LogicallyLazy

Good Morning everyone. Another lovely day out at sea and there nothing quite like seeing this outside your room Starting off the day with a little R&R in the thermal suite The thermal suite pass is around $20 pppd but you do not need to get it for everyday of the sailing. However, you will be required to book a reservation. That said, the thermal suite will be private to you and your party which is kind of sweet

There was. It’s one of the measures to assist with contact tracing. When passing by certain checkpoints in the ship, you tap your seapass to pass. I feel like it’s a little too many checkpoints though, considering we are using the tracelet and the Singapore contact tracing app in addition. But hey, it’s a small inconvenience It’s to help differentiate the different tracelets in your group. Since we’d remove the tracelets in our stateroom, our tracelets won’t get mixed with other people in your room. Everyone in my group has a different color code.

Stateroom So we’re staying in the Owner’s Loft 8720. Just walking through the ‘gated’ area makes me feel so fancy. Lol. I think it goes without saying that the room is gorgeous. It’s definitely the biggest room that I have stayed in, even on land. A little snack left by Eli Together with the standard information given like voom internet and our star class itinerary, they also provide 1 mask per guest as well as a bottle of hand sanitizer. It is indeed. ?

Phew, a long day. Time to catch up. Let’s rewind back a few hours Coastal Kitchen Lunch Tapping our seapass to get into CK, we were brought to our window side table with a view. To be on the water, even when in port, it’s giving me the feeling of being free For our appetisers, we went for the cilantro fish soup and oven baked scallops. Both were delicious, though the fish soup was definitely the more memorable of the two. For our entree, as arranged by Eli, they managed to prepare the filet mignon for us specially. While it was definitely good, I think I may have hyped it a little bit too much in my head. We’ll see how the filet at Chops compares. For desert, we end it off with the Royal cheesecake, dark chocolate cookie and creme brûlée. The cheesecake was decent, but I think the cookie and creme brûlée left more of an impression. Though it was a little too sweet for our usual tastes, I loved the cookie, though it was more like a thick fudgy brownie, than a cookie. By the end of the meal, we were stuffed. Our initial plan of getting some stuff from Windjammer was put aside.

Boarding We arrived at the terminal around 1.45 and immediately, the Star class usher came over and asked for our room number. I’m not sure how exactly they knew we were Star class, or they took the “all people who get there are star class until proven otherwise” approach. Either way, they took our bag in less than a minute. As it was still a few minutes before 2, the terminal itself wasn’t opened yet, so we waited in a priority line just outside. We were the first to enter the terminal. Immigration was quick, though we were slower compared to other guests as they were training a new staff. It’s okay though. We also got out tracelet at this time. Overall we were on the ship within 30 mins. After which, we were brought to our stateroom by Eli. Pictures of the room coming in a later post. Next up, lunch!!! ??

All packed and ready to go!!! Now we wait for the boarding time.

It’s here. It’s finally here. After so long, it is finally...CRUISE DAY!!! Here I am, lying in bed awake at 8am even though I wasn’t planning on waking before 10. But what can I say, my mind’s a buzzin’ The weather’s looking good and the forecast promising. With tropical weather, you never know when there’s gonna be a thunderstorm, so having that is a little reassuring. I guess this is also where the live in live blog comes in. Will be trying my best to update everything timely, but forgive me if some posts are a little delayed. After all, I am on vacation. Lol. ?

It’s so close I can almost taste it. Don’t think I will be able to sleep tonight with all the excitement. It’s the only kind of insomnia I welcome

And it would not have happened at all if you didn’t give the suggestion. I think I would have missed out a lot if not for you and your star class live blog. Took so many tips from that

I guess it’s a good thing that I told her the reason I wanted to move some of the shows around was so we could go to one of these MH shows. If she can reserve it for us, great! But if she can’t, it won’t we the end of the world. Besides, with sequins and starwater both going on around the same time, maybe the MH would be relatively quiet

And I’m negative!!! Cruise is a go!!!

