Pattycruise

You need to ask the travel agent before you “hire” them. And you sound like me, I’d be double checking by running my own mock bookings weekly (or twice weekly as the sales change). as for your methods, my eyes glazed over. Here is my analysis the popularity of a cruise can impact price as can availability of cabins. If they are selling a lot of balcony cabins those prices might just go up. The solo “discount” may be on one of those cruises making it cheaper. be sure you are adding your C&A number, residence, age, military discounts if they apply every time you are running your numbers. Also, don’t waste your time on running numbers for 2 adults, it’s your final cost for you that matters. And, run your mock booking to the shopping cart….the “face value” price means nothing. There can be discounts applied as you continue and you won’t know until the cart what the final cost is. Finally, “Royal math” has no rhyme or reason.

If I could put 100 I would!

I had them push the survey EVERY…SINGLE….DAY recently. It got so bad everyone at the table was finishing their sentence. They were FANTASTIC servers, but that damn survey request, was most annoying. on the extreme opposite we must have had some of the worst servers ever last month. Service was so bad it was the first time I did not tip additional. The head waiter showed up day 4 to introduce himself …fresh out of “required transfer quarantine “ so we thought the staff was off goofing around unsupervised for the first days, however nothing changed afterwards either. when it came time to ask for 10’s they couldn’t even look at us, barely got the words out and left.

There are A LOT of new cruisers who are unaware of the need to book reservations and others who feel taking advantage of their drink package is priority so they don’t think about reservations. I imagine you will be fine. Worst case is you check for openings if there are cancellations or show up to the shows to see if there are no shows.

Copper tone Pure and Simple Blue Lizard google and you’ll find a lot more choices. I agree, read the labels, some are not!

I’ve never been stopped to asked my cabin number when I carry on my 2 bottles. Neither has my husband.

I did this with my disabled mom. I thought it was awesome!

Freedom in January, -stateroom attendant told me he could not get it for me, guest services had a small pile behind the counter for those who asked. Anthem for 2 weeks in February, first week told no by guest services when requested one nightly so had to swing by daily. 2nd week guest services said they’d have stateroom attendant put it in my cabin (and it was there, like it used to be pre-Covid, after dinner) the Adventure in August, Oasis in the fall all announced “enjoy it while you can”. They plan to phase it out as part of being green.

Are you shifting the day to day 2? I’m not going to be on Freedom but I can see Main dining room and My Tine dining to click on. I can see breakfast if I click on Day 2

I’ve read on these discussion boards that people have tested just past midnight.

I’m Diamond plus. I’ve seen nowhere to get a discounted package because of my level prior to boarding. I do know I can get it discounted onboard but I’ve not looked yet to know if the sale price I’ve got online is better or worse than what I would pay with the discount onboard. When I was Diamond (1free day of Voom) I did look to see if my sale price was better than onboard and it was, however it was a great sale price I had gotten on Black Friday, so hard to beat that!

My SIL did not receive any communication regarding her unvaxed kid for her sailing at Cape Liberty a few weeks ago, she had the 11am slot for boarding. They were gracious enough to allow her to go to the testing at her 11 am check in time and that process took almost an hour. Your experience may vary.

I had this issue with a cruise that was sailing within weeks. The "nice man" at Royal told me I needed to uninstall and reinstall the app (I had done that already), he told me I needed to update my phone (done already) and when I told him I had done that already he said, nope, gotta do it again......then he had me clear my history. None of it worked. A week later I was able to access that reservation in the app. It's so hit or miss with them. BTW, I had cruises on either side of this one and I could access those-so clearly it was not my phone (oh, tried daughter's phone as well, no luck) and it was Royal. Perhaps they need to give them a pay raise?

Try it, is should be open. They can handle the documents at the pier during your check in there -for those who have previously uploaded documents they are checking your docs, for those who have not previously uploaded docs they take the pics and upload them for you.

I thought close contacts didn’t quarantine for a long period of time, I thought it was 2 tests your out

When the photographer is taking photos they ask your cabin #.....only give yours, that MIGHT work You cannot use the photo package for photos assigned to someone else's cabin. When you go to view your photos you swipe your seapass card. Only pics that were assigned to you will come up. Your husband and other family members photos will come up on their seapass card viewing. You can't move them from account to account. I did overhear someone tell the photo people when viewing their photos that there were some on another person's card, I did not hear if the photo person was able to have them moved.

