WAAAYTOOO

YIPPEE !!! The excitement is building ! Have a SAFE and fun flight. Let us know when you get to sunny and WARM FLL !

That doesn't surprise me. The Loop is fairly useless (until it isn't....as we found out !) b/c the Genie has to be at a computer to receive the message. I had assumed that Yen was not going to use The Loop until we did receive it at the very last minute before we left for the cruise. In retrospect, I was very damn glad that I had it on my cell phone when I had to use it to contact her on the ship.

As Jason12 said, the most important part, truly, is being out of the cabin. They have to get it ready for its next residents. They will allow you meander around on the decks for a while before giving you the final GTFO (channeling my inner JLMoran).

I guess that’s not technically “texting”. My bad, using the wrong word.

Did Araceli send you The Loop app ? TBH, that one time is the only time I have ever used The Loop for any of our SC cruises but I was damn glad I had it when we needed it.

What time did Arcaceli tell you to meet her ?

If you have already purchased the drinks package then you have already paid the 18% gratuity. It is calculated in the package purchase.

What has your Genie told you ?

He doesn’t use a camera. He’s a bot. He just scans the scene with his laser eyes.

Wow, the CVL looks incredible. I can’t believe this is the same ship I was on last Nov. EVERYthing is new !

eh-oh...lamb shank. Don't let Dan see this...

I completely understand your concern. It is something that we all have to deal with when trying to coordinate dining and performances. First of all, you are correct. Indy does not permit reservations for their performances. I recommend that you book your dining AROUND the shows rather than doing it the other way around. I don't know what your eating time preferences are, but I have found that eating early almost always gives me time to see whatever show I want to attend. When you try and eat 6-7 is when you find you start having conflicts. We have just made it a "rule" to eat at 5:30 so that dinner is out of the way. Then, generally, a show will be at 7:30 or 10:30 or whatever time it happens to be and we rarely have any conflicts. Are you planning on purchasing a dining package before you sail ? If so, you can make those reservations once you get on the ship, have a chance to see what the schedule is going to be. The only danger is that you may have to reschedule something well into the week and by then you may have a limited choice in dates, times or venues. It's just one of the hazards of a dynamic mix of dining and entertainment. Good luck !

So now for the good stuff ! The days in between coming and going. The Genie. Yen Lee is from Malaysia (not China, as I had first assumed...you know what they say about assume...). She is a little whisp of a thing...probably 75 pounds, tops and she has a "bop". Bop is really the only name I have for the cute little half curtsey, half bow that she does when she walks up to you. It's kind of a knee bend, bouncy thing. So cute. She is ALL business. Personable ? After you to get to know her (and she gets to know you)....yes. At first we were a little concerned b/c she is very formal. After a while she will laugh with you but it took a while to see that first smile. Efficient ? Hell, yes. I think the rest of the crew is scared of her. Nah...not really. I don't think... Everyone knows her though and she can quite literally do anything. Of course, she did the usual and expected things: made (and changed) our dining reservations, saved our seats for performances, escorted us on and off the ship when asked or needed, arranged a party for us in our suite, made sure we had anything we asked for (food, drinks, etc.) in our suite. But a good Genie will go beyond that. Here are a couple of things that Yen did for us that really MADE our cruise. In our pre-arrival email exchanges I had mentioned that Dan loves Modelo Negro beer and asked her to please have some in our suite, on ice with some fresh lime. She wrote back and apologized...saying that the Anthem no longer stocked Modelo Negro. No big deal, I told her. Corona will do just fine. Thank you. So when we came on board, we had a whole bunch of Corona on ice with fresh lime all ready to go. Dan was in heaven. About day 5, Yen came to our suite with a tote bag over her shoulder. This was somewhat unusual as she only came to our suite, unannounced, maybe 2 times in 17 days. We were happy to see her (as we always were) and she started pulling Modelo Negro bottles out of the tote and she kept pulling out more and more and more bottles until we finally had about a dozen bottles of Modelo Negro that she had "found" somewhere - only God knows where. It was just such a sweet and over-the-top kind of thing to do. I couldn't believe that she even remembered that from 1 email weeks before we even boarded. Dan was now truly in love with her. ...and regarding the special abilities of Genies. You may recall that I had made kind of a big deal about how busy it had always been on our previous SC cruises - the deliveries, door bells ringing, phones ringing constantly. I have no idea HOW she did it but that phone never rang ONCE and the door bell never rang ONCE for about the first 4 days of our cruise. For all I know, she was standing guard out there and threatening anyone coming close to our suite but however she did it, it was a major miracle. I will say that, as time went by, we started getting a few visitors and calls but it was NEVER like we had it on previous cruises where they were coming and going at all hours. She definitely had performed some kind of intercession for us. It was wonderful. The other very special interdiction that Yen did for us was during our first stop at Port Canaveral. As we were sailing towards the port (wee hours of the morning. I recall looking at my iPad and it said 1:50 AM) the Captain came over the all hands comm and told us that passengers had reported seeing someone go over the side. He sounded very distressed. He asked that if anyone in your party could not be accounted for, to please call 911 and report them missing. No more comms on the subject - for now. Once we docked at PC, we got up, got off the ship for a while in Port Canaveral (Terminal J...way the F* on the other side of the port...in fact, we used a Carnival terminal. Ugh...whatever). When we got back to the terminal, it was slam packed full of people. Some people were in wet bathing suits. It turns out that they had never been able to get a reliable head count so they made EVERYone disembark, including crew so that they could account for everyone. In the end, there were no pax or crew missing so it turned out to be a false alarm...but they had to be able to verify that with the Coast Guard AND the local police, who were now involved and flittering around going on and off the ship in packs. Tempers were beginning to flare and mobs of people were jamming what would soon be the entrance back onto the ship. I sent a text to Yen saying, "come save us". Maybe 5 minutes later, I saw her beautiful little self coming down the escalator and I knew we were going to be ok ! (joke). She shoved her way through the madness at the entrance (BTW, I saw her shove that little body through more than one traffic jam ! She may have been pint sized but she had the determination of a 340 pound linebacker !) Dan whistled and got her attention and she drug our asses back through that mass of people, up the escalators and back onto the ship.

