Va4fam

Following along and looking forward to your cruise next month. Yay for no testing required! We are booked on a 7 night and 4 night B2B in February on Navigator and have had issues with the cruise planner too.

Thank you everyone for your information. I may have additional questions between now and February. We went ahead and booked the 4 night cruise and will be doing our first B2B cruise! The completion of this cruise will put us One cruise away from D+. That cruise is booked for April 2023 on Odyssey.

We wore ours one time to sit on the balcony on a chilly sea day. I have seen several people wear them to the spa and the pool but not the dining room or casino.

That's a great tip. Will we still have to do the emuster drill and all the safety videos on the app for the 2nd cruise?

Our bags will remain on the ship even if we get off and go through customs? If we don't have luggage, it might be a great way to sightsee in L.A. or the beaches. Would we be allowed to reboard later in the day?

What about the ports made them so bad?

We are booked on a 7 night Navigator cruise to Mexico next year in a Junior Suite. We have sailed on Navigator before the amplification and looking forward to the new changes. It's a long (and expensive) flight from the East Coast. Thinking about adding a 4 night cruise to Ensenada and Catalina to the end of the original booking and had a few questions. 1-Do we get off with all of our luggage at the end of the 7 nighter and reboard later that morning to start the 4 night cruise? How early can we board? 2-The 2nd cruise will be in a different cabin, how will we move our luggage to the new cabin and get new sea pass cards? 3-COVID Testing. With the current rules, we must test before the 7 night cruise, but not the 4 night cruise, is this correct? 4-We used a travel agent for the 7 nighter but might book the 4 nighter on our own or use a different agent. What issues might come up with not using the same TA for both cruises? 5-Has anyone done the 4 night cruise to Ensenada and Catalina Island and have recommendations of things to do and see? Thanks for your thoughts and assistance.

Is that $700 per person or total? Your question is very subjective. Some people will enjoy the extra room and small amount of perks that a JS offers. I would look at which ship the JS was on (didn't see which one you are on) as not all JS are the same. The JS we will have on Odyssey next year looks amazing, the JS we had on Brilliance a couple of months ago was......okay. Also look at the actual fare difference between your balcony and a JS. Sometimes the price difference is not that great vs. the bid on RU and you get double points too.

Just FYI and NOT AT ALL encouraging people to follow what we do........... Multiple cruises to Miami but we fly in/out FLL. Successfully navigated disembarking and taking UBER to FLL in time to catch 10:30 and 11:00 AM flights on multiple occasions. Checking bags each time. Our issue has been lack of reasonable flight times....they either leave early morning (can't make those), late morning, or early evening. Instead of waiting around airport all day, we have been lucky to catch the late morning flights out of FLL. Miami is closer and might give you a small cushion. Or it might not.

Backpacks have been extremely helpful to make us more travel efficient. Try to walk off the ship with your bags and get off as early as possible. Take UBER/Lyft instead of taxi. You may be able to check your bags with the skycap/outside porter. They still have this service in DC, maybe they do in MIami too? TSA Pre would save you time in the security lines. If none of this works, you would have to let Delta know you are running late and they should get you on a later flight.

I understand that cruise ships, airlines, hotels, dining establishments, etc. are all dealing with labor shortages. I think @Neesa locked in on one of the main issues......customer expectations and behavior. In the days of 15 minute pizza delivery, next day amazon, and instant streaming movies and shows on your TV, people seemed to have forgotten the lost art of patience and how to wait their turn.

We noticed a big difference on our cruise at end of May. Long lines, no pool chairs, lots of people! Seemed more crowded than i can remember. I think we got spoiled by sailing at 30-50% capacity last fall.

Our first Royal ship was Enchantment, our 2nd was Freedom. Pretty big differences between those two. After many cruises we ended up on Empress (tiny) before the pandemic shutdown. 19 months later we boarded our first Oasis class ship Symphony at 30% capacity. Next two cruises were on Oasis, also sailing with limited capacity. May never be able to recreate the freedom we had on those giant ships without tons of people.

I think it would be fun if Royal did more weekend or 4 day cruises in the Mid Atlantic/Southeast NYC, Boston, Philly, Baltimore, DC, Charleston, Savannah. Would also like to do Gulf of Mexico cruise-Miami, Tampa, Pensacola, New Orleans, Galveston

Start to finish was 7:50 am to 11:50 am from leaving our apartment to boarding the ship. We walked from our AirBnb near St. Mark's Square to the water taxi. We missed the first taxi but caught another one 8 minutes later.....watch the schedules, some of the taxis make more stops than others and can take a lot longer to get to Piazzale Roma (the train station). This was at 8:15 am. The water taxi is very scenic and the trip took about 40 minutes. We met our Get Transfer driver at 9:00 AM at the parking lot at Piazzale Roma, and the trip to Porto Corsini (Ravenna) took 2.5 hours. We were dropped off about 50 feet from the check in tent at the cruise terminal. Even though we had a 12:30 check in time, we were encouraged to proceed and boarded the ship 10 minutes later. When we returned to Ravenna, the ship docked and was cleared by 7:00 AM. We could have walked off at 7 AM but our bus transfer to the train station didn't depart until 8:30 AM. We enjoyed breakfast at WJ and walked off the ship at 8:00 AM. Sorry if long winded but wanted to provide as many details as possible. Let me know if you have more questions and enjoy your trip.

Agree with previous posters that is very easy! We have also used UBER/Lyft to take us from airport to the grocery store to pick up wine/soda on our way to the port.

Agree about the "impatient" part! We booked multiple cruises and did the math to make sure we wouldn't be changing tiers in the middle of a cruise. Now we are closing in on D+ and I'm doing fancy math to figure out how to make it work.

We used to be very port intensive......only one sea day total for 2 cruises when we first started. Now we look for itineraries that have 2-3 sea days so we have time to slow down and relax.

We did that..........sorta. Went from Bayonne to Port Canaveral, Nassau, and PDCC on Anthem for NYE cruise 2 years ago. Last fall we went from Bayonne to Port Canaveral, Nassau, and PDCC on OASIS. The NYE cruise was Packed wall to wall with people, the Oasis cruise sailed at 40% capacity (LOVED IT) so it is hard to compare the experiences.

Our vote would also be for Symphony of the Seas. Our first Oasis class ship, everything was modern, clean, and still had that "new ship" smell. Great mix of open spaces, places to eat, and shows. Love those Piano stairs on the way to the top deck.

We went on 2 cruises and had the opportunity to see CATS numerous times...........but never went. I've heard it's THAT bad!

Can we count the Aqua 80's show on Oasis?!!!! If not, We Will Rock You on Anthem was great. Least fave...............Spectra's Cabaret?

We just had this happen on our cruise at end of May. Some of our tags said Diamond but others were labeled Platinum. It was not a big deal and luggage made it to our room. Our sea pass cards were all correct!

Maria....we used Get Transfer(s) to book a private transfer from Venice to the cruise port. They offer longer transfers if you want to stop at the beach or other places on the way.

We didn't take the shuttle to the airport but were quoted $45 and $55 per person during our research. We went to Ravenna and rode the train to Munich.