FionaMG

What a shame your Cinque Terre trip didn't go to plan. I guess that means you'll have to go back, right?

I am so impressed by your spreadsheet. No way would I have the patience to set up something like that, let alone keep it up to date. I just jot down figures by hand in a notebook.

Or a new intern.

Key is down to $14.99 on my upcoming Anthem cruise. Surf and Stream is $20.99. However, I got S&S ages ago at $13.99 and only need one device, so still not worth it for me but at that price it will definitely be worth it for a lot of folks on my sailing.

And why not? People tend to be far more ready to complain when things go awry than to praise when everything runs smoothly!

I think there's probably plenty to keep you busy on a 3-night cruise. I often find myself thinking that I don't have enough time just to chill and enjoy the ship because there's always that feeling of "having" to get off just because we're in port.

I'm just starting the planning for our NYC+cruise combo that we lost to covid at the start of the pandemic. We will be going in April 2023 and will stay 3 nights pre-cruise, probably in the Mid-townish area to do stuff like Empire State Building, Central Park, etc., and 2 nights post-cruise downtown to do 9/11 and Lady Liberty. Does anyone have a go-to hotel in either area they'd like to recommend? There will be 3 of us and we'll share a room to keep costs down. Ideally included breakfast so we can fuel up for the day, and trying to keep it at $350 or under a night, if at all possible.

I suspect that's to minimise as much as possible the risk of an outbreak and/or someone becoming seriously ill days from anywhere in the middle of the ocean. The bigger problem on the TA sailings is that they have determined everyone aged 5 and over must be vaxxed. There will be some families with unvaxxed kids on those sailings who won't be able to get their kids vaxxed even if they want to.

Hope you get over the dreaded lurgy quickly. Thanks for bringing us along. It was a fun ride.

Yup, that was me. I just replied over on the other place. For info for blog readers, this is the second time it's happened. The first was a couple of weeks back and only lasted for a couple of days. Then when it came back the prices were way higher, adding nearly 2k to the total cost of the rooms I had been looking at. I was kicking myself for following the advice given regularly on here to book when you see a price you're happy with.

We have always bought a couple of photos on all of our cruises so when we finally hit D it was great. That and the free drinks have effectively reduced our onboard spend to practically zero. Just the sort of people Royal "love" to have on board.

It's an excellent perk. The only thing if you can't decide on just one you might end up buying more!

Wow @DDaley, what fabulous pics! I'm so glad you had an amazing time.

Woohoo!!! Have an amazing time!

It's very odd. I'm disappointed about the Madeira stop too as I have friends who live there and was planning on spending the day with them.

Hopefully not.

That was exactly what happened a few weeks ago. It was like that for two or three days.

Congratulations! The free photo is a nice perk.

I've been getting that for quite some time now. It seemed to right itself for a couple of days at one point and then went back to doing it and has been like that ever since.

The same thing happened fairly recently and took a couple of days to clear. When it came back up, the prices had gone up considerably. That said, the website has been acting up since yesterday. I was trying to make a couple of bookings (not for Oasis) and was either getting an error message or it would simply throw me back to the search results page. My TA (shout out to @michelle ) was able to get them for me and she mentioned that they'd been adding stuff to the website and it was acting crazy.

I agree, it's pretty pointless. Possibly just a means of easing their way into scrapping testing altogether? Unless the requirement on longer cruises is due to ports/countries setting this as a rule? I've already bought a couple of tests from the supermarket for us to use prior to our Anthem sailing next month but I wouldn't be upset in the slightest if I didn't have to use them.

Just booked it yesterday for myself, DH and DS, as an add-on to a covid-postponed trip to the Big Apple. The prices are excellent, although DH is concerned the weather might not be so great that early in the year.

Haha, you're going to be flavour of the month with the port staff.

I'm booked on that particular cruise and can see it fine on the US site. However, yesterday when I was trying to book a different cruise the website was just being completely silly and I ended up having to get my TA to book it for me. She said they had downloaded a lot of stuff to the site and it was acting crazy. @Sarah have you tried using an incognito browser? There might be some rampant cookies somewhere in your history that are causing the problem. Clearing your cache or using a different device are two other methods that can sometimes help you get around website woes.

Yay! Enjoy!