I turn on my tv in between all the cruises I've been doing. Thanks!

They have stopped that practice of putting the compass in the cabin. If you are lucky you can get one put in your cabin every night. Ask your stateroom attendant or ask at Guest Services. The app should have the shows. See if you can get a copy of the entertainment for the week at Guest Services or ask them for a printout. If things require reservations don't hesitate to make them.

All Junior Suites have a balcony, you will not be given an interior cabin. Check your ship to see the size of the spacious ocean view balcony. You can do this doing a mock booking on the same ship....if it says sold out then pick a different sail date for the same ship. When you see the Balcony and select that look for Spacious Ocean View Balcony and compare the size of the cabin sq/ft to the size of the Ocean View Balcony. There are ships where all you are getting for your "spacious ocean view" is a slightly larger balcony. I had the opportunity to bid on that and when I understood the difference felt it was a waste of money. You can also look at the locations of the cabins and decide if you can "live your cruise in that area". Ex. I am currently booked in an interior on Anthem. I have the opportunity to bid (very inexpensive) for a spacious ocean view cabin.....they are located all the way forward on Anthem of the Seas. I stayed in them once and the amount of walking to get to/from the cabin was exhausting, and it was worse if you forgot something and had to go all the way back. The interior I have is located fairly close to an elevator. Despite how cheap it would be for me to bid on that spacious ocean view I feel it's not worth it. If you win your bid and get your assignment and do not care for the location you can try calling RC to see if they can move your cabin. If that does not work you can approach Guest Services on embarkation day to try and change cabins. Keep in mind they may not be able to accommodate you and bids are not refundable. Hairdryer-is like a motel/hotel room. The only difference is it is not in the bathroom, it is in a drawer near the sit down vanity. There is no attachment to direct the airflow, you likely cannot fit a diffuser over it (and if you could it would probably burn out the motor) and it has 2 speeds low/high.

They do not come on a lanyard. You can probably purchase a cheap lanyard at a dollar store. If the seapass card is not RFID (wired inside) you can have Guest Services hole punch your seapass card so it can go on your lanyard. I do this for my Oasis sailings. If the seapass card IS RFID then you might want a plastic card holder that attaches to the lanyard to slip your seapass card into. Additionally, if the ship is like Anthem, where the seapass card has to be slipped into the card holder inside the door to activate the lights you might want to bring along a spare card for that purpose. I had guest services punch a hole in a shoppers club card and I attached it to a spare lanyard and kept it near my door....that way I could use it for the light system and not have to bother putting my seapass card for the room in and out of the plastic holder. I've never had a problem handing over my seapass card in my thick plastic ID holder, it has always been read by the ship card readers. I've never used a soda cup so I cannot offer any input for that.

My 19 year old was so happy to finally be on a cruise and able to get a massage. She paid her way. When she came back "mom, all they tried to do was sell me things at the end". Now we know!

The new variant is rearing it's ugly head. If anything, when people decide to test for spring break travel the numbers will be going up as they did in Nov, Dec.....so I think we will be seeing a spike and therefore a need for testing. If anything, it might become tight to find available testing, like in Nov,Dec.

It's my understanding all travel agents must contact RC for any price reduction and it is quite time consuming. (Royal does have an uncanny ability to quickly pick up the phone for new bookings!) While I cannot address the hours of hold time to get through to Costco, once you do that travel agent has to face the Royal wait times.(it's almost karma!) I had a travel agent through the company recommended here. I had to call and get price drops. I don't' know if it was because I am "on it"-I check a few times a week, I no longer went back to her when I had issues with one of my sailings that should have been handled by her, one issue before sailing and another regarding flight info at the end of sailing.

I have seen where people have reached out to Michael Bayley direcdtly via email (I do not have it) or on Facebook.....I am following him on facebook and witnessed someone post and tag him and he answered to send him a DM and he would have the issue addressed. Hopefully there will be a negative test for you. If not, look into that.

Geez. I hope not too many people read this, they might get more grandiose ideas.