teddy

Our youngest joined me last January on the second leg of my back to back. He was 19 at the time. He had a good time in spite of himself. We rarely saw each other except for the shore excursions we did. For the most part, we kept to our home sleep schedules...I’m early to bed and rise, he’s the opposite. I don’t know everything he did, but here are some of the things I’m aware of: He went to a lot of trivia in the schooner bar, listened to a lot of live music at the different venues. hung out with some people he met at the water slides, found some people to play games with, he went to the silent disco, and quite amazingly (he has anxiety) was a team captain at Quest At 19 you can go in all the different venues, but you cannot drink alcohol. One suggestion I have is to be willing to step outside your comfort zone

I was on Adventure from Jan 18-Feb 1. My wife and I did the first 8-nights, she went home, I stayed onboard, and our youngest came with me for the second itinerary of 6-nights. The whole experience hooked me on back to back cruising. We have two back to backs booked for 2021. Oasis next to Adventure in St. Maarten. Adventure felt big till we saw this. ?

American dollars are fine to tip with. ?

This is good info. Thank you.

...unless you're in Maine. For some strange reason traffic has declined but fatal crashes have increased. We don't make sense to ourselves, either.

I've been doing some reading on the 1918 Pandemic. Four waves and close to three years with around a third of the world's population infected. The Spanish Flu pandemic came to an end though, and so will the Covid-19 pandemic. When you feel things are hopeless, remember this...it will end. To plagiarize Winston Churchill.....perhaps the vaccine is the end of the beginning. We all will cruise again.

I'm guessing a lot of you have probably seen this article. https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/27/tech/coronavirus-vaccine-passport-apps/index.html

I'll get mine whenever our state gets to Phase 1B. I have zero trepidation with getting it. As much as I really, really, really want to cruise again, I want even more to start putting this pandemic behind us.

....and if we are able to book Alaska for 2022, we'll be doing a short 2-3 night cruise in January 2022 since we will end 2021 with 79 C&A points....

We've decided we're either going northbound or southbound from Seward/Vancouver. Airfare will most likely dictate which direction we choose, but honestly I don't have a preference. Either way we will spend an extra day in Seward. We waiting a couple months to book until we know for certain that our cruise on Liberty in Aug/Sept 2021 sails. If we have to lift and shift, that will use up the pto my wife has allotted for cruising in 2022. She only gets three weeks and uses two of them for cruising. We're going to book an inside cabin, so we're not too concerned about them being all booked up before we take the plunge.

When I was young, I had an uncle who lived in the Grapevine area. We'd go down to visit during February school break up here, and my cousins thought I was crazy because I'd go in their unheated pool. Fast forward to my late teens when one of those cousins came to visit Maine in August. One step in the ocean and he finally understood why I thought Texas pool water was warm in February. ? Congrats on your pool. It's neat to see the progress.

Great video. Thank you

lol, yea, I just realized that it's pretty much all of them. ? Boy I sure hope so. It's been a long, strange trip.

I wanted to thank everyone who has made threads or even just posted about their Alaskan experiences. If our Aug/Sept 2021 cruise goes as planned (and we don't have to Lift/Shift), we'll book Alaska in 2022. We're not sure which itinerary/ship we'll choose, but I have a stepbrother who lives in Juneau, so we're going to pick one that stops there. We're leaning toward a one way cruise, either starting or ending at Seward. I spent three weeks in Seward in 1994 and would like to spend a day there wandering around.

We stay in Inside Cabins, so our expectations are not real high....but after thinking about it for a bit, I'd like to see another AC outlet or two as well as a couple USB outlets by the bedstands.

I wear one every day at work, and it's a physical job. At this point, I've become used to wearing a mask. If I have to wear a mask on vacation, so be it. To be honest, the only thing that really bothers me about wearing a mask is when we get customers in the store who have made wearing a mask the hill they're gonna make their patriotic last stand on......they come up to us and tell us how we're sheep for wearing a mask. My usual response is "My mask is for your protection not mine. I'm in close contact with 100s of clueless people each day I'm here....how close do you want to get to me??"

When we hit the actual open water in San Juan, I had a hard time with neutral buoyancy. The local instructor told the ship instructor that he'd help me and she could stay with the other two students. I know the small number of students we had was random luck, but getting that one on one time was awesome. I don't think I would have had that in a larger, local class. From talking with our ship instructor, it seems like most cruise classes are small, so there is a very good chance to get that one on one time if you need it.

I'd do that in a heartbeat. I mean...you'll already be over there. Just pace yourselves and be realistic about expectations. On a related note, I'd give anything to have one more family vacation with all three kids. Life is so short.

I got certified on Adventure back in January of this year (2020). I can't remember if I posted about it. It is time intensive, so if you are traveling with people who will resent you for not spending time with them, you'll have to decide which is more important. I did all the "book learning" at home before the cruise. On boarding day, we had to check in at the PADI shop and take a small quiz to see that we actually learned something at home. Any areas that were foggy were gone over. We also fitted for gear and learned about it that same day. The training in the pool was done in the early mornings before it officially opened. It was interesting to see the people lined up to get chairs as we were finishing up each day. One morning I went to the chair I had left my bag on, and someone told me that the chair was already taken. We did our actual open water dives in San Juan and St Thomas. The PADI instructor on the ship was not allowed to work in the US (or its territories) due to visa requirements, so while at those two ports, we had an instructor from the dive shops that Royal contracted with. Our ship-based PADI instructor came with us and for all intents and purposes instructed us with the local instructor. It was really great because there were two instructors for three students. We had a lot of personal attention and instruction. In San Juan, we entered the water from shore. In St Thomas we entered from a boat. After the final training dive in St Thomas, we had dive time left to do some sight-seeing with the local instructor. Diving is something I always wanted to do, and my wife encouraged me to take the course. We were on the cruise with another couple who we are close to, and they thought it was awesome that I was doing the course. My wife spent the day in San Juan and St Thomas with them while I was diving. There were no bad feelings. The only bummer is that I haven't been able to dive since (we came back from our cruise shortly before the pandemic exploded), so if our back to back cruise in Aug/Sept 2021 goes, I'll take the reactivation course on the first week and do some actual diving the second week. I don't feel comfortable enough to just go on a dive since I haven't actually practiced what I learned.

My thoughts: If you truly don’t care where your room is, let them assign you. If there is any little voice in the back of your head saying, “Yea....but”, pick your room yourself. Disclaimer: We do guaranteed rooms as long as it’s cheaper.

I have a 7-night solo in 2021 that, with the double points, will put us up very close to Diamond. Almost feels like cheating. (close as in one point away)

The other thread is basically a straw poll asking if people would volunteer. It's for fun. Many people are posting in that thread who haven't read (or don't comprehend) the initial post. There are probably some people volunteering in that thread who have read but think they should volunteer anyway "just in case". Personally, I think there are a lot of people who don't understand that this is a fan site, not an official Royal Caribbean site.

I think the same. You're already in the "bubble" from the first cruise.

We were originally scheduled to be on her tomorrow for the 4-night. Lifted and shifted to Monday, November 8, 2021 We added the following 3-night to it to make it a full week.

lmao Read the post directly above yours.