not the speediest website either.

I was still charged $25/day when I disembarked Oasis on 10/31. 

1 hour ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

AAA has "locations" ?  I've been a AAA member for over 25 years and had no idea that they even had any office locations !  LOL

You missed out -- before GPS (and before mapquest.com) you could go there and ask for a "TripTik", and someone would make you a little binder of maps for a custom driving route for your road trip.  They would use a highlighter to show the route.

I recall using one of this when I was a kid in the late 80's to direct my mother on our driving trip to Lancaster PA.  Was kinda nifty.

It's awful you had to deal with something like this; it's really unacceptable.

I'd give it a few days, and if you do want to escalate it up, you could write a concise email to Michael Bayley, and someone from exec relations would likely get back to you about it.  I've complained about much lesser things, and gotten responses.

But I also agree that you are likely to get better service, in general, if you find a *good* TA for future bookings.  And you're likely to get better answers to most of your questions if you post them on message boards like this one.

I hope you have an awesome time on your B2B cruise on Jewel in December!

9 hours ago, BrianB said:

Oct 17…Oasis of the Seas…7 night from Port Liberty;  3147.

So about 56% capacity (assuming double occupancy is 100%)

4 minutes ago, AlmondFarmer said:

Maybe missing the ship is why Super Mario spends so much time on Royal Caribbean ships.

His parents left in him in the Song of Norway kids club in 1971 to hit the bars in port. They missed the ship and ever since Mario has been traveling from ship to ship looking for them. 
 

Can anyone confirm or refute this theory?

Fun theory, but I doubt that there was either a dedicated kids club area or that the children's program actually ran during port days on Song of Norway in 1971.  Based on my experiences on Norwegian Caribbean Line in the mid 1980's, the kids program was likely run on sea days, out on one of the open decks.

Dedicated kids club rooms would likely have only been found on larger ocean liners, in earlier decades.

4 hours ago, Big Red said:

Thanks for all the response!  This really helps me, as far looking into new watch makes on the cruise and St. Thomas shopping.  

I was tempted to look for the new version of the speedmaster professional in st thomas a month ago, but it seemed like most of the stores in the port area were closed.  I might have had better luck downtown. 

4 hours ago, Dicey said:

if i remember correctly they only carry pre-owned rolex and omegas. 

I’ve seen new omegas, at least on anthem. But only preowned rolexes, and no stainless sports models. A handful of datejusts, mostly.