bobroo
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Posts posted by bobroo
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After years of cruising with Royal, I am a convinced that anytime you you tip and that receipt, envelope, or anything else that says "gratuity" and also has a Royal Caribbean logo on it--those funds are going into that ships general tip pool for all employees. That includes leaving a buck or two tip on a receipt for drinks. That bartender/server/room attendant does not individually receive those funds. That is true for the above pictured envelope. Cash to that guy or gal you want to thank? That goes entirely to that person you want to acknowledge.
Case in point: want to know why that employee Waaaytoo described was afraid to touch that little blue envelope??? Because management is afraid an employee would stick it in their pocket and not put it into the collective fund and probably has given extreme warning to any employee thinking of not sharing that money.
You don't need no stink'in envelope, there is nothing to hide. Be proud of your acknowledgment and carry some small bills in your pocket when you are onboard. Enjoy the smile you get in return for your couple bucks.
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If I had to guess, Trujillo, Honduras might be the go to alternate. There are other cruise ships that port there--but none often.
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I'm glad you brought this one up ADK, we haven't talked about it in a while.
No matter what you might think, RCL wants their excursions watered down. They want all their excursions so that anyone can participate and make tour operators refrain from offering advanced, or faster pace, or more difficult excursions aimed for those who can ride a bike for more than a few miles, maybe are a runner, or otherwise are in reasonably good shape.
Except for the St Kitts Volcano Hike! And for what reason this one is allowed to be so advanced we'll never know. A test of fortitude, stamina, and guts. Less than half who start will finish.
My wife Susie trained on a Stair Master at her gym for 6 months in preparation and she completed it in 2014. Here are some pics (spoiler alert: the video is from the top of the climb....and the view is probably a lot less than you think you have should have earned.) Below is the Golden Ticket, the path and terrain in general what you climb, her shoe back onboard, and finally short video at the summit.
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"Fisherman's Catch" Night might be an more appropriate name. <wink,wink>
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The time your specific bus will drop you off at the airport will be determined by the the passenger who has the earliest flight. The driver will ask everyone their departure times before the excursion begins.
Your luggage will be transported separately via straight trucks that transports everyone's luggage.
The truck drops all the luggage in an area outside the terminal; it is generally covered by an overhang. Is it monitored??? Well, kind of.....
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You are thinking there might be a town in the south of France that is uninteresting, boring, or otherwise "meh"??? You think that may describe Marseilles? Boy are you in for a big surprise!
If you chose to do nothing else, do yourself a favor and have lunch in downtown Marseilles; aim for the Ferris Wheel. There are seemingly 100 outdoor cafes there, the water is right across the street.
We chose the Aix-en-Provence/Cassis/Marseilles excursion when we were there in '14. It was wonderful! We were allowed lunch on our own in Marseilles. Susie and I would enjoy taking that same excursion again and most likely will. But the best part of our day was lunch and specifically the dessert. Let me explain...
Our bus dropped us off and gave us a two hour window. Two hours was not quite enough although we made it back in time (lunch in France may well take 2 hours, so leave time). Like I said there are many restaurants and there was no visual telling that one may be better than another; so I went with my go to: which one is the most ridiculous? We chose a place called Hippopotamus. We dined out side in the french sunshine. Enjoyed bottle of wine. Had our entrees (these things are served leisurely) and decided to have dessert probably because it was very much like eating in the MDR; we chose profiteroles. It took a while and I was seriously beginning to wonder and was trying to remember words from my high school French class to ask Did you forget about us? When our server brought our dessert, it was enough for four people--it was also made entirely from scratch--everything!--ice cream included. Heaven-on-earth! That one dessert put Hippo on my list of my favorite 10 restaurants of all time.
Don't short Marseilles, there are reasons ships on European itineraries stop at the places they do, that's because they are good; real good. I can recommend the excursion we went on; but if you do nothing else, do yourself a favor and have lunch in Marseilles. Bon Appetite!
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19 hours ago, SaltyNavyCruiser15 said:
Excellent dive report, bobroo. I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for sure. Very good information.
Get back to us when you get back, I’d like to hear a second opinion.
