FionaMG

Hi @dancernl I have Anthem booked for September, also in a run-of-the-mill cabin, so will be following your blog with interest. Hope you have a great time. As a gym-goer myself, normally the age for unaccompanied gym use on board is 16, so your SK2 may need to have an adult with him. That said, ever since Royal began introducing paid stuff like foot analyses, the instructors have been conspicuous by their absence (that's a whole other rant) so you might never see one. Also, if he's a big lad, which he probably is if basketball is his thing, and clearly knows what he's doing, chances are they wouldn't say anything anyway, but just so you're aware. The gyms on board are fantastic so I'm sure he'll love it.

We did this in Rio de Janeiro and had about the same time between the two excursions as you will have. One thing I would highly recommend is to get to the meeting point for your first excursion early so that if there is more than one group you will be in the first group out. My family are hardened stragglers (they drive me nuts) and in Rio we ended up on the last of six buses for the first tour. Obviously that meant we were at the back of every line on every stop so by the time we got back to the ship at the end of the first tour our 75 minute cushion had been whittled down to 15. We literally only had time to run to the toilet and grab a ready-made sandwich from the WJ to chug down as we ran to make the second excursion. To be fair, I think this is unlikely to happen to you but no harm in being prepared.

Omg, you just described ME! I can tell you though that the woman behind the check-in desk at Barcelona airport practically kissed me, she was so happy to see my neatly ordered documents.

I'm not tech savvy enough to understand the ins and outs of it but I'd heard of it happening before. I'm glad you were able to get it sorted.

I think this probably happened because you originally benefited from some promotional offer that was not able to be used in conjunction with C&A status and when you put your number in the system repriced to reflect that.

Hello neighbour! I paid by card. Initially, I booked the cruise I wanted on Royal's US website (you can change the website country at the top of the home page) to get the booking in dollars. When you do that you have to pay the deposit on the website immediately. I then emailed Michelle with the booking number and asked her to take the booking over. She replied within a few hours (remember she's 6 hours behind you so there's bound to be a bit of a delay) to say she was processing it and then in the next couple of days I received emails both from her and from Royal confirming that the process was complete. She also sent me a form to sign electronically confirming the booking was to be handled by her. When it was time to pay the balance, she sent me details with a form that I could email back to her and her phone number to call, if I preferred, to give her the card details. The thing that is different from here in Europe is that she will use your card to pay Royal directly. She does not ever hold any of your money the way travel agents do here, so your card statement will show payment to Royal. For this reason, it's probably not possible to pay by transfer, although you could ask. I didn't bother because I wanted to take advantage of the travel insurance provided by the card. However, you don't have to book on the website if you prefer not to. Simply send her an email telling her what you're looking for and she'll get back to you with suitable suggestions. That way, you will sometimes get access to group rates that are cheaper than the prices you see on Royal's website. Sorry if I've given you a ton of information you didn't really need; I just wanted to be as helpful as possible.

We are going in May and staying 2 nights before our cruise. We chose the Hotel Lancelot for its proximity to the Colosseum, which is what we specifically want to visit, and for the good reviews. They have been very responsive. We booked direct through their website and I received a confirmation email back from the owner containing lots of useful information. When I replied to thank her she replied back with even more information. She sounded so nice and helpful. Their website also has a ton of information, including the hotel's very interesting history and a number of walks complete with maps. Obviously it might not be the right hotel for your specific needs and I haven't stayed there yet so I'm writing this sight unseen but I have a good feeling about it. Here is the link to the website, if you want to take a look: https://www.lancelothotel.com/

I use Michelle Cunningham. [email protected] I found her recommended here on the boards and have been very happy with her service. One thing to bear in mind is that your cruise pricing has to be in US dollars so the exchange rate against your currency may sometimes be in your favour and sometimes not.

Yes. I live in Portugal and use MEI.

You could perhaps try uninstalling and reinstalling the app. There have been a few issues reported recently on the boards that this has somehow fixed.

I wonder if anybody ever takes advantage anymore of that Stateroom phone rate.

Oh good. Thanks for confirming. I was wondering this too as I will be due my first ever half way through my Anthem cruise in September because of the double points promo.

