PatsFanBrian

I know what you're saying. We take our camera everywhere and always ask servers to take pictures of us. And as I posted, look at the pictures from the excursions, many are very reasonably priced. We have purchased pictures from many excursions.

IMO, the photo prices on RC are the most obscenely overpriced item on any cruise. We always go ahead take all the photo ops because you never know, a gem may be taken. But we've only purchased a handful of pictures over the years. We have far more excursion pictures which have a better bang for your buck, and are a better representation of the cruise experience, than on-board pictures.

The only time we ever had WOW bands was way back when Quantum was brand new (Dec. '14). Over the course of the cruise, we didn't like them. It was like wearing a 2nd watch and we got tired of having to take them off all the time. We eventually ended up putting them in our pocket/purse which sort of defeated the purpose. I always have my wallet with m anyways, so I prefer the card.

For me, it's hard to describe a good cruise director, but you'll know a good one when you have one. A sign of a good cruise director is his staff. The cruise director can't be everywhere at once, so his staff will run many of the events on ship such as Bingo, trivia, karaoke, etc. I have found that how they run these events says a lot about the cruise director, they take his/her direction and general tone and are a general reflection of his skill.

We check every morning, charges from the night before may not show up immediately.

Our only time in Nassau was also a short stop. We walked around town a bit and then just went back to the ship and enjoyed an empty pool. We weren't going to pay for an excursion to Atlantis just to be able to do the same thing for free on the ship.

Hopefully you have a good credit card that will be in your corner. They will likely require Royal Caribbean to provide proof of the charges and they can cross check it against your final itemized statement you should have received from RC on your last night. I dealt with a credit card issue (stolen and several false charges) in July when we visited New York City and Capital One could not have been better at taking care of it. Today's credit card companies are very vigilant about fraud.

Down to $48 for my Bermuda cruise in 3 weeks. The "sale" price last week was $51. Yesterday it was $55. I haven't received any promotional emails since last weekend. This weekend is likely decision time. I doubt I'm going to get anything lower than $48.

Not a Podcast, I help run a message board, PatriotsPlanet. Been around since 2002. I'm originally from Fitchburg, but been living near the "Sockett" for nearly 30 years.

I live just north of the RI border. Been to Newport many times. I never knew it was a port of call. There's great things to do there for a 1 day stop.

Besides the notion that some snow birds could be going down that time of year, post-holiday travel, not sure if the Super Bowl being held at Hard Rock Stadium 2 weeks later has any impact on pricing. The media will begin to converge on the area around that time.

The NFL announced that the Super Bowl will be played on February 2, 2020 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. It is not yet known who the Patriots' opponent will be.

I never knew this existed. I just checked our cruise and 55 people have signed up. My wife and I enjoy meeting new people when we cruise, I'll need to sign up for it, although we'll probably be mostly "Massholes" so who knows if anyone will actually speak to each other.

There's also little difference from Platinum to Emerald. We're now 12 pts. from Diamond, 5 by this time next month. I look forward to being the menace of the Diamond Lounge. We were booked for a sailing out of Barcelona last August, but had to cancel just before the full payment was due. Very disappointed when that happened. We will eventually book it again although that one may not happen for a few years.

I hope not, the pictures we took would make the RMV proud.

Actually, the stadium is about halfway between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami.

I'm surprised you were able to get either a hotel or flight for that weekend, unless you booked it a long time ago. The stadium is just south of Ft. Lauderdale. The activities on Super Bowl Sunday usually don't get cranking until early afternoon, so you should be good to go.

You can really take it any way you choose as long as you can browse for it when you are doing the online check in. My wife and I just used our regular camera, inserted the chip into my laptop and then browsed for them from the check in page. It took about 5 minutes total. If using your cell phone, you can email it to an address that you can reach from a larger device and then save the pic on your computer.

My wife is 7 points ahead of me, but our accounts are linked. She will hit Diamond one cruise ahead of me. It's my understanding that we are both at the highest level of the two. I know when we linked the two accounts a few cruises ago, I was automatically bumped up to her level even though our points are different, Am I understanding this correctly?

If it's free, I'm not being picky. We are 2 away from Diamond, counting the one coming up in a few weeks. We may have to book one more while on-board just to get us over the top.

My card doesn't have this, so I wasn't aware it existed. Good advice. Can't say I ever thought of this. I'll need to make a point of paying attention if/when I use it outside the US. Thanks for the heads up.

Or your credit card. All credit cards will convert the currency automatically.

"Worth it" is a relative term for everyone. I don't recall what we paid for it, but we enjoyed it. The bus ride to the beach included a guide to tell us about the island, I like the stop at the distillery which included a few ounces of taste testing. I checked the excursions and it was the Curacao Highlights and Beach Fun at $54/adult. For that price, we felt it was worth it. Part of your decision is how long you'll be in port. Since we were there for 14 hours (a very long stop by cruise standards), we knew we could do that excursion (4 hours) and still have more than enough time to do other things.

One more item, which you will likely be warned about on the ship. If you walk into town, you cross the Queen Emma bridge, which is a floating pontoon bridge designed to open up to let ships pass. If the bridge is open, there's no way to get past it until it closes again (there are ways, but you'd never get over to the other side in time). We were warned several times to leave plenty of time to get back to the ship, especially as we got closer to departure time, in case the bridge happens to open close to departure time.

When I went a couple of years ago, we had a 14 hour stop, so we broke the day up into segments. In the morning, we did a bus tour which went to the Curacao distillery and then to a beach resort. We were back at the ship by early afternoon. We then walked into town and explored. The walk is easy and leisurely. You walk through an old fort on the way in which has been converted into a hotel, stores and restaurants. We loved the town. We started walking down all the side streets and came across a couple of courtyards at the end of some of them with food, bars, a nice cafe feel. Stopped and had a couple of beers and a snack at one of them. We really enjoyed the atmosphere of the town. At night, the pastel colored building are lit up and has a very European feel. We really enjoyed it and would be happy to go back again