teddy

Voom is just Royal Caribbean’s fancy name for WiFi. Once you pay for it, you will have internet access, and can do anything you normally do on WiFi. Turn cellular service off using Airplane Mode and you won’t incur any cellular charges.

Nothing with a surge protector is allowed.

Long response typed out then deleted. It just ain’t worth it. Happy cruising

The service industry as a whole is suffering and it feels like the majority of consumers don’t realize how bad it is

No. No gratuity charged at a bar when just getting a soda (providing you have the soda package).

I've found the bars to be limited to soda that's typically used in drinks...Coke, Diet Coke, ginger ale, Sprite, etc. As mentioned above, the Freestyle cups are not required except at the machines...and on recent cruises, where there have been attendants at the Freestyle machines, I've seen people get cups of soda at the machines based on the designation on their sea pass.

Interestingly enough....this was only a few posts down for me:

They are big towels and you can take them off the ship with you.

I was bummed when we couldn't have it last month

When we've done My Time Dining, we chose it when we initially booked the cruise. You may be able to find a customer service rep who will change it, however you also may have to call a few times to find one who not only is willing to do it, but knows how. I suspect there are a lot of newer (ie less trained) employees working the phones right now.

I personally think it’s magic. A few years ago I did a back to back, the first week with my wife and for the second she went home and our son joined me. The beds were together for my wife and I, and they were separated when I went back in after doing the back to back turnaround despite not saying anything to our steward. Ok, I don’t really think it’s magic. My point is that room stewards are very observant and want to make things right for your needs. Don’t hesitate to ask if you need more blankets, beds changed, etc.

My wife and I do the one login for two devices. She stays logged on her phone the whole cruise and I swap between my phone and iPad. In order to not risk kicking her offline, I log out of my current device before I log in to the other one. I’ve never kicked her off by doing this.

If you have any concerns about where you’ll end up, I recommend choosing your cabin yourself. You can’t tell Royal to put you wherever they want then complain when they do. It’s really a crap shoot whether you get a “good” cabin or not. We have booked guarantees more often than not because most of the time we genuinely don’t care where we end up. When we absolutely want something specific, like the aft balcony cabin we booked for our European cruise, we pay the extra to be able choose it.

We were just talking about this last night, specifically the Adventure sailing we were on back in September that had 480ish guests. It was downright eerie at times.

Yes, you can bring food with you. We do it all the time. I'm always trying to talk my wife into going to the Windjammer and bringing breakfast back to the room for me. Most of the time she brings me a cup of coffee while she brings bacon for herself, but occasionally I'll get a plate of food. We frequently grab lunch in the Windjammer and bring it to the Solarium or Pool Deck, depending on where we're sitting. Pre-covid, my wife would go to the Main Dining Room on sea days and bring a tutti salad back to where ever we are sitting. Bringing pizza back to the cabin at night is a regular thing for me. When we were on Vision in 2019, they always seemed to have shrimp in the evenings at the Park Cafe, and a plate (or two) came back to the cabin with us. I've seen people carrying food out of the Main Dining Room before, but we've never done it because we enjoy the experience of the MDR.

I use ThinkSport spf 50. It's approved for use in Hawaii, and I see it's listed on the website KristiZ posted as "All Ocean Friendly" It's thick and white, but it works very well in keeping my Irish skin from burning. I get it from Amazon

I've shared this here before, but my wife and I had the epiphany about having solid travel insurance after watching someone get medvaced from the pier at Labadee.

I just told my wife to have the camera ready on our next cruise, cause I'm gonna do it.

Without getting into specifics of the invasion, I feel like not making a stop in a warring nation is a good call on Royal’s part.

Thanks for sharing!! I'm glad you guys had a good time. Interestingly enough, I have 21 nights on Adventure and am going on Liberty in August. I've been wanting to try the Flowrider, but am worried about getting injured. I broke a vertebrae in 2010, and while I'm technically fixed and have no restrictions, I still am wary about doing things that can cause funky wipe-outs....for example, I don't ski or snowboard anymore. That being said, I can't wait to be able to dive again. My thoughts are with you.

Damn C&A emails....but it's hard to beat the prices so far out, and since Aruba/Bonaire are on our bucket list...yolo. We just booked Voyager for March 1, 2024 Is there a prize for currently having the two furthest out cruises?

We don't use a credit card except when traveling, and we pay it off in full as soon as we return home. Doing this requires discipline in order to only spend what you have budgeted for vacation. We feel using a credit card rather than a debit card protects us...not only for the pending charges or "holds", but in the unlikely event that our card gets compromised. Random incident that happened last month in Miami....when we checked into our pre cruise hotel, the hold for incidentals was actually applied twice. Since we used our credit card rather than our debit card, we didn't worry about it too much (yes, it went away when we checked out the next morning).

Thank you for all the updating you do here @Lovetocruise2002

There has been some interesting spam posted in the past.

My biggest pet peeve with the Windjammer is the lack of any comprehension about how lines and waiting your turn work. I hate it when someone walks up and reaches in front of me to be served when I'm next in line. I mean seriously, I get it....the chances of me confronting the person are pretty much nil since there are no consequences and a confrontation will just end poorly. Sure, I could say something to the offenders, but the last thing I want is get into a argument and have a scene when all I want is a cheeseburger. When we were on Oasis last month, it was more widespread than the other two cruises we've been on since the restart.....and it seemed like all the people who were rude and entitled were older than us (we're in our 50s).