mdgwow

An odd one, but, being social. I'm largely an introvert when not on a cruise ship.

We stay in Inside Cabins, so our expectations are not real high....but after thinking about it for a bit, I'd like to see another AC outlet or two as well as a couple USB outlets by the bedstands.

I will keep my answer grounded in reality, since a variety of draft beers on tap would be difficult to install in each room.
 
I would like a button to press to have cabin steward come to room. I know there is a phone but a simple button would be convenient.

What's the one thing you would change about the cabins on RC?
Mine would be bigger showers.

Just like @WAAAYTOOO, I have been purchasing things for my cruises in 2021 even though the majority of them likely won’t happen. But what I have been doing is before I cancel the cruise, I cancel the CP items first and the refunds seem to come back sooner. YMMV

Better wifi reception and the ability to cast or stream to the TVs in the cabin.

People talking out loud to their phones held at arm's length.


 

Every one has different vacation budgets, that's what is great about cruises, they can accommodate most of them.
Even at $400 difference I'd want to pick my own room, at $141 (actually $170 I'm a midship guy) it's a no brainier for me. That's because I can afford it and don't like to gamble with guarantee category.
If you can still afford the cruise comfortably and not have to cut out a "must do" to get the room, do it. However, if it comes at a sacrifice, think about how much time you spend in the room and if it's worth it to you.

A $141 difference is not enough incentive for me to take a guaranteed room, I would call and switch

For me, my days are pretty consistent:
Breakfast - Fresh-squeezed OJ and a grande cappuccino from the cafe One or two days of the trip I'll follow that up with a jalapeño bacon Bloody Mary Another cappuccino around mid-day On embarkation day and port days I always get a reposado or añejo margarita for sail-away On sea days I might get one beer around lunch time, if the ship has a decent import option; if not, I'll get a lighter drink like "She's a Geisha" (sold only at Izumi) On port days I always get two bottles of water when I leave the ship At dinner - 2 glasses of wine (either bottles I brought with me, or if I bought the DBP then slightly more-expensive options that are mostly covered it) After dinner - A glass of Bailey's on the rocks with a shot of espresso mixed in; kind of a reverse Irish coffee And then I'll be drinking bottled or ship's tap water around all of that through the day.

Can't say I've ever heard of that...sounds um...interesting....and really different!  Sounds like a neat twist on a Bloody Mary.

Wake up-- I need my Diet Dr. Pepper..  They had it on Harmony in the Freestyle Machines.. If not ill drink a few glasses of coke
Mid morning (1000ish)  I gotta have a few Tito's Bloody Marys.. 
Around twoish.. I guess its Bud Light time until Dinner.. 
After dinner... Tito's Dirty Martinis or Tito's and Cranberry..  Depending on the night.. Maybe a few shots of Patron mixed in ?
Last year I made the bright decision after a nap to start the Afternoon with Tito's and Red Bull.. Drank those up until dinnertime.. Around 11pm i lost my wings and crashed hard.. Couldn't  find our cabin (should have listened to my wife).. lol ?

My husband and I are on this sailing also in an ocean view balcony room.  I will be following you as well.  ?

I have been watching a lot of videos of people ordering room service on their cruise. The room service menu has a lot of good looking food on it! Sad to say, I am so excited to order room service and just eat it in my room or on the balcony. Just relax and chill doing nothing. This may be one of the highlights of the cruise for me! LOL....BTW, I am a mom who will be taking a vacation from cooking too!

I have no problem in that area.  They are struggling to provide for their families.  
Yes they will invite you to visit their booth.  No one has ever touched me so it's just a matter of looking around to see if anything interests and if not moving on.  Yes sometimes there are two or three inviting you to visit their booth at the same time.  It's just words.  "Come look what I have for you", "I have something for you", etc.  It's hardly offensive or scary.  
When I took my adult son there he walked into several booths and bought a handful of small items.  Later I told him he could have negotiated the price down.  He acknowledged that but recognized they are dirt poor so he didn't try to beat them down. 
We don't appreciate how well we have it, the people of Haiti have very little and jobs are non existent.  It's not unsafe, just a different culture.

