GKMCruising

We enjoyed Ovation because of all the extra shows, dining venues, etc. That said, we definitely spent most of our time off the ship, and the seas were too rough / winds too strong to enjoy the pool deck or most outdoor activities on sea days anyways.

7 hours ago, twangster said:

Good luck with that  

I've seen people with self-made gold "Pinnacle in Training" badges before and thought they were the only thing more ridiculous than the actual Pinnacle badges.

Not *that* weird, but would have been extra concerning had we not seen the whole thing go down from start to finish.

50 minutes ago, Sharla said:

Remember they often raise the prices of guests 1 & 2 for this, so it's not always the best deal. It's a marketing tactic to get people interested.

Some people do indeed save money, just don't think you're automatically going to save.

Yup. We *did* save about $250 on our sailing for Harmony in September, but I've definitely checked on Kids Sail Free before and not had it be any cheaper.

That's... bizarre. 

1 hour ago, Debstr66 said:

First time purchaser of The Key sailing on Mariner out of Port Canaveral Saturday.  I saw the "no shorts" policy for the MDR; does that apply to the welcome lunch? Don't want to drive two hours in smart casual clothes. Thanks for all your great advice on this forum! 

You'll be fine, trust me. As long as you're not in a soaking wet bathing suit or a robe, they'll probably let you in. My wife and I broke the cardinal rule about no shorts at dinner the last night on Wonder after Coco Cay because we were sunburned and got back to the boat with not much time to spare before our dinner reservations as it was.

16 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

I'm guilty of this one.  Sometimes it's the only way to get on at all !

I think we're *all* guilty of that one on occasion.

3 hours ago, BowTieBrigade said:

Curious about what this is referring to

Bloggers/vloggers, I'd imagine.

Hmmm.... a sailing from NOLA might convince me to try out Radiance class, finally.

We never got an email for anything regarding testing when we did Wonder a few weeks ago with our 2.5 year old - they simply sent us straight to testing when we arrived for boarding. 

1 hour ago, jay1021 said:

Non-parenting parents.  I never blame kids or dogs for the lack of parenting.  Many parents I just want to ......., well, I won't get violent here.  To all non-parenting parents, take control of you yelling, screaming, running, running around the dinning room yelling and screaming, tasting stuff on the buffet and then putting it back, licking the windows, throwing food all over the eating facility, babies with non-stop crying/screaming in dinning rooms/restaurants/snack bars without any reaction by parents, et al.  I don't take a cruise to parent YOUR kids, the cruise lines is not your babysitter except for the appropriate facilities.  If you can't parent you kids, don't take them out in public, especially in a closed environment like a cruise ship.  

My opinion is:  Businesses, especially cruise lines tend to say when you complain about bad behaving kids, "Well, this is a family friendly cruise line".  Fine, I don't have a problem with that.  However, they have to remember that there are other categories of cruisers on the ship, too.  Besides this topic, I'm not a complainer.  But, when I do complain and it takes a lot for me to complain, I expect something to be done.  

 

JMHO

As someone with a 2.5 year old, I agree completely. If she's in a bad mood / tired / whatever, I'm not going to try and bring her out in public, I'm going to figure out some way to get her mood fixed before we ever leave the room. 

I felt terrible on our cruise on Ovation last September - she was jet lagged and had a total screaming meltdown in the MDR first night of the cruise. I took her out, walked her around, all to no avail. Finally wound up just taking her back to our stateroom and having the rest of our dinner brought up. I'm pretty sure we made an older couple that was in there that night decide not to come back for the rest of the cruise... but she was good as gold the rest of the week. 

13 hours ago, jeffmw said:

There's a person who maintains a fairly rudimentary website with a list of cruise incidents, including people overboard. Oddly, it seems to happen more on Carnival ships on average than RCI. In fact, according to this website, of the 5 ships to have at least 5 people go overboard since 2000, 4 are Carnival ships (none are Royal ships.) 

http://www.cruisejunkie.com/events.html

http://www.cruisejunkie.com/Overboard.html

 

 

I suspect the singles / party crowd on Carnival accounts for this, as opposed to the more family-centric crowd on Royal. Just a guess, though.

11 minutes ago, fa-li said:

Political statement clothing. Of any leaning. I like to escape politics on vacation. 

