Dan Curtis

We have over packing down to an artform. We are waiting for shuttle to take us to airport. Flight leaves at 4:30. Little M is beyond excited.

Another vote for a passport. Having a passport is the best practice for travel in general.

Recommend a passport. If for some reason you miss getting back on the ship at a port of call, you are going to need a passport to get back out of that country.

Taking our grandson on his first cruise next month.  Although we COULD just use his BC, we opted to get him a passport.  I also have the Royal Caribbean form signed  by his mom and notarized as we are taking him alone.  Thinking I will also take his BC. Might be overkill but I am a worrier by nature.

Thanks...I can never remember that port

Martinique is now requiring Passports.

The rules aren't different for kids. Certified birth certificates are fine, but we got our kids passports just in case we got stuck somewhere. If something were to happen and you had to fly home from an island, the kids would need passports. 

Some Caribbean ports are now requiring passports so you need to check.  But with that being said, you don't need to have a passport on closed loop cruises but it is highly recommended to have it in case of issues that may arise when outside the country.  We currently only have and use BC's for all my kids under 18.  

Some awesome pics, thanks for sharing.

The Effectors
The second unique show to Spectrum is The Effectors. It plays in the Royal Theater for two shows on one night each cruise. Although it’s also a bit light on plot, it has a fun comic book vibe. It’s easy to see the good guys from the bad guys and the special effects are FANTASTIC. It’s a must-see if you end up sailing on this ship. We missed it our first leg (again due to high seas), but used our magic gold SeaPass cards to score perfect seats on Day 10.
Hard to photograph due to the low light, here’s a tiny sample of what you’ll see:





 

Day 10 - Chan May, Vietnam
This was the first day we’ve had to set an alarm — waaa!

The ship docked before 7:30am, which was when we met for our shore excursion.

We were headed to Hoi An, a historic trading town with Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese influences. We knew in advance we had a long bus ride, so we were emotionally prepared for the hour and 45 minutes drive. Our tour guide was excellent and our bus driver competent. You could tell almost immediately that Vietnam has been in the tourism business for about a decade longer than the two new Philippines ports we were in last week.
Hoi An was an important temporary trading post for a hundred years or more until 1610 when the Japanese decided they should just set up permanent camp in the location. The Chinese soon joined them and the town of Hoi An what born. Currently the “old town” portion of the city is a UNESCO World Heritage site and there are restrictions on building or remodeling in the area. We saw several historic sites, had a fantastic lunch, and then had a bit of free time to roam the area. 
Japanese bridge circa 1600:

Scenes about town:






Incense spirals that will burn for a month:

The theme of the trip — weddings!

Free time found us in a cafe trying local tea and coffee and doing some people watching:

See the next post for food pics from lunch!
We were actually back on time to the ship so that we could enjoy a glass of wine at sail away - woohoo!

We saw The Effectors at 7:30pm. Whole separate post on that show! Stand by!
We failed to make a dinner reservation ahead of time for New Years’ Eve — the problem with normally being #TeamMDR ? This meant we had to wait until 8:30pm to eat in Gold dining. Ah well, it helped us stay up late! #caffeineisyourfriend
New Years’ menu:

New Years’ celebration options, choices for everyone:

 
 

SeaPlex, etc
I appreciated the sport activity areas on this ship. I know other larger ships have similar spaces, but for me this was new!






 

Only a couple?  I think I asked for a couple of couples.  My record is 8 tails.  The waiter stopped serving them one at a time with all the sides and fancy plating.  He just brought out 3-4 at a time. LOL

Just got out of work. I’m officially on vacation. We are just driving 2 1/2 hours tonight. When we booked we weren’t sure how weather would be to get out of upstate NY. Hubby has bad back so breaking trip up is better for him. 

You should have lobster night on a 7 night cruise, usually on formal nigh or what ever they are calling it now. Usually also,have prime rib on the same night, the lobster tails are not huge, but don't be shy to ask for a couple. Enjoy.

Your wish is my command — here are the photos that had not yet made it into the blog!
Caramel Apple Blossom, Consecutive Cruiser Lunch

Chocolate Lava Cake, Gold dining

Dover Sole, Gold dining

Shrimp Cocktail, Gold dining

Baked Eggplant, Consecutive Cruiser lunch

Spicy Prawns, Silver dining

Crab Cake, Silver dining

Vegetable Tempura, Main dining room

Black Cod, Gold dining

Creme Brûlée, Gold dining (sorry about the missing bit!)

French Onion soup, Gold dining (not very photogenic, but delicious!)

