jeffmw

The schedule could very well be wrong. With the mass number of changes to itineraries as of late, a lot hasn't been updated. For example, our cruise leaving 3/22 added CocoCay in place of another stop and it hasn't been added to any of the online port schedules. Similarly, I'm fairly certain one of the two boats listed to be there that day is no longer going to be there (b/c I don't believe there are every 3 boats there in one day), but neither has been changed.

Same with the others here. I was on it at full capacity and the only time it felt crowded was in the Promenade right before dinner when all the shopping tables were out and people were mingling. Even then it wasn't mobbed by any means. Just a lot of people. There was a couple times we had to go way in the back of the Windjammer to find a table, but the Windjammer on that boat is massive. As for the pool deck, chairs are always tough to find on any ship, but it never struck me as too terribly crowded.

How have lines at Windjammer been? How long are you waiting to get in, to get food, etc., during meal times? It's so weird how some people find a ship really crowded and others don't. I was on Symphony at capacity and I never felt like it was too crowded. Strange.

Sounds like you're going during Spring Breaks, so I anticipate it will be more crowded than some of the anecdotes above. It's important to remember that the crowd on a cruise in the middle of the school year (as in the past month) vs. during a popular vacation time is an apples to oranges comparison. The same ship for the same itinerary could be 50% full one week and 100% full the next if it's during breaks from schools. One thing I will say is that I'm going on Mariner on March 22 and looking recently, there appear to be a ton of rooms available. On top of that, they're currently restricting new bookings to 2 people per room (not allowing bookings of 3 or 4 in a room). They do this to cap the number of children on a ship, which likely helps assure the 95% vaccination rate they need. So not only are there a lot of rooms available, but anything that's filled from here forward is likely going to be only double occupancy in a room. I'd check your cruise to see if the same is the case. Go on the RC website. Choose different stateroom types for 2 people and see what's available, then look for 4 people and see if it even says there are rooms available. That'll give you a good general idea.

I'm not much of a germaphobe and I don't get sick very often, so I would prefer self-service. I don't mind sitting at a table waiting for my food, but I feel like a combination of cattle and a prison inmate when I'm standing in a big, long line waiting for someone to serve me. I've never really seen anyone being egregiously irresponsible from a health standpoint at the buffet. Trust me, I totally get why they'd stick with staff serving from the buffets, but I'd rather do it myself!

You booked for the Wonder this year? I'd guess that sailing is pretty full as it is since it's only the 2nd one. I wonder how much of that had to do with room availability rather than simply not allowing 3+. Likely both, but I wonder if both are a factor in that particular case.

This makes a lot of sense. The third and fourth people in a room are more likely to be very young, and so they're less likely to be vaccinated. To maintain the all-important 95%, they actually need to somewhat limit the number of small children. So they can monitor the age breakdown for a particular upcoming sailing and if there's a ton of kids under 5 already booked, they can shut off rooms of 3 or 4, thereby basically ensuring nobody new under 5 can get onto the ship and ensuring vax rates don't dip. I'm guessing on a typical Spring Break sailing close to >5% of the ship is under 5, so that in and of itself would disqualify it for the 95%. That's smart.

So here's something weird that I'm hoping someone can explain. I'm going on Mariner on March 22. I'm already booked but I wanted get a sense of how how full it's going to be so today I was looking on the RC site. When I enter in that I have 2 people in my room, there are tons of rooms available, including many that I know for a fact can hold 3 or 4. But if I say I have 3 or 4 in my stateroom it says there's nothing available. Why would there be a sailing with a ton of open rooms but they're only allowing 2 people per room? Does that help keep a hold on capacity (even through the sailing is far from full)? If they're trying to limit capacity, doesn't it make more sense to make whole rooms unavailable but allow the normal number of people per room? That really precludes families from going if they're forced to get more than 1 room.

