CrimsonCruiser

We just completed an 8-day cruise on the Odyssey and we had 4 sea days.  As you can imagine, the chair hogs were out in full force but Odyssey’s staff were ready.  Each pool area had at least two attendants that worked all day long…They were tagging all unoccupied chairs and removing the items if the person didn’t return in time.  They were using little yellow stickies to mark the time they placed the tag, the number of chairs and they placed the tag on the chair in a location the person would not notice.  The staff got lots of thanks and I only witness one upset lady…She came back three hours later and was upset her stuff was removed.  Way to go Royal!!!

Thank you for the reminder to look into that.  Found my reservation and looked it up!  Yes, laundry-coin operated.  I'll have to look for my Canadian $ to bring along.
 

I  had the same issue and just changed my password. Now I'm in and all is well. Hope they fix whatever it is that's not recognizing perfectly valid users though....

I  had the same issue and just changed my password. Now I'm in and all is well. Hope they fix whatever it is that's not recognizing perfectly valid users though....

Theron, I hope it helps to realize that what's more likely is that the stateroom attendant cleaned the safe (as is their job) after you left the room and the officers weren't able to locate them at the time when they were searching. Turnaround day is hectic, fast and very very busy and the stateroom attendants are in and out of rooms and staff areas like crazy getting rooms stripped and re-set for the next passengers.
Please don't think the worst of the attendant just because the safe was empty and instead file a lost and found asap. The cash may be gone (it is after all hard to keep tabs on whose cash is whose even in the best of circumstances) but I'm sure the documents and wallet and other non-loose items will be returned to you.

Theron, I hope it helps to realize that what's more likely is that the stateroom attendant cleaned the safe (as is their job) after you left the room and the officers weren't able to locate them at the time when they were searching. Turnaround day is hectic, fast and very very busy and the stateroom attendants are in and out of rooms and staff areas like crazy getting rooms stripped and re-set for the next passengers.
Please don't think the worst of the attendant just because the safe was empty and instead file a lost and found asap. The cash may be gone (it is after all hard to keep tabs on whose cash is whose even in the best of circumstances) but I'm sure the documents and wallet and other non-loose items will be returned to you.

I was on that cruise and think it may have been the person in the cabin next to me.  When I woke up that morning that they had a lock on the cabin door next to me and someone was guarding the door all morning.
i saw a person go in that cabin day 1.  I thought it was a teen boy or could have been 20.  I wasn't really looking at him cuz I was decorating my door when he came and used a key to get in.  My daughter and I were telling him how I sometimes put my deco on other doors the last night to confuse people.  He laughed.  He was black, quiet and polite, not someone who seemed like a raging alcoholic like the press seems to be saying.  It could have been the brother though.  We never heard a noise out of that cabin, no partying, no arguing, no slamming doors.  I looked over our balcony at theirs after I saw the lock, there was nothing but chairs there.

I can't comment too much on the laundry as we've not yet had any issues but we don't really send anything too fragile out either.
BUT I can comment on being picky about clothes, flying, and having to pack wisely. Being from Chicago where the weather can 100% give me all 4 seasons in a single day AND hating to be cold I always like to have options with whatever I wear, so I generally try to pack light layers and dresses over things that require multiple components to make an outfit. That said, I do still pack some separates as well and try to have a bottom that can go with at least 2 of the tops I'm packing. And second is packing cubes. While they don't magically make things weigh less, they do help a lot in getting the best use of space in your luggage. I've attached a photo of one of my last piles in their packing cubes. Rolled and tightly nestled and for a 7-nighter lol

For the sailing this Aug 25

It's actually a courtesy to yourself as it helps the crew sort faster and get you your bags faster.

@All4family  I uploaded the video to YouTube so that you can see the whole thing.  https://youtu.be/s-ci8or__pE

1).  I believe they had to book times and stick to those times. If the ship was filled with World Cruisers (2,400ish instead of 700) there may have been massive issues that they would have solved with the large ship laundry services. 
3).  I fear I have misled. Not all food was delicious. It was typical RCL “hit and miss”, some details (all MDR and Specialty … we do not eat in the Windjammer 😂)
Breakfast:  It is hard to mess up breakfast. Everything was good. Nothing spectacular, just good. 
Lunch: This was the miss. A big miss. By the end of the cruise we would have the soup and grab a mediocre sandwich somewhere else.  There was nothing in the MDR for lunch that was good. On bigger ships there are tons of options (other than the MDR) for lunch.  Not on Radiance Class ships (full disclosure we love this class of ship.  Radiance Class sea views more than make up for this shortfall … especially in Antarctica).
Supper:  Meals had some excellent successes (the Filet and a Thai Chicken special were the best at sea that we remember).  Other than that, good consistent food with variety over the entire 18 days  
Specially: Was just like other cruises.  Chops was Chops and it was good.  Giovani’s was OK, but did serve a very memorable risotto.  It was too much, so we told the waiter to hold the potatoe dishes (still to come) and leave the risotto.  It was very special.
Curt from Canada
 
 

Last year we met a bartender who was starting out on the world cruise, but timed it to have his contract ending in Manila since he's Filipino.

