CrimsonCruiser

Ohhhhh! I've never seen an accessible room but that makes sense!

This one took me a second until I realized no JR suite balcony is this big. So I think that might be where a divider was supposed to go if this balcony was used for a smaller room. Though I am also wondering if this is Royal at all because I didn't think any Royal balconies were carpeted like this? Is it carpet?

Red Circle is Speaker Green circle is Light

So..I don't know if it was a glitch or not... but... on Odyssey last fall, with only the free wifi on, I was able to connect to FB messenger BEFORE I logged into the free Voom that came with our suite. Did it recognize my app and room before log in? Was it an oversight that's been fixed? Who knows! I plan to test it again when onboard this August. It could be as @Ampurp85 mentioned above - that it worked only because we were still docked at the time.

Thanks. Yeah I realized my wording was weird; by solo I meant without a pre-determined travel partner. I'm just worried about booking it only to find out that I'd be SOL. In a similar circumstance, I wasn't able to ride the boomerang slide on Liberty because you HAVE to have 2 people and there were no solo riders for the 5 or so minutes I was standing there taking up space. I know a ship isn't the same as a waterpark where they'd have me wait for a solo rider because the chances are high one would come along sooner rather than later but it really did bum me out. I'd hate to have something similar happen with an excursion I spent money on.

Hello! I'm looking at the Labadee parasail excursion but I'd be booking it just for myself (my travel partner is afraid of heights). The booking says all rides are tandem. Has anyone gone to this excursion without their own ride partner? What did you think? If they don't have another person to ride with you (aka another solo adventurer) will they tell me I can't go? Stick me with staff? Force a couple to separate for me? If they tell me I can't go, will Royal refund me or am I at loss because I understood the risk and ordered anyway? It's a third party excursion so I'm not sure if Royal customer service can help me with on-the-ground details like this. Thanks in advance!

In addition to what the others are saying about the casino being closed and there being less activities on board, I've also noticed more of the shops will be closed - primarily the more expensive ones. But! Spa sessions in port are discounted so that's nice.

How it works: All throughout the cruise (most specifically around dinner time, formal night, in the dining rooms, within the first 3 or so hours at each port and on embarkation day - also maybe at the water slides or pool) there will be Royal Cruise line photographers at sectioned off staged photo areas with either canvas backdrops of various scenes or colors, a prop or costumed crew member (at ports) or around highlight points of the ship such as The Royal Promenade Bridge, Central Park on Oasis Class, the atrium glass stairs, Wonderland's chair on Odyssey. They will scan your seapass card or just ask for your stateroom number and then guide you through several poses though you are more than welcome to try some out yourself. By the next day around mid morning, those photos will be viewable in the ship's photo area on computer workstations. The pictures are (I think) lightly edited - blurring backgrounds, adjusting lighting - but no heavy photoshop changes. They don't have time for that lol. With or without a package you can take photos - you are only paying to OWN them after the cruise. Within the first 2 days onboard, Royal will have photo package prices that echo what you see on cruise planner now (save for any steep discounts that come with specific sales) and you can buy a package at any time on board. I would suggest, that even if you're on board and haven't settled on if you will or won't get a package, stop by every station and take all the photos you can. If you end up with that 100-photo package, you want to have plenty to pick from to get your money's worth. Packages: As with most things on Cruise Planner, package prices vary by ship and sailing and not everyone will have the same thing. Not since my first cruise in 2015 have I seen prices as low as Mum got. Most times I see $20 single photo, $150 for 20 photos, and $250+ for 100 photos. There is also a private session package which may interest you if you want to go bigger on your anniversary. With the ongoing sale, prices on my August Allure cruise are: 10 photos $96.99 (regular price $149.99) 20 photos $119.99 (regular price $199.99) 100 photos $136.99 (regular price $249.99) Is It Worth It: That is something only you can decide. Some people don't find it worth it if they have a cell phone or DSLR that takes really good photos. All of the areas the photographers are in are publicly accessible and you can use them once the photographer leaves or before they get there. But, you may struggle to get non-selfies of the two of you together unless you ask a passing cruiser or staff to snap a photo or 2 of you. In that circumstance you won't have the photographer to help you pose best (i.e, what to do with your hands, how to open your body to the camera, where to look, avoiding a double chin etc), not as much time to get it right, and be subject to the potentially dim or bad lighting of the area. You should also consider if you're going to be off ship early enough to catch the port photos (my favorite). Since they have to be back on board in order to get them processed for viewing by dinner-ish, they aren't out there all day. Only a couple hours. Also a good idea to consider what you'll do with the photos.

Really it depends on what I'm getting. We only do the soda drink package and that pretty on bigger sales will dip down about $2 per day so we wait for that but know we're getting it. For excursions, we kinda see what's what. If there's something we absolutely know we are going to want, book it as soon as we can so long as it's within our budget for that event. But ones we're just kinda looking at...we wait til it gets closer less because of potential sales and more because we don't want to have more things paid for than we'll actually use. So we'll scroll through, save things, keep an eye on costs and quantity and kinda go with the flow.

I think it would partly depend on how fast you eat. we did it for dinner at about 6 something I think on a day when we wanted to make a 7something show. We ended up skipping dessert. That said, we neither informed the wait staff of our scheduled or request expedited service. Plus we eat relatively slow - I'm almost always the last eater in my groups on land or sea. So I would recommend no later than 6 with a notice to the staff that you're on a tight schedule.

