Dimension

Exactly 100 days till this one sets sail. Anyone else out there onboard with my wife and I?

Wow, someone else actually has a higher drink package then I do.

Great the one time I do not want win a contest and what happens I win. For some reason all my cruises are right around the same $84 mark no matter how close or how far out the cruise is booked.

Well so far my my luck of having the highest package continues. Gee, what great luck I have.

With the price of the drink packages going up I wanted to see who has the highest price. Here is mine for a 4 night on Allure for November next year Can anyone beat this? It seems that I am always the lucky one and have to always pay top dollar for the drink package no matter how far out my sailing is.

My wife and I are booked on this cruise and are meeting some friends of ours on it as well. This will be our first time on Explorer so we are excited to be on a new ship at least to us. Who else is booked on this cruise?

I am booked on Explorer for the end of this October as with the sale that is going on right now Deluxe with Voom is $90.00/Day. I just paid $85.00/Day last week when I was on Mariner of the Seas. I booked 2 cruises while onboard last week for March and November 2023 and both of those are clocking in at $95.00/Day. I would have to say that Royal has really made a major price increase in the Deluxe packages since the restart. I am definitely having sticker shock since the restart for prior to COVID I was use to paying between $50-$70/Day. When Royal has its "sales" I have yet to see any price drop on any of my past 3 cruises or my up coming 3 cruises. My preferred drink is White Russians with Gray Goose. These were a cost of $11 plus gratuity which would bring the total up to $13 per a drink on my cruise last week. Doing the math for my upcoming Explorer cruise I would have to drink 7 drinks a day to break even. On a 6 day cruise that is a lot of drinking especially since 3 of those days are port days. If the prices continue to go up I will have to give up drinking for drinking to get my moneys worth will turn out to be a burnout in drinking. I would be drinking to just be drinking and not really enjoying myself.

I tried that once and it did not work. Best bet is to take your laptop or ipad.

Downloading the movies to an external drive is what I always do just in case the Internet connection does not work on the ship very well. If the Internet is working properly then I just stream movies from my home media server. As for connecting your phone, ipad, laptop to the in room TV you will need a HDMI cable/adaptor to run to the back of the TV from your device. Once connected the TV will see the connection and using the remote you can change the input over to the HDMI port that your device is plugged into. I did this exact same thing last week when I connected my laptop to the TV on Mariner.

I was just on Mariner of the Seas last week and the Internet connection was very slow. It make even checking email a painful task but with that being said I have sailed on other ships where I was able to stream without any real problems. Sure every now and then the stream would buffer for a few seconds but for the most part I was able to stream the content in 720. The TV on Mariner I do not believe was a smart TV or nor were any of the other TVs I have seen in the cabins. Since I bring laptop I just use it as my streaming device. As for streaming from your phone you would need an AV adaptor for your phone depending on if it was a iPhone or Android. Something like the following would accomplish your task: iPhone: https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Lightning-Digital-AV-Adapter/dp/B009WHV3BM/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Hdmi+Cable+for+Phone+To+Tv&qid=1651663510&sr=8-3 Android: https://www.amazon.com/Android-Mirroring-Charging-Smartphones-Projector/dp/B08LN8Z6QX/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1DIN9PBNFOO5F&keywords=android+to+hdmi+adapter+for+tv&qid=1651663768&sprefix=android+%2Caps%2C62&sr=8-3

@MuttMutt @DJ VINCE How are you all displaying your devices? Are you using the in room TVs or bringing some sort of external display? I know that the RPi can run a very small touch screen to make it like a hand held device. On a side note I love my RPi 4 and have installed RetroPi along with Kodi on it. Kodi allows me to access my Jellyfin server along with 3rd party add-ons that gives me my cable TV. I would like to be able to take my RPi 4 and use it with the in room TV but the last time I tried (it has been several years now) but I was never able to get the my universal remote to see the TV so that I could change the input to my laptop.

You can do like I am doing and only purchase the package when it is around the $60 mark. If it is not around that range I am now going to just buy the Refreshment package which can be easily found around the $23 range.

For me $66 a day is in my range but I am not sure if I could drink that much for 14 days. I would most likely get tired after the first solid week of drinking. I just wish that my cruise coming up was $66 a day mine has come down from $80 for the DBP to about $70 a day so I am little more happy but it sill out of my future range for the drink package. I have already made up my mind that I am going to stick it to Royal for charging me so much money for the DBP that my minimum alcoholic drinks per a day is going to be 15. If they want to charge that much money then I am going to up my game. After this cruise however I am done with buying the DBP unless it is around $60 a day for it.

You can get Coco Locos on the ships.

I would be happy with 3 shots being covered under the package. To get up to 5 shots like a real bar makes I would be willing to kick in a little extra to cover the additional shots assuming that a standard one was 3 shots. I have no problem kicking in a little extra to get a drink that has a lot of alcohol in it. I do however get a little upset when I cannot taste an alcohol at all in my drink. I would have been really upset when I ordered the Long Island if I was paying by the drink. The better bang for the buck is a cap. and coke for it comes in a lowball glass so that there is not as much room to water down the drink. My Long Island was served in a standard highball glass so the drink was very watered down with the same amount of alcohol in it.