Morganno

I'm now Emerald and never received any pins at what level do you get them?

Great post and I agree with everything however on European sailing we have been on while the 12-17 shared the same area the activities were definitely 12-14 and 15-17. My 13 year old had a great time with kids his age doing the activities. Perhaps after the restart they are having some issues getting the clubs up and running again.

Just be careful to fully read the protocols it changes from region to ports even. Hope you have a great cruise. Just a word of warning to unvaxxed that have not had covid yet. There is a high risk of catching it on the ship. I speak from personal experience having done 2 seven night cruises. Many people including all those that hadn't yet had covid in my party caught it. Just want to add, good or bad, don't expect people to test or even tell Royal that they have it. That's clearly not happening in many cases.

I suppose it depends we usually have two pretty full cases with slacks, suit, toiletries but we always go on 7 day cruises with 2-3 days either before or after so need the supplies, we don't want to be walking around with sweat stained t-shirts on day 5 lol I moved my luggage through the ship once and the carpets make it tough going so I prefer to let someone else do the heavy lifting after the cruise.

Have a great cruise.

Firstly most banks in Europe don't have cash you have to order it. Last few times I've ordered USD the lowest denomination I could get was 20$. People these days use pre-paid cards in Europe like Monzo or Revolut. Cash is rarely used in Europe and I am suspicious when a vendor says his machine is broke. I usually reply saying that's ok I can do a phone transfer. In most bars people tap to pay for drinks.

You may but good luck getting them outside the US

Sadly in Europe we don't have 1 or 2 bills only coins so I double line my speedos to tip all the people I talk to on the ship. I get funny looks with my 200 coins bulging but hey ho when in Rome....

Don't worry it's only 3 questions now and they ask you to confirm them at port, it won't take longer.

People also do this to get the one deluxe package what they do is they can print a duplicate key for you that just opens the door so the parent that swaps rooms still has account privileges on it.

Congrats. We had to do it for our two european cruises this summer. I always self tested before so kind of knew the result but it's still stressful. It didn't matter for the first cruise as anyone in our party of 12 who never had covid caught it on the cruise.

I have enjoyed reading this post. I was lucky enough to be on two European cruises this summer with a large contingent of US clients. However I didn't see 1 dollar pass hands or get left for any drinks over my 14 nights of cruising I'm really surprised at this considering that many on these boards say they take stacks of 1$ bills to hand out. Does the tipping policy not extend when not cruising out of US ports? Or is it done discreetly via a palm with the deluxe drink card hand over. I'm not saying it doesn't happen just I expected to see it once or twice on my cruise but didn't see it at all on any night.

Thanks for the reply. The food in MDR did improve during the week as we heard from friend but not the service. Like I said if you really complained to the maître d' you got good service if not you were missing dessert to see the shows. My advice would be to complain early if things aren't right. I loved the cruise as well but won't sail on brilliance again. Too many other ships to see to give it a 2nd chance.

Thanks for the quick review. Adventure is a ship I want to try next year perhaps. Did you enjoy the ship? Sorry to hear about MTD this was also chaos for passengers on Brilliance as well.

Ok I thought I would update since we are now back from our cruise. We stayed in Hotel Santa Chiara which is across the street from the people mover. We never ever got any voucher from RC but when we found the rep at the end of the people mover (btw she was wearing a t-shirt with Trumpytours on it so it took a while to see that Royal Clipboard) we had to ask several tour reps before they pointed us in the right direction. We were on the list so waited to board the bus. There seemed to be 3 buses and the driver loaded the bags then we went on quite well organised. We had a pit stop around 1.45 mins into the journey and over all it too around 2.40 to get to the port. For the return one of the good things about the transfers is they give your luggage tags 2 days beforehand so you can sort things out. However check with Guest services your return, we were offered 6:30am to the airport which I thought was early for a 4.30pm flight from Bologna airport only for Guest services to tell me in their system I was going back to Venice !!! Luckily I had my printed voucher with me that clearly showed Bologna airport. After 30 mins she offered me Bologna airport at 7.15. I asked if we could go to the train station at 9am instead so we moved to 9am. Had I not asked it would have been panic on the final day. This gave us some extra time in bed on the last day Once off the ship we collected our luggage and wheeled it past the empty customs desks to the clearly marked busses and were soon off to Bologna train station. The unmanned monorail train from Bologna to the airport costs 9.50€ and runs every 7 minutes. We intended to use left luggage at the station and head into town but we weren't feeling great and it was very hot so opted for the airport instead. We had lounge access (it's before security) but you are only allowed in 3 hours prior to your flight. Left luggage is still closed at Bologna (I think they are doing renovations.) Hope this helps future travelers.

We were on Odyssey in July and the highlight was MDR, arriving at 6pm waiters lined up accompany to your seat, pull out your chair throw the napkin on your lap, day 3 so 2nd full day all our drinks were already on the table before we sat down. Stories exchanged with other guests and our excellent waiters and food hot and tasty with virtually no waits. Compared to BoTS you would think we were on a completely different cruise line. Like I said though the friendly staff at windjammer made up for it. Yeah we were just so lucky to be able to cruise and still had a great time.

