TXCruiser

https://www.emed.com/

We used the Binax ag tests (through eMed and not RC) because our flight to Spain was at 7 in the am on Friday with our cruise being on Sunday and we wanted to test prior to flying out of town. It was very easy and the nice thing is that we were able to run all the tests in parallel on our phones with the exception of my son who is a minor and couldn’t have his own account. The cost of the online proctor is included and Aetna reimbursed $12 per test so it was pretty cheap all in at $13 per test plus shipping after the partial reimbursement. Hope this helps.

Just a word of advice to be careful. There were 6 of us in our family that went on our Wonder of the Seas cruise from Jul 24-31 and everyone tested positive for COVID on Monday when we returned home except for me (because I had it at the beginning of last month). Everyone besides me in our group was fairly vigilant about KN95 masking as well with the exception of at meals, in our staterooms and excursions where we were outdoors. Besides that, the cruise was fun but exhausting but that was more due to us booking excursions that required meeting between 7:15-8:00 am at every port. Pros: Food at the MDR and Windjammer was great and plentiful (the Indian food station at the Windjammer was surprisingly yummy). All the employees on the ship were incredibly nice and helpful. The ship did not feel crowded even though it was at capacity. There were plenty of activities onboard. Cons: Headliner entertainment was mediocre at best and people started leaving after the first song or two. The escape room was not ready. Our dining reservation at the Chef's Table was canceled because my wife and I were the only two people booked for that time slot. We didn't get our shareholder OBC because we were told it was not valid for our rate. This was told to us by someone at guest services who said she had never seen that before. It would have been nice if the shareholder OBC team had mentioned that ahead of our cruise in an email instead of only making a note in the file that I received after waiting in line at guest services. Our rate was just a lift and shift from last year's cruise that got canceled and was the market price at the time so I'm not sure what happened.

Sorry, didn’t see that there was a similar thread and on top of that I posted in the wrong section! Please ignore

Hello Is the only advantage to booking your next cruise onboard a RC cruise ship the obc or do they offer better rates as well? Thanks!

Ours took a little over 2 weeks to switch to "validated". FWIW, other members mentioned that the status didn't matter and only the actual check in at the terminal mattered with regard to confirming your vaccination status. I assume then that this is a "pre-check" to ferret out any potential issues in lieu of waiting to arrive at the terminal only to discover that you don't meet the reqs.

FWIW, we're going to be staying at the AC Hotel Victoria Suites (a Marriott brand) it looked to be reasonably priced and somewhat near both the port and places to see.

Thanks @OrlandoDad. At 30 min per test I think it's worth the extra sleep to burn a test the day before making sure that my mother in law knows how to login and perform all the steps via a dry run so that she can run hers, my father in law's and my mom's while I do the same for my wife, son and myself. Prepping for a 3 am wake up next month lol. The things we do for cruising...

Ok, I have a question regarding clarification on the 12:01 am start time for the 2 calendar days. Is it anytime at 12:01 am or after based upon the local time of where you are taking the test or 12:01 am based upon the time zone of the ship? We're sailing from Barcelona on the WOtS on a Sunday but flying out from Texas on Friday early am to give us a day buffer in case of some sort of travel delay. I was planning to have all our tests taken on Friday prior to us stepping foot on the plane to avoid having the potential for positive tests somewhere away from home and being stuck in limbo. What I'm not looking forward to is waking up just that much earlier to run the tests (I have little faith in my in-laws or mom being able to run the eMed tests on their own which will mean running everyone's in series instead of in parallel). If the 2 day period started on the ship's local time then I could start administering them to the family anytime between 5pm and before bedtime on Thursday which would be awesome. Otherwise, I'm picturing a horrendously long day where we wake up around 2 am on Friday and then get little to no sleep on the red eye on the overseas leg of our flight . FWIW, airport testing at our airport doesn't open up before our flight leaves so Newark during the layover would have been our only domestic option. TXCruiser

Aha thanks. Yeah, I did see that in the instructions but thought that I had read elsewhere on the forum that folks had been successfully submitting well in advance of that 2-3 week window and that RC was actually having some issues with processing everything inside that advised window. I'll just look for it in the next few weeks and cross my fingers.

Btw, I also had a similar issue with the balance due email. It is interesting that of the 3 reservations in our group that the room for my wife, son and I was the only one that got the email and we were also the only ones that requested the shareholder OBC and also rebooked a few of the excursions when sales came across.

When do people generally receive notification of their shareholder OBCs? I sent in the forms for that about 4 months ago now. I initially never heard anything back then asked for a status update at which point I was asked to resend some info but then never got a response from that. Our cruise is on the 24th of next month. At this point if I had to resend the info all over again with an updated statement I would need to rebuy the shares since I dumped them once the stock started tanking...

For those who have cruised recently, how long does it take RC to validate your uploaded vaccine card info to the app? I uploaded our family's cards 10 days ago and it still says, "we are validating your record". Thanks!

Once again wanted to say thanks to @wordell1 and @FionaMG for providing their first hand experiences. I initially called RC to ask them for more clarity while posting to this forum at the same time as a backup. RC was supposed to call me the next day with an answer but I haven't heard another word from them. I'm very grateful that this forum has such a helpful community of folks because otherwise I'd still be in the dark.

Ok, so the issue finally got resolved after 1 hr and 40 min with me waiting on hold most of the time while the Costco Travel agent was dealing with talking to RC. They didn't really elaborate on what the issue was. I was only told that it was taken care of and they sent me a new email showing that indeed the invoice was paid in full. I'm definitely looking forward to the cruise that is really 2 years in the making if you consider the Spectrum sailing that didn't happen in summer '20. TXCruiser