Holiday Ham, Gold dining 

Oslo Bucco, Gold dining

Spice Cake with Rum Sauce, Gold dining

White and Dark Chocolate Mousse, Gold dining

 

Just wanted to say Happy New Year to the RCI Blog Community!

What a great resource we have here of like minded cruisers that offer up great advice
and information to everyone.  Thank you to Matt and his team for all they do to keep
all RCI cruise information relevant.

Hope to see some of you on a cruise this year in 2020!  Here's to a Great Year Ahead

Michelle

We start trip at 2 o’clock after work on 12/31. Will met daughter and granddaughter on January 1 and fly from Baltimore on January 2. As you can see I’m beyond excited. YOLO has special meaning to me. I have been in remission for 2 years.

Spend 40K on cruises to get a free $15 towel. Makes sense.

Ilocos pt. 2
As promised, real photos!
Laoag Cathedral (St William’s Cathedral), built 1612:


Sinking Bell Tower, built 1612, sinks 1” per year:

Ilocos Norte Capital building, dressed for Christmas:

Moto-taxis, hold 2 passengers in the side car and one sitting side-saddle behind the driver:

Paoay Church, built 1694:


The only shot we got of the inside:

Because wedding!

 

Day 5 - Ilocos
Today started in Silver dining for breakfast, and then back to the cabin to slather on the sunscreen before our full day shore excursion in the Ilocos region of the Philippines. “Huh! Where’s that?” you say — just like I did when we booked this cruise. And then I continued to say it for many months as I failed to do any real research on the place and Royal failed to have any shore excursions in the Cruise Planner. At 29 days prior to the cruise, two excursions appeared — hooray! Having still done no research, we picked one based completely on the other excursion saying “time for shopping”, which we had no interest in.

This is a tender port, so I felt it was important to book an excursion through Royal just for my own peace of mind. Also, our track record with full-day excursions in the Philippines actually getting back to the ship on time has run 50-50. **Spoiler alert — our track record is now 80-20 returning late ? ** Anyway, slathered up with camera in hand, we headed to our tender with our group. 
Tendering took about 15 minutes. The dock was obviously a cargo port, and a very small one. The local city council had set up entertainment for our arrival:

We walked through a small museum with a bit of history of the area to get to our buses. One brilliant thing — there was a tent set up with an official money changer right at the dock. Only Philippine pesos are accepted in the Ilocos region, FYI. (Sorry this is a crappy shot but I actually didn’t see it until I was on the bus):

I expected the tourist facilities to be a bit more rustic than elsewhere in the Philippines, and I was not wrong. However, they rolled out the red carpet for us and in general did a great job. The local mayor for the Ilocos Sur region even rounded up free moto-taxis to take people into the closest town when he realized many passengers had made no accommodations for transport!
Turns out Spectrum was the first ever Royal ship to call on Ilocos, and the FOURTH cruise ship EVER. The last one was a Star Cruises ship two years prior! That one docked at the gravel shipyard in Ilocos Norte about 45 minutes north of where we were. 
Our tour bus was “experienced”, but comfortable enough and the A/C was frosty so no complaints. We drove about an hour and 20 minutes north to Laoag town, the capital of Ilocos Norte. Our guide was very good. Her day job was working for the vice-governor of the area. She was a licensed tour guide for English speaking and Mandarin speaking tours. Her *third* job was cooking Indian food at the housing complex for the Indian engineers working on road improvements. Underemployment is a problem in the Philippines...
We saw the town center, the American-built capitol building, the Spanish-built town church, and the Marcos family regional courthouse. Yes, that Marcos family. They are still a Really Big Deal in the area; Ferdinand’s grandson is the current mayor and a grand-niece is a senator. There’s even a university named after Ferdinand’s father.
A Philippines staple, the Jeepny:

Next we went to the Marcos’ family home in the region, a beautiful home on the edge of a lake, that is now a museum:

Finally we stopped at a fantastic old Spanish church of St Augustin, a UNESCO World Heritage site:

Then we headed back to the ship. We were 10 minutes past all-aboard, and 40 minutes past the last tender. The ship ended up departing about 30 minutes late. Oops.
Off to Vintages for a nice glass of wine before dinner:



For dinner we tried Silver dining, which does a blend of menu and buffet. MisterZ had the crab cake and prawns, I had the chicken. It was all very tasty! The menu is the same every night:

We ended the night at the Music Hall, listening to the Extra Band. Another good one!
**MisterZ has promised more Ilocos pictures, so stay tuned for a second post on the topic!**
 