I'll start my review by saying any time on a cruise ship is an amazing time. The weather was perfect for the most part and the destinations were great. Our opinion was this was our best cruise and also our worst cruise at the same time! Let me explain. My highs from this cruise. The bar staff in all the bars were great attentive and served us very well. Shout out to Ana and Clifford in Schooner bar and Colony club. The ship was clean and well maintained despite being 20 years old most of it fell very well kept. The people we met. The passengers were very friendly on this cruise, we were apprehensive as it was the first time we had sailed as only a couple but we soon got chatting to and met loads of new friends and had such a fun time on this cruise laughing and joking every night this is what made it a great cruise despite the lows. The lows we gambled with royal up and lost. We were in an inside cabin on deck 3 carefully selected by us to be centrally located. We won an upgrade for 220$ in total to a balcony cabin, the downside was it was above the piano bar with what most of us on board thought was a simply terrible piano singer. Naturally on day 2 we asked for a move as we like early nights and early starts for excursions. However the cruise was full so on day 2we gave up the early starts and enjoyed the evenings on the ship since day 3 was a sea day. On day 3 we got a phone call at 8.30 that there was a cabin above the theatre available so we went along to see it, it was perfect. We were very happy about it we could get an early night and get off the boat early. BOY were we wrong, we were not above the theatre like they said but above the King and Country pub with the loudest guitar player I've ever heard playing in a pub. Our floor was literally vibrating with the noise. No early night for us. I phoned to complain about the noise level at 12:30 asking when he would stop, he stopped at 12.35. AT 1AM after getting to sleep guest services called us back to inform us that they had went to the pub and there was no noise. The literally woke us up to tell us that! Again we asked to be moved but there were simply no cabins left for us Very disappointed in RC moving us from one noisy cabin to literally a worse cabin for noise. On hindsight I should have looked at deck plans but we didn't have the internet and it was a sea day, so I trusted guest services. On this occasion we simply decided to look on the positive side and gave up any excursions this time and enjoyed late nights on the ship. Still not happy at the sound level of the guitar player who was simply far to loud for a drinking venue. He wasn't playing MSG but a bar on a cruise ship where people might like to chat. Complaints to him and the cruise director Mike about his insanely high music level fell on deaf ears (probably literally) It was impossible to sit in the bar and have a conversation when he was playing which might explain how there was always an abundance of seats every evening..... Lesson learned we will never do another royal up as they just move you to bad locations that no one wants. Our one other big negative was the level of service in MDR which was atrocious. We had 6pm dining. At 6:20 no one had come near us finally I flagged down the head waiter to ask what was going on, were they short staffed etc. No no was her reply were are fine, what's the problem? The food was also either under cooked (worrying for crab cake) or dried up and cold. It really was horrible. The wait staff were non existant and when we did get them we really didn't fancy another long wait for a replacement meal as we wanted to see the show at 8pm. We skipped MDR day 2 we thought we'd let them sort out their issues but day 3 was even worse. Again had to seat ourselves, watched as our waiters ran around up and down the MDR carrying covered plates. Were given our menus at 6.20 literally thrown at us not even a good evening. Water came eventually and we ordered drinks which came with desert. The food was totally inedible and by 7.20 we'd had enough. On day 5 of 7 we received a phone call from the head waiter begging us to come back that all was better but our various conversations with other passengers told us otherwise. People with a 6pm sitting had to skip dessert to see the show at 8pm. It seemed like if you complained enough you got the service you should have got at the start but probably at the expense of some one else. By this time we'd gotten to know the wait staff at the windjammer and had our drinks served to us as soon as we entered the windjammer so again despite missing out on the MDR which we very much enjoy, the windjammer staff made up for it. Also the food in the windjammer got progressively better (warmer) as the week went on, we actually burnt our tongues on the steak and Guinness pie. By the way, to add a bit of insult we received 8 complimentary chocolate covered strawberries from the head waitress, however 3 of them had gone off and were squishy and moldy. We just burst out laughing when we picked them up. No point in getting more annoyed but it at least convinced us we had made the right choice. The entertainment was hit and miss but I think this was just post covid and on it's own wasn't that bad. All in all like I said we are very fortunate to be able to afford cruising and this was the first ship which we had so many bad experiences, but the good laughs with the other passengers and the bar staff more than made up for the poor customer service desk and mdr. I still have to write my post cruise survey but it will not be 10 out of 10 for MDR or guest services. Thanks for reading see you on the next cruise.

Doesn't sound good I hope we are not stuck I will be turning up at the bus stop and demanding to get on. Never again for us either.

Getting kind of fed up with RC over transfers from Venice to Ravenna. I booked the cruise from Ravenna and phoned for the transfer to and from the port to the port from Venice and from the ship to Bologna. I got the e-docs and the voucher supplied is only for the post cruise I have no pre-cruise vouchers so I phoned them up and had to spend 40 minutes on the phone while their supervisor had to manually update their booking. I was then told it would be reflected in my docs in 5 days. We are now 7 days later and my docs haven't changed. I'll need to phone tomorrow again now and spend another 40 minutes on the phone. We fly out 2 weeks tomorrow to venice. I'm not sure if we don't get on the coach that we would be able to find alternative transport. (Taxis cost 350$ one way.) This isn't something to leave to chance, I'd prefer to have something in writing.

Oh which part isn't true?

Unvaccinated people pose no risk to those vaccinated apart from an increased chance of having to turn the ship around due to a medical emergency. This is why cruise lines have the policy in place.

Oh didn't think of that. Perhaps I will do it again then.

I would like to know why you want to know this?

We were on Odyssey July 10th sailing hardly saw any mask usage, all 9 of us caught covid on the ship.

just off Odyssey despite uploading all documents correctly they still wanted to see everything again at the port in Civitavecchia Won't bother wasting time uploading anything for my next cruise.