My guesses:
There are multiple laundry areas used by the hotel services, I would say maybe on every deck that is primarily staterooms (if not two small ones each deck - one aft / forward). It would be pretty easy to convert one of these into the guest laundry room, without impacting the crew members' own laundry facilities in the crew area. I can't imagine them having crew bring their personal laundry up to the stateroom decks, or sending guests down to the crew decks.
I think I recall reading something about switching out crew as normal. They might just arrive/depart from more varied ports.
The ship likely has laid out of a schedule of how frequently they need food / water / gas etc and have coordinated with local vendors along the itinerary to have the ship restocked while its docked in the various ports.

My soulmate and I were on the Antarctic leg of this cruise in January. It was definitely a Royal Caribbean style cruise, but with quite a few differences that made for an even better experience. First your questions:
1). Laundry:  Only World Cruisers have access and it was a special (very small) area that was created just for them. It did not cause any confrontations 😉, but the scheduling of time in there was an ongoing “process” each week. I do not know the details, but the World Cruisers (and Royal Caribbean) needed to be totally organized to make the scheduling work. 
2). Crew Contracts: They seemed to be just like regular cruises. Crew rotates in and out on normal schedules. Our favourite bartender was going to rotate out and then get back on to Serenade for the last few legs of the World Cruise.  One of the senior Food & Beverage Mgrs rotated out just after our leg and should be back on the ship soon. Staggered rotations for everyone (as usual). 
3). Provisioning & Port Issues: This is a great question. I did not sense any issues at all, but I did sense a big advantage … variety. The food varied noticeably as we moved from one region to the next.  I had the best Filet Mignon at sea while docked (for two days) in Buenos Aires AND I was in the MDR.  The entertainment was much more varied and plentiful.  More variety of enrichment lecturers and topics.  More variety of climates (93+ deg down to 30ish)
We seriously looked at another leg, but could not make the timing work. We could never be away for the entire cruise, but would look at other interesting legs if they ever do again. 

Curt from Canada

I think you should feel lucky that they found the items. If you search lost and found on even this forum, you'll see that more often than not, the items aren't ever found, since turnaround is so fast and hectic. They were found, you have proof of that in email and now they need to get to you. be patient, I'm sure they're coming.

I think you should feel lucky that they found the items. If you search lost and found on even this forum, you'll see that more often than not, the items aren't ever found, since turnaround is so fast and hectic. They were found, you have proof of that in email and now they need to get to you. be patient, I'm sure they're coming.

I think you should feel lucky that they found the items. If you search lost and found on even this forum, you'll see that more often than not, the items aren't ever found, since turnaround is so fast and hectic. They were found, you have proof of that in email and now they need to get to you. be patient, I'm sure they're coming.

I was on Symphony of the Seas with our teen daughters in February. The kids insisted that they did not want housekeeping in their room, which I found annoying at the time. The said it creeped them out to think of a stranger going in and out of their space. This story came out a couple of weeks after our cruise and I realized that the kids had the right idea. 😬 

Filling a glass first is the only way I would want to do it.  Even at that, I know some people can't be trusted to do the right thing.  Wifey is wanting to use less plastic bottles.  We'll see how it goes.

Someone in the stateroom that purchased the package has to be in the photo, but yes you would give out that stateroom.

If you have a party in multiple staterooms, can the entire party provide the number of the state room that has purchased the package?

While it's frustrating to draw a room with cosmetic or maintenance issues, it's also important to look at the ship and cruise as a whole. In 19 cruises I've only been on a "newish" ship twice. Every ship has had scratched furniture, occasional plumbing problem, or the odd noise at night. Ditto for land based hotels and resorts. I'd be more concerned about a constellation of issues on a single voyage, eg, bad service, bad food, bad entertainment, and a bad room. The smaller and older ships have discounted fares for a reason. Still, I don't like to be disappointed. In the end I try to manage expectations, and I actually enjoy vision class vessels.

I don't suspect Royal makes payments directly to one president or another elected official.  That's like saying I don't know who to send my federal tax payments to in year when a different presidential party wins an election in the US.   It will always be the IRS.
There will be contracts in place with named departments or companies where payments are sent.
The departments of the Haitian government haven't been dissolved.  Once a transitional government in Haiti has been formed various department heads will report in and at some point the transitional government will learn of a major revenue gap absent in tourism stemming from Labadee. 
The transitional government will have its hands full trying to stop the gang violence.  At what point they will become effective with that and can begin to focus on something less critical such as tourism revenue will influence the outlook for a return to Labadee.    
The problem with vigilante mob violence in a lawless and corrupt system is getting them under control.  The gangs don't have a distinct leadership or direction from an organized head.  The gangs are making this up as they go along.  Soon they will run out of perceived enemies such as government leaders or more affluent Haitians and they will begin to turn more on the average Haitian.  "The guy who charged too much to fix my broken down car last year" or "that store that charges too much for groceries" will become targets.  We haven't seen the end of the gang violence and only when we do will we see a path forward for Haiti.   

Random mid-march, post-St Patricks sale started today and somehow the DBP for my Nav cruise in May has dropped lower than ever before! It used to alternate between $81.99 (non sale) and $76.99 (sale) but today it dropped to $72.99! Worth a glance! That’s even cheaper than what I paid for the DBP on this same ship and itinerary in Oct 2022, who woulda thunk?