Crazycruiser50

We will be in Allure in a few months in a Grande Suite.  I’ve never been in a suite on an Oasis Class ship and therefore never had the opportunity to experience Coastal Kitchen.  Since we are strictly specialty restaurant type cruisers, I am curious if Coastal Kitchen is the same quality as the specialty restaurants.  Wondering if we even need the unlimited dining package on our cruise.

If anyone can chime in who has experienced both I would really appreciate it.

Have a great day!

On 8/15/2022 at 7:56 AM, smokeybandit said:

There haven't been restrictions since March.

Ok, great!

Thank you!

Can anyone who has cruised recently chime in about AO?  Our last cruise, Dec 2021, we were restricted in only choosing 3 slots for the kids for the week long cruise.  Just curious if that has been lifted or is still in effect?  (We worked some magic and got them in a few extra slots as the cruise progressed, but it’s a headache)

Cruising on Liberty this October and I’d rather not have to deal with that again.    Thank you!

Just got off Adv of the Seas NYE cruise.  Was very frustrated with their new rules for Adv Ocean.  Kids of all ages are grouped together to try to play social distance games.  Spots on the floor they must stand on.  Give me a break!  We were allowed 2 night sessions and 1 day or morning session.  Also annoyed me.  Even if some of the night sessions weren’t full they wouldn’t allow us to add our kids to it.

Our next cruise isn’t booked until October and I can assure you we won’t be on it unless this all goes away.

We love family time during the day and then date night time at night.  It just wasn’t the same.  My kids who usually LOVE Adv Ocean also needed to be bribed to go there.  They were miserable. 
 

Funny thing, 25 of them lined up on the kids slide at the pool with no masks on isn’t an issue at all though… Just doesn’t make any sense to me. 

CVS antigen tests we got back in 2 hours.

My 4 year old did a PCR at CVS on Sunday at 11am.  The results were texted to me at midnight last night.   So 37 hour turn around for that one.  
 

She warned me due to the high volume of testing this week it could take up to 3 days which had me very anxious.  

12 hours ago, bryresangel said:

I just had my Royal Up on a 1BR GS change to "Pending" and my JS one is now "Expired"......fingers crossed..........

Usually a good sign.  Our GS showed expired, Owner’s suite pending about 2 weeks prior.

We got the good news email 3 days prior to sailing.  
 

Problem is I don’t know how we will ever be able to sail in a regular balcony room again lol.  

7 hours ago, Deanna Mcfarlane said:

We are booked to Sail the Liberty of the seas out of Galveston in Feb 2022, We are C&A diamond members and Huge RCL fans. This will HOPEFULLY be our kids FIRST cruise ever, with the Whole Family, 20 of us are booked to cruising together.

We have just been told we will not be able to take our unvaccinated 1 & 2 years olds to port with us , UNLESS its with an RCL excursions.!?!?

WHAT'S THE POINT OF GOING ON A FAMILY Holiday!?! We were told that if we didn't want to book an RCL excursion our kids need to stay on board. IF us adults still wanted go to port, we could leave our kids with the kids club for the day...I thought she was joking at first, Our children CAN'T be vaccinated anywhere in the WORLD.... We don't want or need to do an RCL excursion.. we have been to these ports before and just want to chill and do our own thing.

Needles to say, i will be calling head office to see if this is for real... or our party of 20 will be canceling our much needed and anticipated family Holiday.

I feel so heart broken and betrayed by this Bull shit policy and desparte money grab from our favorite cruise line. 

We can't be the only family dealing with this policy....?

 

 

I agree the policy stinks, but nothing we can do about it at the moment.  We have a 4 and 7 year old traveling with us in December and had to book 2 RCCL excursions we’ve done a dozen times just to get them off the ship.  We chose 2 of the cheaper/shorter ones so my kids can at least have an opportunity after the excursion to buy the souvenirs they always look forward to getting in ports.  
 

$20 toys just became $500+ due to their policy lol.  
 

