KevinJ

We went through this between our Jan and March cruises. Wife and sons passports expire in Sept. First country for our March cruise was St Kitts and it was stated they require 6 months. So as soon as we got off in Jan submitted an Online renewal application. We had almost 7 weeks between the cruises and expedited claimed 3-5 weeks. First issue was that as soon as your online application is accepted they invalidate your current passport, so no trying to skate that. When we hit 5 weeks with no status change for the application we had a panicked week of getting certified copies of birth certificates and marriage licenses, wide was married before so multiple name changes. My sons passport showed up the day before he flew to Florida. We used my wife's BC and our current marriage certificate plus Id were all that got checked, but you never know. Our marriage certificate did list her maiden name as well as her previous married name. At least now we have all the paper work. My wife's passport showed up while we were on the cruise.

My son is the one that really got us cruising. He's mostly about the ship, so working our way through the Oasis and Quantum inventories. He was badly affected by the shutdown period and decided the heck with it, YOLO. So we're currently averaging about 5 cruises a year. We're starting to branch out looking at destinations. He and I are doing a B2B in May. Then the family is doing a transatlantic from Barcelona. Doing Ireland Iceland with celebrity next year. Planning for additional European cruises, Panama Canal, and maybe a Transpacific. He also mentioned Antarctica. Lots to see in the world. I'm spending his inheritance but we're enjoying our time together as my wife and I approach 70. My current cruise count is 8, but we've only got one booked for 2025.

all checked in, 10:30 arrival. Tik tok tik tok

Ah, my son actually made all our reservations so he would have gotten the emails, I just checked the calendar in the app to make sure I was OK with what he scheduled. We booked everything for this cruise and the next of our B2B.

I'm doing the same research for our Transatlantic from Barcelona in October. We're getting in three days early to have time to both acclimate to the time change and see some of the city. I've checked out some of the hotels mentioned, one problem I've run into is that we are three adults and some of these hotels don't have a single room with that occupancy. Getting two rooms starts to really get pricey.

You won't get an email. You should see your reservations in the app when you look in My Calendar.

Went through this exact scenario for our March 12th Wonder cruise. Got off Odyssey late Jan, submitted renewals for my wife and son. Expedited said 3-5 weeks, we had six till Wonder. After 5 weeks and no change in status, we used the Online renewal process, we really started to panic. We had no idea where our marriage certificate was and to further complicate things my wife had been married before and we had nothing showing that. Several hundred dollars spent getting certified copies expedited to us and off we went to the port. Meanwhile we drive 3 days to the port my son flies down and meets us the day before. His passport came in the day before he left so he was all set. Check in went very smoothly. They only looked at my wife's birth certificate, but having everything else was for safety as you never know what a particular agent might want to make an issue of. My wife's passport came in while we were on our cruise, so 7 weeks total.

@brdjnr I wouldn't be surprised if they figure out at some later date that you were not entitled to that "extra" FCC and want the money back like they did with @deep1. I had a situation where I was trying to make final payment and they couldn't tell me how much I owed? There was a refund I was due from a cancelled cruise planner purchase that was "stuck in limbo". So how was I supposed to complete final payment? My TA had me pay what our records indicated was owed. Since I had prepaid gratuities and that amount exceeded the disputed amount we felt covered. It was weeks after final payment before it got settled with several refunds and charges for the amount in question hitting my card over a couple days. You hear stories of folks having their cruises cancelled over nonpayment for minor amounts so it would make me nervous.

Just booked all our entertainment.

Just booked all our entertainment.

When we were on Wonder a couple weeks ago I saw a couple of younger children crawling through the plants in Central Park, didn't think that was quite right, but they did find one. When I find one I take it home and then hide it on my next cruise, so the one I found on Wonder will be on Harmony in May.

@AlmondFarmer I did the same thing, it's really annoying. I now keep track of the price I purchased items at both before and after they apply the 18% as the % off they show is almost meaning less.

My son collects these from our cruises. He couldn't get Wonder last year in March, but did get it this year. However it's smaller than some of the others he's collected but still quite detailed.

We were on Wonder a couple weeks ago, got to meet Matt . 1800 plus kids, what i noticed was by about day three or four the teen packs start to form, as @Pattycruise said. There are a couple of leaders and then a group of followers. I was riding down the elevator to deck 5 and we got stopped on deck six, there was a teenager making antics to a group in another elevator. When we got to deck 5 and I was stepping out a group of about six went racing full speed by the elevator doors and almost knocked me down. Then you get the groups that sit on the stairs. Your're trying to walk down, I can't do up, and have to make your way through them as they are spread all over, mostly looking through their phones. Still we had a great cruise, after we got the kids in the cabin above us to stop jumping around for hours at a time till 11pm when we called customer service.

