CruiserNic

Just incase anyone else is in the same boat as me and dying to cruise again but are not covid vaccinated, Virgin cruises is allowing 10% of adults (adults only cruise line) to be unvaccinated. We will be coming back to royal I'm sure but for now virgin will have to do. Haven't booked yet but still exciting being able to look at booking knowing it's actually possible to go again. Hopefully all the other cruise lines will follow along soon. 

Latest discussion is very interesting.  I    am headed out on Aug 8th.  Normally I    book all on my own.  This time I  used MEI, too.  They treated me awesome.
I    enjoy engaged banter and discussion.  Can't wait to do it on a ship with you folks in the future, in depth thoroughly.  If you don't want to buy the drink package beause it costs a fortune....I    will find a way to sneak you one. 😉 
For the sake of simplicity, can we all just lobby for TODAY.
2020 Protocols ....It's the past.  Who did what, when they did it, how they did.  We can argue the facts, the data, the measures, etc. etc....PAST no impact today
2021 Protocols ....It's the past.  We can debate who launched first, who ranked best with CDC, who complied the best, took care of their employees best, cut their losses the best, restructured billions best, etc. etc.  PAST no impact today.
2022 Today, right now, current climate, current status, remove all the past baggage of timing, politics, variants, blah blah blah.  NONE of the restrictive additional protocols in place today make any logical, mathematical, impactful sense other than the ones mom taught us when we were kids.  They simply congest, cause stress, irritate, waste money and we all will continue to pay for it.
DROP THEM ALL.  I'll take "rolling" them back gingerly, but simply lay it out there and tell these locations to alter or the ship alters the stop.  The revenue is enormous and they will alter policy.  RCCL will rally its customers by taking a stand.  

I'm not sure that's accurate (Royal desperately wanted a vax mandate). 
Royal went to great lengths to build their protocols so that unvax could sail.  They even deployed vax areas and unvax areas on the ships just so that unvax could sail.  Royal did test cruises while other lines like Carnival did not, so that unvax could sail.  Royal used vax bracelets for months on the premise that unvax might be able to sail soon.  
Royal did a lot of work on the premise that unvax would be able to cruise until the Bahamas instituted their vax requirement.  Then St Thomas and San Juan followed with their vax requirements, then other destinations like St. Kitts.  Despite that Royal continued to sail ships with vax and unvax areas on the ships hoping the vax requirements would be lifted by the destinations. 
It was not until the CDC's CSO 2.0 came out that defined "highly vaccinated" ships wouldn't need masks and anything less than "highly vaccinated" by the CDC definition would be virtually impossible to sail.  The CDC created their CSO 2.0 so that no cruise line would attempt to sail anything but "highly vaccinated".  The CDC couldn't establish a vax mandate but they could make it really ugly to perform a cruise with less than 95% vax rates so that's what they did.  
Royal has always taken steps in the direction to try to allow unvax to sail but they have always been kept from achieving that by either the destinations or the CDC.  If anyone,  NCL wanted a vax mandate.  NCL took Florida to court over it.  Royal never jumped on that bandwagon.  

It really seems to me that regardless of what Royal changes, there are going to be countries that will still require testing and/or vaccination. I'm sure that we will eventually get to the point where no one is requiring anything at all. So until then...just go with the flow. 
32 days until we board Harmony and a MUCH needed vacation!!!!

Need to skip any Country that won't let in the untested/unvaccinated. It is their right to refuse entry and it is the cruise lines right to go somewhere else or just cruise around the Caribbean. I rarely get off in Nassau anyway. I do like the empty ship as everyone else disembarks though.

You nailed the question, and I appreciate the answer. I can understand how changing the dining for one night can cascade into the other nights. 
Here's what I have drawn up:
 

I will attempt to answer your question in the way I understood it.
First, all of our dining times were scheduled by me to have an hour buffer time before and after, just in case we did not get that specific time.
For instance, Izumi on day 2 for lunch on day 2 was scheduled for noon.  We had plans to do flowrider at 3pm.  The time we got for Izumi was 12:30 instead of noon.  So we took it and still had time to get changed for flowrider.
We did not have to swap out venues for times because we scheduled enough buffer time.  
Even if the latter was not true, we had the UDP for 7 nights and we had to stick to our schedule as much as possible because we wanted at least one full day between dining at the same venue.  We did not want to eat Chops 2 days in a row.  So we had Chops on Sunday, and then again on Tuesday for lunch.  If we had to swap out venues for times, we might have ended up eating sushi 2 days n a row, Italian 2 days in a row, etc...

We were probably one of the first 50 to board our cruise this past June.  First thing that I did was run to Chops and begin reserving our specialty dining with the host.  
I used my spreadsheet and began reserving.  Even though I was one of the first on board and overly prepared with my spreadsheet, I did not get the exact times for my family of 4 dining on each day.  They gave me times that were more than acceptable, but they were off by 30 minutes or so for most days.  
I highly suspect this was due to (1) limited seating in each venue, and (2) Key and Suite guest priority reservations.
My advice is to be flexible.  You will likely get your reservations, just might not be the exact times you were looking for.
Also, keep in mind that (at least on the Ovation) the Chops host could schedule all of our reservations, but only the Chops reservations showed up immediately on our daily planner app.  The other ones took 2 days or so to appear.  Write down the times on paper when the host makes the reservations.  
Oh...one last thing, many people told me that any host from any specialty dining restaurant could book all of your reservations.  That was not the case for us on the Ovation.  The Izumi host could only make Izumi reservations for us.  May be a specific computer glitch, may be fleet wide (I doubt it), but be aware that Chops was out go to host stand. 

