WhoCruiser

I currently have a group of about 75 on wonder as we speak. For our own reasons within the group, we needed to have seven different tables so we could rotate some guests of honor to a different table each successive night, so we needed to have seven tables that all seated 10 or 12. They were very accommodating and pushed together combinations of rectangular fours sixes and twos so that all of our tables totaled out to the required amounts. As long as you set it up ahead of time I don't see it being much of a problem, but if you try to do it on the fly without warning them it would probably be too much to accomplish because it would not be possible to move those tables around if other people are already assigned to them.

On board now and having a great time! A bit over 13 months until we do it again with our specialized celebrity/fan group, with a smaller ship, but a longer & more varied itinerary. This is us next year, just updated the web site accordingly yesterday....

On board now and having a great time! A bit over 13 months until we do it again with our specialized celebrity/fan group, with a smaller ship, but a longer & more varied itinerary. This is us next year, just updated the web site accordingly yesterday....

Misposted...

Really only true of the shorter 3, 4, or even 5 night cruises, as you can only sail so far in the allotted time. With a week or longer, the potential itineraries really open up a lot.

Based on past history I thought they might go as little as a week, and certainly not more than a month, before they had the first incident of hitting a pedestrian or a vehicle. Ended up being less than 1 day, as a pedestrian was hit in Delray Beach by a bright Line train today, uffff! Sometimes I really hate being right...

After all the gaslighting, and all the crap we went through, now this?! Nope, happier where we are now on Explorer on 5 - 15 December, better itinerary, better pricing, almost as nice a ship. If they now turn around and say that Explorer is gonna dissapear into that same phantom zone drydock hell, that'd be it, I'd be off to Carnival or somewhere else instead at this point...

Don't forget, online check-in opens tonight, right after midnight...

Scottish, eh? You JUST missed us with the celebrity/fan group from Doctor Who getting on the ship the same day you get off, with fellow Scots Frazer Hines and Sylvester McCoy on board with us, among others. Take good care of Wonder of the Seas for us and we will gladly do the same the following week!

You will most likely be able to book shore tours on board either through your cabin TV or through a paper you can fill out and drop off with the shore tour people instead of having to wait in a long line to do it face to face at the desk. I might be wrong about this but I don't think I am, of course those who have to make some sort of special Arrangement might still need to talk face to face.

For a minute there I got really scared cuz I thought you meant Gordon Ramsay was on board filming an actual episode for TV! That would be a true nightmare if that ever happened on wonder of the Seas hahaha!

Interestingly enough the app is telling some of our people that check in opens on the 7th and is telling others of our people that are opens on the 6th I can only assume those of us who are being told the 6th are getting that because we're Crown and Anchor members and the people being told the 7th are not in either case I know it starts at 1 minute after midnight.

I wouldn't necessarily call it unique, but if you can get the sunset catamaran harbor cruise that's run by the local operator Red Sail (and yes they do contract with the cruise line through the ship's tour office normally) it is probably the best booze cruise of its kind that I've ever done. Every time our group goes back to Aruba we try to book it, we have done it three times in the last 5 years, one of the few that runs a complete full open bar, not just a jug of rum punch and some ice cubes, hahaha.

What was the earliest available check-in time you saw, and how far after the 45-day window opened were you looking, if you don't mind my asking? We're exactly two weeks after you and I'm looking to get 11:30 check in for as many of my people as I can to smoothly coordinate with our scheduled hotel to pier transportation.

I really don't care one way or the other because all in all it's pretty crappy Pizza. The only reason I have EVER eaten it is because at the time there was nothing else to choose from instead. My opinion of course, and yours may well vary...

I definitely resemble this remark, LOL!

Not quite The Twilight Zone, but we'll have plenty of Doctor Who on our Wonder sailing pre-Halloween, LOL!

You miss us by 2 weeks. Same itinerary but we're also schmoozing it up with cast & crew members from the famous BBC-TV show Doctor Who on board for an awesome celebrity/fan adventure. Take good care of Wonder until we get our turn on her. And if you don't mind a smaller & older ship sailing to much more off the beaten path ports, consider joining our NEXT celebrity/fan voyage with the Who Crew in early December of 2024 on Explorer Of The Seas.