PS if you decide on leaving them in adventure ocean make sure you sign them up as soon as you get on board as they have very limited availability.  Our Oct sailing only had 15 slots total for their age groups.  
 

Hopefully with the CSO set to expire mid Jan this policy will be cancelled in time for your Feb sailing.  

Ya, Galveston seems to run a bit ahead of schedule.  We got there at 11:50 for our 12-12:30 check in and they were already accepting 12:30-1pm check in slots.  Might be because they only had 1200 passengers on the 10/25 sailing on Indy.  
 

Might have just been that day though…

PS we were in a suite and there was no separate line or priority access like there used to be in the past.  
 

That being said, from walking in the door to on the ship was less than 10 mins.  

18 minutes ago, SpeedNoodles said:

By "check-in booklet"' do you mean they sent new Edocs?  I just got a RoyalUp today as well, but I didn't see that they sent me any new documents or luggage tags.  My Set Sail pass is updated.

It says Guest Ticket Booklet.  I also noticed if you log in on the Rccl website, click on your sailing, and then below your set sail pass there is a spot to click on bag tags.  You should be able to find your updated ones there.  
 

PS Congrats on the upgrade and in fact I owe you a thank you!  One of your posts reminded me about Royal Up.  We usually never do it because our kids are always booked in a connecting room to us.  Finally my wife and I get a cruise alone thanks to my Mother in Law who offered to watch the kids.  

4 minutes ago, Pattycruise said:

Can someone share the link to Royal Up?  I’d like to check my reservations to see any bidding options 

thank you!

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/booked/cruise-room-upgrade

There is about 10 posts about Royal Up and I wasn’t sure which one to attach this to so I figured I would just make a new post for anyone interested. 
 

We are Emerald Status on a 4 night sailing on Indy of the Seas out of Galveston. (10/25).  We booked a Junior suite and with this cruise it will make us Diamond.  

I never got the email for a Royal Up offer, but used the website that one of you posted and made 2 bids.  
 

One was for slightly over minimum on a Grand Suite and the other was $50 over the min for an Owner’s Suite.  
 

3 days ago I noticed our Grand suite offer expired, but Owners was still pending.  It wouldn’t let me cancel or modify it.  I have been checking the amount of rooms available the past 3 weeks regularly.  There were 17 Grand and 7 Owners still available. 
 

Lucky for us we were awarded one of the Owner’s suites this morning.  (4 days prior to sailing).  They sent us a new check in booklet via email and I was able to print off our new bag tags and updated Set Sail pass.  Also I noticed it had refreshed with the new room on the Royal App.  
 

We saved $1600 by getting lucky enough to win this Royal Up vs buying the room outright.  When I tried to make a mock bid this afternoon it only shows 2 bedroom Grand suites and Junior suites left. 
 

Hope this info helps.

Ya, we will be cancelling it as well.  We Never use room service.  We always buy the UDP so the 25% discount is useless.  We had purchased this for $20/day so it’s cheaper just to buy a 2 device voom package in its place.  

17 minutes ago, Matt said:

Since you are sailing on Independence of the Seas, it is mostly hibachi, but there is a sushi bar if you prefer to eat there.

So two restaurants in one, to some extent.

Yes, just tell them you want to eat at the sushi bar

Thanks Matt!  As a long time Galveston cruiser it’s nice to see some new ships other than Liberty or Enchantment.

We are looking forward to our Adventure OTS sailing in Dec as well.  
 

Thanks for the update on Izumi! 

Hi all, this will be our first sailing on a ship that has Izumi.  I’m a little confused between the hibachi and sushi part.

Are they two separate restaurants in one?  Or do you just order sushi at the hibachi table?

My wife and I would much rather just eat sushi and skip the hibachi portion.  We have the unlimited dining package.  When I get on board can I book a reservation at just the sushi half?  
 

If anyone can fill me in I would really appreciate it.  
 

