I do like the concept of the bundles since we always do the DBP. Without the bundle the prices for my April Utopia cruise mirror Mike's post above. We have a b2b and the 4N leg is slightly cheaper per day than the 3N leg.
Well I wasn't sure if I would blog this trip since I really am not very good at it, but I know there are a few questions out there about the new Crown Lounge and Casino spaces so hopefully I can get some pictures and update those interested. This B2B was made possible by Club Royale. Ever since last August when I took my youngest on a cruise by himself(that he ditched me on), the wife said I had to take the rest of the kids on one by themselves as well. So I had an email offer for a 4nt on Utopia for Memorial Day week and since school would be out booked that for me and the 16yr old. A few weeks later ended up getting another offer that had the 3nt cruise before it available so seemed like it made sense to add that one and make it a B2B. So here are some of the pre-cruise details:
Who's going: Me and Ody (16yr old son)
Flight: Leaving Thursday the 22nd at 9:25 MDW to MCO on Southwest
Pre-Cruise Stay: Residence Inn Cocoa Beach
Itinerary:
May 23 - Port Canaveral
May 24 - Nassau
May 25 - CocoCay
May 26 - Port Canaveral
May 27 - Nassau
May 28 - CocoCay
May 29 - Sea Day
May 30 - 9:50 flight MCO to MDW on Southwest
Cabin: wasn't able to get the same cabin which is a bummer. Also, the first leg of the cruise was an interior virtual balcony on deck 10 and the 2nd leg is an oceanview balcony on deck 8.
Cruise Plans: The one thing I hate about Utopia is the 1 flowrider. I enjoy flowriding, but there is only about 1 hour of advanced time each day and about 3 hours of mixed wave. No self assist stand up, so not sure how much time will get to flowride. We did book the Waterpark on the first leg as the kid said he wanted to go and it was on sale for like $75/person. I also booked Giovanni's Kitchen on day 3 of the first leg. Then booked day 4 Mason Jar brunch on the second leg. @OCSC Mike do you know if Jocelle is still on the ship?
Well that's all for now. Hopefully will get mostly packed this weekend so I don't have to worry about it next week.
I know I heard about this project many times but didn't pay much attention to it or what they were doing but HOLY FREAKING COW! I am just blown away. I'm a sucker, a big time sucker for a lazy river so that has something to do with my excitement. Everything here looks amazing.
I suppose there won't be any cruises from NJ? Too far? Would LOVE to go to Coco Cay and Perfect Day Mexico on the same cruise.
I just found the website: https://thecruiseglobe.com/. This looks like a lot of fun. I can't wait to get started on mine and see from others. Great idea, Thumper44!!
Here's mine; we've been painting the Miami-to-Cozumel part of the map.
Interestingly, viewing the map makes me want to connect the dots and extend the lines. I suddenly feel compelled to do a Panama Canal transit and branch out to a trans-Atlantic and also Hawaii and Alaska cruises.
@Matt, I don't know if you've done theCruiseGlobe thing yet, but I hope you do and please share it. Those of us who haven't cruised as much need something to aspire to!
Please take a few screen shots of your globe and let us see your total stats. We're dying to know what it looks like 😊
On a related topic, many other non-CocoCay CP items are also showing up at 25% off today (and all of ours were off the same base price as previous 15% and 20% off purchases).
Unless they drop the price this will have minimal impact to anyone.
$600 per day for a couple?
$1,200 per day for a family of four?
(Free for guests under 6 in the same cabin.)
In many cases that's the cruise fare.
I don't see a lot of people buy it, unless they drop the price.
On a sailing I checked the DX, UDP and Voom added up to $137 per day including the 18% service charge.
$163 pppd for a Genie? On Freedom class? Nope.
"Hi I'm your Genie, let me escort you to your interior cabin on deck 2". 🙂
The Filet Mignon is from the regular menu. I will update the graphic when I get an actual photo of the Signature Cuts filet mignon. I plan to order it when I go on Star in August. On Icon they called them "Iconic Cuts." Maybe on Star they will be called "Stellar Cuts”?
No, this isn't an expose that the Bionic Bar is really controlled by teleworkers in Bangladesh, carbon unit. With the Bionic Bar seemingly living on borrowed time, and the shear volume of video on how to use it yet lacking drink recipes, I decided something should be done to document what hasn't been documented. Namely those recipes. Love 'em, hate 'em, or indifferent to 'em, it's been an interesting project from Royal Caribbean.
Currently I'm aboard Odyssey of the Seas and have completed phase one of this project. I've recorded every single Bionic Bar recipe entered into their system aboard this ship. I've also been ordering select drinks and custom made beverages to get a good read on exactly how much a part is. Unfortunately, I forgot to pack my measuring cups. But I did remember a write on everything marker so level lines on cups it is. Right now I'm leaning towards 1 part = 25mL = 0.845 floz.
