FionaMG

Score!

@CrimsonCruiser, a new sale has just started if you want to check those prices.

Legs and eyes crossed as well, but there's no emojee for that!

My cabin number for my Symphony cruise showed up today, exactly 30 days out, and is the number revealed by reading the bar code.

This was confirmed months ago and guests whose cruises were cancelled were given the option of reinstating them if they wanted.

In full disclosure, I don't know the answer so I could well be mistaken but I was always under the impression that the ones who help out with the loungers are locals who are brought in each time there's a ship in port.

This is correct for b2b sailings in the US, where a 0 passenger count is required before the next cruise can begin boarding. However, this is not a requirement in Europe (which is why cruise lines can do interporting there, i.e. have passengers embarking and disembarking at any number of ports on a given itinerary). This makes doing a b2b in Europe a much easier process as @cedricmr explained in their post. As a caveat, the process may be different when arriving in Europe for the first time at the end of a transatlantic cruise. I don't know how that scenario works.

It's meringue floating on a pool of vanilla custard https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/floating-islands/

I remember that too. They were on Oasis. The room didn’t show on that ship but it did on Harmony.

No. You need to include all travellers. Otherwise they will not be covered for medical, accidents and the like. Travel insurance is about way more than just the cost of the trip itself.

I guess all you can do is keep scanning it every now and then. Hopefully you'll be successful soon.

Very possibly. Or I wonder if for some reason it's showing the opposite way round. Mine has 9 digits followed by a hyphen and then five more digits, so you have the same total number of digits as me. Is there a cabin 11118 on your ship? Just a guess that may be way off base.

I love floating island but have not yet been able to make it to lunch in the MDR on a day when they have it. One day...

Are those the digits after the hyphen? Room numbers on deck 11 would usually start with 11. Maybe you could try re-scanning; perhaps your scanner app is misreading it?

Then let me throw out something a bit out of the box for you to consider. As @Jill says, Europe is generally about the ports (unless, like me, you're European and can visit the ports as regularly as those of you in North America can do the Caribbean), so the ship tends not to matter so much. However, since that doesn't fit your needs so well, could you perhaps consider one of Allure's transatlantic cruises at the start/end of her European season? That would give you plenty of sea days to enjoy but also the chance to visit a few European ports. Another alternative might be a back-to-back on Allure, which would let you spend more time on the ship, as you could do half the ports on the first week and half on the second week.

The picture is nowhere near as bleak as that. Yes, the Windjammer (which is the main buffet) can be a mad house, especially on embarkation day and at peak meal times but on a ship like Utopia you're going to find plenty of other alternative eating places scattered around the ship. For dinner, I'd suggest you get traditional seating (early will be around 5.30 and late around 8 pm) rather than choosing My Time Dining (MTD). That way you'll have the same table reserved for you every night and you can just walk straight in without having to wait in line for a table. Another strategy could be to buy the ultimate dining package, which will let you eat at the speciality restaurants for dinner every day and lunch on boarding day and sea days. The amount you save by booking two standard rooms rather than a suite will probably cover this and you'll likely still come out on top. However, since it's your first cruise, I'd be inclined to suggest you stick to the included venues so you can see what's what and what you like and dislike. Then you'll know what works for you on the next one!

Just to mention for anyone reading this thread who doesn't know, Android users can use a bar-code scanner app to see their cabin assignment. The cabin number will be the last digits after the -.

21st of June 2025. Details are in the events section.

As well as the two mentioned above, my Symphony sailing next month lists a moet&chandon champagne tasting experience. They are not showing on my others, which are farther ahead.

I've seen the Women of Wine Tasting one before but I'm not sure if it showed up on the cruise planner pre-cruise or only on board. I don't remember seeing the Caribbean one before. DD went to a cocktail-making class that she enjoyed. That definitely wasn't on the cruise planner. It was booked and paid for on board.

@MoonMan81, it is absolutely NOT a common thing and you should not have any worries whatsoever about your GTY booking. When you consider the huge numbers of cruisers out there who are making gty bookings, the issue with bumping is infinitesimal. As with everything else, the bad stuff gets reported and blown up out of all proportion, while nobody bothers to mention that the vast majority of gty bookings go off without a hitch. The only way to sort of prevent it would be to book a specific cabin number but that will probably be more expensive and even then doesn't give you a 100% guarantee because stuff happens that can mean a cabin needs to be taken out of inventory and if the cabin in question happens to be the one you booked...

On both my Quantum class cruises - Odyssey and Anthem - the show in 270 (The Book on Odyssey and Spectra's Cabaret on Anthem) was the only one you could book in advance. All the others were first come first served at the door on board.

Unfortunately, for me, having the long flight first on a transatlantic means having 6 23-hour days. We've only done one so far and was westbound resulting in a veeery long homeward flight from Brazil. One day we'll try it the other way.

It depends on the port and sometimes even differs from sailing to sailing. We had 10.30 last April on Anthem out of NJ but later in the year, out of Southampton, the earliest was 11.30. You can keep going back into the app to see if any earlier times open up and change if they do.

It's happened to us a couple of times too. Once, on Harmony, the replacement performance was cancelled too! Luckily, the new replacement on the last night of the cruise went off without a hitch. For this February 10th sailing, it's offered on nights 1, 3 and 4, so of course I've booked it for night 1! We did miss an ice skating show once because we'd booked the last performance of the cruise, which was right after lunch... No sooner had we sat down than the post-lunch snoozles caught up with us and we didn't wake up till it was all over!