I think it's mostly the party size.......yes you are battling suite guest, but a 9-top might be your biggest issue.

Once on board, you make the reservations.  You should have one courtesy reservation.
Go directly to Chops and see the host.  Make ALL of your reservations there.  This will take no more than 10 minutes of your time.  Unless you get on the ship at 3pm, the chances of you getting all of your preferred reservations are high.
Visit multiple venues in a day.  You paid for it.  

Yes, you must wait until you are on the ship to make your reservations.  It's always the first thing we do when we board.  You can visit as many or the included restaurants as you want each day.
Enjoy your cruise!

On our cruise last month...Some were wearing masks but most people were not and all crew were wearing masks.  If your group feels safer wearing a mask...Go for it!  You will not be the only ones wearing one.

Welcome to the boards and thank you for your service.
Who booked the cruise for you?
Did they book you a guarantee cabin?

@Shadyrollz
Dear Veteran, thank you so much for serving I feel heartfelt appreciation for our vets ❤️
We are a fan site with much cruising experience some here are BETTER than RC customer service. 
I know I book specific cabins for my personal needs and I as well don't sail if my cabin isn't what I need for my sailing. That being said what are your criteria without getting to personal. Does it have to be in a certain area of the ship, mid ship, aft or forward for instance? On a certain deck due to the perceived confinement of some cabins? Do you prefer an accessible due to certain abilities? 
Please minimally we need to know what would make this work for you. Also, what ship or ship class do you prefer? What itinerary? What ports? How many days? Sailings are not sold out until 2024 albeit the original ship may be booked at capacity; so just give us something more to work with and we will help you get there. 
We will help you, it's just your original post had so much frustration, I get it. If you give us more we will do our best to help you experience a most comfortable sailing. Standing by, sir please come back and provide more details. 
I'm sure the cabin booked was wrong due to a perception error, I'm confident enough a Royal rep wouldn't book you in something you didn't want. Let's do this together.

On your original receipt when you first booked was the cabin correct?   Not fully understanding the whole thing.  Did you use travel agent, etc.

Welcome to the board.
This is a fan site; all we can do is offer advice.
I don't know how your room situation happened, or what exactly needs to occur. Without knowing the ship, type of room and sailing dates, there is no real way to offer you the best advice.  If the sailing is close-in you might be out of luck. I find it hard to believe they are booked up until 2024, so call back again. Different reps will have different answers.

Hoping they drop the mandate all together by Oct!
 
Happy Cruising!

Not sure of logic here personally.  Surely length of cruise irrelevant with covid testing.  Either everyone or none at all.  The whole aim of vacs is to prevent serious illness.  It does NOT stop you catching & passing on, so again, logic of extra testing of those who have both vacs bot no booster, seems odd as anyone regardless of status can carry, pass covid on.  RC trying to tick boxes but come on RC, the CDC have said testing now not required, so choose...all or none. This will anger those on 6nights & above, as no logic.  We all know its our own risk if we choose to holiday, go on cruise with covid now part of the fabric of the world.  Even someone fully upto date, could bring covid on board, where pre cruise test hasn't picked up, as maybe slightly too early to detect.  Family member had last week & showed neg for 3days even though classic symptoms.  4th day tested +.  
This is my opinion only,  so I'm nit saying 1 persons view right or wrong. I am fully up to date on vacs & was very anxious of covid. Still not keen to catch it but realise my own risk.

I would be surprised if an antigen test isn't also allowed

I saw that CCL dropped the PCR for unvaxxed. I am hopeful RCL will reconsider this and allow an antigen for unvaxxed as well. 

Which, I feel will continue to be the case; because, the science says vaccinated persons are leading candidates of spreading the virus, and RCG, stated, the staff will continue to be fully vaxxed & boosted... not to mentioned the 80+ percent passengers. Cruise lines would serve themselves better, to forgo it all together, like most of society.

It's okay to post "I like this change Royal Caribbean made..." or "I don't like this change Royal Caribbean made..." because it's discussing the POLICY. It's not debating covid itself.
There's no problem with discussing the changes Royal Caribbean is making, and engaging in a debate of what the cruise line should or should not do. 
But when you veer into talking beyond the cruise line policies, that's where the problem exists.
I try to give some leeway to everyone, but when it crosses the line, it has to go. This is how we prevent this forum from descending into a miserable place to go, as other forums have become.

It's been our policy for 2+ years to remove comments that veer away from cruise discussion and talk debate covid, vaccines, et al. 
Keep the discussion to cruises, not your thoughts on vaccinations, the state of covid, or anything like that. 
Why?
Because no one convinces anyone else of anything and it just irritates everyone. 

Okay, so right now the unvaccinated do still need a PCR test, but do not any longer have to test at the port or on board at the five day mark.
 

I just got off the phone with the access department, 100% I no longer need the religious exemption request. She said she thinks the PCR still applies, but she isn't sure so she's transferring me to CS.