On Wonder last week I had bought the 24 pack of water, my wife is always asking about getting water. When we got to the room ans don't recall exactly how many extra bottles we had I'm thinking 6 as we are three diamond in the cabin. I don't think we used more than 3 or 4 bottles of the 24 pack. I immediately cancelled the water I ordered for my next cruise although the black Friday sale price was $12 for the 24 pack.

With the website check in you have to load a bunch of your data before you get to the page where you select your boarding time. With the app you can go straight to selecting the boarding time and then do everything else later. My son did our check in for our last cruise and for some reason he used the website and he only had my travel documents so checked me in for a 10:30 time. When I got up a 7am I noticed this and by then all I could get him and my wife was 11:30, I think he assumed that once he selected my boarding time it would apply to all three of us. So as I've seen sometimes the website is available right away but the app lags behind.

Over all we enjoyed the whole cruise. My wife is still recuperating from knee replacement and found she was unable to sit with her leg bent for the duration of the shows so she missed most of them. My son and I really enjoyed them, quite a bit better than last year when they were not quite ready. Unfortunately my son started feeling off with a couple of days left. At first we thought it was from getting too much sun, he got a bit burnt, but by the last day he was definitely sick. We dropped him at the Hyatt at MCO to catch his flight the next day and started our three day drive home. By the second day I was starting to have the same symptoms, runny sinuses and coughing by now we're all sick, not COVID though we tested, just a really bad upper respiratory. We had the UDP got all our reservations made first thing on boarding day no issues. Since we like to eat early getting 5-5:30 times was easy. Mostly enjoyed the food although it was way too much for us. Some meals I didn't enjoy, partly because I was trying things I hadn't had before and they may not have suited me. I was disappointed at hooked, we had tried it lat year and found it great, this year not quite as good. We did Mason Jar four times, two brunches and two dinners. I had probably my best meal there the last night so left on a high note. The only excursion we did was the scenic railroad on St. Kitts, it was quite nice. We had a casita on board for St Thomas and we've been to Cococay so many times we just hung out on the ship.

This topic brings back nightmares, my last five years when I was working was doing WIFI support. I'd totally agree with @twangster about how difficult it is to manage a large WIFI installation. The things that customers would do and them complain when service was terrible was what I dealt with day to day. Glad I'm retired. On Wonder last week my wife and son had allot of issues. My son was having a terrible time watching some streaming shows and was quite frustrated. I watched Matt's live stream sitting in the same bar, the stream would pause and buffer frequently. Matt indicated he was using his cellular data to ensure adequate internet access

Check in will open at about 12:01am, so late night the 4th or early am the 5th depending on how you want to look at it. Using the app you can just select a boarding time and then do everything else later. We’re sometimes had trouble with check in not opening in the app right away, and have had to use the website.

Saw Matts live stream come up and found him, got to say hi. Was interesting watching the stream and seeing it live, about a 30 second delay.

Update: my sons passport came the day before he flew to Florida. We had all the paperwork for my wife. Birth certificate, both marriage certificates and state I’d. all they looked at was her birth certificate and I’d.

Had to reset my password, phone didn’t have the correct one. We got on board no problem, less than half an hour. Haven’t seen Matt but keep looking. We really enjoyed Effectors and we just saw the first one on Odyssey in January. Intense was terrific. Ice show tonight, they didn’t have their props when we saw it March last year. Hanging out in a casita today, beautiful weather.

Disney Springs can be interesting. I usually just hang in one of the bars and the wife and son check out the shops.

Works for us, as we're usually 3 adults. On our last cruise we were joining my son on the second half of his B2B. He doesn't drink wine, but I had him bring his two on and then I brought two. So were we"cheating"? Don't think so, it was just the right amount, used two bottles in MDR and the other two for the cabin.

We've got the Unlimited Dining Package and will be doing Mason Jar, Chops, 150 Central park and Hooked. We've eaten in all of these before and enjoyed them, I'm the only one who enjoys sushi so we're not doing Izumi nor are we doing the Hibachi, although we have done that before. I think the sushi is fine, not the best I've had but good. The Hibachi was good and a great show at the same time. We often do Chops but now we just do it for lunch.