sford75

So late to this topic, but wanted to add my 2 cents. I decided to purchase The Key for our family of 3 for the Icon this coming March. We did it once before in May 2019 and it was awful. It was so bad, they actually refunded our money in full. This was the Symphony shortly after The Key first launched and crew members were clueless as to what it was. The bag dropoff location was moved and guess how they notified us...with a letter in our stateroom. Make it make sense. With that said, we decided to purchase it for the Icon for several reasons. 1. Its about $300 more than the internet for 1 week. So for me, I'm calculating the cost at $300. 2. With the Icon being a new ship, there will be new activities we want to do and shows we will want to see, so any priority for that will be welcomed. 3. We are going during South Florida Spring Break. Port of Miami is a madhouse for those cruises, so priority embarkation and disembarkation will be helpful. We don't plan on doing much in port, as we really want to take advantage of the ship, so this is our splurge.

the Suite lounge is open most of the day, but alcohol is only free during their Happy Hour. At least this was how it was on Freedom earlier this month.

Yep, that's what I heard. The minimum bids started at $10 for a promenade stateroom up to $50/pp for the Balcony. It's only a 3 night cruise, but the balcony on this sailing was a good $400+ more when I booked, so I'm very happy with it. I'm only traveling with my son, so I was fine with an inside, but having a little more space will be nice.

So for those curious about RoyalUp Bids after Covid, I am pretty sure mine was just accepted. I was in an Inside Stateroom and bid the minimum on most every category, with the exception of the Spacious Interior & Ultra Spacious OV that I bid considerably higher than the minimum. All my bids are now expired except for my bid for an OV Balcony. It was for $50/pp which was the minimum bid. I only added it last night as I suspected many of the categories I bid on are rooms that the cruiseline is keeping empty (categories that were never available). My bids for the 2 categories above were more than I bid for the balcony. Now just waiting for confirmation and new room assignment. We leave on Friday.