Edit- sailing on Indy if each ship is different 

53 minutes ago, PG Cruiser said:

The information can be found here:

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/crown-anchor-society/program-updates

 

Here is a screenshot of the section on Flexible Arrival:

Awesome!!! Thank you!

16 minutes ago, Galveston Steve said:

No separate suite area right now, but you will generally walk right onto the ship after checking in unless you have to wait on a Covid test. Junior Suites and all suites can check in one hour before or after your check in window. If you’re in the first check in window of the day they won’t open the doors until closer to the actual start of the checkin window. 

This is the first of heard of this.  We are in a Junior suite on the 10/25 sailing.  We have a 12:30 check in.  You are saying they will let us board at 11:30?

Where did you see this info? 

This was Enchantment in March 2020, 1 sailing before everything was shut down.  As you can see she had the exact same rust on her then.  Especially when docked next to Symphony it made us realize how old she is.  
 

That being said, we have sailed on her 6 times and she will always have a special place in our hearts!

11 minutes ago, Ampurp85 said:

Since capacity has been reduced, they are limiting the amount of UDP on most cruises. I sail Oct 31st, it was sold out the end of Aug and briefly popped up in Sept, it is no longer showing again now. Some people have reported being able to secure it on boarding day as there were a few no-shows/cancellations. So it is being offered but since you booked a close-in sailing, they didn't have any available.

Thank so much!  I’ll keep my fingers crossed for one to show up available on sailing day.  Paid almost double to book these individually.  (Still worth it in my opinion)

2 minutes ago, Debsters41 said:

I noticed the same for a cruise this November, but it is available on another cruise I have booked for next June.  so who knows?  I will keep checking, too.

Ok thanks, thought I was going crazy.  

Our cruise is in 26 days.

The one in Oct 2022 shows all the other restaurants I can book, but not the unlimited?

Booked a quick get away for the wife and myself at the end of October and the unlimited dining package doesn’t exist.  I called RCCL and they claim it’s either sold out or not offered on this cruise. 
 

Out of curiosity I checked our Oct 2022 cruise and it’s not available on that sailing either.

I booked it for our Dec 21 and Feb 22 cruise a long time ago so those are still showing up on my cruise planner.

Did RCCL do away with the unlimited dining package or am I going crazy?  Having to pay a lot of $$$ to book these restaurants individually.

PS I will do anything to avoid the MDR.  Lol

3 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

The adults can enter the vaccinated only venues but the children will not be allowed. The vaccinated get a wristband and only those with a wristband are allowed in the vaccinated only areas. 

Yes, the kids are the only ones not allowed. Just traveling with kids doesn't mean the adults are treated as unvaccinated.

This is great!!! Thank you so much!  First time I’m seeing that list, I appreciate you posting it. 

Sorry if this has been discussed, haven’t been on in a while.   I am up to speed on all the pre-cruise tests etc.  I was wondering if any parents traveling with their younger children can chime in how adventure ocean was on a recent cruise?  My wife and I typically drop the kids off after dinner so we can have mini date nights.

Are we still going to be able to go into the vaccinated areas (without the kids) even though our party is still technically considered un-vaccinated? 2 connecting rooms.

Going on Adventure OTS on 12/29.  We always do unlimited dining.  I read some specialty restaurants won’t allow our un-vaccinated kids in.  Does anyone know which ones they are?

I was very close to cancelling this one, but we said let’s just get back out to Sea and see how it goes.  Will determine what we do with the next 3 on the books for next year.

Thanks for any input…

Feb 2020, beautiful day at 1:40pm, by 4:40pm the fog rolled in.  I was worried we weren’t going to get out of port.  Next morning at sea it was still foggy.  They blasted the fog horn every 5 mins or so.  It cleared up after a few hours and then it was sunny for the rest of the cruise!

Fog is hit or miss in Feb and March.  We live North of IAH and it is exactly a 1 hour and 15 min drive for us.  
 

We will miss Liberty, but are super excited for the arrival of Allure!!!

Booked a GS with the kids in the connecting balcony next door on Allure 2/5/23... Pumped!!!