FionaMG

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.

Not on Adventure. Free Internet for suite guests is only on Quantum and Oasis class ships. You'll have to buy an Internet package but that will still be a good bit cheaper than the key. Buy it in the cruise planner as it's more expensive to buy on board.

You absolutely do not need an excursion in Barcelona. You can walk up to the bottom of the Rambla in about 20 minutes. If that's too far for you, there's a port bus for a few euros and plenty of taxis right outside the door. Barcelona also has a pleasant city beach and promenade. Note that the taxis will be very busy up until about 9.30 as this is also the main embarkation/disembarkation port on this itinerary so lots of guests will be disembarking with all of their luggage. This will be a good day for you to plan on having a leisurely breakfast and get off a little bit later, rather than getting caught up in the mayhem of departing guests and their bags. I have used this site for research in the past: https://www.barcelona-tourist-guide.com/en/ramblas/barcelona-las-ramblas.html

Yes, it's not looking very hopeful. I did look at the official Madeira port schedule myself later on and the booking for Freedom is definitely there. I questioned the other poster as to the reliability of the information and they said that Madeira is usually very reliable and update their entries regularly. I did try to find listings for Lanzarote to see if I could determine the port prior to that, but wasn't able to track anything down.

Hi and welcome to the boards I don't know the answer to your questions but I'm going to ping another regular poster who might. @Traveler Can you help?

Me too. Prefer the bigger screen and a proper keyboard.

I'm not usually one to repost unverified stuff, but under the circumstances... Somebody who regularly posts port schedules over on CC has just posted this (my underlining): "Funchal, Madeira Port Bookings (Correct as of 31/03/23) A new booking has been made for Freedom - most likely a stop on her way to dry-dock? I see she has port of origin marked as Lanzarote and a gap in schedules between 9th November and 29th December, so this seems likely. Also, the port call for Odyssey has been removed, as this is not a port on the final transatlantic itinerary. Odyssey OTS - 30th April 2024. *CANCELLED* Anthem OTS - 5th May 2024 Anthem OTS - 10th June 2024 Anthem OTS - 12th September 2024 Anthem OTS - 24th September 2024 Anthem OTS - 10th October 2024 Adventure OTS - 5th November 2024 Odyssey OTS - 10th November 2024 Voyager OTS - 16th November 2024 Freedom OTS - 21st November 2024. *NEW* Adventure OTS - 29th November 2024"