This is WILD to look at! It's both REALLY dated but also easy to see where our beautiful promenades came from. Maybe the ball was an observatory? Ooh ooh! Or a stationery precursor to the the North Star!

Go tug boat go!!! I always love tug boats actually tugging...so tiny...so powerful

Echoing what another person was saying about the standard room gratuities which are per person, per day. If you don't prepay gratuities, these will be added to your final bill. There are also gratuities baked into the beverage packages that, since it sounds like you guys purchased the package on board, may not have processed at the time of initial payment. A tip for the future: check your bill daily during your cruise. You can easily access it via the free Royal Caribbean app or on your stateroom TV. This will have an almost immediate record of all of your charges so you can keep an eye on what you're getting charged. You will probably also get a print out on the last day of your charges up to that point, giving you another chance to go to guest services and get things straightened out onboard. Also, if you have other adults sailing with you, be sure that they each link their own form of payment to their sea pass. Then you don't end up eating someone else's charge. Sorry this confusion happened; hopefully you can get things straightened out and you are armed with this lesson for you next adventure.

That's honestly so cool... now I want one...just for keeps

I can say that while I'm on neither stroller or scooter and never outside when tipsy...I have been guilty of casually strolling around the pool deck walking track...in the jog lane...going the wrong direction simply because I'm trying to get from aft to forward. Did this pretty much EVERY time on Odyssey and I was very grateful again to the reduced capacity because otherwise I think I would have been serious hindrance. Looking forward to the lower walking track. I usually never intentionally take a walk around but it could be more tempting/satisfying in the shade of the lower deck, not having to dodge swimmers and kids.

was literally just reading an FB post about this from someone on board. crazy

Oooh I wanna go! I love when there exists a possibility to cruise to a bucket list location. ... still on the hunt for a South Korean cruise that stops in at least 3 areas...

The only reason I say not to is just a matter of having less to deal with on such a busy day. We have 2 suitcases each plus a personal item and that's not fun to traverse far distances with. Having someone else take it away and to the port area just means we have to deal with it less before getting to the airport. But no, you won't be slowed down - in fact I think most people do self-carry to go faster because they're usually off first - and there's no rule about it. If it's not out there at the pick up time they don't care.

WHAT?! WHAT?!?!?! ohhhh ho ho ho ho ho!!!..I've been armed with new and dangerous knowledge...

I was able to book one for my upcoming Aug on Allure. They are currently sold out but they do appear. Maybe it's a classic Royal IT glitch and the phone service people can help...maybe?

I'm glad things worked as best as could be expected. Hopefully there aren't big cost differences on those cruise planner purchases she had.

ha! omg it is! I wonder if that's a contract google has with military to not have anything viewable by satellite and no one thought to exclude a freaking tourist site

Answering the question you put forth first: - I agree with the others and would recommend option 2 with a caveat that the all of the slides for non-toddlers and many of the great advertised features at Coco Cay are an additional cost and could run pricey (depending on what your view of pricey is). Now...additional thoughts. Judging by the fact that you are looking at literal opposite sides of the country, I have to assume you'd be flying to one or both ports and if that's the case, I would strongly encourage you to book at least a 6-night cruise instead. Why? Well, the mom and I fly from Chicago and we did a 4-nighter for our second cruise. We thought it was a good way to try to enjoy this newfound appreciation for cruising without spending 2-3k every year. But once we actually did we realized we hadn't factored in the pre-cruising stuff (flying in the day before, lodging, boarding stress, unpacking, muster etc.) and the post cruising stuff (packing mainly). After all that, the cruise really felt closer to 3 days rather than 4 (days are counted by days aboard so day 1 is embarkation day, day 2, 3 and 4 are actual days cruising/at ports and you'll see a "day 5" which the return day). For us, day 3 is when we really settle in and get our relaxation on full tilt, so with a 4-day cruise it was over just as we were getting settled. It was a fun enough time but definitely not long enough to really enjoy our only vacation for the year. Obviously you may be in an entirely different boat than us and none of this may apply, but I wanted to put it out there.

Prefacing this by saying I've never had to experience this. The only time I've ended up paying after final payment was on our last cruise but that was on Royal's end because just before our payment date, they shifted our ship and need almost 2 weeks to get things properly put back in order. Since it was on their end Did she get it in writing from the TA that the card would be charged automatically? If so, maybe she can go directly to Royal with all of her information and try to fight for her rebook. Ideally, if she has a TA they should be doing the fighting since it was their error that caused the charge to be missed but it sounds like this TA may be dropping the ball quite a bit. If not...fighting with the TA may be the only recourse. Unfortunately, if she was paying in bits, they would probably end up charging the whole fare at once (if they did manage to reinstate it) which may be more than her credit limit given that whatever refund she's due at that time won't have processed yet. And there's no chance at reinstating cruise planner purchases so that would have to be done manually at whatever the current price is. Sorry for the potentially bad news...

Oldest ship we went on was Enchantment and we never had any hard rocking. A little swaying on a rough wave day but nothing worse than I've experienced on Liberty in the same conditions. So I would gather that, yes, they do have stabilizers. I think, given that most major lines sailing now have ships from only the 90s, you'd be hard pressed to find any ship that doesn't have them. They may be a little older and need more speed or whatever to really get their best use, but they're there.