FionaMG

I agree. I've never sailed with Princess but any time I'm interested in a Royal excursion I always visit the Princess site to see if there's anything similar since their excursion information is light years ahead of Royal's.

Oh, I know. Born and bred in the west end of Glasgow. I always joke that you need to have both an umbrella and sunscreen in your bag any time you set foot outside the door. One of my besties is from just down the road in Port Glasgow, although we both live elsewhere in Europe now.

You get all four seasons in a single hour in Scotland. The photographer just waited patiently for the right moment.

I agree. They'd be losing Thanksgiving and Christmas, which you would think would be big money makers so it really doesn't seem to make sense financially. Utopia... now that's a wild card I hadn't thought about. And there is a precedent: Allure cruisers got switched to Wonder last year.

How stuck are you on dates? Explorer has a 10-night sailing out of Miami on the 14th of November that calls at both of those ports. Is that going to be too early/too long for you? The one on the 5th of December that I'm looking at also has St Lucia, but has St Croix instead of St Kitts. The problem is that the deposit for a 10-night cruise is $450pp, which is a lot upfront for a "just-in-case" booking.

Oh wow! I don't blame you! That's silly money. I got the waterpark for $50 during the BF sale. Same time frame; our sailing is on Anthem, 23rd of April out of NJ. No way would I have paid the amount they're asking for your sailings.

Poor Michelle. I already made her work while she's been away as final payment was due for my cruise in July. The Oasis one you're looking at is a nice itinerary too, but it doesn't have St. Lucia, which was our main reason for choosing this one. Might consider the 10-day Explorer sailing out of Miami on the 5th instead.

I think I read you use Michelle? I do too and she's away just now but back tomorrow, I think. I was thinking about emailing her but won't bother now since you've done it.

I was rubbish at all things mathematical, barely scraped a pass in high school. Just as well I never need to buy a beverage package!

Yup, and then, as my example shows, you get different prices and promotions for different sailings, even on the same ship.

Aaaaahhhhh. So it is!

I was never great at maths but even I can see that something's not quite right here... I just logged into my cruise planner for my Anthem cruise out of NJ to the Bahamas at the end of this month and the banner informs me: Which equates to: Um, ok, how can 50% of $90.00 be $66.99? Especially when, for my Anthem cruise out of Southampton to the Norwegian fjords in July, we have: Which, in turn, equates to: No wonder people get confused!

Thanks for the heads-up @jticarruthers I have no interest in HP but DD is a huge fan and will want to do the trivia on our cruise in July. I'll keep an eye out for that in the Compass.

Yes, but you would have to call their US office and you might be hanging on the line for ages. I imagine that would be costly if you're calling from Asia. Your best bet would be to work with a US travel agent that is authorised to take bookings for Royal from outside the US, like MEI Travel, who sponsor this blog (fill in the big yellow box on the homepage of this site and they will get back to you). That way you can communicate with your agent by email and they will handle any price drops and anything else you might need. To be honest though, I think you're unlikely to see price drops on an Anthem sailing to the fjords. I'm going on one this year that I booked over a year ago and the price has only ever gone up since. So definitely book it now, while you can still get the room you want.

@WhoCruiser, yes, I've seen it myself on the port schedule for Funchal, Madeira, on the 21st of November. The information there shows the previous port as being Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. https://www.portosdamadeira.com/site/index.php/pt/portos/reservas-de-cais?page=9 I've not found any other entries (admittedly, I've been too busy to do much sleuthing). Where else have you found? I'm not sure what other ship they could use. Aren't they all pretty much spoken for already during that time frame, except for Anthem?

A couple of years back the ship would indeed have docked in Venice. Then the city authorities decided they didn't want huge cruise ships docking in the city any more, due to the damage they were causing. Royal moved to Ravenna; I don't know where the others went. But, unfortunately, the cruise lines all do this. They want to put the name of a port that's known and attractive to cruisers rather than places they might never have heard of. Then they put the actual port in brackets afterwards. And that can catch people out, if they're unaware of the practice. I personally believe it would be more honest to have, for example, "Ravenna, for Venice", but the chances of that ever happening are slimmer than none.

Sounds about right. I've no personal experience but from reading what others have posted in the past this is what I would be expecting too.

It doesn't dock in Venice at all. It docks in Ravenna, which is 145 km (or 90 miles) south of Venice.

Your Next Cruise OBC should follow you wherever you go but in order not to lose the deposit you'd need to wait for Royal to cancel the Freedom sailing and offer a switch.

Thanks Brian. That sounds amazing. He definitely deserves the recognition from the fire department. We are hoping we are still going to be able to do this sailing. Unfortunately my 89-year-old mother-in-law is not doing too well so things are a bit uncertain at the moment. We'll see.

Aw, bummer. Hope you manage to sort something out.

@Vlad, are you sure the WJ won't be open until 7 am? If this is for a port of call rather than disembarkation day, and the ship has an early enough arrival somewhere that you need to be off at 7.30 for an excursion, the chances are that the WJ will be open earlier than 7 am. We had a lot of early arrivals on our Odyssey sailing to the Greek Isles last year and on many days the WJ was open at 6 am. On the one day we had an early excursion and it didn't open until 6.30 am, we were able to get continental style breakfast at the Promenade Café at 6 am.

Yup. I hesitated to post that I had actually experienced it since I am clearly showing my age by doing so!

Many moons ago soda was indeed free in the MDR at dinner time. It certainly was on our first cruise away back in 2001, but I think it had already gone away by the time of our 2nd cruise just over a year later.

Also, remember to pick an arrival time for each member of your party as the system does not default all passengers to the same time as the first person.