People are going to tell you to drop your kid off at Adventure Ocean and basically be a solo cruiser, but I think it depends largely on why you're going on this vacation. As a single parent, I'm guessing you might actually be going on this trip to be with your child (!!) rather than to simply drop her off at babysitting and have a vacation on your own. My advice would be to do the opposite. There are a ton of fun things to do on a cruise ship that adults and kids can do together, especially at that age. It's so much fun to spend time with your kid on a cruise ship. So many activities and cool places to explore. And without any siblings or friends for her on the boat already, is she really going to want to be dropped off alone at Adventure Ocean? Enjoy the cruise with your daughter. You'll have so many great memories!

I feel compelled to make sure you're aware that you do not have to dress formal on these supposed 'formal nights'. This comes up a lot. While I don't think it's proper to raggedy shorts and a tank top to the dining room, I don't bring formal attire on cruises anymore. It's a huge inconvenience (at least for me), traveling with kids to have to bring formal clothing, keep it all clean and wrinkle-free, etc., when I'm trying to pack light as it is. I don't go on vacation to dress up. That said, if you want to participate in formal nights because you think it's fun, go for it! Just make sure you understand that it's by no means mandatory.

I agree wholeheartedly. Cats is a weird show to begin with. It was enormously successful in the 80s when it first came out, but it was very much a product of 80s fashion and culture, and while some fads and styles come back, the look and feel of Cats is something that was very much left behind in the early 90s. This is one of the reasons why the movie was so so badly received a couple years back. It just looks weird. Anthropomorphic cats are weird by even the most sympathetic cat person's standards. I'm sure expense has a lot to do with it. And I'm sure the cost for the rights to Cats pales in comparison to something more modern that Royal might want to produce like Wicked or something. Yet somehow Royal has found a way to afford Mamma Mia, which is still a top Broadway show. There are so many other old standbys to choose from that are attractive to a general audience. Why Cats?

I just received an email that my cruise on Mariner leaving 3/22 is no longer going to Grand Bahama but is instead stopping at CocoCay. We do love CocoCay, but were actually looking forward to going to Grand Bahama because we've never been there. But here's the interesting thing: On the schedules I see online, Wonder and Freedom are both scheduled to be at CocoCay the day we are now scheduled to be there (3/24), and while I know two ships can dock there, I'm fairly certain they don't ever bring THREE. So that must mean that one of the others, either Wonder or Freedom, was also probably rerouted and will be going to Coco on another day. Question is: What's the best way to find out about the itinerary changes or the most up-to-date schedules for other ships? Nothing is updated as of yet on the RC website, but I'd like to know what other boat(s) are going to be at Coco the day we are there.

You're 100% correct and if you do one instant of research on what it's like to work on a cruise ship you will quickly find this information. Windowless cabins. Bad food. Long hours. Strict rules. I think the original post posits what it would be like if the experience were something different. That it's more like having a typical day job at a restaurant, where you worked 5 days a week and had the rest of the time to do what you please. If that were the case, obviously it'd be a pretty decent job, but I think they acknowledge that's not the actual circumstances of working on a ship. Maybe I'm wrong and they were actually fantasizing about the reality of life working on a cruise ship, but this daydream seems more hypothetical than rooted in reality.

I just booked them yesterday, actually. Seems like a good company and it was cheaper than the others. Typically for transportation services, your best bet is to double check any company on TripAdvisor and/or Yelp. I only will book a new transportation company if they have a solid number of strong reviews. In this case, they did.

I'm having a similar issue. We have two rooms booked for a cruise next month under different last names. They have separate reservation numbers but the reservations are linked. For some reason, I'm able to access Royal Up for one of the rooms but not the other. I've tried both last names for the second room but neither works.

Some of this may actually be personalized to you. If you have a smart TV and are using an app to watch live TV (YouTubeTV or Apple TV rather than a typical cable subscription), or you are watching something like YouTube or Hulu that has ads, many of the commercial spots are OTT ads that are served to you depending on personal data, which can include things like webpages you visit, videos you watch, things you like or follow on Facebook, traditional demographics, recent purchases, as well as tons of other data points of yourself and those around you. So, while I have seen some Royal ads here and there lately, the volume you're seeing and the range of lines you're seeing them from may very well be targeted specifically to you.

