Andrew72681

26 minutes ago, Razerbkfan said:

Global Entry is a process that allows you to register with the TSA.  It was provide you precheck status automatically on all of your flights.  I think the cost is around $75 per person.  You must have a passport and there are only so many locations that you can go to.  For example there are only 2 in our state and you have to make an appointment, usually about 6 weeks out.  The application process is online but you have to complete at a registered site with an in person interview.  I think it is good for 5 years.  We think it's a benefit if you fly a couple of times a year.  Just getting to be in the precheck lines and not having to take your shoes off is worth it to us.

Mobile Passport is a phone app mananaged by US Customs.  You basically enter all of the information from your passport and answer the standard entry questions that immigration will ask you.  You also upload a phone of yourself.  You then show your phone along with your passport when your enter the port.  Our experience has been that you get to go to a fast line in the port if you have the app loaded.  Another benefit is you can load multiple people traveling with you.  So for my spouse and I we only need it on one phone.

Both have good websites that can answer your questions.

Hope this helps.

To correct a little bit. Global entry is not through the TSA, it’s through customs and border patrol. It’s good for five years and also includes TSA precheck. And it is 99 dollars for the five year period. Precheck is only good for travel within or in some cases departing the US, while global entry as the name implies, is for when you are returning to the country. Also, with precheck at airports, children can come along in the line, but with global entry each member of the party regardless of age needs to have a global entry number. 

2 hours ago, 2Beeze said:

My understanding is that port Everglades (Ft. Lauderdale) has Global Entry, but that no cruise ports have TSA pre-check at this point. We have CLEAR and pre-check; the latter expires next year and I dread going through that process again (we need a half day off for it due to our location). This time we’re going to get global entry, it’s not even $20 more so it makes sense.

I just wish they’d add clear to more spots at FLL. Right now where southwest goes out of in terminal 1 you can’t use precheck if you use clear. Which seems to defeat the purpose, I’m looking to speed through, not wait longer and have to take off shoes and everything out of my bag. 

And on the global entry side, anyone who is thinking about precheck should go all the way to global entry. Think of it as three dollars a year that could save you nearly an hour sometimes. 

Just now, BandJ said:

That make sense. Not sure if it's just me but I find some of the info on RC's website a little confusing so thanks for the welcome and reply.

That’s always true, and that’s if it works. Every now and then the cruise planner decides to take a time warp back to their old design architecture. @Matt has some great articles in the archives about calculating whether or not you’re getting your money’s worth with the drink packages. 

56 minutes ago, Linda216 said:

@Andrew72681 so for $40 (w the special you’re talking about) I can go to two specialty dinners and order a full meal at two places. And that’s all I pay? What do they charge for a kids meal? 

As @Lovetocruise2002 mentioned it’s usually 10 per child. We’ve had times where they charged it and times when they didn’t charge us for our daughter at all. There’s also varying data points of whether you get charged when they order off the kids menu or the adult one. Our eight year old isn’t a big fan of kids menu food. The one time she did was at chops where she ordered the chicken, and a half chicken showed up for an eight year old. 

Check in your cruise planner and in the dining options you’ll look for BOGO dining. 

24 minutes ago, twangster said:

Royal is not about to add self service laundry or steaming, IMO.  

I hear you on the water consumption and agree.  

The flip side is that pressing services are not unreasonable.  $7 for a shirt and long pants.  A dress is $6.50.   

I guess their theory is... you are on vacation.  Who wants to do laundry type things on vacation? 

 

 

Other times when we’ve used the laundry services items come back damaged. They seem to wash everything on the “as hot as the surface of the sun” setting. I’m not looking to do laundry on vacation, but getting the wrinkles out of a suit before heading to get the countless number of pictures taken each night would be nice. 

6 hours ago, Traveler said:

There are also many sites which teach you how to create such liquid , which is very easy.

In the worse case scenario, there is always possibility to  hang the shirt in the shower , open the hot water and let the steam do it works , its not very ecological , but works. I wish RC would have iron room on every deck.

