Tiffeven

That's awesome. They actually allow students to duel enroll in college courses while in high school at some colleges. I've seen several homeschoolers who are close to completing their Bachelor's Degree at the same time they graduate high school. It is definitely a good jump start to life. I also have to say Wow! Nine kids! There must have never been a dull moment at your house. Our four little ones keep me busy. I am so thankful that Steven is retired and here to help all the time.

I 100% agree. Congrats on your 9th year of homeschooling. This is only our 3rd. We enjoy it, but definitely have those trying days haha. Cruising is perfect for our family. It allows Steven and me to get some much needed kid free time which works out great because the kids love Adventure Ocean. It also allows us to do things with the older kids like laser tag which would usually be difficult with the little ones. Plus the older kid's appreciate not having to tag along for the activities that the toddlers want to do. Then, of course, there are so many activities that we can do together as a family. Cruising is really a great option for families.

For some reason every time I try to post a picture or a document, it shows as a broken link or "forbidden." Not sure what's going on so instead of posting my document of requests, I will just copy and paste below. Sorry in advance for the bad formatting. It reformatted everything when I pasted into this. Requests for our wonderful genie: 1. For breakfast, we will have breakfast on our balcony. 2. For lunch: · Embarkation day lunch at Playmakers · Some days we will have lunch delivered to our room and some days we will eat at one of the specialty restaurants. 3. For dinner: · Dinner at Chops on the first night (if not Coastal Kitchen filet mignon night) · Coastal Kitchen on filet mignon night (with the kids) · Dinner at Izumi Hibachi (without the kids but Sophia, Kat, and Nyssa will probably want it delivered to the room as they love Izumi), Chops (first night with kids and once without), 150 Central Park (without the kids), Jaime’s Italian (with the kids), Wonderland (with the kids), and Hooked Seafood (delivered to the room for second dinner haha or we will go for lunch if it is not a reduced menu). · We do not want to go to Chef’s Table. · Please inform the restaurants that they do not need to wait between courses on bringing out the food. We would like to order our meals before we arrive so that it is ready when we arrive. The babies get fussy if we are in one place for too long, so we want the meals to be enjoyable but quicker than the usual cruise ship dining experience. We had a bad experience on one of our other Star Class cruises when we were at a specialty restaurant where the babies got fussy after a long wait on food. Since then, we always request our meals at a quicker pace and the dining experience is much more enjoyable. 4. Shows: · We will probably go to the Quest and the Love and Marriage game shows, but it will depend on the day and time. · We would like to see the adult (not family friendly) comedy show, Hairspray, and most of the other shows without the kids. If it is a show created with kids in mind such as the ice skating show, we will bring them. · We do not want to see the Headliner. · We will watch the aqua theater show from our balcony and would like snacks delivered during. 5. Our favorite snacks: · We love food! Christian and Sophia are like many other children their age and are not fond of new or exotic foods. Their favorite foods are pepperoni pizza, ice cream, candy, salt and vinegar chips, chocolate chip and sugar cookies. Kat and Nyssa also enjoy junk food as much as their older siblings do, but they are generally a lot less picky with food than Christian and Sophia. We all love fruit (with the exception of Christian). Steven and Tiffany enjoy many of the same things such as spicy foods, shrimp tempura rolls, pitas and hummus, and guacamole and chips. Where their tastes differ is Steven loves hot wings with blue cheese and the fresh orange juice from Park Café while Tiffany prefers seafood (especially the lobster from Chops) and desserts. 6. For drinks: Steven enjoys diet coke, Tiffany enjoys sprite zero (strawberry sprite zero is the favorite though), and the kids will drink almost anything but diet coke and sprite zero are favorites. 7. Random info about us: · We (with the exception of Christian) enjoy Starbucks very much. Tiffany usually has a grande skinny blonde vanilla latte or a tall caramel ribbon crunch frappuccino made with fat free milk, light base, and whipped cream with extra of the crunchies on top (depending on if I want a cold or hot drink). Steven has a tall caramel ribbon crunch frappuccino made with fat free milk, light base, and whipped cream with extra of the crunchies on top. Kat, Nyssa, and Sophia like double chocolate chip frappuccinos made with white mocha instead of dark mocha and with whipped cream on top. · Steven does not drink alcohol but will drink virgin drinks. Tiffany will occasionally drink alcohol (frozen, fruity drinks) but not very often. · On embarkation day, we would like to sign up for our nursery and Adventure Ocean hours as soon as possible before or directly after lunch. We would like to get the same hours for all of the kids, so that we can enjoy some adult time. · We are concerned about how Kat will do in nursery as she has never been apart from Nyssa. She is always with us, and has only ever been away from us while in the children’s program on cruises or at Club Med, but she has always been in the same class as Nyssa up until now (she is two and a half and Nyssa is three and a half). · We are homeschool parents and the kids are with us 24/7, so we would really like to have some adult only time to connect on this trip. We still want to do stuff with the kids, but we have not had any adult only time since our last cruise in March 2020. · We have a waterpark cabana at Coco Cay. For the first part of the day, we would like to put the kids in Adventure Ocean and it just be Steven and Tiffany at the waterpark. Then, we will pick up the kids and take them to the waterpark. We will probably be tired this evening and may opt to have dinner delivered to our room, but we will decide after we see how tired we are. 8. Requests · We would like to do a lot of the activities such as the flow rider, zip line, waterslides, Ultimate Abyss, ice skating (with all four of the kids), and the rock wall. If laser tag is included, we would like to do it with Christian and Sophia while the babies are in the nursery. Also if it is included and we have time and it does not conflict with anything else, Steven and Tiffany would like to do the Escape Room. · We do not want to do the Bridge or Galley Tour. · We need the coffee table moved out of the living room, so it is not a fall hazard for the babies. · All six of us want to do the cupcake decorating class. · We are celebrating all of our birthdays on this cruise. It was technically supposed to only be a birthday celebration for Steven and Tiffany who have summer birthdays, but all of the kid’s birthday cruises were canceled due to coronavirus. We didn’t want them to miss out on celebrating their birthday on a cruise, so we are calling this a birthday celebration cruise for the entire family. Not to mention, Sophia has been upset that her past two birthday cruises have been canceled and she has proceeded to remind us of that any chance she gets.

