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To piggyback on this, the menu that the app shows for our upcoming 7-night, August 2022 Liberty sailing is the same as it was on our September 2021 Adventure sailing.

We recently saw Cats on Oasis. It did drag but we would never walk out on a performance. After the show I did some reading about it, and now that I know what it’s about, I’d actually go see it again since things would make sense. The issue onboard as I see it is you’re taking people who are on vacation and showing them something that needs a bit of setup to understand…..people who have been at the pool or beach and drinking all day don’t want a long, difficult to understand show.

We use the provided envelopes at the end of our cruise if we tip our cabin steward and Main Dining Room waiters. If we tip “on the spot” such as at a bar, for room service, or the baggage porters, we use cash. We are not “wealthy”, but we are well-off enough to be able to take a cruise. Because of this, when budgeting for a cruise, we include money for extra tips. Sometimes we’ve given all of it out, other times we being home a little leftover cash. We have no concrete method of tipping, however, I have worked retail for over 35 years, so our default is generous. If I’m asking someone to bring me coffee to my room in the morning because I’m too lazy to walk a minute or two to get it, I’m going to tip them.

We’ve lived in Maine our whole lives and cruised on Adventure out of Nassau at the beginning of September. We were hot and planned our days around shade and breeze. Given the choice, we’d do it all over again with no hesitation. On the flip side, we were at the CocoCay Beach Club the beginning of this month, and the only other people in the pool were from Minnesota….

This is so true. With an extra day (or two), an inconvenience doesn’t become a nightmare. I can’t imagine the horror of being somewhere else when the ship departs. Even going home it’s a good idea…We got off Oasis last Sunday and expected to get home Sunday night. We both took Monday off to have a day at home to recover before starting work again. Because of flight cancellations, delays, and multiple rebookings, we ended up getting home at 1230 am Tuesday. Having Monday off meant we didn’t stress about missing work.

Our retirement plans include traveling during the winter months, and a third to half of that time will be on cruise ships, exploring new itineraries as well as old favorites. The other time will be spent going to land based places we have always wanted to see, as well as visiting family/friends. We have eight years to go.

We usually stay at one of the hotels around the airport. Most of them have airport shuttles Last week a Lyft XL from hotel to port cost $30-$40 each way.

We asked when we were onboard Oasis last week. They said no.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’d love to see both masks and testing go away, but given the hypothetical choice, I’d personally choose testing to go away first. It’s a simple choice for me….I’ve been wearing a mask at work for what seems like forever. I’m used to wearing one for 10-12 hours at a time, in less than ideal conditions….in walk in coolers/freezers, while performing extremely physical tasks for hours, while talking to people, etc. Testing is a huge pita for me. I have to schedule it around work, then worry about the appt being canceled, then reschedule. I have to pay for home tests kits to have a back up plan (we’ve had two separate kits missing components, so that sucked). I can’t isolate myself or limit human interactions before a cruise because I work 50-60 hours a week in a supermarket. So yea, based on nothing else but the above, I’d rather continue to wear a mask than deal with testing. I doubt it will ever happen that way though, and I’ll still cruise as much as possible regardless

There are two different places ships dock…Crown Bay and Havensight. I think it’ll obviously be more crowded with more ships, but still worth it. Magen’s bay was $10 each way taxi ride and $5 each to get in when we were recently there. I suspect there are cheaper ways, but we were only there for 6 or so hours and just wanted to get to the beach. When we caught a taxi to return to the port, there was a “dispatcher” type person there who was making sure people got on the correct taxi for their ship

Yes. I just said the same thing to my wife.

In addition, I don’t think there are actual people making human-logic based decisions. I suspect it’s all a computer-based algorithm…..or whatever the correct words are This is why things like “I bid max, they bid min, but they got the upgrade and I didn’t” happen.

I definitely recognized it

Sometimes, Royal Up just isn’t offered.

I said these exact words to my wife two Saturdays ago when we had an extra day in Miami. We were wandering around outside of the touristy area. My statement was based on all the creepy crawly things that you don’t see in places where the temps drop below 0° F, but I agree with your reasons, too

The rooms are totally separate as far as Royal Up bidding is concerned. If you have chosen two rooms that are connected or specifically located near each other, you won't have that anymore if your bid is successful.

We dipped our toes into Spirit in January 2020 for our flight to FLL. After that round trip, we decided we'd rather pay more up front to fly on a legacy carrier than ever play around with a low cost one again. I know all the arguments for low cost airlines, but they don't work for us. I also have heard good things about Southwest, but their fares are never as cheap (out of PWM) as American (and sometimes Delta). I still say this after having American cancel a flight on us two days ago that caused us to spend another night in Miami.

On our recent Captain Bob's tour, the last stop we made was offshore of Maho Beach. We watched a couple planes land and one take off. After seeing how close the jet blast actually is, I was happy to be on the boat.

Watch out for local events that may affect traffic. Yesterday morning, the Miami Marathon screwed things up badly.

When we reprice online, we take a screenshot of the pricing and send it to our travel agent. Doing this let’s her we exactly what we are seeing so it’s apples to apples. There have been times when we made mistakes or misread things, other times we have been able to pay less.

We really enjoyed going to the Beach Club while cruising in a non-suite cabin. I hope they never make it suite exclusive. We were able to book it for around $80 pp. That’s a lot less out of our pocket than staying in a suite. To be clear, I have no problems with suites having exclusivity, it should be like that…just don’t take away opportunities for non-suites to have a place to step up a bit.

That’s interesting. I wonder if they’re changing things. We’ve participated in quite a few Royal Up bids and have always been able to modify or cancel our bids up until the point they are all expired or one is left pending.

Yes. For the 1/30-2/6 Oasis cruise we just got off, we checked in at 45 days out and made final payment at 30 days out.

Someone asked the Captain about it at the “Meet the Captain” thing on the last sea day last week. He said the owl doesn’t officially exist as far as Royal is concerned, but the horticulturist takes care of any animals that make Central Park home. He also said that the owl is “well fed” The cruise director said something about tidbits from the restaurants

We have a weird schedule…. We’re up wicked early and by 9 pm, we’re fading fast. It’s not a schedule that’s conducive to socializing in the evenings after dinner….