YOLO

Yes, you have to tender. But IMO it is worth it. I would gladly skip a different port if I was given the option. BUT, it is not my call. I just hate it when one of my favorite ports gets cancelled on a cruise after I have it booked. It happens...

Yes, that is it. Mine is 60TB. You can store your life on it. Mine has lots of movies, music, photos, and lots more... https://www.synology.com/en-us

Not sure. I did mention it above as originally being scheduled for day 2, but it is not listed now. This pisses me off as I love Bar Harbor. Leary's has great lobster rolls, but their french fries have always been to die for... https://www.learyslanding.com/

THIS !!! YES !!! @topher4519 @AshleyDillo @Matt We are cancelling our Jan 15th 2023 Ultimate Caribbean on Rhapsody for this reason. We last sailed on her in Alaska in 2013. If you have $150M you can buy her. Last week on the President's Cruise I met Brian and Guyla. Guyla told me just how bad the ship was on their last cruise. They were in a suite and they had trouble sleeping due to the ship creaking. There were other issues too. Talking to the staff and officers was no help. She swore she would never go on that ship again. They are D+ and said it was the only Royal ship they would never cruise on again. She wanted to ask Mike Bayley why it was still a part of the fleet during the Q&A with him, but instead asked a menu question about their booked World Cruise. As much as I would love this cruise I am now very leery of Rhapsody... https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2753581-rhapsody-of-the-seas-for-sale/ https://www.cruzely.com/royal-caribbean-ship-listed-for-sale-priced-at-just-150-million/

Agree. My 7 year old NAS can play 4K movies just fine as long as I don't transcode them. I prefer having video ripped at different qualities and just picking the one I want to watch. I also have lots of movies and music on my phone's 512GB uSD card just in case.

We are also scheduled on the Oasis out of Cape Liberty on 9/11/22 if you can make that one. Prices are cheap...

We are booked on the Oct 23rd Voyager too! Can't wait to go to Prince Edward Island. but we are bumming they dumped the Bar Harbor stop originally scheduled for day 2...

@twangster & @smokeybandit For now, I have given all media streaming onboard. I do have a Synology NAS running a PLEX server with an extensive media collection. Maybe when Starlink arrives... This is my setup for now taken from this post: YOLO Posted May 22 @HoneyBVegas Welcome to the Royal Caribbean Blog Forum! Here is some info for you about using in cabin TV HDMI ports. My universal remote worked perfectly on Anthem last month, but I just got off the Adventure (yesterday) where it did not! But after further investigation, I did not need it. By luck I discovered that if I plugged into the HDMI port and used the RCI room remote that I could tune it to channel 3 and activate the HDMI! I am guessing this maybe true of all Voyager class ships and maybe other older ships too. As far as streaming movies - forget it. Even if you have your content downloaded onto your device and either mirror it to the TV or to a HDMI device (like Chromecast) it is not worth your trouble. I find the zoom WiFi to be unreliable. It may work for a while and you may get through a movie, but if you don't it is frustrating and a waste of time. Even worse if you try streaming from an off ship server (NAS, commercial stream company, etc) as it is almost never satisfactory. Instead use an HD Media Server w/ HDMI. Some laptops. tablets, & phones can do this too, but might not be as compact as my solution below. Before your cruise you can pre-load your movies and TV shows onto a 512GB micro SD card. This will give you more hours of your favorite content than your cruise is long (unless you do Royal's World Cruise). This is what I am using and it has worked perfectly... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089VXSD1H https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09B1HMJ9Z https://www.amazon.com/3-Device-Universal-Preprogrammed-SRP9232D-27/dp/B07B4P1DK9 Let me know if you have any questions...

I found the I did not need the universal remote (it did not work) on the Adventure this past May. By luck I found this out - all I needed to do was to plug in a live HDMI signal (from my Neumi media player) and change the cabin remote channels. When I got to channel number 3, voila I was watching my Neumi which was plugged into HDMI 1. So when the universal remote does not work for you, give this a try...

Royal Red Sox: @Pooch & @JennG010203 I was on Royal when the Red Sox won their first world series in 86 years!!! My sister and I were in the pub on Explorer watching when Keith Foulke threw that final pitch and reversed the Bambino's Curse !!! IT WAS AWESOME !!!

Yeah, agree. Unless you know, you don't. I always get the soda package and on the President's cruise last week I got lots of in-room notices - but not one explained to pick up my cup at at bar...

@JennG010203 Welcome to the Royal Caribbean Blog Forum! My dad was a wicked Yankees fan and nicked named me Mickey (after guess who). He played semi-pro back in the days when it existed and won a batting title. But he passed when I was 8 and I spent a lot of time with my grandmother after school. She was Red Sox fan like all my catholic school mates - and me! Amazing how many generations the Sox-Yanks rivalry has lasted. Ceil is not feeling well today, so I am giving away my WooSox tickets for tonight's fireworks game...

