Andrew72681

I’d avoid the area below a pool deck. Below the windjammer won’t usually be a problem till later in the morning, but below the pool deck means chairs getting moved for cleaning at 5am.

Thanks for the tip @Matt. Was able to reprice our 2020 Oasis Sailing I had just booked last night. Pricing went down $132 and added 200 of onboard credit. I’ll always take 332 dollars for two minutes of work.

Ha. Was doing the same math last week. Hadn’t been on a Royal Caribbean cruise before December and trying to figure out how long it would take to get to diamond. Harmony(14) and navigator(6) in May will get me to 20. Oasis for late 2020 will get me to 34. So after that would be platinum and “only” 56 points from Diamond, which would be 4 7 day cruises in a suite. So easily by 2022 could be diamond. Made Lifetime platinum with Marriott in 6 years so this should be a simple one.

Just wish harmony or symphony was showing the same rates. No such luck on those.

Noticed while playing with reservations for late 2020 on Oasis Class ships, that Oasis and sometimes Allure, are showing Grand Suite 2bedrooms at the same price as the Grand Suite 1bedroom. While it’s not cheap, considering it’s a lot of space, and some dates still have Deck 12 rooms (with a private hot tub)it’s not a terrible deal. Phone agent didn’t believe me when I told her which rooms I was looking at and that they were the same. @Lovetocruise2002 Is probably all over those rooms.

My advice would be to start with the list of things that are found only on Oasis or Quantum class ships and if you can live without those you know you can go smaller. So if it’s a Flowrider you can’t live without you know what ships you are limited to. Not having Water slides would be a dealbreaker for us as our daughter seems to spend half her days on them. So when it came time to book a May short cruise, Navigator was an easy choice. I still have friends though that say I won’t like it as it’s not as smooth a ride As Harmony of the Seas was.

That would be my biggest concern as well. If traveling with just a birth certificate there’s almost no way I’d get off at a port and enter a foreign country. You’d be tempting fate way too much. Just imagine you stub your toe and need medical attention in the Bahamas and couldn’t get back in time.

I noticed when we were in Falmouth a very high number of visitors badges around the ship. Would appear that a large number of crew is from that area and they allow them onboard to visit for the day. So there’s already a system in place to account for comings and goings of non passengers. It also meant lots of non passenger kids in the pools on Harmony that afternoon.

My wife and daughter did the sushi class on Harmony on a sea day. They both loved it and it’s normally fairly early in the day. They did theirs at 10:30am. They were very accommodating when we mentioned that raw fish wasn’t in the plans for our 8 year old. They brought out other pieces of fish and she still talks about it all the time.

They have to be made once onboard. They’ll make a courtesy reservation for day one but even that can be changed. When you enter on Harmony just make a right and they had a table setup in one of the dining rooms. Look for the table setup with al of the specialty dining menus.

When we were on December the Sports pool (to your left after exiting the aft elevators) was marked as adults only with a big red sign. We didn’t see it on embarkation afternoon and was asked to take our daughter to one of the other pools

Outside of the one pool that is adults only they’re pretty much the same. On our December sailing we were able to get chairs pretty easy. The chairs near the water slide exits seemed to get a bit more noisey as people were running around. if I remember when I get home I’ll attach some of the pictures. Tried to from a plane but they kept failing.

It’s usually pretty easy to get an Uber there. Just walk to the middle inner curb. It’ll be about 25 dollars to the port.

I’ll definitely be sure to cover it when I do a live blog in May.

I think @Matt said it great on today’s podcast. It’s like buying a VIP package. If I got to a concert in General Admission seats, I don’t take it out on the person that bought backstage passes.

Definitely with you on the flowrider. Even if you and four others shared the private flowrider session that would still work out to 70 dollars a person. So now just to hope that it’s older couples buying The Key on my sailing who don’t want to use their early hours on the Flowrider

Yeah. I wasn’t expecting the vitriol. Especially with a topic that specifically spelled out it was about The Key

Yes, Vegas has made their decision and now an average resort fee is around forty dollars. It includes all things that were included before (pool,gym, etc)

Am thinking the original poster meant the Panoramic Ocean View Suites. The ones that don’t feature a balcony. They always seemed interesting for the space, but can’t get the family to go without a balcony.

My Vegas stay last week at Mandalay Bay was “Free” and by free I mean they didn’t charge me for the room but then charged me $41.95 a day for resort fee? And that WiFi certainly was not worth 42 bucks a day. And definitely no one using the pool when it was 35 and snowing in Vegas. It did make for cool views though on the way out of town.

I learned a long time ago about breaking things down to the obscenely small. So instead of my original point of 6 dollars per day of questionable value, we can look at it as twenty five cents per hour. Would I pay twenty five cents an hour for priority seats, disembark, etc.. yeah probably. Would be an even easier decision if we weren’t in a Junior suite Andrew I didn’t have MGM Mlife status.

Is it really nickel and diming if these things were never included? When my upgrades don’t clear on a flight I don’t get upset at the guy who paid the extra cost for early boarding, first class seat, etc..

Went ahead and did it while it was 19.99. Too many people mentioning it went up to 24.99 for them. The way I figure it, when you back out the WiFi and lunch at chops, I’m basically paying about 6 dollars per day per person. Even if it’s just a flowrider with a couple of people that’ll be worth it for my daughter.

I’m not sure any of this is something that was included, especially at the Non-star class levels. It’s more of an a la carte program. WiFi, specialty lunch, etc.. have always had costs. Carnival’s faster to the fun program is 54.99 a person on a three night cruise, and is really just earlier access on and off with no real tangible benefits.

Also, does anyone know where The Key falls in boarding area. We are in a junior suite and even without would get priority embarkation as a result of my MGM Mlife status. Does the Key fall before or after suites?