MidwestIA

It's going to be surreal, I will probably cry once we've boarded, lol. Three years is a long time!

I can do that! 🙂 WASHY WASHY HAPPY HAPPY!

Little do you know that the additional health protocols include taking daily shifts as the "washy washy" person.

I started our check in today for our cruise next month and got this notification when I went in and ticked that each of us were unvaxxed. 

OnPoint. Bring your own test kit and it's @ $15. My wife, I and another passenger did it. We all had the same experience. A young lady, who seemed to be in a wind tunnel, told you what to do. She really paid no attention to what you were doing and her only concern was a single line on the test strip. No questions about expiration date, no monitoring if you put a clean swab in the liquid tube, no notice if you do any of the procedures. I see doing my own free self test and Photoshop in my future instead of wasting the $15. 
In the Army, we called this test a finger drill.

Where in Iowa are you located?  Nomi Health has testing locations in Des Moines and Council Bluffs. I use them locally in Florida and they have both PCR and antigen testing options at my site.  
https://patient.nomihealth.com/signup/26?referrer=nomi_sp_ia
They don't have any information on the age limits for testing, but you can try the phone number on their site or the live chat or contact forms to ask for the age requirements if either of those locations are convenient for you.

Sorry, it was RiteAid via Quest:
https://www.riteaid.com/pharmacy/services/covid-19-testing
 

Now if we could just see crew faces again

Crew members like myself, will now no longer need to covid-test before flying out to join the ship at the beginning of our contract.
 
Personally, I am very happy about this!
 
 

Has anyone had their 2 yr old get their pre cruise testing done at Walgreens or CVS? If not, and you got a 2 yr old tested, where did you go? I am looking at the pharmacy websites (and local pharmacy websites) and their PCR tests are all “rated” for 3+. The at-home tests are only accepted for vaccinated, so I’m kind of worried about how I’m to get my 2 yr old the accepted test before embarkation day. 
 
(With my first child, I would never have considered getting a PCR test done because he just wouldn’t have been able to stand it at 2. My second kid, however, acts like shoving things into her nasal cavity a sport so she’d take a test like a champ to go on vacation). 

That is exactly why we booked the liberty out of Galveston. We live in Iowa so we would drive. If we test positive we can just drive home (disappointing but better than airplanes)

We went ahead and booked ourselves and our 8 kids in the presidential suite on the liberty in October. The hope is that they change the percentage for vaxxed and approve our exemption requests (4 of us are over 12). We booked in October hoping there would be less kids booked, therefor more room for exemptions. Wish RC would be more transparent about that while booking but we booked anyway. My husband’s parents are in the room with us and they are vaxxed. We will either get to cruise with RC in October or we will get a refund, I’m just done waiting to cruise. If they don’t approve us we are immediately booking Princess on a sailing that has room for our medical/religious status. We tested to go to Beaches in 2021 and it was a beautiful vacation so we are fine testing this time. We already canceled other sailings and booked Hawaii and another Disney trip in the winter. We decided to avoid international flights for the same reasons everybody else on this thread have. Fingers crossed! 

We went ahead and booked ourselves and our 8 kids in the presidential suite on the liberty in October. The hope is that they change the percentage for vaxxed and approve our exemption requests (4 of us are over 12). We booked in October hoping there would be less kids booked, therefor more room for exemptions. Wish RC would be more transparent about that while booking but we booked anyway. My husband’s parents are in the room with us and they are vaxxed. We will either get to cruise with RC in October or we will get a refund, I’m just done waiting to cruise. If they don’t approve us we are immediately booking Princess on a sailing that has room for our medical/religious status. We tested to go to Beaches in 2021 and it was a beautiful vacation so we are fine testing this time. We already canceled other sailings and booked Hawaii and another Disney trip in the winter. We decided to avoid international flights for the same reasons everybody else on this thread have. Fingers crossed! 

That is exactly why we booked the liberty out of Galveston. We live in Iowa so we would drive. If we test positive we can just drive home (disappointing but better than airplanes)

That is exactly why we booked the liberty out of Galveston. We live in Iowa so we would drive. If we test positive we can just drive home (disappointing but better than airplanes)

We went ahead and booked ourselves and our 8 kids in the presidential suite on the liberty in October. The hope is that they change the percentage for vaxxed and approve our exemption requests (4 of us are over 12). We booked in October hoping there would be less kids booked, therefor more room for exemptions. Wish RC would be more transparent about that while booking but we booked anyway. My husband’s parents are in the room with us and they are vaxxed. We will either get to cruise with RC in October or we will get a refund, I’m just done waiting to cruise. If they don’t approve us we are immediately booking Princess on a sailing that has room for our medical/religious status. We tested to go to Beaches in 2021 and it was a beautiful vacation so we are fine testing this time. We already canceled other sailings and booked Hawaii and another Disney trip in the winter. We decided to avoid international flights for the same reasons everybody else on this thread have. Fingers crossed! 

We went ahead and booked ourselves and our 8 kids in the presidential suite on the liberty in October. The hope is that they change the percentage for vaxxed and approve our exemption requests (4 of us are over 12). We booked in October hoping there would be less kids booked, therefor more room for exemptions. Wish RC would be more transparent about that while booking but we booked anyway. My husband’s parents are in the room with us and they are vaxxed. We will either get to cruise with RC in October or we will get a refund, I’m just done waiting to cruise. If they don’t approve us we are immediately booking Princess on a sailing that has room for our medical/religious status. We tested to go to Beaches in 2021 and it was a beautiful vacation so we are fine testing this time. We already canceled other sailings and booked Hawaii and another Disney trip in the winter. We decided to avoid international flights for the same reasons everybody else on this thread have. Fingers crossed! 

This is me just waving bye to this thread as it gets locked. Bye thread, it was nice while it lasted! 🙂

totally disagree. I trust a fireman to put out fires. I trust a Soldier to guard us. I trust a cruise ship company to cruise. COVID is not in RCL's "lane". RCL was made to follow some political science idiotocracy. Now that they are free to make proper business decisions, many of us hope that they will in the Covid arena as they do in most of their other areas.

After all....90% Vax is WAY safer than 80% Vax or 70% Vax....I've lost the ability to be shocked or phased in the absence of common sense and logic displayed by companies, government, people....
Bowen....my hope is to someday share a beverage and a laugh on a cruise ship with you.  Perhaps I    will follow where you go.

Update: I called RC today since we're just over two weeks out. They said they would be finalizing all exemptions this week and I should hear something for sure by the end of the week. Either way it'll be nice to finally have this three year long chapter of my life closed. I talked to my Mom and we agreed that (much as we hate cruising without the kiddos) if the exemption doesn't get accepted we'll be calling to find a Virgin cruise with unvaccinated space and we'll be trying them out for a five day in August. I'm pretty excited to soon be back on a ship one way or another. 🙂

Careful, they may become virgin daiquiri addicts like my 12-year-old niece was on Harmony recently.
Joking aside, it was fun to be able to "take her to the bar" to grab a drink. The fact that she already knew what a Miami Vice was did shock me a bit though. 🤣

Yes to both.

My boys were able to get beverages (soda, virgin lava flows etc) using the Diamond drink vouchers. They haven’t quite reached 80 points so they are Diamond via me. 

On Monday the cdc said it’s dropping its protocol for cruise ships. And letting the cruise lines set there own protocol’s. They still are recommending   Vaccinations  and boosters. But leaving it up to cruise line as far as pre cruise testing.  I understand one cruise line just dropped test requirements.  If true. Hopefully  rcc will do same.