While I do have some ideas on how I want to present the recipes, in the mean time, if you have a favorite drink from the BB you want to make at home, drop it below and I'll respond when I get a chance.
Here's the BB recipe for Captain Jack Sparrow to make at home.
Stir together
125mL oz ice cubes
50mL Captain Morgan
25mL Jack Daniels
25mL Peach Schnapps
75mL Sprite
12mL Grenadine
Edit: Updated with current information.
I could be wrong but I want to say I read somewhere that RC had purchased an existing beach club in Cozumel and they were taking over in the near future.
I want to say it was Playa Mia (which would make sense given that the new name is similar) but don't quote me on any of this.
Intro
My pre-cruise intro posts always wind up long-winded... you've been warned. The actual blog will have far shorter posts with pics (mostly of food & drink). Some parts are also going to be redundant to the live blog regulars but I can't help but write as if people aren't familiar with my live blogs.
This is going to be VERY similar to our July 2024 Wonder cruise... same Western Caribbean itinerary, same one excursion besides PDCC, mostly the same meals, etc. You can find my live blog for that one here:
https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/topic/47621-wondering-about-paradise-beach-crowded-cococay-and-aqua-nation-july-14-21-2024/
How Did This Cruise Come to Be?
We originally had what was to be our fifth and last Wonder cruise booked for my wife's spring break the week of March 16th. Unfortunately we had to cancel it as a huge conference for her aspiring voiceover career was held earlier in March than usual this year. While disappointed (cancelling any cruise sucks but we also had a really nice group rate for this one) I of course support her in chasing her dream.
As I was suffering through our dry dock since July I was checking for random deals, the GGG flier, etc. even though I was pretty resigned to not sailing again until our Utopia B2B in June. My wife, a kindergarten teacher, has a ton of PTO saved up but hates having to make sub plans for a full week. Anyway, during a GGG sale in January, there were suddenly several Wonder sailings in April/May listed with quite reasonable prices (for Wonder in the current climate at least). I mentioned them to my wife not expecting anything to come of it... until she said she may be willing to take off the week of April 20th. We didn't even realize it was leaving on Easter until several days after putting it on hold. Public schools don't get any days off for Easter here. Obviously you know the rest or else I wouldn't be writing.
How Did We Wind Up in a Central Park Balcony?
Anyone reading who knows me knows we're very happy to sail in interiors so naturally that's what I originally had my TA place on hold, an interior GTY. Then while playing around with the RC website I noticed that it was combining my D+ balcony discount with the GGG sale price, making neighborhood balcony GTY's only slightly more than interior GTY's. I fired off an e-mail to my TA and, as dumb luck would have it, he had a promo beginning the next day that would both increase our OBC and included a complimentary specialty meal for two for all balcony bookings. This made the difference between the two options even smaller. I was fine either way so I left it up to my wife who decided we might as well try a neighborhood balcony for the heck of it (we've never had one before).
I was bored a couple weeks ago and checked CruisePlum. As it turns out, the balcony price during that 2-day GGG sale was the lowest that was ever offered for this sailing. *Pats self on back*
We had a strong preference for CP over Boardwalk for several reasons... my wife envisioned listening to some CP music from our balcony (we'll see if that actually happens), I didn't want to be stuck with the long walk from far aft, we're not big fans of InTENse (the aqua show) so we had no desire to watch it from our balcony, and we also don't usually stay up super late so we didn't need the noise from the show on nights we may crash early. As you already know from the blog title, the GTY gods (aka Royal's mysterious algorithm) smiled upon us and we were assigned CP. We originally had a connecting balcony on deck 11 but got lucky as there was a non-connecting balcony available on deck 11 pretty close to where the musicians set up which is exactly where my wife wanted to be so I quickly had our TA move us to that one. There were only about 6 left to choose from. Deck 10 is our preferred deck on Wonder so deck 11 is certainly close enough. Maybe we'll even like it better b/c it's closer to the Solarium (and bistro), WJ, Mason Jar, ELF, etc. Really not important, we just like being between the pool deck and the lower decks so it's not a terrible walk either way if we're avoiding the elevators.
Where/When/What Are We Eating?
As this will be our 4th time on Wonder in genpop (5th overall), we have a pretty set routine. One difference this time is that we're going to try Mason Jar for dinner for the first time after four brunches since we have that free meal from the promo. This one was my call as my wife orders savory stuff and dessert at brunch so nothing will really change for her. I'll miss the breakfast items but we have brunches booked on Utopia for June and July so this was the perfect excuse for me to try the dinner items. The rest of our dinner routine involves using a D+ BOGO for Giovanni's Kitchen on night one, having burgers at Playmakers for dinner one night, eating in the MDR during the three menus my wife doesn't mind, and one night in WJ after an all-day excursion which happens to also be my favorite WJ night (Tex Mex plus butter chicken).
