CFL

Most of us understand the advantages of booking excursions through Royal.  They include convenience and piece of mind that the ship won't leave you behind. 
But I just learned the hard way about another advantage.
My son was on a waterfall excursion, slipped and injured his foot.  We went back to the ship and had it checked in medical. They x-rayed it and found it was broken. They put on a cast and I braced for a substantial bill.
The doctor then said "no charge for this. If you injure yourself on board or on a cruise line excursion,  Royal will pick up the medical bill."

Yes

"Can someone send me a Cruise Compass from XYZ of the Seas?  I am going on the ship next week and I want to do some detailed planning".
This request comes up multiple times each month.  As a Cruise Planning Addict I know exactly what they are going through.  I have the "Cruise Compass" tab on the Royal Caribbean Blog as a favourite on my browser.  Last month, I stumbled on a "hack".  I hope my brothers and sisters of the "Order of Overly Organized" [OoOO] enjoy this one.
I use the Royal Caribbean phone APP that lists all of future cruises I have. Then I:
Go to the bottom of the start up screen (it lists all of our future cruises) and press the "Get more details on ships we support" tab at the very bottom. Find your ship that you will sail on ... I know all of them are not there but 23 of them are!. Select the ship you will be sailing on. Find a sailing date similar to the one you will sail on (you might have to do some digging on the Royal Website to find a similar one).  I choose the one that is sailing currently or as close to today as possible. Press Daily Planner and ALL of the On Line Cruise Compasses are available for you to view. I am looking at DAY 1 of Independance of the Seas for the NOV 01 to NOV 05 sailing right now.  I know there will be these events on these days:
DAY 1: 8:00PM Headliner Showtime (in this case Nate Weatherup) ... this was in the past.
DAY 2: 9:15PM Ice Spectaclar: Freeze Frame! (V) ... this has not even happened yet (it is 7:49PM in Montreal right now).
DAY 3: 3:30PM Name That 80's Tune Trivia (V) in the Schooner Bar
I think you get my gist. 
It is an absolute Disney World for members of the OoOO.  It is not as nicely laid out as "real" Cruise Planners', but it will definitely scratch that itch for all my brothers and sisters of the OoOO.
I hope this helps,
 
Curt from Canada

This is what I did to conveniently present the required documents.  It took me less than a minute at each checkpoint
 
 

I called eMed about ours. The three month extension is solid. 

We received ours last week. Box expiry date says 9/21/21 so with the 3 month extension, we’re at 12/21/21. Barely made it for our 12/13 sailing!

Hi Everyone, Just wanted to give a quick update - I did email Michael Bayley's office and another person higher up in guest relations, that was yesterday afternoon.  I received a call from a wonderful gentlemen today and we are working on getting me off the fence of whether or not to go on the cruises. 
Thanks for the advice everyone. I will provide you with the final resolution. 😉

I recommend people go through the CVS (or whatever website) to see how scheduling works.  Click EVERYTHING.  I found my local CVS will do antigen and PCR tests but only for SICK visits and you can’t schedule sick visits 2 weeks ahead of time (makes sense)  if I click on Travel on the CVS site I have many locations show up but when I attempt to book it shows “no appointments available”. Now imagine thinking “I’ve got this I can book easily”,  only to go into panic mode when finding out the 30 stores surrounding me don’t offer travel tests!  There is ONE CVS 45 minutes away that allows me to book a travel appointment 2weeks ahead.  So please, whoever is using any pharmacy, etc please understand WHEN appointments open, and do they meet your needs. 

I thought scheduling three COVID test appointments was overkill.  Turns out it was a wise thing to do based on recent posts to this thread.

Sitka - This was a stop that only happened due to COVID. Originally we were scheduled to go to Victoria, but due to the Canada restrictions, the itinerary changed to include Sitka instead, and I'm glad it did. This was a really neat stop, with lots of options to check out. Most of the tours were some combination of time spent at two or three different points of interest, so we looked through and decided on one that went to the raptor center, the totem park, and one of the native clan houses.
 
The raptor center was first, and definitely a must-see if you're in Sitka. There was a short presentation with one of their bald eagles, and then time to explore the rest of the facility, including the flight center, the outdoor enclosures, and the hiking trails. Unfortunately, the bulk of the trails were closed due to bear activity. I asked one of the staffers how many bears you had to see in Alaska to close off a trail, as I'd assume bears were just a fact of life in the area. He said they normally have one or two on the area, but this season they'd been seeing 6 or 7, including a momma bear and cubs. They'd even had one walk across the parking lot just that morning around 8am when the staff was getting there. Additional fun fact - the raptor center is featured on the Nat Geo series "Alaska Animal Rescue" on Disney+, which we've checked out since getting back.
 