I take a small magnetic light with movement sensor put it near my bed so I can see to get to toilet.

If you have a balcony room...A hammock
Highlighters...Excellent to plan out your next day activities in your cruise planner.
One of them over the door shoe holder things.
If you have a Harbor Freight close to you...Great place to get your magnets and magnetic clips.

Just wanted to share! 17 days until we sail! 
 
So excited!

I got so much great advice and information from these message boards that I wanted to make sure I came back and posted a recap/review of our cruise. I'm hoping this might help some other first-timers in the future. 
Sorry if I jump around to different topics! It's been tough getting my brain going again since the cruise! 
Cruise: 12/22 to 12/29 Allure of the Seas Eastern Caribbean 

Staterooms: We had 5 of us in 2 staterooms. I can't imagine trying to get more than 3 people in a stateroom. The magnet hooks and shoe-organizers were awesome for keeping things organized. I think I'm going to take an over-the-door shoe organizer on every vacation from now on!

Dining: 
We chose My Time Dining when we booked. As a first-timer, one thing I didn't realize about cruising was how much you get to know the crew members, and that the same crew members will be working at the same place at the same time (usually) every day. With my-time dining, though, we sat at a different table each night (even if we requested the same waiter), sometimes on a different floor, etc.  So my advice for first-timers: Choose set-time dining, not My Time There are lots of threads on here about dress for formal and casual nights. On the first few nights we tried to stick to these pretty closely. By the last night though, "casual" in the MDR meant shorts and a shirt without writing on it. Yes, there are white tablecloths and fancy menus, but when the tables are crammed together and the dining room is so noisy you can't even have a conversation, the "nice restaurant" vibe goes out the porthole.  We did Izumi Hibachi for dinner one night. We've been to other hibachi restaurants on land, and so I know my family would enjoy it, but the chefs on Allure were really great, some of the funniest I've ever encountered, and they didn't rush us through the meal, either. The food itself was great, too. My steak was cooked perfectly and my kids wouldn't stop talking about the garlic-butter flavor of the fried rice. The only downside was that we did Izumi on lobster tail night, but I didn't realize we had missed it until the end of the cruise. Oh, well.  Entertainment:  Wow! I expected "pretty good" (like the shows you might see at an amusement park) but the entertainment on Allure was top-notch. The aqua theater and ice shows were well done, but Mamma Mia was simply awesome. They did such a good job with it and we enjoyed it so much more than expected. It was as good as any Broadway cast I've seen. Don't miss it! 

We also enjoyed the live music more than expected, particularly Hugh Little and the High-C's Horns. We caught their big band show, the Earth/Wind/Fire & Stevie Wonder show and part of the Dixieland Jazz show (which was just the horns). The other bands were good, too, but I often found myself thinking "turn it down!" during the Promenade shows. Guess I'm getting too old! 

#1 hit with my kids: Vitality Cafe + Refreshment Plan = unlimited smoothies. I really enjoyed the juices there myself. 

Casino: I promised to provide a poker report. 

Poker cash game: The host in the casino said they had 2/5 cash games that started up around 9:30ish every night. $100-$500 buy-in.  I never ended up playing. 