I can't wait to hear those words from you !!!!

Unfortunately, there are no complimentary specialty lunch options for suites on NAV. If you were on an Oasis or Quantum class you could have lunch in the Coastal Kitchen, but NAV does not have a suites restaurant. So as far as lunch in a specialty restaurant, the Key does offer this but being in a suite does not. You can certainly purchase lunch at one of the specialty restaurants (whatever is open) but suites do not rate any complimentary specialty lunch or dinner dining. You WILL have access to a specialty restaurant for breakfast every morning. I was on NAV in November of last year and I believe the Suites breakfast was in Chops but I am not 100% certain about that. Twangster may be able to verify that as he is on NAV now. As far as behind the scenes tours, your Concierge should let you know what will be offered. Generally, there will be a Bridge Tour, a Galley Tour and an Entertainment Tour. You should be able to choose any, all or none of these tours.

Day 17 - TurnAWAY Day As wonderful as it had been, our 16 day adventure finally came to an end. We really hated saying goodbye to Yen who had been our constant companion for the past 2+ weeks. Dan and I had remarked on previous SC cruises that the Genie's had some kind of special power (is that really such a big surprise ?!) b/c they can find you no matter WHERE you are on the ship. After a while we realized that they knew where you were based on where your Sea Pass card has last been swiped...so some of their mystique waned a bit, but they are REALLY good at tracking you down ! Tip: If you want or need to hide from your Genie, do NOT swipe your Sea Pass card ! They WILL find you ! We packed the night before but left everything in the suite. We had already made arrangements with Yen to have breakfast delivered the last morning (7 AM) and then she came to the suite to fetch us around 7:45 AM. Again we had a porter with a cart who loaded up our things and escorted us onto an employee elevator and straight past everyone in line, directly to the suites CBP kiosk where there was no one else in line ahead of us. It was basically a reverse of embarkation sans the security scan and the porters' trade-off. I don't think the Teamsters were very happy when they saw a ship's employee carrying our things but we ignored them. We went through Customs a second time - this time with luggage and off we went. The bus to the airport was steps away and we were at the airport well in advance of our 12:59 PM departure. One of the last conversations I had with Yen was my asking her if she had ever had B2B Star Class cruisers before (I had been dying to know). She said it is very rare but that she had a B2B once before us.

NOW ! THAT is some reliable intel ! Good on you, Twangster. Pretty cool to live on CC....I guess. Did he say if his family (assuming he has one) is able to live there with him ?

Last year, on our NAV Thanksgiving cruise, they told us that we could not get the milkshake without paying the cover charge. We pushed back and got the fee waived but officially, at least as of last November, the DBP on NAV did not include the milkshake without paying the cover charge.

The wife knows ALL. Hopefully you realize that now ! ?