Funny you should ask this as I just moved around a couple things on the plan so we could go for one of the music hall shows. I haven’t checked with Eli on if she can reserve a seat for us, but my guess is no as it’s first come first seated. Of course, with genies, they may make something magical happen. Will check with Eli on board

Eli just sent over our Proposed Planner schedule which also included the entertainment timetable. Based on posts and live blogs from past sailings, seems like they’ve added more showtimes in the late afternoon. Wondering if it’s in response to the complains of lack of shows and inability to secure a reservation. Also, update on the filet at lunch request. At first Eli seemed hesitant and reasoned they usually don’t encourage it to avoid comments from other guest requesting the same. However, it seems she managed to pull through as she’s mentioned they will prepare it for our boarding day lunch. ?

So, today is the day for my covid test. We have a 10am appointment and arrived a few minutes before. The entire process was really smooth and quick, in and out in less than 10 mins. I have done a test before, so I knew what to expect in terms of the test itself. A little uncomfortable but nowhere unbearable or painful, contrary to what some people claim. Now it’s just to wait for the results. So time to go back to packing

It definitely adds some variety to the types of cuisine you can get onboard considering Asian cuisine is so different between cultures.

Was wondering why the Royal App was so limited in its information. Turns out, logging out and in again loaded everything into the app. Now makes me feel stupid for asking Eli some of my questions ?

@RCLFAN1991 Here is the menu I pulled off the App. Not sure if it’s accurate but I will check again once on board.

Haha I have a dietary restriction for pork so I will pass on this

Oh I did not know this was possible. Thanks. I will see if Eli can do anything about that. I will be going to chops for 2 dinners as my dad absolutely loves seafood (I’m looking at you seafood tower ?) I can spread out the filets. But I’m an absolute carnivore, so filet twice in one day may not actually be out of the question. Lol

Based on the menu Eli sent over. Day 1 dinner is filet night at CK? It’s okay though, with any luck I can always try it on another sailing in the future. Fingers crossed

Yeah, the lunch menu doesn’t have as much...excitement to it. Based on @Lovetocruise2002, I actually wanted to compare the fillet at CK to Chops personally, but I feel like going for CK twice in one day when we have speciality dining is a little bit of a waste, especially on a 3 night cruise. But I’ll take what I can. If I was originally in Sky class, I would have gone to CK for lunch anyway.

While planning my dining itinerary, Eli sent over this piece of information that I thought I would share. I don’t recall if they sold the key on this sailing but it’s currently not on my cruise planner. If they did sell it, it may be that chops is fully booked for guests with the key.

Thanks for the info. Luckily, I was aware of the complimentary gratuities. I had to call in to upgrade and had done a mock booking online to see that the gratuities were added and highlighted this over the phone. At the time, there was a system glitch where they were unable to input the comp grats, so they just omitted the final payment of it. It was a few weeks of seeing “Pay remaining balance” on the cruise planner before I they finally removed the charge That’s awesome! So far all the communications with her have been phenomenal. She’s been able to answer all my questions and even managed to go above and beyond with some of our requests. And we haven’t even started cruising yet! ?

They announced the cruises some time in October if I’m not wrong. I booked the sky loft for 4 on 21 Nov and paid SGD$3778 (~USD$2854). Got a reprice a few days later to $3578. Upgraded to the owner’s loft on 18 Jan with a new total of $5382. (~USD$4066) Not sure how that compares with other sailings as from what I see so far, other sailing seem way higher priced In the beginning, my sailing was one of the cheapest ones as it’s a few weeks before the school holidays here and had the a lot of vacancies. It’s slowly filling up but definitely no where near capacity, unlike the Dec cruises or the past Chinese New Year sailing.

No problem Matt. With all the ambiguity surrounding cruises restarting, I thought to share most of the things that Royal has in terms of covid measures and does special arrangements in that regard. While, it may not be indicative if these measures would be in place outside of Singapore, it gives a good baseline