On the 3 sea days they held a "poker tournament" at 3pm. I wasn't able to play this until the last sea day. The entry fee is $100 (1000 chips) + $50 add-on (1000 chips). You can "re-buy" for $75 (750 chips) during the first 4 levels. You could get several re-buys at a time and it wasn't clear if you had to bust out before re-buying. The blinds start at 25/50 and go up (usually doubling) every 10 minutes. This makes for a ridiculous tournament with very little skill involved. Between the slow, uninterested dealer/floorperson and the slow players (the guy next to me had to think about every starting hand for at least 10 seconds, and another guy never knew when it was his turn) it made this game agonizing. Some levels we only got 4 hands played. 
There were 11 people signed up, so they started two tables with 6 and 5 players. But when players got knocked out they didn't combine the tables, they just played to a winner on each table. The "final tournament" was at 5:30 on the last sea-day. You would bring whatever chips you had from the first round, so the winner from that 5-person table would be at a disadvantage compared to someone who might have played at a full table. The prize was a free cruise for 2 on Oasis in late November to play in the Royal Something-or-other championship tournament, where you would again take whatever chips you had won in the satellite. No cash prizes for poker tournaments (until the grand championship) on Royal I guess. 
They said we could take a break after level 4 but then they were in a hurry to start up play again. With blinds being high already, they nearly folded a guy on the big-blind for most of his stack... luckily they saw him coming and waited... ended up he had QQ to win.
When it was time to chip-up they didn't have enough black chips to get rid of all the 25s on the table. So after losing an all-in I ended up with a single 25 chip when blinds were like 800/1600.
Anyways, I don't think I'll play poker on RCCL again unless they change things up a bit. 

Craps: On day 3 I went looking around 8pm to see if the poker game was running. It wasn't, but they had opened the craps table on the non-smoking side ($5 min), and nobody was playing. I ended up playing for a while and others joined in, too. Down a little, then up a lot, then ended up about $20 ahead in the end. The dealers were pretty good and they got into it more when we started placing dealer bets. 

I never saw the craps tables go over $5 mins. Yeah, it's single-odds (2x for $25 bet, morex for $50 bet). It was a pleasant surprise and I was sorry I didn't have a chance to play craps more when the non-smoking table was open. 

Machines:  My wife loves the quarter-pushers, but the machine was broken (permanently?) on the non-smoking side and she doesn't handle smoke well, so no play there. Hopefully they fix that machine during the "amplification". 

To be continued... (this is taking longer than I expected to write!) 

Does anyone else still squeal like a kid when they walk into the room and see a new towel animal or is it just me?

The hotel is attached to a little indoor mall with some shops and eateries.  There were bakeries and coffee shops, a bar with bar-type food, fancy Italian, upscale Chinese, etc.  Didn't really have to leave the building.  There's a free trolley that runs around downtown Miami on Friday and Saturday evenings until 11pm, so that's a nice option for folks who want to get out and see and do things.  I was born in Miami..I no longer live in Miami.  Even though I was a little over a year old when my parents moved me away, I still have a feeling of been there done that when I come to Miami.  
Wasn't feeling any of the eateries (more so wasn't feeling the prices $$) so we opted to walk over to Publix.  It is walkable, even on the way back with bags of groceries.  Great to pick up things like toiletries or sunscreen, wine, etc.  They also have a deli and hot bar to get something quick and ready to eat.  Publix subs are a BIG Florida thing and well worth their reputation.  
I prefer to drink my bread (beer) so I decided to get something hot to eat and since there wasn't anyone paying attention to me at the hot food case (where they had mojo pork, wings, smoked chicken!!) I meandered over to seafood where I had them steam some big 'ol shrimp with Old Bay seasoning for me..$4 for something that Joe's Crab Shack probably would have expected me to pay $25.  I laughed when the seafood lady told me that the shrimp hadn't been cleaned yet when I asked her to steam them..I mean that just means more flavor!

They usually will let you know.  Unless you're asking for specific higher-end vodka in the martini it will more than likely be completely covered with the package.
Another popular chocolatey drink is the mudslide which is almost like a frozen version of a chocolate martini.  For something extra special ask them to make the mudslide lava-flow style and they'll put some pureed strawberry on top and it tastes like a chocolate covered strawberry.
The specialty coffee location should also have some mocha drinks and some are even "spirited" which will also be included in your package.  Then there's also milkshakes from Johnny Rockets..but without the alcohol usually.  

I need to mention that for Floridians, "cold" is anything less than a 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

I have used this brand for years! Even my olllld ones don't leak although I usually buy fresh ones every few years as the plastic starts to get cloudy. 
Loksak Waterproof Airtight Resealable Bags
For into-the-ocean portability I put it in one of these waist bags.