After leaving the raptor center, we headed to the totem park. You could go check out the exhibits in the visitor center, or you could go walk the trails. Again, some of them were closed due to bear activity, as these trails apparently connected to the raptor center trail section as well, but we were able to walk most of them and see the totems as well as check out the pink salmon running in the river. We took a quick lap through the visitor's center, and then hopped back on the bus for a ride to the last stop, the clan house.
 
This one, unfortunately, was a little disappointing, simply due to COVID. It was advertised as a tribal dance experience, and while we had a nice presentation and a couple of songs and stories by one of the natives, but we didn't get the full tribal dance performance - I assume either due to low staffing or social distancing protocols. 
 
Overall, another awesome day in Alaska, and for a very reasonable price. If we hadn't been limited to RCL provided excursions, we'd have probably tried to work the science center in as well, as we had plenty of time left in port after our tour was done, but that'll have to wait for another trip.























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Skagway - Part 2
I know the "default" excursion in Skagway is the railroad, but we wanted to do something different as we didn't think our 2 year old would enjoy just sitting on a train for 3 hours. Instead, we decided to book the musher's camp and s'mores experience. Unfortunately, due to COVID and the reduced number of tourists in port this year, they weren't offering the full experience where you actually got to ride in a dog sled - our guide told us they actually didn't expect to get *any* visitors again this year, so they had to scramble last minute to even get a handful of sled dogs and a few staffers in to run the excursion at all. 
The drive out to the camp was incredible - absolutely beautiful views, just like everywhere in Alaska, and our coach driver was a wealth of information and fun trivia about the Gold Rush, Jack London, and all things Skagway. It was actually kind of nice with the reduced crowds, there were only 7 of us on this particular excursion so it was very intimate.
Once we arrived at the musher's camp, we got to hear all about the history of sled dog racing and got to interact with one of the dogs - the rest stayed nside the fenced in area. It would have been nice to interact with more dogs, but again, just one more thing they weren't able to do because of the reduced operations due to COVID. They only had 7 or 8 dogs on property, whereas he said they normally have way more than that. Also, I was a little jealous - apparently they take one of the dogs onto the Princess ship that comes in every week and do an onboard experience.
We still got to sit around the fire and make s'mores though, as well as walk up a short trail to a waterfall overlook and grab some souvenirs before piling back on the bus. We were running ahead of schedule, so our driver actually stopped at one of the photo overlooks along the route back to town, as well as took us by a couple of extra points of interest in town instead of going straight back to the ship. 
Overall, an excellent excursion at a reasonable price, and I'd love to go back when they're running at full operations to actually take that sled dog ride and get  more time to play with the dogs.















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Skagway - Part 1
I'm an avid hiker and trail runner, so I wanted to find a good solo adventure for the morning before our main excursion in the afternoon. I did some research and found a bunch of different trails listed, but settled on hiking up AB Mountain as it was close to the port, looked like a decent workout, and I could easily get a shuttle there and back for not much money.
Let's just say I might have underestimated that trail, at least given the time of year and weather conditions. I thought I'd be all the way to the summit and back down in around 4 hours, instead it took me closer to 5. My GPS showed that I was about 4 miles in (a mile from the summit) when I turned around. The fog up top was really thick, I could barely see the trail markers, and I knew I had to get back to the ship for my later afternoon plans. It was a great hike, super intense, just a shame that it was so foggy - apparently on a clear day you can get some outstanding views.
Special shout-out to my shuttle driver, Ann, from Dyea Chilkoot Trail Transport. She loaned me a can of bear spray (thank goodness I didn't need it) and waited on me at the trailhead even though I wound up getting back almost an hour later than I expected. She simply asked if I could give her a little extra since she sat and waited, which I didn't mind, especially as the round trip shuttle was only $20 to begin with.
If you want a challenging hike while in Skagway, definitely try this one out, but I would advise being in really good shape and being OK alone on a trail - I didn't see another person the whole time I was out there. And yes, I did have to use the ropes in the photos. They were mildly useless on the way down - I slipped and slid so much it wasn't even funny, and completely destroyed the cheap cotton gloves I took for the hike on all the rocks.