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Here is how my diving excursion went in St Thomas last week:
Our excursion met (8:30am) about 1/2 an hour after the ship docked just outside the gates of the pier. The excursion provider, Underwater Adventures; runs all the scuba, snorkeling, try-a-dive, scubability, and transports the open water students that are taking the Open Water class on your ship. I spoke with the owner Rob a bit when I was signing the hold harmless agreement. He claimed that he is the provider for all the cruise lines that port in St Thomas. I asked him if I could pay to use larger tanks ( aluminum 100's) and he replied "you could have if you would have told me yesterday, we load all our tanks at night. We've got two 72's for you." "Don't worry, I can dive for 75 minutes on a 72." Fortunately Rob turned away and had other passengers to sign his clip board. I bet I stared at that iron fence for 5 minutes asking myself "What have I gotten myself into?" "I remember this outfit from a snorkeling excursion about 4 year ago and the crew reminded me of characters in Jimmy Buffett songs from the late 70's" " Why do I care how long someone can dive on a tank of air, It's me that I'm concerned about", "72!???........that's 10% less than 80", and finally "what the hell is an aluminum 72? I've never heard of it......EVER. Great, $139 wasn't enough, so now the dive operator is going to short us on air." If my scuba bag was full of red flags instead of gear---it would have been empty---and little did I know I was soon to need more red flags. I'll continue....
Underwater Adventures picks everyone up close by near the pier, just a short walk away. So our herd made our way to their boat and got on. The boat was full and had members of ALL the fore mentioned groups. It was a quintessential cattle boat operation. UA had four employees onboard, all supposed certified Instructors. No, these are young kids running away from who knows what <cue old school Jimmy Buffett: Havana Daydream'in', Mañana, (and especially) Cowboy in the Jungle>. The gal who ran the scuba shop on the ship was also onboard and going to be the instructor for her 5 Open Water students. A quick Coast Guard briefing and we are off to......Buck Island. Buck Island is a 15-20 minute boat ride away.
We arrive at Buck Island and there are already 4 boats moored to the 4 available mooring balls. One of them was another UA boat. There are easily 50 snorkelers in the water. There was no discerning of what snorkelers were in what group nor what boat they may have arrived on. They were scattered though out the site. While we were waiting for a boat to leave I though to myself "Why? Why would anybody want to put more people in the water here right now?" A few minutes pass and a boat leaves. In St. Thomas, it is perfectly acceptable to moor your boat in the middle of people snorkeling, if you go slow enough they will get out of your way once they realize the boat will just plow into them if they don't move. We tie off and then one of the crew realizes they forgot to put the drinking water on our boat. So, the lowest ranking crew member puts on a mask and fins and is dispatched to the other UA boat to get our water. Shortly she swam back with a milk jug about 3/4 full of water and put it into the cooler onboard.
I was in a group of 12 certified divers and our dive master was Dave. (mental note: 13, we need 13 returning to the boat) The first dive was a reef they called Wye Reef just off the starboard side of the boat. We splashed. The max depth was 62', the water was 76 degrees and the vis was 80'. We saw a couple turtles, 3 black tipped reef sharks, and a few barracuda came close by. The dive starts out on this reef and it was healthy and I was impressed. Later the dive continues real close to Buck Island and there are these huge round boulders you have to swim around and those were really cool! The dive ends under the boat using the mooring line for accent. Make sure you reach and turn when you surface, you may have to fight off some snorkelers. Despite some buoyancy problems with a couple divers in our group and some time for weight checks at the beginning, I really liked this dive and at the end thought that despite a lot of concerns that dive was worth it. I might even sign up to do it again sometime. My time in the water was 41 minutes. I was the last out of the water and........I counted to 13 once onboard! (interesting: there was never a roll call after either dive)
The surface interval was 1/2 an hour and dive #2 is the wreck called Cartanza Señora off the port side of the boat. It's 51' feet to the bottom, the deck 20' above that. I was glad to explore this wreck simply because of the memory of seeing it 4 years prior while snorkeling. At that time I though it was stupid and senseless to have people snorkel above wreck that was 30 some feet beneath them. Ok, I see a big black rectangle BIG DEAL. But now able to scuba around it was different. It was the view I wanted earlier. It was satisfying to be able to do that. Actually that made my day. This dive too lasted 40 some minutes.
After we got all our passengers in the boat we headed back to Charlotte Amalie. The boat captain mentioned something about tipping and the recommended tip was 20% of the excursion price. <cough, cough WHAT????> They took a group picture of all of us for proof we all returned. I think we got back at 2:00 but I had plenty of time to drop my gear off in my cabin, hook up with my wife, and take a bus to Havensight. We wandered around a bit and had a sit down late lunch. We jumped in a taxi and made it back onboard with 45 minutes to spare.
All in all, the dives themselves were good. Not spectacular but good experiences; I don't know any other dive sites in St Thomas to be that much better. The dive operator? I have a lot of concerns there. Much too loosey-goosey for my liking. Do I think other certified divers should take this excursion? Only if they are confident in their abilities and know beforehand that they are not getting two aluminum 80's, there are a whole bunch of people on the boat set out to do a bunch of different activities, and the crew may not always be paying attention to the things that they should.
