leesam82

Day 2 - At Sea
   This was the only, and I mean ONLY day where we had any sort of a problem.  We had gotten a Casita to use as a "home base" for our sea day so we wouldn't have to fight the crowds and chair hogs on the pool deck.  I went up to the Lime and the Coconut at a little before 9 while everyone else enjoyed room service breakfast and was quickly able to select my location.  I went back to retrieve everyone else and by the time I got back up on deck at 9:15, they had closed Deck 16 due to weather.  It was incredibly windy and someone (correctly!) decided it probably wasn't safe to have guests up there while underway.  While I fully agree with and support the decision, there was really no communication about the situation, and many of the staff even seemed unaware.  As a result of half of teh avaialble seating being out of commission, the pool deck was EXTREMELY crowded. You'd think that common decency would lead to people being more mindful of their belongings and aware of their fellow passengers, but no, chair hogs gonna hog.  We were able to find one sole chair between two families that we piled our things on while we enjoyed the pool and bar for the rest of the morning, then (and take note here people) picked up our things and took them with us at we headed off to El Loco Fresh for lunch!  Shocking, I know!  Despite the over crowding, the kids had a blast in the pool.  We decided to eat at Park Cafe for lunch, as I needed to try the legendary Kummelweck.  It was pretty good!  Maybe not worth of cult status, but definitely not a disappointment either.  After lunch we played some mini-golf, watched some body and stand up surfing on the Flowriders, then headed off the enjoy the Boardwalk.  Later that evening, the cost of the Casita was refunded to my account as OBC automatically, so that was good.
It was formal night, so even though the dress code in CK is more relaxed, we opted to dress up both for the novelty of the situation for us and to take advantage of the photographers for some formal family portraits.  Dinner at CK was excellent again (spoiler alert, it was excellent every night).  Also, following up on a question I had asked pre-cruise, they were 100% able to deliver my favorite dish from the MDR, the Grand Marnier Soufflé for dessert.  I had asked our server Alma about the night prior, and she quickly brought the Maître d' over to confirm that it was possible.  He just told me to remind them upon my arrival, and they could make it happen.  I did so, and he did his due diligence in letting me know that the soufflé might fall on the trip from the MDR to Deck 17, but was happy to bring it up.  They not only brought me one, they brought two, and they were both as delicious as I remembered! While it was not implied or expected, I was sure to include an extra-additional gratuity to both my server and the Maître d' to express my gratitude.
After dinner it was more enjoying the ship, and again ending up back in Central Park.  The boys loved Rising Tide, and I was very surprised and pleased to see how welcoming of children (albeit well behaved ones) they were in what is essentially a bar setting.  I was also surprised that they consistently gave them their Shirley Temples gratis despite them not having a refreshment package (and our being sure to point that out more than once).  I'd imagine the fact that we tipped with our drinks and were quickly becoming regulars had something to do with that, but maybe not... After winding down after dinner and a few more photos, it was off to the room to enjoy the balcony before bed.




IMG_3905.HEIC

In what I hope will be a fraction of the assistance this board provided me in getting ready for my cruise, I'm going to finally start (slowly) posting some information and pictures from my most recent cruise.  I apologize in advance for both the holes in the narrative and photographs; this was DW and my first cruise in almost 15 years, and our first one as a family, so I was much more focused on be present in the moment.  If anyone has ANY questions, please don't hesitate to ask and I'll be glad to do my best to help.  For background, this cruise was originally booked for my family of four  in the winter of 2018 (!!) for 2020, but I think we all know what happened there.  Now, the boys are 7 and 11.  After taking advantage of the opportunity to upgrade prior to Lifting & Shifting in 2020 to a Jr. Suite, then winning a minimum Royal Up bid in May of this year, we ended up in 1BR Aquatheater Suite cabin #12730.  We also had the Deluxe Beverage package for the adults and no drink package for the kids.  The suite concierge reached out to us about a week before sailing and secured our Costal Kitchen reservations for the week expect for day 6, where they got us 7:00 PM seats at Izumi Habachi.  Two days before sailing, they also reached out for entertainment reservations, and we had them reserve seats for Aqua80 on Day 5 and the Ice Show on Day 6. 
Day 1 - Embarkation
We were able to secure a 10:00 AM health check/embarkation time, and thanks to the amazing predictive ability of Waze, we arrived at the port after an approximately 1 hour drive at 9:55.  The porters were already hard at work helping arriving passengers, and there was a short line up around the bend at the terminal.  It looked crazy upon arrival, but as you get up to the front of the line, it's actually very well organized.  There was a port employee directing cars from both lanes to the appropriate unloading terminal as they became available.  We quickly drove up, dropped the bags, and were directed to a surface lot parking space.  It was a short walk from there to the terminal building (well under 5 minutes).  Despite it being just after 10, the terminal building was already quite busy and a little chaotic outside.  We were first directed to the suites line, but then we had to go back to the main entrance so someone could check the two boys Vaccination Cards since they were under 12.  They each got a little sticker, then back in line for security.  All told, it took maybe 15 - 20 minutes from doors to gangway, no complaints.  We watched the safety briefing while in line, then went straight to our muster station before lunch at the Windjammer.  It was extremely busy there (as anticipated!), but we were able to finally secure a table and sit down for lunch.  After that, we explored the ship, signed the boys up for Adventure Ocean, then enjoyed the pools thanks to all of you who suggested to pack our bathing suits in our carry on.  Waterslides had no lines and the hot tubs were essentially empty!  After a few hours, we went down to check out our cabin.  I still hadn't told the family that we had been upgraded out of our Jr. Suite, and they were blown away by the cabin!  The balcony IS everything that everyone makes it out to be, even as high as deck 12 (deck 14 looked pretty small, though!).  We enjoyed sailaway and took in the sights from our balcony with a few drinks before getting ready for dinner at Costal Kitchen.  Thanks again for all of the suggestions for the CK filet for night 1, it was everything everyone said it would be.  The remainder of the night was spent exploring the ship, and we ended up spending some time relaxing in Central Park for a bit before turning in, an activity that would become a running theme. 

