CruizIan

So I recently got off Mariner of the Seas on Nov 30th and was about 3 hours into the drive home when I realized that I did not have my wallet on me. While cruising I always leave my wallet in the safe and only take the cash or credit cards that I need onshore and my passport. So on debarkation morning wearing athletic shorts it fell out of my pocket in the chair in the main dining room. This was the first time I had been separated from my wallet in at least 15 years and so I was thoroughly panicked. My wife did a quick search for a Royal Caribbean lost and found and there is an email process that you go through and give them all of the details about the item and the ship and so forth.
Being the pessimist that I am I thought it was a fools errand but what the heck. 
Thankfully for Mobile Apps and being able to turn off all of my cards immediately, and that I jokingly had given my Wife all of the cash from my casino trips telling her that she would get it from me one way or another so might as well hand it over. I was only really out the actual wallet.
2 Days post cruise and I received an email last night from Royal that the wallet has been found and it will be returned to me once the ship returns to port and they are able to process it, all I had to do was pay for shipping.
So if you ever forget/lose something this might be worth a try.

So I recently got off Mariner of the Seas on Nov 30th and was about 3 hours into the drive home when I realized that I did not have my wallet on me. While cruising I always leave my wallet in the safe and only take the cash or credit cards that I need onshore and my passport. So on debarkation morning wearing athletic shorts it fell out of my pocket in the chair in the main dining room. This was the first time I had been separated from my wallet in at least 15 years and so I was thoroughly panicked. My wife did a quick search for a Royal Caribbean lost and found and there is an email process that you go through and give them all of the details about the item and the ship and so forth.
Being the pessimist that I am I thought it was a fools errand but what the heck. 
Thankfully for Mobile Apps and being able to turn off all of my cards immediately, and that I jokingly had given my Wife all of the cash from my casino trips telling her that she would get it from me one way or another so might as well hand it over. I was only really out the actual wallet.
2 Days post cruise and I received an email last night from Royal that the wallet has been found and it will be returned to me once the ship returns to port and they are able to process it, all I had to do was pay for shipping.
So if you ever forget/lose something this might be worth a try.

And technically you're paying for a Travel Agent's services anyway, since the price is the same to you and we're paid from Royal Caribbean.

Here's a more fun way to do same idea: https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2019/05/24/free-printable-surprise-royal-caribbean-cruise-ticket-template

So we have been to both stops when we went out of San Juan. I can tell you in St. Kitts I really enjoyed the railway tour. 
 
In Barbados we actually just hopped in a cab and had them take us to a local beach and ate at a local restaurant and I think the cab fair might have been 30-40 bucks round trip. The driver actually came back to get us at the time we requested.

Hi,
We had booked already shore excursions for our upcoming holiday cruise on the Allure of the Seas in December. Unfortunately 2 of our shore excursions got cancelled.  My wife and I (we are in our late 50s) are debating:
for St. Kitts between the Caribbean Scenic Railway Tour or the Brimstone Hill and Fairview Great House and for Barbados between Flavors of Barbados & Island Drive and Barbados Highlights Do you mind sharing your experience if you have done any of those?
Thanks
Markus

We also very much enjoyed the railway tour. 
 
Our experience... Folks do their best to be topside on the railcar.  It's quite packed up there.  We remained below, inside the car.  Still had a great view and we were lavished by the wonderful young ladies that are the hosts and tour guides on this train ride.  And by the end of the tour, the folks up on top realized the best place was down below.😀

@Matt recently cruised with his kids and reported they also had the drink voucher benefit. 
In Alaska I like to be sharp.  Stay up late and/or get up early given the longer days with more sunlight hours.  I have found the drink package is counterintuitive for my goals of being alert, awake and outside as much as possible to soak in Alaska. 

It's one of the great things about Royal Caribbean's loyalty program.  No other cruise lines give away daily drinks in the loyalty program like the Royal family of cruise lines do.

First off, welcome to the land of the living. You will not go back to Circus.
We went on Freedom just before the upgrade and it was still a wonderful ship.
I hope you have a wonderful time. 
To me the Promenade is what makes it on RC and it just goes up from there.
I hope you come back with your impressions afterwards.
 

The worst odds are the quarter machines where you drop quarters in and put pushes out money

I was thinking if not for the e-muster I'd convince her we need to practice getting into the lifeboat.