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Just off Allure last week; it did not make a difference how many stairs I traipsed, lengthy walks on the jogging track, rock climbing, wave ridering, or asking my wife overnight how exponentially high her Fitbit recorded steps compared to her normal day.....our cruise was a glutenous indulgence of food and drink. We both still ended out a pound of weight gain per day.
Bring sweatpants for the trip home.
- Orchids, mom2mybugs, RestingBird and 2 others
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15 hours ago, monorailmedic said:
The capacities of ships are posted online, but it's not always clear if they're talking about double-occupancy max, or total/all berths max. Lines of course want to load up as many people as they can. Lifeboat capacities are required to exceed the total capacity of the ship (for various reasons), and remember you don't see many of the life boats as a number of them are rigid-inflatables which can be manually deployed, but are required to automatically deploy if in salt-water, and can even deploy if the ship is heavily listing.
As far as the size of a person, I know each seat on a lifeboat must be able to accommodate at least a 220lb person so I'd assume that's the calculation they use but I'm not sure. If so, that would give some "breathing room" since that's above average. Ultimately however, you can fit waaaay more people in a crowded space when the other option is swimming home.
This explains lifeboat requirements and the history. The article on muster drills (linked in that article) may also be of interest.
http://www.cruisehabit.com/safety-sea-lifeboat-history-requirements
Great article Mono, Thanks for sharing!!
Many people don't realize that all those other people that have the same muster station as you during the muster drill; that in case of an emergency-- will also be the occupants of the lifeboat that is above your head during that drill--again, in case of an emergency. There is a "seat" (or rather a space) inside the lifeboat for all 150 or 340 passengers. One of the crew members who is at your station during the drill will be operating the the lifeboat, the other couple crew members will be there to assist passengers. The lifeboats are rather roomy inside and ( a complete surprise to me) don't have the musty smell of a boat that has been under a tarp for a long period of time. Actually, they are kind of nice on the inside, have a (some what) padded seats and grab bars to hang on to, and have pretty powerful motors!
Also, the crews lifeboats are those inflatable rafts.
What I always question is the supposed system for children and their wrist bands. That--again in case of an emergency and a call to muster-- what is supposed to happen???? Ahhhh....I don't think so.....Nahhhh.....There is 100% chance that is NOT what happens.
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I am left to believe that Royal is leaving it up to the passengers themselves (and likely via a phone call to customer service) to repair all the broken C & A accounts.
I think it's unreasonable for me to have to tell Royal my C & A number. I don't think I should have to tell them the reservation ID's for the cruises I've put deposits down on but are missing in my C & A account. I most certainly should not have to research every cruise I have taken and paid-in-full for so they appear in my (now empty) cruise history--that includes the one last week.
Does anyone else feel this way?
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2 hours ago, SaltyNavyCruiser15 said:
Hello All!
My Wife and I are leaving for our cruise on Serenade of the Seas in 13 days (woot woot, FINALLY!) and I’m trying to get dive information about the diving excursion in St Thomas.
Has anyone ever did the diving excursion in St Thomas? If so, was it a good dive?
Any information helps! Thanks in advance!
I dove there last week when I was on Allure. I'd be happy to tell you how it went. Allow me to find a little computer time to scribble down the events of that day. I promise I'll get back to you.
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One thing these photos reveal is that Harmony still has problems with those stupid plastic sheets above the Solarium. Warranty or no warranty, those things have got to go! C'mon Royal!
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I like these photos a lot but by comparison I am not suppose to take a picture of my wife while on the gangway boarding the ship because of......safety. <scratches head>
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17 minutes ago, twangster said:
I've heard rumblings of Lake Michigan cruises for a while now. It never seems to get enough momentum though.
Empress is 30m wide. Monarch 36m. Song of Norway was 23.96m.
Seaway maximum beam 23.8m. So it would have to smaller than the 1st ship in the fleet.
Celebrity Xpedition class is a candidate but those are very specialized ships built for a specific market.
On a side note, the second worst U.S. ship disaster in terms of loss of life occurred on the Chicago River.
Oh yeah, the Eastland disaster! Very, very strange incident.