Final Thoughts
Two things I haven't commented on yet are crowds and crew.  
We've been on the largest ships including Symphony and Allure and my smallest was Grandeur (but that was awhile ago, so don't have fresh memories of it), and recently, the mid size ships of Voyager class including Adventure.  During our Adventure cruise, DH kept commenting "the ship must not be full" as nothing ever felt crowded.  At one of his comments, the crew member overheard and said "it's a fully booked ship".  Adventure isn't huge, and there isn't a ton going on at once compared with Symphony, but we had no crowd issues which was great.  The first night, even though there was only one showing of the welcome show, the theater was half empty.  I think that's because it was an awkward time of 7:15pm so people were probably still at dinner or unpacking.  But even going forward, we never had an issue getting a good seat.  
On our Grand Cayman day, you could just go to the tender if you were within the first hour, or after that you had to get a ticket that would assign you a time to get off.  We managed to make the first hour so can't comment on how the ticket system worked.
Now having said all that, I never found it that crowded on Symphony as there was just so much to do, that it spread the people around at different events and venues.  But DH isn't a crowd person so he noticed the difference.
As for the crew, they were great. Our room steward was very friendly, always saying hello when she saw us in the hallways.  I'm impressed that she make the effort to remember our names as I imagine the she has many cabins that they look after.  
We really liked our waiters at dinner.  They were a bit quiet and no magic tricks for us without our kids (ha ha), but they always had a smile and were attentive.  One night DH asked for "a" roll without seeds, and from then on, every night, our main waiter left him an additional basket of about 6 super fresh plain rolls.  And he's always smiled and said hello when we saw him in the MDR at breakfast. It's those simple things that mean a lot.
We found our CD Drew Devine pretty good.  He was funny and introduced the shows well.  DH managed to chat with him briefly after one of the shows and the top tier and he was pretty personable.  And he is from Toronto so he automatically gets a point from us!  But one thing I find different these days, is that aside from the evening shows or the Top Tier event, you don't see the CD around.  I'm pretty sure you used to see them around the ship during the day too (or maybe I'm thinking of Love Boat episodes...lol)
Rating
I will start by saying that every cruise I have been on, has been amazing.  I really love them all and really have no bad comments.  Also, when we select a ship, the criteria is different if it's just DH and I going vs our kids.  For example, Dh and I both want to try Brilliance some day, but we'd never take our kids on that one.  We stick to the newer ships or the amped ones with lots of amenities when it's the four of us.
DH comments that "Voyager class is his sweet spot".  It's not too big, not to small (and thus, he loved the lack of crowds).  His favorite ship is Mariner, but I think Adventure is way up there too.
I really enjoyed Adventure too.  If you are in the dining room, and want to go to say the theater or Imperial Lounge or Starbucks (did I mention that you can get cappacino with Baileys?  ...lol), it took no time at all.  One of my favorite activities is to walk around deck 4...up to 5 to the front....and then back down to 4 to complete the lap.  I love that feeling just watching the water, or even looking at all sides of the port we are in.  A lap on Adventure only take a few minutes.
But for me...my very favorites are still the mega ships with Symphony being my favorite.  You can't beat the amenities, the shows are amazing, and the decor of the newer ships is spectacular with the most beautiful and creative and fun art work all around.  
So my current rating so far is:
Symphony Allure Independence Navigator Mariner Adventure Voyager Grandeur Can't wait to try Anthem in March.  Will see where it rates.
We also have Harmony and Oasis booked so looking forward to trying to too!  And another Freedom class as well.  I really love the variety of ships that Royal offers.

I want to thank everyone for the excellent guidance for our first RCL cruise. We are super prepared and most importantly at ease because of this blog's guidance. 
Cheers!

One of our highlights today was a private bridge tour! Access on DCL was restricted to all guests. So we were very happy to hear we would get a chance to visit it on Anthem.  
We were allowed to take pictures but no recording of video. We spent about 30 minutes with the 2nd officer and were treated to champagne and other beverages. As traffic was light and weather conditions optimal only a 1st and 2nd officer along with a spotter are required on the bridge. 
Some interesting trivia: the ship carries 3000 tonne of fuel which = 3,000,000 liters.
This was a great star class perk for our family! Loved every minute of it. 

So a while back I started posting my cruise reports on the DISboards. And I figured that since I'm trying to be more active here that I might try and to a little cross posting. Hope you enjoy!
(Note: When I do these things I write. A lot. I try to inject humour (and pics/gifs) into what amounts to a very long essay, and that seems to break up the monotony.)
Usually, my go-to cruise time is in the summer. Given that I have kids, this makes sense, as I don’t have to deal with any issues associated with missing class during the semester. And yet, here I am, doing a pre-cruise post about a cruise in January. Why? Well, there’s a long story associated with taking this cruise.

