Rackham

Fried seafood on the menu can be conveniently sourced pre-battered or breaded and frozen. So all it needs aboard is being portioned out and fried. Royal might not be doing this, but I wouldn't be shocked if they were to streamline their kitchen. Looking at the other offerings on the menu, something can be said similarly about most of them. I'm giving Hooked a chance next month, but I'm keeping my expectations in check.

"Highlights include a revamped pool deck, new waterslides, a new water park, new restaurants, the conversion of the ice rink into a laser tag arena and much more." https://cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/2025/01/royal-caribbean-gearing-up-for-huge-allure-drydock/ Are they misunderstanding things or is Allure getting something akin to an interior SeaPlex?

Assuming 100% capacity (edit: using the double occupancy number), 25.7% are new to Royal, 41% are Gold to Emerald, and 33.3% are Diamond and higher.

It appears that The Bamboo Room aboard Navigator is getting a variation of The Pesky Parrot's menu with a few holdovers. Haven't looked at Mariner. Here's Bamboo's in app menu as the screenshot. The previous menu (minus food): https://www.royalcaribbean.com/content/dam/royal/resources/menus/the-bamboo-room-menu-sample.pdf Pesky's menu:

I'm curious which ships in RCCL's fleet have sailed over 30 years? Here's the retired ship data I have. Retired Ships Ship Maiden Retired Delta Song of Norway 1970 1997 27 Nordic Prince 1971 1995 24 Sun Viking 1972 1998 26 Song of America 1982 1999 17 Viking Serenade 1982 2002 20 Sovereign 1987 2008 21 Monarch 1991 2013 22 Splendour 1996 2016 20 Legend 1995 2017 22 Empress 1990 2020 30 Majesty 1992 2020 28

Great question. Here's an article from Frommer's on ship ages which talks about that. https://www.frommers.com/tips/cruise/how-old-is-your-cruiseship-does-it-matter My take is that they can operate past 30 years, but it's less than ideal. Besides getting families booking with Royal who are turned off for something as large as Oasis or Icon class, there's also port availability. With everyone and their dog who can afford an Oasis sized order getting into the mega ship game, Royal needs smaller vessels so that they can find ports to send their ships to in the future. Otherwise, there's going to come a time where Royal will either have to limit their growth due to lack of available ports or pay a serious premium for their dock slots. It doesn't help either that Americans generally don't have much vacation time. Thus, to encourage bookings, necessitating itineraries starting or ending on a weekend so that cruisers need less vacation time to sail with the company. Which also means itineraries can be somewhat limited in their port order to minimize fuel costs during the voyage. And this goes back to port availability. Doesn't matter if port X has space available on Monday if a cruise starting on Saturday can't make the journey.

I've been thinking about this, and it depends on how Royal's seeing the market, and if they could find a location which would allow visits on a three night itinerary. If they think they'd be able to homeport more ships on the West coast in the future, it might be worthwhile in the short term to only have 3-4 visits a week to be able to offer a product their competitors don't have. It'd sell cabins and gain them mindshare when the alternative is Ensenada.

Strenuous could also mean hiking multiple miles at a reasonable clip for someone who regularly hikes in the mountains or open water swims. If physical activity could be an issue, you really should ignore the activity level then make a personal determination based on the description and other people's reviews of the excursion. If there's one thing Royal could improve on with their shore excursions it's this. There's such a wide range of excursions tagged "Strenuous" that it's not too helpful as a descriptor.

I doubt we'd ever get a US based Perfect Day simply due to labor costs. Then there's the benefit to Royal of having a port they control which ships can head towards to satisfy the PVSA if needed.

2029 would have Discovery launched on the 30th anniversary of Voyager class. Here's hoping there'd be a similar video to this for the new class.

$249 on average sounds right to me with everything that's included. Royal also loves their sales, so most people would end up paying between $125-$175 pp most likely. And, of course, they can always change the non-discounted price based on the ship, itinerary, time of year, customer demographics sailing, etc. So maybe the MSRP will range from $199 to $299.