Not to hijack Rjac's thread, (and all ya' alls just got a few more days to get me those Boca Clips) but what if Gary, In had a compound like Falmouth? What if we dusted off the coal dust and iron ore off a pier in Sandusky? I think we all know the Apostle Islands are beautiful. Summerfest in Milwaukee happens right on the lakefront (and that had better be an overnight stop 'cause nobody leaves there sober). Boy, what if certain cruises coincided with MLB games in Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland? I think sailings like this would be extremely popular and provide economic stimulus to places that could really use it. Maybe it's Azamara, maybe it's a new company? Maybe the staff on board is paid a living wage???? Whoa
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The "Sailing the Great Lakes" comes from a couple different ideas. One, sailing the Great Lakes was a very popular thing to do 100 year ago. Two, these type of offerings would make cruising a possibility to many new customers located in the Midwest. But mostly three, with less and less available port space on the Caribbean, it would give RCL a new angle and new revenue stream.
I'm certain RCL has chosen not to go there, there name after all is Royal Caribbean. But have you noticed how many companies now sail the Mississippi? The Columbia River? Chesapeake Bay? I predict those become big revenue generators for Carnival and others in years to come.
Having an old Monarch of the Seas or Empress located in Lake Michigan during the summer is only me being selfish. Lake Michigan is actually quite shallow once you get close to land, surprisingly shallow. I never even gave width a thought.
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I think this is a great idea to use RCL fans to participate in company development in exchange for some kummelweck sandwiches. I'd like to see more openings of this type of interaction.
Good job RCL! <pat on the back>
From there my opinion goes downhill fast and that is just because of years of RCL IT disappointment. I have lost all faith that Royal cares one iota about a users online experience. Royal has dragged their feet for years in making their land based, ships online, or passengers communications anywhere in the same decade as the ship sails. For that matter, the computer terminals used at Guest Services (and each ships separate internal computer system) still run on that neon green blinking hyphen....DOS.
I know IT is expensive. I know it's difficult for companies to keep their systems running, much less updated. And all this IT stuff, at least on the surface, all it does is take away from earnings. On the other hand it's 2018. It shouldn't be a confusing story whether a mother can text her teenage daughter while onboard. A potential customer should NEVER find that the website is down. And for Christ Sake, can more than one person be in a reservation???? Particularly when you call and one of them is a Royal employee who works in customer service? <face palm>
Over the years Royal has made me feel this way. Royal has shown me they will finance billion dollar ship after billion dollar ship. They will spend some $300 million dollars to make their own private pair in Miami that is a mere 200' longer than the one they already use. In the meantime, they use the same crummy pictures to illustrate excursions, I have to "pretend to make a booking" just to find out what a cruise will cost me--with ever increasing key strokes, and the wait for my cruise points to post is how long??? I gave up a long time ago.
It's a nice thought that Royal (or who ever their contractor is) would go through a usability test or show care and concern to make their system better; even a refresh. But to be honest, that is giving them too much credit; I think this is a test to see if having several people do the same thing causes the whole system to become unstable. Or, does the system give out the same pricing if two different users ask simultaneously. I'd guess they are they are trying to accomplish much, much simpler tasks. I hope I am wrong and a positive surprise would be more than welcome.
<gets off soapbox, walks quietly away>
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13 minutes ago, DERPDR said:
We sail Allure March 25. Just missing both of you. BTW @bobroo I see you are located in Chicago. We are practically neighbors here just east of South Bend IN.
Cool beans!
I'll add you to the list of RCBloggers who would strongly support a RCL ship deployed in Lake Michigan during the summer.
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20 hours ago, fillmoreranger said:
If I understand correctly, non-combatant passengers were being physically attacked during this unchecked thug-spree. If you are willing to take a thumping for a 25% discount on a future cruise, by all means, please advance to the head of the line. Meatshields are always appreciated during events like this.
No, when I see something like this about to go on, I pick up my drink and head to another bar. If you don't like what you are watching--change the channel.
The 25% off coupon is really a way of punishing the captain. I'm certain whenever one of those coupons is redeemed, that $ of discount is applied against that captains profitability on his/her next sailing. And therefore that captains bonus for that voyage is decreased. Cruel, but that's how maritime employment works.
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If we were to get a 25% off coupon for a future cruise--I wish this would happen on every cruise my wife and I are on.
That would save me $750 or better a cruise.
Just Say'n.....
Diamond Plus Gift Selection on "New " website.
in Royal Caribbean Discussion
Posted
FYI, assuming you travel with a spouse; there will only be one free bottle of wine for the two of you. That bottle of wine will be determined by who ever selected their preferences last. Despite how C and A gives a free welcome beverage since the time you were gold status and even though the C and A website allows each member to select their preferences; you are only getting one bottle per stateroom per voyage.
This is true for the first "tier" of Diamond Plus. Perhaps when reaching one of the other two "tiers" of Diamond Plus C and A will cough up two bottles of wine??? I'm sure there is someone from the other higher "tiers" that can chime in.