Jacqui

That's what I was thinking. When I did a mock booking, it came up as a non-refundable deposit, but I'll have to see if there's an option to change it further in the booking process.

Thanks for the tip! We will do balcony so there should be a little more availability, but it did still seem limited when I looked. I'll talk to my husband soon to see if he has any preferences and make sure he definitely wants to do this given that the next few years are a bit up in the air when it comes to some personal stuff. Hopefully it'll all work out for us! He's been wanting to do an Alaska cruise for many years now.

Thanks for the input. I am torn for these reasons. I know the smaller ships can get to places the bigger ones can't, but at the same time I worry about the smaller ships being outdated and not have as much to do/less dining options and such. I was spoiled with Symphony being my first Royal cruise this past October so now I'm used to having a brand new ship with tons to do . I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's opinions but I have a feeling it'll lean towards the smaller ships.

I'm thinking of possibly doing an Alaska cruise in 2023. Most likely in June if we do decide to go. I'm curious of others' opinions on ship and itinerary. Which ship (enchantment, ovation, quantum, or radiance) do you prefer and why? What itinerary or ports do you recommend and why? Seattle is probably the easiest and cheapest to get to and from, but I'm open to any start or end ports. Thanks!

It's like a credit card. I put it in my cross body purse when I carried it but we ended up buying lanyards from the RC store on like the 2nd day of our cruise and it was definitely worth it. Felt like I was back in middle school wearing it around though lol.

To an extent, I agree with this. However, it was kind of annoying having a 7pm sail away, which ended up slightly delayed, and then the only nighttime broadway show being night 1 at 7:45pm. We didn't get to fully enjoy sail away because we had to run to the show. The show was great, but it was poor planning on Royal's part in my opinion.

In addition to spreading people out during the check in process, we noticed on our Symphony cruise out of Miami last month that we were the last ship to leave port. We watched the ships from other cruise lines go before us, so the overall schedule out of the port likely plays a role too.

I was on Symphony 3 weeks ago and never made reservations for Windjammer. Our sailing was about 40% capacity. Windjammer was a bit full most of the time but employees were eager to help you find a seat and made sure to clean tables quickly so we never had an issue.

You don't officially know til you board. There will be a sheet with all show times in your room with the cruise compass for day 1. You can always try to find someone from a sailing prior to yours and ask them to send you their schedule. If it's close to your sailing, it likely won't change much.

We sailed Symphony 3 weeks ago and it was a super easy check in. There were separate lines outside the terminal for each time slot. It was a little confusing where to go, but there were employees out there you could ask where to go. They did check our time before letting us in the 12pm line. We got in line early for our 12pm check in and they actually started letting us in early, around 11:30ish I think. We had drinks in our hands by 11:55.

I bought a bottle of the peach habanero rum from Toppers. Pretty much every flavor we tried was good though!

We stopped in St. Maarten on our cruise on Symphony 3 weeks ago. We did the double decker bus tour which went through both sides of the island. We didn't see anything concerning, but I think our stops were mostly on the Dutch side.

We had just surf on our cruise 3 weeks ago. I was able to upload pictures and videos to facebook but it took hours for a full batch of 80 photos. I tried posting an instagram story (video) one day and gave up on that because it just kept spinning.

We were on Symphony 3 weeks ago and my husband's passport expires in March. He didn't even get any questions about it. I did have him take his birth certificate just in case, but he didn't end up needing it. We went to St. Thomas and St. Maarten. Might still be worthwhile to take the birth certificates just in case. Better safe than sorry.

From what I've seen, the best deals are on port days. On Symphony a few weeks ago, we weren't able to stop at cococay due to weather and they ran a 20% off promotion for massages. That was also our last day of the cruise so they might have had deals regardless.