Bowen

We stayed in the 2BR on Harmony and watched the show from the balcony. You can easily seat 4 at the bar (I think there were only 4 chairs there), but there was plenty of standing room. I don’t think 12 would be a problem.

I was checking the app today for our sailing in a few weeks and I can’t find any open ice skating. Does anyone know if it is still offered?

Does anyone know if there is still ice skating on board? I can’t find it in the daily activities.

Make more pizzas!

We did Allure in January and April, there were two comedians on board both times, one was different in April, one was the very same guy as January, so I don’t think they’re different every cruise, unless we just had a huge coincidence. Could be. I’m hopeful neither is on board in September.

When we needed to link a group on our last cruise, nine people, we linked the reservations before hand, but they didn’t link the tables as requested. So the first night took an extra 20 minutes or so to get that sorted, and then every night after that we ate at the same table.

I didn’t notice any difference at all.

You can participate without being in the action. Like when I did it they asked for each team to come up with a bottle of prescription medication. I had some with me so I threw it to the team leader without leaving my seat. In hindsight that could have been very bad if he’d been unable to catch it and it had hit the ground and popped open, so I wouldn’t do that again, but certainly you can help the team score without doing anything at all embarrassing.

I’ve only done it once, It seemed to me that the people in the crowd had done it a lot, like they came prepared. It kind of felt…fabricated somehow, if that makes sense. I think if you had people who came and didn’t know shot e about it, that would be a riot.

Same. I carry a light jacket in my "around the ship" bag, and I wear it a lot. The ships get too chilly for me in the general areas, but my family is fine.

What a wonderful story. And sage advice.

I'd agree that probably not stuff like escape room, but yes they will have slots on board to book for shows and dinner.

Maybe not, but it's helpful advice in case you ever do cruise again. One thing I learned from being on this board is that if you have a problem on board you really need to escalate on board. It's not anyone being mean to your cause, which I do hope you get resolved, it just bears repeating over and over. I cruised with friends in April who had a problem with their room and I told them to go to customer service every single day and escalate. It never got resolved while they were on board, they had established that there was a problem, and they were given compensation after the fact. Were I not a member of this board I would never have known to tell them. All that said, I hope you get it fixed, I hope you cruise again, and (because there will probably be another problem you need addressed) I hope you take to heart that escalation on board is the way to get things done.

It's been a hot second since my kids have been in AO, but from what I remember there will be limited hours the first day, like you can go in and check it out and sign them up on the first day after 3 or something, and then bring them back from 5 until 10 p.m. The rest of the cruise they are consistently open, but will close for meal times, so maybe open from 9-noon, and then 2-5 and then 6 to 10 on sea days, but open pretty much the whole day (maybe closing for an hour or two at all aboard) on port days so you can leave the kids in AO while you go ashore, if you want to. I remember that there was one cruise that the kids could choose to eat with the group and they would be taken to the buffet as a group, but I can't remember if that was Royal or Disney, so I'm not 100% sure on them feeding the kids. Sorry!

Agreed.

This was our experience when we did Alaska in 2019. We booked side by side rooms, my parents had a large balcony, we had a regular one. They were the same width, but there's was very deep, probably an additional three or four feet compared to ours. We could see the same things from both balconies.

And if you want to verify what I'm saying, go look up TSA biometric data collection on face scans. All of the capability is there, every bit of it. Are they using it on you, maybe, maybe not, but can they take a picture, update your biometrics, and send it to the great warehouse in the sky, absolutely.

Your facts aren't facts at all, though. The original design of facial scanners was to collect (COLLECT) biometric data from foreign nationals, not compare, not snap a shot then immediately delete. Do you think the entire programming was changed because you check a box that says you're an American Citizen and thus that data will not be collected from you? Also, as to your claim that the pictures are immediately deleted, this is false, even by TSAs own verbiage. The pictures are deleted, but kept on the RAM until actually deleted, which normally happens every 24 hours OR after the unit has been powered down for 30 minutes, BUT pictures may be kept if they can be useful to make the whole recognition software more reliable. So, believe what you want to believe, I'm going to let my family believe what they want to believe. If there's one thing I learned in the past three years it's that there's a whole lot I don't know, and I'm not going to dismiss it when other people have opinions that I might think are wild. And I'm still going to be walking through the facial scanning section of customs, but I'm certainly NOT going to be judging anyone for a fool if they decide against it.

It's very fast, we have a split every time, and without fail the passport lines are slower than the BC lines coming back from Galveston. We sailed in September, January, and April, part of the family used the BC line each time, they were through before the rest of us each time.

Today's delusions are tomorrows FOIA admissions. You do you, my family can do what they want, it's nothing to you. Just stop being rude.

We'd like to do an excursion in at least one port, but we like to do things in our own little group of 10 ish people. We did the monkey/sloth thing in Roatan last time and it was a lot of fun. The guide even took us to his buddy's house and opened up coconuts for us so we could drink the water. It was really a great excursion. Is there anything more personalized like that that any of you would recommend in any of those three ports? Thanks!

It's so nuts that so many people get bothered by something that affects them not at all.

We've grown our group! Two married couples in their 40s, one older couple in their 70s, and four kids 12-16. It's going to be so much fun! We plan on seeing all of the shows again, but we probably won't watch the comedy shows again, we were kind of meh on them last sailing and I presume they are the same.

I don't believe that, neither do they, so they can err on the side of caution.

That's not their issue, their issue is that every time you walk through one of those facial scanners your photo is updated in the database. They don't want that. They want to provide photos on their terms. Just like how people turn off their GPS and stuff, yeah it can probably be extrapolated, but if you'd like to only give information when you want to give it, then that's okay.