Day 9 - Turnaround Day I know, I know....I'm sorta skipping all of the stuff from Day 1 - Day 8 - for now. When we got back to Bayonne, at the end of the first leg of our B2B, we needed to get off to conduct some business. It was somewhat unfortunate that we had to do that, b/c we did not get to really enjoy the traditional B2B perks but ya' gotta do whacha gotta do. From what I understand, the B2B'ers met at the Diamond Lounge (Deck 4) and were processed there, making it unnecessary for them to even get off the ship. That would have been really nice. Then, they were apparently treated to a private lunch somewhere. That probably wouldn't have been anything we would have done anyway, as we could eat in any specialty restaurant (that was open, of course), but we missed the special luncheon too. Yen had asked us prior to turnaround day if we needed her to help us disembark (we had told her that we were getting off, briefly) and we told her that we would appreciate an escort to the suites CBP desk so she took us straight down past all of the lines of people getting off the ship (where she left us), we showed our passports (they questioned us about having no luggage !!) and went straight out, grabbed an Uber, conducted our business and came directly back to the terminal. Yen had given us our new Sea Pass cards before we disembarked so all we had to do was show our cards and we proceeded straight back onto the ship. I think we were back in plenty of time and had we decided we wanted to join the other B2B'ers I'm sure we could have but we just decided to do our own thing for lunch. As I have discussed in another thread, we decided that we would do Jamie's for lunch this time as there had been such a big crowd at Chops on our first embarkation day. As <bad> luck would have it, by embarkation day #2, they had expanded The Key to include lunch at either Chops OR Jamie's, so now we had the Key crowd to contend with AGAIN. It was fine though...we didn't leave hungry (I was never hungry for 17 days, in case you were wondering). As soon as we got back on the ship safely, we called Yen to let her know that we were back and she was relieved to know that we had made it back. Changing suites: Since I was not able to get the same suite for both legs of the B2B we had to change rooms. We had to pack up everything that was not hanging in a closet, into our suitcases and leave everything upstairs. Our stateroom attendant, Brian (who was EXCELLENT, BTW...more about him later), moved everything for us from 8724 to 10720, which was to be our new home for the next 8 days. It seems that Brian (8724) and Jesus (10720) had sailed together on other ships before...and were quite good friends, so it was really a super easy transition. Jesus took our things upstairs for us and we quickly and easily (there are complications here that I will discuss later) unpacked and settled into our new home. And with that, we were on our way to another 8 day adventure back to the Bahamas.

Nice score on the hibachi discounts ! YIPPEE !!!

I guess I am in the minority here. I do not really see this as a money grab by Royal except from the aspect that they are now getting paid for what used to be free upgrades. It SEEMS to be a fairly efficient program to ensure that any last minute vacancies are filled by people who are willing to pay for an upgrade. Truly, I see this as a win-win scenario. Royal is selling any remaining cabins and people are getting upgrades at a discount. Everyone is happy ! I have been the recipient of free upgrades in the past and I really enjoyed it but I don't feel that anyone is entitled to a free upgrade. I have read, several different places, that the high level C&A members are upset b/c they used to be the beneficiaries of the "free" upgrades. But, at least in my case, that was not the true. I am NOWHERE near the top of the C&A pyramid and I have been upgraded for free twice. I certainly don't expect it will ever happen again and it was nice when it happened but I don't see why Royal would give something away that they could sell instead. I don't actually believe that it was ever true that the high level C&A members were getting all the freebie upgrades.

Great question ! If you make any precruise dining reservations (except for those that are complimentary already), you WILL be charged.... So if you have a specialty dining package, do NOT make any online specialty dining reservations before boarding. When you pre-purchase a dining package at a discount, you are trading the freedom to pre-reserve your specialty dining venues for a reduced price on the meals. BUT that doesn't mean that you will not be able to get the restaurants that you want on the date and time that you want them. They will automatically make an arbitrary reservation for you at one of the specialty restaurants for the first night. You will not know where or when that reservation is until you board. Once you get on board, go directly to one of the specialty restaurants or to the kiosk that will be set up somewhere on the promenade or the Centrum (depending on which ship you are on) and you can confirm the reservation that they have already made for you or change it to something else if you wish. You can also make all of the rest of your specialty dining reservations at that time. So.....you must wait until you board to finalize your specialty dining plans. It is helpful if you have a good idea of what restaurants and what times you want to eat. That will make the reservations process faster and less frustrating for you and for the person making your reservations !

HA ! Good luck with sleeping ! It'll never happen !

UGH. Sorry to hear it. I wouldn't be happy either.