5.HEIC 1.HEIC 3.HEIC 4.HEIC

Hi Bob 
I have used casino royale before for cruises. One thing that does occur is that everyone (travel agents, individual travelers, and RCL agents) all book through the same system and rooms. This means that some times a sailing could be sold out. However, what happens sometiems is that agents can do a 24 to 72  hour courtesy hold for the passenger. Once that hold is done the room is freed up to be booked again. I would keep on calling in until you see the sailing be listed as sold out on the RCCL website. 

With additional passengers and training up some additional staff members, I do expect MTD to have issues. Personally for me we always do the earlier set dining time as this allows us to get out to see the shows. Plus it still frees us up to snack on Sorento's later in the evening. We also had a hard time getting the specialty dining reservations. But that was mainly due to the fact that we had such a large party (17 of us).  

Free! (but cold is pretty important too)

Why would anyone post their entire question in the title of their post??  See, everybody’s different!!😁

I love this thread!  We are now back to the usual cruising complaints and not all of the pandemic stuff!  Unruly kids during school vacation time, no pool chairs, waiting at Windjammer, I love it!

I love the cocoloco/labadoozee. I've also had success by asking the bartender when they weren't too busy asking for a recommended frozen drink. 

Hello I was on the Oasis OTS in June and ran into the same as we have kids and only the adults of the group bought dinner packages. On the day of embarkation, go to any specialty restaurant and just update your reservation. You will need to go to a specialty restaurant anyway to reserve your other dinners anyway since you can only reserve chops on day 1 or 2. 

I just had an interesting experience, so thought I'd share. I originally had a $200 off casino offer that I used for a Sept. 29th cruise. This morning, I got a casino offer for a complimentary cruise for the same sailing. I called Casino Royale and mistakenly used the term "reprice"; they said that since yesterday was the final payment date, I couldn't reprice. I called again to get a different agent and explained the situation and she said, "Oh, of course we can change the offer that was used." She made the switch easily and I'm getting a refund, as well as having the offer I originally used made available to me again.

This is a non-food advice
1) Bring a small battery pack for your phone. Its nice to have so you don't run out of power for your cell phone
2) Bring magnetic hooks. They are nice cause you can hang your hats/lanyards/and other items. I have also used them to hang up a shoe rack organizer and use it to put common items eg sunglasses, sunscreen etc. 
3) bring a USB splitter such as this it allows for charging of multiple devices rather than having a plug for every single device. 
4) if you do buy a photo package via the cruise planner just know that once you choose a digital print you cannot un-choose it to get a different photo. So wait till the last night before picking your pictures
5) Ask a lot questions on this blog. There are many experienced Royal passengers on this forum that are willing to share their experience. 
6) Final advice is have print outs and don't just rely on your phone for digital copies. I don't know where the Mariner is sailing out of but when you sail out of Cape Port liberty in Bayonne NJ and have T-mobile as your cell phone provider, the second you step into the terminal you have no signal. So it is really hard to pull up your set sail pass on the app or communicate with other members of your party. So rather than leaving that to chance if you have a print out of all your documents you will have no issues. 
 