My read is there was X dollars of gift card sales targeted during the promotion. Due to the links working for people multiple times and allowing more than $1,000 dollars in savings, people with moola bought far more than they were entitled to under the terms of the sale. Thus, what should've lasted at least a week was sold through in less than a day. I've read elsewhere people buying $10,000, $20,000, and more at 20% off. What I'm hoping Royal will do is allow those who missed the opportunity previously to purchase gift cards up to $5,000 worth at 20% off once (i.e. the terms and conditions which should've been enforced before, one transaction with up to $1,000 in savings). I can't imagine a situation where they'd just reopen sales and allow transactions to continue the way they were before.

Good will from dedicated fans and testing the waters on pricing models to separate more money from more people. These types of promotions allows the company to raise fares while helping retain long time customers who will know about and be able to use these offers. People who might try a competitor with another fare increase might book if they know there's a possibility of a gift card discount (or similar) in the future. In other words, it's a differential pricing strategy which won't get the type of pushback of individual pricing of fares would since everyone is seeing similar fares at the same time.

It's legit. If you're receiving the C&A emails you should be receiving a personalized link. There were no problems redeeming on a Celebrity booking just now. Edit: It's worth knowing that these are low security gift cards. If someone knows your email address then they can access your cards. I wouldn't buy anymore than what I can turn and use today (or won't cry over if lost).

I'd believe it's a real possibility that Discovery is around Voyager class sizing. Originally, rumors had it around Radiance class. Then between Voyager and Radiance classes. So the final ship tonnage being Voyagerish would be par for the course. What I'm really interested in seeing is if there's any truth to a rumor that Royal is going wide with Discovery instead of tall. Something like the height of Radiance, but with the beam of Quantum, so that they don't have to think about bridge heights and have the deck space for amenities.

PDM should be included in the fare. Much like PD CocoCay is. It's the Royal Beach Clubs which will cost extra. Edit: Looking at the cheapest 4-night sailings from Galveston with RCCL and Carnival, a $42/head fee would add roughly 10% to the cruise fare with fees and taxes. So for roughly the same cost, they could either visit Cozumel or PDM. I don't think it'd be a hard decision to make for the average person.

The article doesn't provide enough detail to say this for certain, but since it's an immigration fee and not a port fee, it reads like it'd be charged per person once per sailing which visits Mexico and not every time the ship docks in Mexico. Also, this could be something of a boon for Royal and Perfect Day Mexico. For the proverbial family of four, that fee would add $168 to the sailing cost. PDM might look really good right now, but it'd look even better if MX cruise costs are noticeably increased across the board and they're looking for ways to save money during the cruise.

https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/topic/42039-cocktail-recipes-on-royal-caribbean-ships/page/9/#findComment-482820

I've seen that once, and it was filled with Coco Loco after Coco Cay.

I'm seeing the thermal suite (and fitness class pass) back in the cruise planner this morning. Just going to assume it was something with IT (system or database update?) which caused them to disappear.

I don't, but it's missing on my cruises too. I'm also not seeing the fitness class pass either. I wonder if this means they're revamping their fitness program? Or maybe moving to a model where booking a spa treatment gets you thermal suite access? Can't imagine they'd make it free if they were charging for it.

I'm thinking that's an error on their part since that's the quantity options when buying still water. However, I won't complain if I've got 12, instead of 8, bottles waiting in April.

I'm seeing a new, San Pellegrino package for 8 or 12, 500mL bottles on the Beverage page in the cruise planner. Gratuity was charged when I placed my order.

Can't tell if they're joking or saw someone's invoice who booked the ultimate family townhouse for this itinerary.

Solar eclipse cruise pricing if the website isn't working for ya. As it comes and goes on my end. Edit: With website issues preventing booking, here was the pricing when the site finally worked and was accepting payment. There's $150 onboard credit included with an interior booking. $75 also happens to be the price increase on an interior cabin per person when comparing these prices to the earlier ones ($75 x 2 = $150). Funny how that works.