FionaMG

For Rome, take a look at the Hotel Lancelot. It's nothing fancy but it's comfortable, walking distance to the Colosseum and has a couple of family rooms.

There have been a number of sales running where the discount for a JS would be more than the Diamond discount, but you only get one or the other. Typically in these cases, the system gives you the bigger discount. You'd need to check the individual lines on your invoice to confirm if this is the case for your booking.

We were also on Odyssey, but in May last year, and called at both Santorini and Chania. We did Royal excursions in both ports. In Santorini, we did Island of Santorini and Village of Oia and in Chania we did Kournas, Monastery and Rethymnon (sounds like it might be the same one @MaryS did). We enjoyed both. (We did them in Spanish but as far as I know, they're essentially the same as the English ones.) Details of both on my recap blog here:

Since I was on Anthem last week, I spoke to the LA about our block and mentioned that I was dubious about it being sent to us in Portugal. She looked us up and confirmed that there was an order in for it with FedEx but that it had been delayed due to restocking issues. Well, wouldn't you know, during the cruise I received an email from FedEx about our order (which I would have been suspicious about if I hadn't spoken to the LA) so I looked up the tracking number and it appears to be legit; it's coming from Sunrise, FL, which I seem to remember seeing mentioned somewhere in a block-related thread. It's supposed to arrive by this coming Thursday.

Anthem is going to Singapore after her summer 2024 season in Europe. This was confirmed to me by the Captain when I asked on board at Captain's Corner last Sunday. He said he couldn't say any more than that for now so I don't know any dates or if there will be a repo from Europe to Singapore.

Also be aware that sometimes it's actually cheaper to book a normal double cabin for single occupancy than a solo cabin. This was consistently the case on my very recent Anthem cruise right up until very close to the sailing date, so beside to check both. Why pay more for less space and a single point per night if you don't have to?

@Cruiser4Life, we just disembarked from Anthem this morning. Our 8 night cruise had the Asian menu on it! The salmon teriyaki was really good.

I would absolutely prefer this. I hate, hate, hate having to be up at the crack of dawn to get off the ship, especially if we're flying home transatlantic on disembarkation day, since those flights are overnighters that don't leave till later in the day. Those extra few hours on board would make a world of difference to us.

Currently on Anthem and wow bands are available so I would imagine that unless there is an issue with supplies there's a good chance they would be available on yours.

This is Anthem right now (on our way to Port Canaveral from NJ). I don't know what any of it means but haven't had any issues with the internet so far (touch wood).

So far (touch wood), I've not had any issues. It's only dropped momentarily once. But I'm only using my phone and tablet, not a computer. There's a thing about randomised MAC that apparently can cause persistent connection problems but I don't know if that would apply to a computer.

We made it to the Big Apple!

I like to watch Cruise with Ben and David on YouTube.

It makes it all seem more real once you have firm plans made, doesn't it? @bethr_20, wishing your husband all the best for his operations and a speedy recovery.

I believe the dry dock is due either late 2024 or early 2025. I have read a couple of posts elsewhere suggesting she may be heading for Asia, so if that is going to happen I think you'd be right and they'll do the dry dock at some point after her summer 2024 season in Europe.

My pleasure. I always find Royal's excursion descriptions to be sadly lacking, so I'm glad I was able to help. With a 5pm flight, it should work well for you.

It depends to a certain extent on how late your flight is because the excursions do get you to the airport in plenty of time for the earliest time mentioned in the excursion description. So if that's, say, 5 pm and your flight home isn't until 10 pm, you'd still have a lot of time to kill at the airport. In that case, it might be worth finding a hotel or somewhere that would store your bags for you or get a day room somewhere and enjoy some pool time. However, if your flight is towards the earlier end of the spectrum, you'd use up most of your spare time just getting to somewhere that will store your bags so that's where the convenience of the excursion kicks in. We have done several tours with airport transfer and the one we did of Miami was scheduled to make an hour-long stop at Bayside and another hour in the Cuban area of Miami so that might be similar to the one you're looking at. Unfortunately our time got cut by half due to some silly passengers getting the wrong disembarkation tags but that wasn't the tour people's fault and it was still a good tour. One thing to bear in mind is that these tours start quite early and it might be a bit chilly, so make sure you keep a jacket or something else to hand to wrap up in until it warms up.

Just keep watching it. I got that same excursion for $64 during the BF sale, which is cheaper than the ticket price for KSC! We're less than 2 weeks out now and the current price in the planner is $139!

Totally agree with your DD. Out of all of the new menus, the taste of Asia one is the one I find most appealing. Guess I need to book a longer cruise too.

It would be interesting to hear what you think of them, if you wouldn't mind sharing afterwards.

I was just randomly browsing and spotted two more new menus on Brilliance's current sailing (she's doing a 14-night Panama canal), if anyone wants to have a look. One is called "A taste of Royal history" and the other is "A taste of the world".

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.