Man a lot of Debbie downers in this thread. Nothing wrong with a joke here and there on vacation God forbid. It might be hard to pull off now with the e-muster but several years ago we convinced my Father In-Law that he needed to bring his life jacket to the muster station for practice. 
Once he saw us at his door with no life jackets he immediately took his off but even that 15 seconds when he opened the door was priceless.

Man a lot of Debbie downers in this thread. Nothing wrong with a joke here and there on vacation God forbid. It might be hard to pull off now with the e-muster but several years ago we convinced my Father In-Law that he needed to bring his life jacket to the muster station for practice. 
Once he saw us at his door with no life jackets he immediately took his off but even that 15 seconds when he opened the door was priceless.

Well first off we were thinking about skipping Giovanni's because it just looked really casual and to be honest we didn't love Gio's Table the old concept. But we could not have been more wrong. Thankfully we decided to have lunch there on like day three and it was incredible and we went back for dinner on the last night. Everything is awesome. When we went for lunch they recommended three appetizers (The meat and cheese plate, stromboli, & Caprese) all was great but then we each ordered our own actual pizza when we could have split one or really just had the apps for lunch. It was just me and my Wife so we missed not having extra people to help with the sharable portions. 
Teppanyaki - has one of the best views on the ship and is definitely worth one of your dinners.
Playmakers - Food was good sports bar food if you are into that sort of thing and was great to just munch on late night watching a game. I think you could order up to 11pm
Wonderland - If you have never done it before I would say do it because it was an experience but you might have to get something to eat later on because it is not really a "Filling" meal.
We missed the opportunity to have some food at Giovanni's Wine Bar and I found out they have fried lasagna bites that I wish we would have tried.
Obviously CHOPS, CHOPS, CHOPS, everybody! CHOPS!

We just did the UDP on Odyssey last week. We very much enjoyed it; but as it was our first time graduating from the 3 night package we felt the need to get the most bang for our buck and did it for lunch and dinner every night and even got some food in playmakers with it. (additional non meal time stops at Izumi) We would do it again but next time we get it we will not focus on absolutely having to have every possible meal we can in specialty. Some nights we were working around their schedule so we ate too early and then on the sea days when we did lunch it felt like we just ate the whole day. 
We did enjoy the food in Playmakers quite a bit while watching a game later in the evening. 
The Pub food was for whatever reason not included. I don't know if that is always the case or perhaps the bartender just made a mistake. Regardless the food is not very expensive in the Pub to begin with, like 4-8$ for appetizers. 
I would say if you are going on a ship that has many specialty dinning options then you should definitely do it. If you are going on a ship with fewer options it might make more sense to do the chops +1 or something else.

We just did the UDP on Odyssey last week. We very much enjoyed it; but as it was our first time graduating from the 3 night package we felt the need to get the most bang for our buck and did it for lunch and dinner every night and even got some food in playmakers with it. (additional non meal time stops at Izumi) We would do it again but next time we get it we will not focus on absolutely having to have every possible meal we can in specialty. Some nights we were working around their schedule so we ate too early and then on the sea days when we did lunch it felt like we just ate the whole day. 
We did enjoy the food in Playmakers quite a bit while watching a game later in the evening. 
The Pub food was for whatever reason not included. I don't know if that is always the case or perhaps the bartender just made a mistake. Regardless the food is not very expensive in the Pub to begin with, like 4-8$ for appetizers. 
I would say if you are going on a ship that has many specialty dinning options then you should definitely do it. If you are going on a ship with fewer options it might make more sense to do the chops +1 or something else.

It's the number of shots you buy for Matt on a cruise.

Well first off we were thinking about skipping Giovanni's because it just looked really casual and to be honest we didn't love Gio's Table the old concept. But we could not have been more wrong. Thankfully we decided to have lunch there on like day three and it was incredible and we went back for dinner on the last night. Everything is awesome. When we went for lunch they recommended three appetizers (The meat and cheese plate, stromboli, & Caprese) all was great but then we each ordered our own actual pizza when we could have split one or really just had the apps for lunch. It was just me and my Wife so we missed not having extra people to help with the sharable portions. 
Teppanyaki - has one of the best views on the ship and is definitely worth one of your dinners.
Playmakers - Food was good sports bar food if you are into that sort of thing and was great to just munch on late night watching a game. I think you could order up to 11pm
Wonderland - If you have never done it before I would say do it because it was an experience but you might have to get something to eat later on because it is not really a "Filling" meal.
We missed the opportunity to have some food at Giovanni's Wine Bar and I found out they have fried lasagna bites that I wish we would have tried.
Obviously CHOPS, CHOPS, CHOPS, everybody! CHOPS!