I'm not sure if you really mean this but I can actually understand the sentiment behind it. I was a complete wreck in the run up to my Harmony cruise last September and it completely ruined all of the usual pre-cruise anticipation and excitement. It wasn't until the second day on board that I was finally able to feel relaxed and enjoy the cruise. I reckon that pretty much everyone is going to get covid sooner or later going forward and Murphy's law inevitably means that, like in the OP's case, it will happen at the most inconvenient time.

That's lousy. I feel for you. I hope you will have a great cruise when you are able to go.

I think it depends to some extent on passenger demographics. For example, ships sailing in Asia usually offer a range of Asian food, while cruises from the UK typically offer a pie and a curry dish every evening in the MDR. Curiously, I have noticed that they also offered these two options on Jewel last summer and currently have them on Grandeur. Although neither of these ships was/is saling from the UK they were/are heavily targeting the UK market, so the onboard demographics would likely reflect this. I completely agree with what you're saying and would love to see them roll out some regional cuisine on all their cruises as the menus currently are getting to be rather same-old and boring.

I had the opposite happen. I don't drink any alcohol and when I asked the bartender at the gym to charge my two waters to my diamond drinks he was amazed and asked me if I was sure.

You can get an idea of what to expect by going into the app and looking at the daily planner for the cruise your ship is doing at the moment. To get there, you just to scroll down to the bottom of your app's home page and click on "Get more details on ships we support". From there you choose your ship and whatever cruise is at the top of the list. Hope this helps. We sail on Odyssey in May so I hope you will all take good care of her for us.

Definitely!

It will go to waste. Guess you should book Chops or something.

This type of OBC is non-refundable. From Royal's website: "If the CWC “best price guarantee” results in a decrease in the guest’s cruise fare after the Final Payment due date, then the difference will be provided to guests in the form of a non-refundable onboard credit for use on the guest’s cruise." If you haven't used it all up by the end of the cruise you will lose it. I'm sure you won't let that happen.

It's impossible to know right now what the situation will be at the time of your cruise. When I sailed on Harmony in the Med last year, various governments required cruise ship passengers to be tested in the 48 hours prior to final disembarkation (this was definitely the case for Spain; not sure about Italy) so Royal had to provide that test or nobody would have been allowed off the ship at the end of the cruise. Sooner or later the protocols will turn up on the Getting Ready to Cruise, so just keep checking here: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/the-healthy-sail-center/getting-ready-to-cruise

I would love to do an itinerary like this one. The problem is convincing DH that it won't kill him to sail on what he refers to as a "fishing boat"! (This from the man who worked for 8 years on the old Sitmar Line, whose ships were tiny in comparison to Grandeur ) Hope you have an amazing time.

I did not know this was even a thing. I will have to look out for it in the future!

Hi @jbrinkm, We did this tour the opposite way around (disembarked Fort Lauderdale, flight out of Miami) back in December 2019. I did a recap of that cruise in the Live Blogs board and you can read about how the excursion went here (link should take you straight to the actual post; if it doesn't it's on the last page of the thread): It was a good tour. We enjoyed it and in terms of convenience it's absolutely unbeatable. You get off the ship, collect your bags, stick them in the bus, do the tour and you and your bags get dropped off at the airport afterwards. In that respect, I would definitely recommend it. We have done this type of tour several times and it's way better than sitting at the airport for hours. But, and it's quite a big but, you do pay quite a high price for the convenience. It was ok for us, just as a couple, but you mentioned "family" and that means it's going to cost $$$, probably a good deal more than hiring a car. Another but is that it will still leave you several hours to kill when you get to the airport, because the drop-off time there is usually sometime between 1 pm and 2 pm, since they like to leave themselves plenty of leeway to ensure people don't miss their flights. If you wanted to do it on your own I don't think you'd be able to use a rideshare because then you would have nowhere to leave your luggage unless you paid them to stay with you the whole time. Maybe you could consider one of limo companies? That might work for you because you can book them by the hour and it might actually work out cheaper than the excursion depending on the size of your family. That way your luggage would stay in the car the whole time. I've used Larry's Limos in the past for port/airport/hotel transfers and they were fine: https://www.larryslimo.com/contact.html Hope this helps. If you have any specific questions about the excursion that you don't see answered in my blog post feel free to ask. I'll be glad to reply if I know the answer.

That's a pity. I hope you manage to sort something out. Fingers crossed for you.