Steven and I got all of the kid's new cruise bags and filled them with snacks for the drive (Tennessee to Florida), new masks, and new lanyards. We were supposed to give this to them the day we leave for the cruise; but I am impatient, and we figured today is exactly one month until we board, so we caved and surprised them with their bag of goodies today. Giving the kids their bags got us really excited for the cruise but that excitement was intensified when Steven showed me that we received our genie email from Sunil. I am so beyond excited. I responded back with our list of requests (we just edit our previous one with any changes every time we do Star Class) that I will attach below. We also asked him if there was anything that he would like for us to stop and get him on our drive and we inquired about how Adventure Ocean and Royal Babies and Tot's hours would work. I will update when we get a reply.

We have been on Oasis and Allure and have two cruises scheduled on Harmony, but this will be our first time on Symphony as well. I am so excited. The Oasis class ships are amazing!

Looking forward to following along. Your family will love the Oasis, and even more so, experiencing it as Star Class. There is so much to do onboard and literally something for everyone.

I absolutely wish you the best and hope it works out even better than you planned. Have you received the September protocols for the first part of your B2B?

I second that! If you are not already planning on it, you should blog your trip. It would be nice having a blog to read on the drive to help get us excited (not that we need much help getting excited haha). Look forward to seeing you onboard.

You are right about the shows. I loved being up front during Mamma Mia, but during one of the aerial shows, our genie sat us about mid-way up in the theater, and the view was so much better. We would have missed so much in the front row. It just depends on the show. During this trip, we are planning on attending the shows without the kids. The only exception is the more kid friendly shows that actual hold their attention like the ice skating show. Obviously, this could change since Adventure Ocean hours are more limited than usual. We've always had to reserve nursery hours but this will be the first time reserving time in Adventure Ocean. With it occurring while school is in session, I'm sure it will be much easier getting hours than a school break cruise. I'm going to tell the genie that we want to reserve our hours first thing, so we can make sure we get the same times for all of the kids. I'm surprised we have not received the September guidelines yet. They said we would have them atleast 30 days out, but we are currently at 33 days and haven't heard a thing.

Oh man. That's disappointing, but I don't blame you one bit. Being told you can't go into areas of the ship (particularly ones you love) is a deal breaker. I really hope they loosen up the rules. I am so worried our B2B Star Class on Oasis in November will be affected by our kids not being able to be vaccinated. They told me right now the no B2B for unvaccinated only applies to August sailings, but I really hope that doesn't extend further. It would be nice to get some normalcy back.

Thank you! Glad to have y'all following along!

Glad to have you following along. When is your next trip? I always love reading your blogs.

Glad to have you following along. I'm sure you will have a blast. As we all say, it's hard to go back once you've went Star Class. Hopefully, our trip will ease any worries you have and answer any questions you have about sailing with a little one too young to be vaccinated.

Hey, you never know what could happen in the future. Not to mention, Star or not, a cruise is a cruise, and we have all went way too long without. We went with Tiffeven because we used the name Tiffeven and Stiffany in a video game we play together, and after Steven started getting called Stiffy, we decided Tiffeven was a little more PG haha.

Yes, Alan Rodrigues. We were so hoping he'd be on Symphony. Enjoy your cruises!

Looking forward to having you follow along on this journey!

I just started a new blog if you are interested. My kids are 11, 9, 3, and 2.