As a person who works in the in vitro diagnostics industry, I'm a little bit worried about how RCCL will proceed. Although I do understand the angst and the headache for passengers that need to do pre-cruise testing. I can also understand the argument that pre-cruise testing is still letting covid onboard. But I can also see the other side of the picture which was eloquently put by Tony for La Lido Loca pre-cruise testing will catch people who can are infectious. The testing allows the cruise line to mitigate some of the population that are infected. Are there passengers that will get through because the test was done too early to catch it? Yes. But by getting rid of pre-cruise testing completely I think you then allow even more infection onboard. Pre-cruise testing was one of the tools used to prevent covid from spreading on board.  From a healthcare perspective I am also worried that by inviting more infected onboard ships could face a situation where their facilities are overrun. This can definitely be the case with the new variants. I would say that if the cruise line gets rid of covid testing then they should increase safety using other tools such as mandating vaccinations for children now that the emergency use authorization for that age group is available.          

Drink. Lots.

This is a non-food advice
1) Bring a small battery pack for your phone. Its nice to have so you don't run out of power for your cell phone
2) Bring magnetic hooks. They are nice cause you can hang your hats/lanyards/and other items. I have also used them to hang up a shoe rack organizer and use it to put common items eg sunglasses, sunscreen etc. 
3) bring a USB splitter such as this it allows for charging of multiple devices rather than having a plug for every single device. 
4) if you do buy a photo package via the cruise planner just know that once you choose a digital print you cannot un-choose it to get a different photo. So wait till the last night before picking your pictures
5) Ask a lot questions on this blog. There are many experienced Royal passengers on this forum that are willing to share their experience. 
6) Final advice is have print outs and don't just rely on your phone for digital copies. I don't know where the Mariner is sailing out of but when you sail out of Cape Port liberty in Bayonne NJ and have T-mobile as your cell phone provider, the second you step into the terminal you have no signal. So it is really hard to pull up your set sail pass on the app or communicate with other members of your party. So rather than leaving that to chance if you have a print out of all your documents you will have no issues. 
 

A basic and informative video on how Casino Royale works onboard our ships!
 
I hope you guys find this information useful.
 
 

As a person who works in the in vitro diagnostics industry, I'm a little bit worried about how RCCL will proceed. Although I do understand the angst and the headache for passengers that need to do pre-cruise testing. I can also understand the argument that pre-cruise testing is still letting covid onboard. But I can also see the other side of the picture which was eloquently put by Tony for La Lido Loca pre-cruise testing will catch people who can are infectious. The testing allows the cruise line to mitigate some of the population that are infected. Are there passengers that will get through because the test was done too early to catch it? Yes. But by getting rid of pre-cruise testing completely I think you then allow even more infection onboard. Pre-cruise testing was one of the tools used to prevent covid from spreading on board.  From a healthcare perspective I am also worried that by inviting more infected onboard ships could face a situation where their facilities are overrun. This can definitely be the case with the new variants. I would say that if the cruise line gets rid of covid testing then they should increase safety using other tools such as mandating vaccinations for children now that the emergency use authorization for that age group is available.          

This is a non-food advice
1) Bring a small battery pack for your phone. Its nice to have so you don't run out of power for your cell phone
2) Bring magnetic hooks. They are nice cause you can hang your hats/lanyards/and other items. I have also used them to hang up a shoe rack organizer and use it to put common items eg sunglasses, sunscreen etc. 
3) bring a USB splitter such as this it allows for charging of multiple devices rather than having a plug for every single device. 
4) if you do buy a photo package via the cruise planner just know that once you choose a digital print you cannot un-choose it to get a different photo. So wait till the last night before picking your pictures
5) Ask a lot questions on this blog. There are many experienced Royal passengers on this forum that are willing to share their experience. 
6) Final advice is have print outs and don't just rely on your phone for digital copies. I don't know where the Mariner is sailing out of but when you sail out of Cape Port liberty in Bayonne NJ and have T-mobile as your cell phone provider, the second you step into the terminal you have no signal. So it is really hard to pull up your set sail pass on the app or communicate with other members of your party. So rather than leaving that to chance if you have a print out of all your documents you will have no issues. 
 

As a person who works in the in vitro diagnostics industry, I'm a little bit worried about how RCCL will proceed. Although I do understand the angst and the headache for passengers that need to do pre-cruise testing. I can also understand the argument that pre-cruise testing is still letting covid onboard. But I can also see the other side of the picture which was eloquently put by Tony for La Lido Loca pre-cruise testing will catch people who can are infectious. The testing allows the cruise line to mitigate some of the population that are infected. Are there passengers that will get through because the test was done too early to catch it? Yes. But by getting rid of pre-cruise testing completely I think you then allow even more infection onboard. Pre-cruise testing was one of the tools used to prevent covid from spreading on board.  From a healthcare perspective I am also worried that by inviting more infected onboard ships could face a situation where their facilities are overrun. This can definitely be the case with the new variants. I would say that if the cruise line gets rid of covid testing then they should increase safety using other tools such as mandating vaccinations for children now that the emergency use authorization for that age group is available.          