I like to watch the Air Disasters documentary series on the Smithsonian channel. It turns out many Airlines crashes could be avoided by more experienced and better trained pilots. God help us!

Also a quick COVID note about last week's President's Cruise. There were no forced restrictions anywhere I went - not one. Even in the terminal, most people wore masks, but it was not required. After this 7 day cruise, I have seen quite a few FB group reports of people reporting testing positive after arriving home. Even 2 from our group! I thought (was hoping) we were further along than this.

JetBlue canceled our outbound BOS -> SEA trip for the 2022 Ovation President's Cruise (6/24). We were scheduled to leave BOS at 7:18AM on 6/23, but the second leg of our flight out of JFK was cancelled just about 18 hours before departure. There were 6 of us on the same flight and our only choice was to rebook with Delta. Lucky for me (and two others) we kept our jetBlue return flight. That flight did fly direct from SEA->BOS on Friday, but the Delta return flight was cancelled. We got back Friday, but the other 3 had to spend for a hotel and endure a flight layover yesterday. We should have realized this weekend was a holiday. Next year's president's cruise is July 23rd, so we shouldn't have any problem by then - I hope. I agree with @barbeyg and for now we are going to cruise out of Boston's Black Falcon Cruise Terminal or Bayonne's Cape Liberty Cruise Port - we can easily drive there. The current status of flying is sad right now. We are going to cancel our 14N Ultimate Caribbean Cruise on the Rhapsody in Jan as we would have to fly round trip to Barbados. Sadly, we are also considering cancelling our B2B Norwegian Fjords cruise on the Anthem in May... Flying is bumming me out!

It could be if you have insurance that covers this, or if you booked through the Air2Sea program, or if your cruise qualifies for CWC (Cruise With Confidence) and are able to cancel the cruise more than 48 hours in advance. Otherwise I hope you didn't spend too much. We had CWC on the President's Cruise (Ovation - Friday June 24th) and my JetBlue flight (BOS->SEA Thursday) was cancelled on Wednesday afternoon. It was too late to cancel using the CWC, so we were able to purchase a Delta flight at double the cost of the JB flight. There wasn't much choice for us...

@Cindyb We were in Bermuda on May 14th. There are shuttles from where you get off the ship to where there is transportation. There may be wheelchairs too, but I did not notice any.

I understand that Matt's Blog explains that exercising CWC will result in a FCC (excerpt below). How long does it take to get a FCC? My TA is saying 45 days, but didn't @Matt just use it on his Alaska cruise and only pushed the cruise out just one week? We are scheduled to cruise next Friday on the Ovation (Jun 24th), but Ceil is having emergency surgery today. We made need to use the CWC option early next week. Will it really take 45 days to get the FCC?

@Michelle westley No Refund makes No Sense ! I am sorry about your troubles, but something about your story is not correct. Our 25th Anniversary Cruise was the RCB Group Cruise to the Norwegian Fjords on Anthem, but that was cancelled due to Covid. So we booked the Anthem coming out of the shutdown and got our first suite. It was very nice and we loved it. Good Luck to you - hope you find a solution that works. Also, Welcome to the Royal Caribbean Blog Forums!

All, thanks for all the great information in this thread. @TXcruzer Thanks for the specifics on your policy and cost! For us, I like the idea of annual insurance. We tend to buy per cruise insurance in some cases and not in others - trying to hedge our bets depending our situation for each cruise. By going the annual route we could finally stop worrying or trying to remember which cruises have insurance. Also, we worry about air fare and whether or not we used Air2Sea. The annual insurance takes care of that too. And finally, if something major did happen to us causing us to use the full annual limit, I suspect we would be cancelling the rest of our cruises and not traveling for awhile anyway. For example, a ship evacuation is very costly. Overall, we are thinking that an annual plan would work better for us. Does anyone know if there is an annual plan which covers evacuation or offers cancel for any reason

@Pooch I was wondering if you made an decisions on Travel Insurance? I too like the idea of Annual Cruise Insurance, but it seems like Allianz was the only provider I could find for such insurance so I could not do any comparison shopping. Any info you have would be appreciated. Thanks!

Yes, I called C&A yesterday and was told they would mail me my Adventure of the Seas block, in about 4 months!!! I will check on it again in September...

Both Ceil and I surpassed 210 points on our recent Adventure cruise and no glass blocks appeared. I knew at the time, but thought like C&A category changes, it would occur on our next cruise. But based on this thread, that should not be the case. What should I do? Do Ceil and I (we have been on every cruise together) both get glass blocks? Thanks...

Doesn't by booking with Air2Sea provide a guaranty? To get you to the ship, to protect the cost of the cruise?

I bet ice usage would go up. The question is which is cheaper (or more eco if that is your concern)? How about coolers with ice in every room?