One other difference... we have MTD this time with reservations at 6:45pm for our three MDR dinners.
As usual, other meals and snacks will come from various included venues (I try to hit them all although some far more often than others). We usually have breakfast in Solarium Bistro after I grab cappuccino and "pre-breakfast" from the CL in the early AM and I hit up ELF just about every afternoon unless we're off the ship all day. We'll also probably check out the evening CL snacks more often than we have on recent cruises.
Will We Use Our Vouchers?
As most of you know, my wife barely drinks and I failed in my mission to use up most of our combined 10 vouchers last trip. I vow to do better!
Are We Seeing Any Shows?
We've never been big fans of the shows on Wonder besides the ice show and having seen it four times now, we may even skip that one too. We usually check out the headliner for the heck of it but Wonder has been rotating the same 3-4 acts for the past couple of months and we've seen all of them and have no desire to see any of them again. No biggie, we'll find other stuff to do. We always go to adult comedy so we'll definitely do that at least.
*For anyone who read my blogs last summer, you may remember a 2nd aqua show called Aqua Nation had been mysteriously popping up on day 7 on Wonder and we got to see it in July. It was more of a showcase of different skills and was far more entertaining than InTENse. It has again been popping up in the app on day 7 as recently as last week so if that's running, we may see that again.
What Are Our Ports And What Are We Doing?
Exact repeat of July...
Day 2: PDCC - Our usual spot by Oasis Lagoon to use vouchers while making Snack Shack and Chill Grill runs. As Floridians who get enough heat at home, we're looking forward to some cooler weather there.
Day 4: Cozumel - A return to Paradise Beach. We had a great time on our 1st trip there and with no plans to be back in Cozumel for a while I couldn't pass it up as much as my frugal side says to just stay on the ship with vouchers and included food. We switched from a beach daybed to a pool daybed this time after my wife scouted them out and took lots of pictures last time. I couldn't let her research go to waste, right? We're in #21 (one of the new ones in the back) for those who followed along and helped with my planning last time (or anyone else familiar with PB). I'm looking forward to it being a bit cooler than it was in July so I can better take advantage of the all-inclusive food. I really enjoyed it but even my appetite is affected by extreme heat. That said, it should still be plenty hot there so we'll just take dips in the pool to cool off and keep the frozen drinks flowing.
Day 5: Roatan - Stay on the ship, relax and use vouchers in the Solarium, snack throughout the day, do some trivia, etc.
Day 6: Costa Maya - See above. Wonder always leaves this port early when we visit (gangway up at 1:30pm) so while I would normally consider a beach club or something else, I'm not a big fan of short morning excursions.
Miscellaneous
I've tried this before and failed so no promises on too many non-food/drink pics but I'll try again. Maybe I'll take some of the cabin/balcony since it's new to us. I should have some from Paradise Beach although I already posted a bunch in my last blog. Beyond that, who knows? There's a brand new MSC ship (World America) joining us in Cozumel so I'll try to take some pics of that when we get back from Paradise Beach since it docks two hours after us.
As usual, I've been on my pre-cruise diet for the past few weeks other than when we went to see my FIL for his birthday this past weekend so I'm ready to gain my standard 10 pounds or so.
Without going into detail, some real life issues have been popping up over the past few weeks. Everything should be fine once taken care of but we're really hoping to escape reality... which has always been a big part of our cruise enjoyment anyway but it's a little different when you have specific things on your mind.
Closing
That's about it. I rarely have much to share leading up to embarkation day since we pack late and only have a one-hour drive to the port so there are no travel stories, no hotels, and no special pre-cruise meals (no one wants to see grilled chicken and brown rice from our kitchen).
We usually get to the parking garage around 9:30am or so and have been onboard before 10:30am every time. We had Express Boarding in July when it was pretty new to PC and it didn't do a whole lot. I've read that they've updated the procedure a bit and it actually does speed things up a little now (although it's always so quick and smooth I'm not sure how much faster it could be) so hopefully we get it again. The sooner we can get onboard to make our dinner reservations, get muster out of the way, use my first voucher (likely on a Mississippi Moonlight), and get to WJ while it's empty the better!
As always, questions, comments, and tangents are welcome both pre-cruise and during.
CruzOnBye got a reaction from OCSC Mike in Royal Beach Club Paradise Island
CruzOnBye reacted to smokeybandit in App update