Yes, but choice is what matters. For one trip vs. another my ideal departure time could be totally different. Sometimes I want to leave at 6 a.m. Sometimes I'd like to go late morning or midday. Sometimes I'd like to leave in the evening. It all depends on what I'm doing when I get there, why I'm going, how long I'm going to be there, etc. The issue with smaller markets is you may not have a choice. The only flight on a particular day might be early morning or late night. A cruise is a great example, actually. If I'm flying home from Miami or Fort Lauderdale after a cruise, it's possible the only flight on a given day is at 8 a.m., which I can't make after getting off a ship. So I might be forced to either pay an exorbitant amount to fly that night on a full-service airline, or stay an entire extra day and night and delay getting home. This actually just influenced a cruise we are taking. We wanted to go on the Allure this March out of Miami, but the crappy flight schedule coming home was going to add $1500+ to the cost of the trip. So, instead we're going on a different ship out of Orlando, even though we preferred the other cruise.

I think this affects people from larger markets less. If you're in a big city, particularly where you have an airline hub or two, an airline going away doesn't seem to matter as much. In smaller markets it often matters a ton. You might go from 2 flights in an entire day to 1, or 3 flights to 2. It not only can drastically affect pricing, but it's very annoying from a scheduling standpoint. Suddenly, you might only be able to fly somewhere at night, which leads to an extra night in a hotel. Or maybe the only flight is at 6 a.m. For work purposes this can really suck when you're trying to limit the time away on a business trip.

I've never had an issue with traffic at Port Miami. South Beach is a quick drive to the port -- probably a half hour tops with traffic, but could be as little as 15 minutes. Maybe I've just been lucky but the port has always seemed to move traffic through somewhat quickly. Not dissimilar to an airport.

This is typically fairly bad for consumers. For example, in Cleveland where I live, Frontier and Spirit both maintain a decent number of routes to vacation destinations. With one fewer airline (a discount airline, at that), prices will likely get less competitive.

When do the packages initially become available? A year from sailing date? I'm booked for Wonder for March 2023 and I'm not getting options to book any drink or dining packages yet.

Yea.. and last time they said they were going to be at something like 60 or 70% and from what everyone reported here it was clear they were much higher than that over the holidays on some ships. I think they're skewing the numbers to their advantage. By using fleet-wide totals and taking into account the many cruises that, to this point, aren't nearly full due to lower demand and reduced capacity, they give the perception that they're being careful and not filling ships, which eases concerns of some patrons. When, in fact, some ships are full. I don't know if that's still the case, but it seemed to be in December. One thing I did notice while booking for the Mariner this March is that I don't believe I ever saw two rooms available right next to one another. Many maps had every other room available. For the number of times I saw it on different decks, it leads me to believe it's not a coincidence. So it's likely they're either: 1) reducing capacity and only allowing spaced rooms to book (although I have to imagine they aren't limiting to 50% capacity), or, more likely, 2) only allowing rooms to be next to one another once every other room fills up.

Do you have an idea of whether this is because of capacity vs. demand? It's hard to gauge the max capacity this time of year because I don't know that very many cruise ships would be full anyway, even if COVID weren't an issue. It seems like they were trying to stretch it as far as they could during the holidays when they could fill the rooms. I'm cruising during spring break and am wondering how much they're going to test capacity at that point, particularly since Omicron is fading.

This is where having a travel agent can be a negative. Since you booked it through them, they're the only people RCI will talk with about the reservation (I believe). However, if you were able to deal with Royal yourself, this seems like something you could get out of with a little complaining. Royal aren't usually total d*cks about this stuff and they've been particularly accommodating with COVID stuff, at least in my experience. I would call Royal yourself and if they won't discuss it with you maybe talk to someone on the ship about it. They can issue pretty decent-sized future cruise credits if you talk to the right person.

Oh certainly to each their own if you've got the cash to spare. And I didn't think about the other perks of being in a suite (expedited check-in, etc.) -- those are great perks to have. But merely for the purpose of the extra space, I don't know if it's worth it for one person. If you've got a bed, a couch, and a balcony in a stateroom, what else do you really need for the little amount of time you spend there? My thinking was that you can have a great experience doing something off the ship in a cool place for the same money. But I'm not saying she unequivocally shouldn't by any means! It's still a nice perk to have for a little extra money.