I remember one excursion in Nassau the bus driver made an off-hand comment about whoever the current US President was - either Obama or Trump, I don't remember the year - while trying to make small-talk with the guests getting on the shuttle. It did *not* endear him to anyone.

1 hour ago, Templecruiser said:

I did not see a list, do you know what it was? I bump to the next week on another ship as Wonder before and after did not have any GS left.

• 6-Night Western Caribbean cruise onboard Wonder of the Seas sailing to Cozumel, Mexico, Roatan, Honduras, and Costa Maya, Mexico on December 18^th
• 6-Night Western Caribbean cruise onboard Jewel of the Seas sailing to Costa Maya, Mexico, Roatan, Honduras, and Cozumel, Mexico on December 3^rd
• 7-Night Western Caribbean & Perfect Day cruise onboard Wonder of the Seas sailing to Perfect Day at CocoCay, Nassau, Bahamas, Falmouth, Jamaica, and Labadee, Haiti on November 27^th
• 7-Night Eastern Caribbean & Perfect Day cruise onboard Wonder of the Seas sailing to Perfect Day at CocoCay, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, and Philipsburg, St. Maarten on December 11^th
• 8-Night Eastern Caribbean & Perfect Day cruise onboard Jewel of the Seas sailing to Labadee, Haiti, San Juan, Puerto Rico, St. Croix, U.S.V.I, and Perfect Day at CocoCay on December 9^th

2 hours ago, Templecruiser said:

What did you get for credit with the cancellation? I have not seen any yet.

Someone on the over on that other board about posted the full email:

Quote

To sweeten the offer, you’ll receive a credit to spend onboard per stateroom:

$100 USD for Interior, Ocean View, and Balcony staterooms | $200 USD for Suites

Plus, an additional $50 USD for each third or more guest

That chicken has been fairly polarizing, from what I can tell. I really enjoyed it, but I also know people who have said they thought it was too dry/bland/bready/whatever.

29 minutes ago, coneyraven said:

It seems to me this did happen to RC many years ago when Captain Otto Bang "bumped" into something off the coast of Italy.  I want to say it happened in the early 2010's (he was the Captain of Navigator in 2009.)  Not sure of the details only to know that he was "let go" due to the incident.

With a name like "Otto Bang" they should have seen that coming.

Shame this happened just a bit too late for our sailing on the inaugural last week - will be good to know for future sailings though!

52 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

The requirement to book an RC shore excursion if you have unvaxxed kids has been rescinded (unless the port requires it)

 

Healthy Shore Excursions
For departures on or after March 18, 2022: all guests, regardless of vaccination status, may visit most ports freely or book a shore excursion. A few ports still require an excursion to go ashore, regardless of your vaccination status. For more details on specific requirements by port, please visit our Ports of Call FAQs.

Just came here to post about this. Shame it was just a little too late for our sailing last week, but at least we can plan on it for sailings moving forward (hopefully).

Yeah, they were able to find us one on Ovation in September, but didn't have any on Wonder last week.

1k more? I'm not sure if I'd take that gamble. We did a GTY suite on Ovation in September and were happy with the JS we were assigned, but the GTY was actually cheaper than even the JS, so it was a no-brainer for us.

They did let people on early for the inaugural, but obviously YMMV. We had boarding time at 11:30 and even with getting our daughter tested as well, we were still on board by noon. We didn't book our UDP reservations until like 1 and still had no trouble getting slots. If you've got a big group and aren't flexible on times, you may have issues, but we were able to reserve everywhere we wanted and even got a couple extra walk-up slots.

Yeah, I really wanted to know the story behind that knife block.

33 minutes ago, twangster said:

Which reminds me...  I picked up a delaminated card in the parking lot coming off Odyssey.  Without any printing it was a pretty blue card with a Royal logo. 

I brought it with me to use in the cabin power slot on Wonder.  Now I just realized I left it in the power slot when I debarked.

Darn it, now I need someone else to drop an old card in the parking lot.  

Fun fact, I grabbed one of the little coupon cards from the FL welcome center for the Crocs outlet or something and it worked just fine in the power slot. And, now that you mention it, I left it in our slot as well.

20) They've changed some process/supplier/equipment with printing Seapass cards. It was almost some sort of laminate with the printing and was prone to peeling even without getting wet.