On my last cruise, part of a restroom ended up on top of my wife’s foot. While not serious (my wife might disagree), Royal did express concern - consistently - for the rest of the trip. They offered a few incentives to my wife, who decided not to accept any of them. But, at the end of our cruise, they gave us future cruise certificate of roughly $450 CDN to apply to another cruise. So after some clarification as to how the application worked (they agreed that we simply needed to apply the certificate to a cruise prior to the 1 year expiry date), we booked a 4 night Navigator of the Seas cruise out of Miami for January 2020.

Now, you’ll notice that the title of this report says Independence, not Navigator. And that is because in early January 2019 we received the bad news that our cruise had been chartered. For the “Friendship Festival Cruise”, which appears to be an EDM (Electronic Dance Music) festival. We were given the option of moving to the cruise immediately following, but being a bit wary of boarding after a charter cruise, we decided to book Independence for a 5 night out of Fort Lauderdale instead. For rebooking, we received $200 OBC + $75 based on the booking offers at the time.

Ordinarily, you’d think that this would be the end of it, but in March my TA sent me an email saying that my Independence cruise had been chartered - this time for “70,000 Tons of Metal”. Which is an amazing name for a theme cruise, so kudos to them.

This time, the offer allowed us to rebook to a 5 night preceding the metal cruise, and given that this fit our schedule better (kids only miss a couple of school days), we decided to take it. As with the previous cancellation, we received an additional $200 OBC. $475 in OBC is a lot, even after you subtract gratuities from that amount.

Hopefully nothing else delays or cancels this trip. Like, say, 12 inches of snow.

Ahem. Moving on.

Flights
As per usual, I start looking at flights once I get my cruise booked or they become available, whichever comes last. So I suppose it’s fortunate that I hadn’t booked a flight at the time of cancellations, although I would’ve gotten a change fee credit from Royal if I had booked flights. But the less paperwork the better.

The interesting part about the flights to FLL from Toronto was that departures were cheaper on New Year’s Eve (would be a 2 night stay in Florida) than New Year’s Day (1 night stay). Conversely, hotels were more expensive on New Year’s Eve. Go figure. So it was a bit of a dilemma, but this was resolved in part by my starting a new job, and not having any vacation for the end of year. And thus, we are leaving New Year’s Day, and just staying the one night before the cruise.
Hotels
I’m currently booked at one of the more popular cruise hotels, Hyatt Place 17th Street. As usual, I booked via Valuetrips, although the discount at this time of year is not as large as it is in the summer. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a better deal, but the proximity to various restaurants, shops, grocery stores and Port Everglades made it an appealing place to stay.

Excursions
The cruise has two stops - Grand Cayman and Cozumel.

We’ve been to Grand Cayman once, off Disney Fantasy, and it was a fun beach day along seven mile. Well except for the part where my brother went into the water with his phone in his pocket. Good times.

This time around, we are doing something we wouldn’t normally do - swimming with stingrays. After doing my research, I decided to sign up with the well regarded Stingray Sailing and their sister company, Cayman Eco Adventures. Both appear to be focused on small tours (max 25 people) and being kind to the rays, which seems quite appealing to me.

For Cozumel, we currently have no plans. With only one other boat docked with us, We will probably try out Paradise Beach, since they have a low entry fee and a $10pp minimum food charge.

Onboard
Neither my wife nor I are big drinkers, and as a result the drink package isn’t something that provides a lot of value for us. The argument could be made that one could also find value by purchasing coffees, juices and bottled water in addition to alcoholic beverages. And you’d be right, but here’s the thing - without the package there isn’t much incentive to buy bottled water or fresh squeezed juices. Coffee… well, maybe, and to that end I’ve purchased the coffee card, as we can take that with us onto Symphony in the summer if there are still unused credits. 

We did purchase the photo package (Black Friday discount). Hopefully I’ll be able to include some of the shots, but time will tell.

Boarding will be a different experience. I checked in via the app, and thus have Expedited Arrival privileges. It will be my first time with this, and I’m excited to try this out.

Our room is a 1D Oceanview Balcony. We will be right by the “bump” on the ship so I expect some of our peripheral view to be a bit obstructed but we shall see. I did put in a RoyalUp bid for a Suite, at the minimum cost, and we’ll see if that’s accepted. It be nice if it was, but I'm not counting on it.

For now, it’s less than one week until we get on that plane. Can't wait.