Plumlee2028

Harmony will likely be in Florida, maybe it moves from Orlando down to Miami. Or Icon may be at one of those for the year, or Oasis stays in Miami and Icon goes to NYC. Im starting to thing that maybe Wonder stays in the US and Oasis 6 gets built similarly and they send it to China in 2024. Give the market time to recover. Currently Spectrum is there and they could send Quantum back for a season if they want two ships there in 2023. Thats still quite a lot of capacity. With China, Royal is probably also considering that Carnival is putting a lot into their China operations now. They moved two costa ships into a "upscale" brand in China. In 2023 their newbuild in china (based on Carnival Vista) enters service. Thats a total of around 8000 berths between these three. Costa has Venizia and eventually Firenze should be there, that's another 8000 berths. The market was growing heavily but that clearly stunted. Holding off an extra couple of years on an Oasis class may not be a bad decision.

MSC always cracks me up a bit when they talk about how "innovative" their structure is on this ship, and their "innovative, unique" dry slide from the top decks to the outdoor promenade. Seems like we've seen all that stuff before. That said I would be curious to talk to the engineers about why they chose props/rudders over pods. I imagine a similar bow will be used on Icon, similar to Edge class. Technology wise, I suspect yesterday's Silver Nova announcement gives some clues (some of which Royal has already confirmed). https://www.silversea.com/lp-silver-nova.html

Rhapsody, Jewel, serenade, and Voyager as well.

I think Sabor may be on the way out sadly. They dont seem to be putting it on new ships. It’s my favorite, but I guess paying extra for Mexican food wasnt bringing in the crowds. I think it is only on Allure, Harmony, and Liberty. And Allure will probably lose it once it gets renovated some day to add Playmakers.

I think world cruise starts a few months later, in Dec 23 correct? They must have some other plans for the summer on serenade.

https://www.portofgalveston.com/80/Cruise-Lines-Schedules The port posted their new schedules for 2022. It looks like the first (planned) use of Terminal 3 will be Allure on Nov 13 and then Adventure on Nov 14. Terminal 2 will be then used by Disney for their winter season and Carnival on Saturdays (as they have already been doing).

It's interesting they are replacing Serenade out there, I wonder what that ship will do during the summer. It may do Europe before coming back to the Caribbean to prep for its round the world sailing at the end of the year. I think there will be lots of pieces shifting around with the new ships in 2023(Odyssey, Wonder, and Icon) which makes for interesting watching.

I got back last week from 5 nights on Adventure. It was interesting, because I was on Adventure out of Nassau which didn't require masks. I had no issue wearing them when required, the only negative for me was just forgetting it at the table when getting up for the restroom or something. So basically it was just like what happens everywhere else in life.

One of Carnival's does 6 night in the west then 8 nighters to Bahamas. I think Royal would have to get a third ship there like Carnival to make that worthwhile. Might be a challenge to dedicate the capacity.

We had an outage on Adventure a couple days ago, but it's working okay now.

There is also a need to balance Capital Expenditures. All of the projects they have talked about (Amplifications, Port projects, private destination developments, Celebrity's Revolution program, Silversea ship conversions to Expedition) are expensive. The brands also brought a lot of capacity onboard during the pandemic. Royal's capacity was flat, despite shedding two ships, by adding Odyssey. (Also worth noting, they planned to shed Grandeur to Pullmantur but that became unavailable during the pandemic). Now they just took initial delivery of Wonder. Celebrity took the Apex. Silversea grew substantially with two full ships delivered (dawn and moon, I believe) and their replacement Galapagos vessel. Now for each brand it looks like they keep a 1 ship per year schedule with a year off in between some years, which is still a pretty quick schedule, especially given the sizes. The smallest ship Royal adds in the next few years will be Icon family, over 200,000 tons. Celebrity and Silversea will each add new capacity which will be the largest in their fleets.

If you don't buy ahead Izumi has a la cart pricing, so I would think that would allow to go in for just drinks. I am planning to try in a couple weeks.

That was the case on my Caribbean cruise for 2 of the 3 ports. That said, by June 2022, the rules will be different in some form to include the ports requiring excursions. "Required excursions" ports were based on Covid positivity rates, so they change periodically. Hopefully by June none will be. That said, I would still consider the excursions, there are usually some good ones.

Florida already has LNG. Carnival sails with Mardi Gras year round from Port Canaveral and next year starts with the new Celebration. Icon is a little more interesting for the fact that it won't be the biggest ship in the fleet, so with the new terminal being able to handle Oasis, Icon should be fine for size considerations, but the fueling etc will be the biggest challenge. I imagine the terminal is being built with shore power in mind, which is important for Icon based on their recent press releases about the ship. Port of Galveston has been establishing LNG fueling partnerships for their cargo operators, which likely can be created/extended/etc to include cruise. We won't know for a while why Royal specified the Galveston terminal can handle Icon, could have been they've discussed that ship going there, that class going there, or just because they all have Icon on the brain right now. Im sure we will see in a few months. Interesting times in Galveston beyond Royal. Carnival wanted four ships there before the pandemic started, and even today has three of their larger ships. Disney is keeping the winter sailings they do there, and Norwegian will be basing their newest ship there as a new homeport. The market is going to get more competitive, but its also a huge market.

18knots is a relatively normal speed for those ships. Not much sense in running high power/high fuel burn if the time doesn't require it. More power would give it like 21-22 knots probably at a lot of extra fuel and costs.

I assume just technical work. It got some passenger facing work done in around 2018 or so (I believe) including slides, some room refreshes, Izumi on the promenade, and some other things. I went on Adventure in June, I don't expect any differences. Their marketing team is usually pretty good at making us all very aware of updates.

Yes they are, but you do them onboard, no need to plan ahead for anything. When I was on Adventure back in June, there was 1 ice show, shown 4 or 5 times during the week, 2 outside acts each shown a couple times, and the production show, shown a few times. As soon as you're onboard, you can schedule out your whole cruise with reservations if you wish to plan, or if there's a certain time you really want.

Some of the tracking/vessel location sites look like it's leaving Europe heading towards Coco Cay. Should be back in time. I'll be on the 12th.

During the recent sale, my cruises on the "old" cruise planner site were cheaper bundled, but on the "new site" (My royal cruise or whatever its called) it was more expensive when bundled, similar to what you described in the opening. Might be a coincidence, or may be how they load pricing into the new site, Im unsure.

I got some through the website. They were delivered about 2 weeks ago. Their original expiration was extended by the three months to December 2021. I was trying to do the exact same thing you are, so I took the chance and missed. Still paid the same as three tests somewhere else to order 6 and have the spares.

I am on Adventure in November (admittedly different) but it departs at 5pm as well, moved back from 3pm.

Mine had probably around 20-30 people on a large catamaran. For the outdoor busses they had us split into 2 busses.

I did the Champagne Cat... through Celebrity back in September and loved it. May or may not be the same boat and crew obviously. For mine it was an open air bus drive across the island (about 30 minutes) and about 3-3.5 hours onboard) sailed over the st john and snorkeled off honeymoon beach. Great natural corals with easy snorkeling. There was also a good grass bed that several turtles were feeding on as well. Coming back they kept the drinks flowing if that's your thing (beer, champagne, rum punch, and other options as well) as well as non-alcoholic stuff.

Thank you, that's what I was looking for!

Hello Everyone, I have a couple sailings over the next few months and wanted to see what everyone has been seeing for onboard offerings. We will have a couple of platinum level members with us, so that's what I am interested in, but Im sure others may want to find out about the other levels on recent sailings. Thanks everyone! Enjoying these being the questions we get to ask these days instead of wondering when we get to sail! "