Well first off we were thinking about skipping Giovanni's because it just looked really casual and to be honest we didn't love Gio's Table the old concept. But we could not have been more wrong. Thankfully we decided to have lunch there on like day three and it was incredible and we went back for dinner on the last night. Everything is awesome. When we went for lunch they recommended three appetizers (The meat and cheese plate, stromboli, & Caprese) all was great but then we each ordered our own actual pizza when we could have split one or really just had the apps for lunch. It was just me and my Wife so we missed not having extra people to help with the sharable portions. 
Teppanyaki - has one of the best views on the ship and is definitely worth one of your dinners.
Playmakers - Food was good sports bar food if you are into that sort of thing and was great to just munch on late night watching a game. I think you could order up to 11pm
Wonderland - If you have never done it before I would say do it because it was an experience but you might have to get something to eat later on because it is not really a "Filling" meal.
We missed the opportunity to have some food at Giovanni's Wine Bar and I found out they have fried lasagna bites that I wish we would have tried.
Obviously CHOPS, CHOPS, CHOPS, everybody! CHOPS!

We just did the UDP on Odyssey last week. We very much enjoyed it; but as it was our first time graduating from the 3 night package we felt the need to get the most bang for our buck and did it for lunch and dinner every night and even got some food in playmakers with it. (additional non meal time stops at Izumi) We would do it again but next time we get it we will not focus on absolutely having to have every possible meal we can in specialty. Some nights we were working around their schedule so we ate too early and then on the sea days when we did lunch it felt like we just ate the whole day. 
We did enjoy the food in Playmakers quite a bit while watching a game later in the evening. 
The Pub food was for whatever reason not included. I don't know if that is always the case or perhaps the bartender just made a mistake. Regardless the food is not very expensive in the Pub to begin with, like 4-8$ for appetizers. 
I would say if you are going on a ship that has many specialty dinning options then you should definitely do it. If you are going on a ship with fewer options it might make more sense to do the chops +1 or something else.

Just have a great time! Try the Poutine in The Pub its delicous!

Well first off we were thinking about skipping Giovanni's because it just looked really casual and to be honest we didn't love Gio's Table the old concept. But we could not have been more wrong. Thankfully we decided to have lunch there on like day three and it was incredible and we went back for dinner on the last night. Everything is awesome. When we went for lunch they recommended three appetizers (The meat and cheese plate, stromboli, & Caprese) all was great but then we each ordered our own actual pizza when we could have split one or really just had the apps for lunch. It was just me and my Wife so we missed not having extra people to help with the sharable portions. 
Teppanyaki - has one of the best views on the ship and is definitely worth one of your dinners.
Playmakers - Food was good sports bar food if you are into that sort of thing and was great to just munch on late night watching a game. I think you could order up to 11pm
Wonderland - If you have never done it before I would say do it because it was an experience but you might have to get something to eat later on because it is not really a "Filling" meal.
We missed the opportunity to have some food at Giovanni's Wine Bar and I found out they have fried lasagna bites that I wish we would have tried.
Obviously CHOPS, CHOPS, CHOPS, everybody! CHOPS!

We just did the UDP on Odyssey last week. We very much enjoyed it; but as it was our first time graduating from the 3 night package we felt the need to get the most bang for our buck and did it for lunch and dinner every night and even got some food in playmakers with it. (additional non meal time stops at Izumi) We would do it again but next time we get it we will not focus on absolutely having to have every possible meal we can in specialty. Some nights we were working around their schedule so we ate too early and then on the sea days when we did lunch it felt like we just ate the whole day. 
We did enjoy the food in Playmakers quite a bit while watching a game later in the evening. 
The Pub food was for whatever reason not included. I don't know if that is always the case or perhaps the bartender just made a mistake. Regardless the food is not very expensive in the Pub to begin with, like 4-8$ for appetizers. 
I would say if you are going on a ship that has many specialty dinning options then you should definitely do it. If you are going on a ship with fewer options it might make more sense to do the chops +1 or something else.

Nope, no one here has ever done the UDP!
Sorry, couldn’t resist, just kidding.