Hoski

Glad I found this post - traveling to Bermuda in June, family of six.  There goes $240. 🙄

I had to pay for a NZeTA to travel to New Zealand.  It was ~ $40 USD.  
Incredible trip, good use of $40.   

We’re thinking about Bermuda for next year.  While I agree it’s a tourism tax, I don’t think it will prohibit us from going. We’re numb to being nickel and dimed, it’s par for the course.  Tolls on bridges and tunnels, hotel tax, paid WiFi on ships, paid parking, it goes on and on. You wanna play, you gotta pay.

Yes I can attest that the cruise port is in the nicer part of town. A number of historic sites, restaurants, and shops you can walk to. Lots of beautiful buildings too. There are a few rougher areas so I wouldn’t walk for miles. 

I fail to see whats so funny. Urban pollution has long been a problem in Haiti, which produced more than 2 million metric tons of waste in 2015, according to data from the World Bank. The same report found that Port-au-Prince collects just 12% of its solid waste, one of the lowest rates in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yes there is some pollution coming in through oceans currents, but Haiti has a HUGE problem.  Research it instead of laughing about it. 

https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2022/04/15/royal-caribbean-releases-cruise-ship-health-protocols-us-sailings-june-30-2022

Don't pay for the Kits, get them free from the Government.  Chances are they will be the ihealth kind which can be done online.  It does cost about $20.00 to do the online proctored part of the test.  But, if there is a change to the pre-cruise requirement before you cruise, your not out a dime.  If you haven't got one yet, you will be eligible to get up to 8 of them.
https://www.covid.gov/tests

Arawak Cay has the Fish Fry area which is tons of vendors with authentic food.  It's an easy walk (directions wise) but probably would take 30 mins.  Should be a cheap cab ride right from the port.
 

We connected with an ATV company and had a 6-hour tour of the island... it was great!  Splash in the Sun was the company.

I told my husband the same thing.

It's raining in Johnstown today but we are not flooding again.  Some Johnstown folks will be on next week but hoping not floods.

Better a leak from the top of the ship than the bottom of the ship, am I right?
Seriously though, accidents happen and it looks like the staff were on top of it. I'm sure they got everything cleaned up quickly, and it appears no one was hurt and there wasn't any major damage. 

I saw pooling of water but he is correct not all sprinklers on Promenade activated. I was able to walk from Spotlight Karoake to nearest elavators on that side and did not get wet. Middle seemed to get hit hardest but not the Johnstown flood.

"Flooding" is a litte click baity.  
The sprinklers activated in a central section of the promenade.  The floor was wet but there was not torrents of water "flooding" the ship.  
The sprinklers produce a heavy mist.  They put out a good bit of water.  Yes things were wet but it was well short of a flooding event.  The promenade has since reopened.  
 

Whoa!
That's gonna be an interesting story for her first trip!
 
Quick someone print new inaugural merch! "#WonderPromenadePool2022

Putting those $25 blue towels to good use!

Agree 100% with these sentiments.  The Cruise Planner definitely doesn't do a fantastic job covering the excursions.  Luckily you can still get the "old school" descriptions, it just takes a little extra leg work.  If you go to https://www.royalcaribbean.com/beforeyouboard/shoreExcursions/downloadBrochure/ , you can get more thorough descriptions for the items listed in the CP.  The downloaded brochure shows all of the potential shore excursions available on your itinerary, so I check the CP for availability first, then look to the brochure to help me make final decisions.

When we started cruising many years ago with Royal, the excursions in the cruise planner had a LOT of info. Like how long the transportation from the ship to the actual excursion area and return was, how long you would be on the excursion site and (most importantly) what other previous cruisers thought of this particular excursion. Boy how things have changed over the years. Now it's basically a crap shoot. No longer does the cruise planner offer total transportation time, how long on the actual excursion nor any previous cruiser comments (good or bad). What I find disturbing is the highlight of the excursion is nothing more than a watered down of description of the excursion. OK, so Royal is trying to cut back on costs, save money, etc...I get it. But, do they still offer post excursion surveys? It's been a few years since we cruised, as for many here and I remember they used to. Would like to hear what you all think. Thanks 😎

If you are able to visit St. Kitts, please take a moment to visit Captain Jack's Treasure Chest in the port area.  It's your typical souvenir shop, but the owner of the store has excellent customer service.  When we were there back in December, we were not able to roam town freely after our excursion, so we were unable to visit the post office and mail our postcard to our selves home.  We decided to buy the post card at Captain Jack's, but he had no stamps available to get it to the US.  He then offered to let us pay him for the stamp and he would get the stamp and mail it for us!  This was back on November 13, 2021.  That postcard arrived in the mail yesterday, January 19, 2022.  Not sure when he actually mailed it, but the postmark is from January 2022. 
 
It's now my personal mission to get the word out about this shop.  
 

Harmony did officially dock at Labadee - so it looks like it's back up and running!

$18 drink package intern strikes again! 😂

😮  First, this is about the vendor beach representative, not Royal, not the off-ship staff, nor the transportation provider.  It is about the RUDE, INSULTING, and MENACING on site operator at Smith Bay.  Yesterday our party of four went on this excursion and upon arrival at the beach a man identifying himself as Kareem gave an orientation highlighted with pointing out the large tip jar.  The experience went downhill from there.  We waited  20 minutes for Kareem to bring lounges, yelling at one of the ladies who went to asked for promised chairs.  This was followed by him throwing three chairs down and again yelling that we had asked for three when there were four of us.  Finally he returned with a fourth chair, again throwing it down with more yelling.
After stewing about how bad the experience was, we decided to get a taxi (at our expense) back to the ship.  On learning that we wanted to leave, Kareem approached us yelling and swearing.  Yelling and becoming physically menacing, I told him twice to back off and that I wasn’t going to argue with him.  All we wanted was for them to call us a taxi.  Instead, Kareem , still yelling, said he was not going call a taxi and called his boss instead.  Continuing to yell, calling us crazy, I walked away from him and asked that the three ladies in our group to start videoing him.  At that point a taxi appeared by coincidence and we climbed in, leaving Kareem still yelling at us.
Arriving back at the Oasis, we immediately sought out the ship Excursion Manager and reported our experience.  Aiya, the Excursion Manager, took down our complaint and explained that she  would initiate an incident report through their contracting process, but didn’t know the outcome.  However, she provided us with a full refund for the excursion.
Bottom line, I recommend that cruisers going to St. Thomas avoid the Secret Sands/ Smith Bay beach excursion and the possibility of encountering this out of control employee.
 

A brand new excursion package showed up on my cruise planner this morning, presumably created specially in response to the requirement that all guests, vaccinated or not, can only go ashore in Italy on a ship-sponsored excursion.
The new package is priced at $199 for adults and $194 for children and includes three excursions, one in each of the Italian ports of call.
The excursions are: Pisa City Sights (duration 4 and a half hours), priced individually at $99; Rome City Sights (duration 5 hours), priced individually at $119; and Naples City Sights (duration 3 hours), priced individually at $59.75 for adults and $49.75 for children.
They all include some sightseeing from some form of transport (coach/trolley car/river boat), some walk-abouts and some snack/shopping stops.

Thank you all very much for these posts and suggestions. The RT-LAMP test seems to be the best option for us, although I'm still bitter about the additional unexpected cost. 

You are not forced to pay them for the test.  You HAVE choices including free tests available in the US with 3rd parties or an infinite number of paid tests available for PCR or NAAT on a rapid basis.  In the US you might as well ask where you can get a car wash.  Testing sites are all over the place and now that Xmas is over the demand has fallen off sharply.
You have choices.