I think the architect who designed the Silja Symphony also led the design of the Oasis OtS 

As a person who works in the in vitro diagnostics industry, I'm a little bit worried about how RCCL will proceed. Although I do understand the angst and the headache for passengers that need to do pre-cruise testing. I can also understand the argument that pre-cruise testing is still letting covid onboard. But I can also see the other side of the picture which was eloquently put by Tony for La Lido Loca pre-cruise testing will catch people who can are infectious. The testing allows the cruise line to mitigate some of the population that are infected. Are there passengers that will get through because the test was done too early to catch it? Yes. But by getting rid of pre-cruise testing completely I think you then allow even more infection onboard. Pre-cruise testing was one of the tools used to prevent covid from spreading on board.  From a healthcare perspective I am also worried that by inviting more infected onboard ships could face a situation where their facilities are overrun. This can definitely be the case with the new variants. I would say that if the cruise line gets rid of covid testing then they should increase safety using other tools such as mandating vaccinations for children now that the emergency use authorization for that age group is available.          

I think the architect who designed the Silja Symphony also led the design of the Oasis OtS 

As a person who works in the in vitro diagnostics industry, I'm a little bit worried about how RCCL will proceed. Although I do understand the angst and the headache for passengers that need to do pre-cruise testing. I can also understand the argument that pre-cruise testing is still letting covid onboard. But I can also see the other side of the picture which was eloquently put by Tony for La Lido Loca pre-cruise testing will catch people who can are infectious. The testing allows the cruise line to mitigate some of the population that are infected. Are there passengers that will get through because the test was done too early to catch it? Yes. But by getting rid of pre-cruise testing completely I think you then allow even more infection onboard. Pre-cruise testing was one of the tools used to prevent covid from spreading on board.  From a healthcare perspective I am also worried that by inviting more infected onboard ships could face a situation where their facilities are overrun. This can definitely be the case with the new variants. I would say that if the cruise line gets rid of covid testing then they should increase safety using other tools such as mandating vaccinations for children now that the emergency use authorization for that age group is available.          

@LonB I've done the past two cruises with my physically disabled brother who needs a wheelchair onboard. We have always had a hard time booking accessible cabins as there are not that many onboard. My suggestion would be is to try and book out as far in advanced as possible allowing you to have the room you want. I would also double check with your travel agent or if you are trying to book directly with RCCL book via the phone. 

As a person who works in the in vitro diagnostics industry, I'm a little bit worried about how RCCL will proceed. Although I do understand the angst and the headache for passengers that need to do pre-cruise testing. I can also understand the argument that pre-cruise testing is still letting covid onboard. But I can also see the other side of the picture which was eloquently put by Tony for La Lido Loca pre-cruise testing will catch people who can are infectious. The testing allows the cruise line to mitigate some of the population that are infected. Are there passengers that will get through because the test was done too early to catch it? Yes. But by getting rid of pre-cruise testing completely I think you then allow even more infection onboard. Pre-cruise testing was one of the tools used to prevent covid from spreading on board.  From a healthcare perspective I am also worried that by inviting more infected onboard ships could face a situation where their facilities are overrun. This can definitely be the case with the new variants. I would say that if the cruise line gets rid of covid testing then they should increase safety using other tools such as mandating vaccinations for children now that the emergency use authorization for that age group is available.          

As a person who works in the in vitro diagnostics industry, I'm a little bit worried about how RCCL will proceed. Although I do understand the angst and the headache for passengers that need to do pre-cruise testing. I can also understand the argument that pre-cruise testing is still letting covid onboard. But I can also see the other side of the picture which was eloquently put by Tony for La Lido Loca pre-cruise testing will catch people who can are infectious. The testing allows the cruise line to mitigate some of the population that are infected. Are there passengers that will get through because the test was done too early to catch it? Yes. But by getting rid of pre-cruise testing completely I think you then allow even more infection onboard. Pre-cruise testing was one of the tools used to prevent covid from spreading on board.  From a healthcare perspective I am also worried that by inviting more infected onboard ships could face a situation where their facilities are overrun. This can definitely be the case with the new variants. I would say that if the cruise line gets rid of covid testing then they should increase safety using other tools such as mandating vaccinations for children now that the emergency use authorization for that age group is available.