Maybe on Oasis 6 we can get them to install those steaming cabinets that you can fit between a washer and dryer at home. Always seems like such a waste of water to steam the wrinkles out on a ship where water is limited, but as I tell my wife “they forced us to do this” 

27 minutes ago, Hagar said:

I like the joke made by a few of the Captain's at the "top tier" events;

Ultimately the largest ship will just be anchored in the Caribbean and the passengers will be brought to it ;>)

It’s not that far from Port Everglades to the Bahamas. Just have a ship big enough to stretch between the two.  

On 3/18/2019 at 8:00 PM, Linda216 said:

Just starting to learn about dining and drink packages and my heads spinning!

If I don’t want to buy a dining package, is it still $30 for me to have dinner at Jamie’s Italian? 

If you’re just looking to dip your toes into the specialty dining world, I’d recommend the BOGO 2 night special. It’s usually 40 dollars but gets you 2 specialty dining restaurants. One of them has to be used on the first night, but gives you a chance to try them out at a reduced cost. Just be sure that once you get on board you head to make your reservations. Jamie’s is great, for our navigator cruise in May my eight year old daughter asked if our three dinners could be Jamie’s, Jamie’s, and Jamie’s. 

Most of the time just as in hotel rooms the port is inaccessible, blocked, or under a software lock. 

2 hours ago, DaArsonist said:

I’m wondering the same thing my nephew is wanting to bring his PlayStation video game to play during late evenings. Is it possible to connect it to the TV

Thanks for bringing up that question. My wife and I were just asking the same thing. Not sure if I’d rather have more people with the Key on our May Sailing to where Jamie’s is on offer, or less people as it means the exclusive times will be less busy at the activities. 

 I’m not sure what type of room you are in, our junior suite on Deck 8 had a full size tub/shower. 

4 hours ago, Vancity Cruiser said:

So there would be less public space per passenger. This is why Royal is my preferred cruise line, they seem to have much more public space than other lines.

Yeah. Was looking up stats on Norwegian Encore (we’re on one of the first sailings in December) and it has a passenger to space ratio of 34.2, and “only” holds 4K people. Harmony, which holds 6k has more space per person at 35.9. 

We started taking our daughter on cruises when she was 7 months and again around 18 months and she’s always loved them. New things to see, and best of all the crew all seem to love a happy baby. So many of them have children back at home, that they’d do special things for Addie. Every night in the MDR they’d bring freshly made baby food and other treats. We never subscribed to the “babies schedule” mantra so Addie was always flexible with heading ashore and nap times. She even got her first tooth on a cruise  

Also, as many will mention, I’m a big fan of the plastic luggage tag covers you can purchase from Amazon or from @CruiseHabit Ric. Will keep you from rushing on embarkation morning trying to borrow a hotel stapler and hoping that they don’t fall off. 

13 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

We put luggage tags on our carry-ones b/c half the time Dan has no idea what our cabin number is !

Im always good with the number, but being able to find it is a different story. Being directionally challenged means using lots of signs on board trying to find things. 

Were planning on using them on our Navigator sailing even though all we’ll have it carry on bags and using The Key. Hopefully it’ll be an extra layer of making sure they don’t get lost. 

7 hours ago, nrgMike said:

Hi. 

I'm going on a cruise in October but not sure if I'm flying in to fort Lauderdale or Miami. I know there are things to see in Miami but is there anything to explore in the Ft Lauderdale area. I'll probably have some time when I return from the cruise on a Friday because I plan on flying back at night. Let me know.

 

 

Thanks

Is your cruise going out of Port Everglades or Port Miami? A lot of which one you decide to fly into will be based on that.  Otherwise you’re looking at an ~80 Uber ride each way. Also, another consideration is airlines. If you’re an American flier, MIA is your only choice. If like me, you spend a lot of your year on Southwest, FLL is your choice as Southwest doesn’t fly into Miami. 

All that Genie time made you sleepy. 

1 hour ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

All updated up to this point.  Happy cruising everyone! 