I also decided to blog our next trip. Here is the link if you are interested.

This cruise is a lift and shift from an Oasis of the Seas August 2020 cruise. We got a fantastic price since it was booked within a few months of the sail date. I'm pretty sure, Royal knew it wouldn't happen, but we were hoping for the best and figured worse case scenario, it would make a great lift and shift if the cruise didn't happen. Obviously, Oasis didn't happen but our price was protected and we were excited to switch from the New Jersey Oasis itinerary to the Symphony Eastern Caribbean itinerary from Florida especially since we are due to be on Oasis again in November. We were also able to snag a price I couldn't believe on a Thrill Waterpark Cabana and Full Day Pass during the shutdown. I had never seen it listed for $399 nor have I since. At 90 days pre-cruise, we logged in to do our online check-in. Unfortunately, it was not available until about 60 days out. We also never received our Star Class survey, but after calling Royal, they advised me they never were given my email by our TA. They quickly resolved this and we received our survey within a few hours. It is pretty much the same as before, but one of the questions was worded differently to keep up with the times (it used Elon Musk as part of the question). After seeing who the genies were on Symphony, we requested Sunil. I'm sure we would be happy with any of the genies, but we have heard so much good about Sunil we couldn't resist (especially since Alan is not there and is on the Allure instead). I am interested to see if we end up with Sunil, and I will update you all as soon as I receive my genie email.

11 cruises canceled, 4 devastated kids, 2 very sad adults, way too much future cruise credit.... 8 cruises scheduled, 4 excited kids, 2 very happy, yet leery adults, only 34 days to go until Star Class on Symphony!!!! Wow! Cruising is back!!! I am so excited that we can finally say that. I was one of those people saying "surely, cruising will have started back by ...," but as one cruise after the next was canceled, I started to wonder if we would ever return to sea. I went from reading daily live blogs and watching youtube cruise vlogs all the time to rarely doing it. My closet of vacation attire went from a "cruise closet" to a "Club Med closet." Then, I saw that a ship was set to sail and then another, and the next thing you know I began to think, "Wow, this might actually happen!" Initially, I was worried about what it would be like sailing since my kids are too young to be vaccinated (even though my husband and I are fully vaccinated). I worried about us being treated like second class citizens, and most of all I worried about how this would make the kids feel. Some of you, can even attest to my facebook post where I voiced my concerns about this. After, contemplating this for awhile, my husband and I decided to talk to our two older kids about this, and they still wanted to go. At that point, we said "This is OUR cruise, and we are going to go and enjoy ourselves and not let anyone ruin that for us! As this initial fear subsided, the excitement finally began to fully kick in. Cruise Vlogs and Blogs are back on the menu, and we even bought a new cruise wardrobe for the kids, but before I get too much further into this blog, I should probably stop and introduce my family and tell you a little about us and our booking. Family: Tiffany, Steven (he will be co-blogging with me), Christian/CJ (11 year old boy), Sophia (9 year old girl), Nyssa/Prissy (3 year old girl), and Katarina/Kat/Kitty (2 year old girl) Ship: Symphony of the Seas Sail Date: September 11, 2021-September 18, 2021 Cabin Type: 2 Bedroom Aquatheater Suite Itinerary: Miami, Florida; Philipsburg, St. Maarten; Charlotte Amalie, ST. Thomas; Perfect Day at CocoCay; Miami, Florida I look forward to catching up with those who have followed my other blogs and also getting to know some new faces. We have cruised star class before, so I will try to cover any changes since cruising has returned. I will also let you know what it is like sailing with kids too young to be vaccinated.

Thank you! It is quite a walk, but not terrible. We absolutely love the 2 bedroom aquatheater suites. In fact, we have one booked in September on Symphony and a b2b on Oasis in November. I think your family will love being in an ATS. Having breakfast on the balcony each morning was the perfect start to the day, and being able to watch the aquatheater show from the balcony when one of us is tired or when someone falls asleep early is so nice.

Yep, can't wait. To be honest, I'm more excited about this sailing than my 9/20 sailing on Oasis out of Jersey. It's hard to get excited for that one because I don't have as much confidence in it sailing especially out of Jersey. November out of Florida, on the other hand, seems very optimistic.

Oasis is doing free play now (similar to Disney's Oceaneer club), so she should be in the same area as our 8 and 10 year olds. They love Adventure Ocean and we have to practically drag them out; so if she is there, I'm sure she'll bump into them. There's some videos of the new Adventure Ocean area on youtube. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. Our son can not wait to try out the gaga ball arena. He loves gaga ball so much that our last genie surprised him with a VIP gaga ball family tournament in our room and even gave everyone medals.

Happy late birthday! We will be Star class (2 bedroom aquatheater suite) on this cruise as well. How old is your daughter? Our son is 10 and our daughters will be 8, 2, and 1.

Thanks everyone!