Juneau - We did the combined tour of both the Mendenhall Glacier and the Mendenhall gardens nearby. I'd have loved a little more time to hike at Mendenhall on my own, but as we had our 2-year-old with us, all excursions had to be booked through Royal, and several of them were off-limits to anyone under 12 due to COVID and operator policies.
If you go to the glacier, I strongly advise taking the short hike down to Nugget Falls. We had roughly an hour, and we had enough time to go to the falls, take photos, get to the overlook trail, and then grab a souvenir from the gift shop before getting back on the bus.
The tram tour through the gardens was fun - not something I think I'd go out of my way to do again next time I'm in Juneau, but it was a neat excursion nonetheless. The tour guide driving the tram was very knowledgeable and pointed out tons of plant life and mushrooms, and the view from the top was great. Just be warned, the grade going up (and down) is rather steep, so it can be a bit of a bumpy ride.
Definitely a good combo for the cost - as much fun as a helicopter tour would have been, I wasn't going to shell out $500/person for it... and it got cancelled anyways due to fog, much to the chagrin of a couple people who wound up on our tour instead.

I didn't want to shell out for VOOM, so I couldn't live blog during our trip on Ovation a few weeks ago, but I figured I'd share my thoughts and pics from our excursions, as that's what I took the most pics of. I'll split it into 3 or 4 multiple posts - one for each excursion.

#LongLivePrintouts

Almond butter for those with allergies. 
 
Disclosure: I profit from almond butter sales.

I'm planning to book CVS for two days before our cruise. However I have also ordered 3 at home tests just in case. 

I'm really hesitant to go to CVS for our pre-cruise Covid tests.  We received our vaccines there but despite many hours on the phone with their customer support, our vaccines never showed up in the app. My concern is taking the test at CVS but not being able to access the results. For those of you who got the vaccines at CVS, do the results show in the same place in the app as the vaccines?  We'll probably either do the home tests/Walgreens just for peace of mind. 

I received my tests. This is the lot number and expiration date printed on them, but with the 90-day extension, they're now expiring on 1/5/2022. So, thankfully they'll cover my cruises.

I had it made by a jeweler friend at the beginning of the pandemic, but searching 'mask lanyard' on a site like etsy yielded some great results. Like this one!

One thing to remember with the proctored tests. You can use them on your own as a peace of mind test. Just that result wouldn't count since it wasn't proctored.

There's nothing special about the test itself in those kits compared to the other at-home tests. Just you pay extra for the paperwork trail.

My thoughts are that the kit offered by RC show in new packaging which would suggest to me that there is a new expiration date as well?  Just a guess as I do not have mine as yet and just ordered them today. With this guess I chose to pay the $99 cost for a 3pack from Royal as opposed to the $150 price abbott offers for a Six Pack in the old packaging.

Looks like Royal's testing kits are now available - https://store.optum.com/royal-caribbean/
$69.99 for two, $99.99 for three - no cost for expedited shipping. They're labelled as "for Royal Caribbean" - so big "plus" for "will the cruise line accept this" peace of mind. 

Correct ....... I'm realizing, actually more accepting, it is also the new travel reality.
Look, it's been nearly 2 frigging years since SARS2 first appeared on the planet. Democratic governments and scientists advising them don't agree on most things pertaining to SARS2, it's spread, how to prevent it without crushing economies or restricting social mobility and basic freedoms. They can't get their shit together to either get their messaging right or provide guidance. Uniformity in managing the pandemic? Non-existent between states in the US and countries globally. Selfish nationalism is pervasive and prevents arriving at common solutions. Everyone is confused then political polarization rising globally sets people against each other and that prevents rational discourse and problem solving.
My solution? I know how to keep myself healthy and protect others from COVID. My personal opinion is that SARS2 isn't going away and the primary reason for that is that more than half of the planet either can't get vaccinated or refuse to. That's reality. I can't change that. OTH, in addition to accepting inconvenience and change in the pandemic environment, if you take basic health steps, and avoid unnecessary infectious disease risk taking, avail yourself of available therapeutic protective measures including testing, you can travel safely ANYWHERE.
I'm acting on that belief and pretty much ignoring what our own governments, federal, state and local, are telling us.    

“To cruise or not to cruise…that was the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of schedule-conflicted cruises, or to make reservations against a sea of uncertainty, and, by cancelling, end them?”…my buddy Billy Shakespeare said that while considering a river cruise on the Thames back in the 1570’s. It gave him the idea for a play!?