Looks like my Oasis cruise got out in November of 2019 instead of November of 2020 on the master list. 

On 3/15/2019 at 11:46 PM, Thetechie said:

Cruise day is here!! I actually slept quite well last night, and got up about 7am to start getting ready. 

We decided to get a professional car service rather than an Uber/Lyft, as we wanted all four of us together, and had quite a bit of luggage between us all. We had some experience with Lyft and UberXL while in Miami, and it was kind of a crapshoot on weather we would have gotten a fun size SUV or not. Anyhow, we were super happy with our ride in an Escalade EXT, and had it packed full! Our driver was originally from Cuba, and was hilarious. 

We arrived to the port about 10:10am, and were surprised to see tons of people still waiting for shuttles from getting off the ship, come to find out, they had a customs delay. 

We have The Key for this sailing, and there wasn’t much (if any) signage, and the crew was a little iffy on what they knew about it. We ended up getting in line with the Diamond and up, and there we waited... They finally started boarding about 12:15-12:30, and let me tell you what, people were not happy! Not going to let it spoil it for us though!

We got on board, and the theater was right there to drop off our carry on bags. Such a nice thing! They were doing a photo shoot while we dropped our bags. 

We dropped our bags and headed straight to Chop’s for our lunch, which was wonderful! First drink on the ship was a lava flow.

After lunch, we made our reservations for dining the next couple nights (we bought the BOGO dining package) and headed to our rooms. Our carry on bags were there, and our checked bags showed up shortly thereafter. 

Looking around our room, I didn’t see any paper work for our internet codes or acces, and no paper for The Key. I went to guest services and they said they would send things up. So we went exploring for a bit. A couple hours later, we came back and still no paperwork, so I called down. The agent that answered the phone told me how to access the VOOM, and apparently they don’t use codes anymore. Would have been nice for the first person to tell me that, oh well. And here is is 11:30 and I still don’t have any paperwork about our Key program and times for things. 

 

While waiting for dinner, we were walking around, and noticed no one at the Rock Wall, so I decided to give it a shot, come to find out, we were there while it was Key-only time. Nice how that worked out! So I suited up and got to the top!

Dinner tonight was Jamie’s and was amazing!! We hit the comedy show after and are now in the room for the night. 

We made good use on our drink package and have got our “break even point” and then some for this day!

Amazing sunset from the ship, and a Royal Zombie in hand. This whole cruising thing is pretty nice!

Thats a lot of Kombucha for a week long cruise. Hoping to counterbalance all that drinking?

Navigator 5/17/19

Oasis 11/8/20

56 minutes ago, rtread said:

This is what we will probably do. We were just concerned about our dress-em-up clothes getting abused if we checked them. Sounds like it is the best alternative. Thanks.

Also, if it’s timing you’re worried about (clothes being back in time for dinner the first night) Keep in mind that if you purchase The Key, it includes the ability to drop off your carry on bags and have them delivered to your room. 

2 hours ago, tonyfsu21 said:

Also, important to note after seeing where they are w/ perfect day construction at this point it looks like May is a pipe dream. As others have said, RC has done a good job keeping things somewhat normal on the island even with the massive construction project in full swing. You would think there would be excessive noise but I didn’t notice much. They were pouring cassion foundations for the end of the pier section while we were docked.

I’m holding out hope for our 5/17 sailing on Navigator. Nassau carries no weight as a port for us, so without the perfect day stuff open we’d have just been better off flying to grand cayman or Aruba for the weekend. 

2 minutes ago, rtread said:

What about a garment bag for hanging clothes?

I’ve seen people handing full size suitcases before rooms are ready. Just be ready for lots of looks as you inevitably take up extra space in the windjammer. 

35 minutes ago, Sh2738 said:

Has anyone had any experience in doing Habachi with people who don’t eat meat or seafood? Thanks 

While not part of our party, there was another person at the table who didn’t eat meat, they stuck to the fried rice and vegetables. It’s really more of an issue of avoidance or allergy. If you’re allergic, it’s a bigger issues as the grill is a big co-mingled space.