It was kind of a mixed bag price wise, as the outside cabins came in at almost the same price or actually a few dollars less, even though it's a 10 night cruise and the original one we were looking at was an eight nighter, so that's quite an improvement. The inside cabins came in at more than $100 less, so an even better improvement. The balconies however seem to be a little bit higher, which is understandable because on that class of ship there are fewer of them. So price wise overall it's a wash, but I'm extremely happy that the itinerary is, in my opinion, much better, and overall will make up for staying with the smaller older ship rather than the larger newer one.

I am glad that they finally came clean and admitted they were doing what myself, and a number of other astute observers here on the discussion forums had already figured out they were doing two months ago or more. Throughout this entire time, every time my travel agent has inquired they have repeatedly reassured him that it was a clerical error on the website and the ship would sail as planned. Once it showed up on the Harbor Master's registry in Funchal on route to Spain in the middle of November the jig was up, and rather than be caught in the lurch now when they finally announced things publicly and thousands of people are madly running to rebook, I had my travel agent open a fresh group of 50 cabins for us last month on another sailing that suited us, so all he has to do now is let Royal Caribbean know that WE already did the work for them, and they can just cancel that original Freedom booking, and we will keep the new one we're holding on Explorer out of Miami 2 days sooner, which is the ONLY other Royal sailing that works for our needs & our dates, and it's a damn good thing I did this because it is NOT among the few selected alternate sailings. While I have been very much looking forward to doing Freedom class we are quite familiar with the Explorer having taken our group on it twice before for a Pacific Coastal in 2018 and a deep southern Caribbean in 2019 so we will be quite happy to be on her again and other than being on a smaller ship I must say that the overall Port of Call line up on Explorer for the 5th of December is far better and does also include St Lucia for those who were specifically looking for it. I'm also very happy that the call at San Juan actually occurs during the hours that El Morro Fortress is open as I have specifically made a point for many years now to never book a cruise with a San Juan Port call that arrives later than 3:00 in the afternoon with 5:00 p.m. closing at The Fortress. Did that once many years ago and will not fall for that again, being forced to simply walk by outside the biggest and best attraction on the entire Island and wish we could go inside for the tour, hahaha! Now that I finally have confirmation of this I can start to try and make up for the two months of time I lost in not being able to notify my celebrity guest invites for December 2024 of exactly what ship and itinerary and date we would be on. Half a dozen of them have been patiently awaiting that information so I can now start working on firming that up for them so I will have them ready to announce to my current year cruisers when they arrive on wonder of the Seas in October.

Right Fiona - I am glad that they finally came clean and admitted they were doing what you, myself, and a number of other astute observers here on the discussion forums had already figured out they were doing two months ago or more. Throughout this entire time, every time my travel agent has inquired they have repeatedly reassured him that it was a clerical error on the website and the ship would sail as planned. Once it showed up on the Harbor Master's registry in Funchal on route to Spain in the middle of November the jig was up, and rather than be caught in the lurch now when they finally announced things publicly and thousands of people are madly running to rebook, I had my travel agent open a fresh group of 50 cabins for us last month on another sailing that suited us, so all he has to do now is let Royal Caribbean know that WE already did the work for them, and they can just cancel that original Freedom booking, and we will keep the new one we're holding on Explorer out of Miami 2 days sooner, which is the ONLY other Royal sailing that works for our needs & our dates, and it's a damn good thing I did this because, as you have noted, it is NOT among the few selected alternate sailings. While I have been very much looking forward to doing Freedom class we are quite familiar with the Explorer having taken our group on it twice before for a Pacific Coastal in 2018 and a deep southern Caribbean in 2019 so we will be quite happy to be on her again and other than being on a smaller ship I must say that the overall Port of Call line up on Explorer for the 5th of December is far better and does also include St Lucia for those who were specifically looking for it. I'm also very happy that the call at San Juan actually occurs during the hours that El Morro Fortress is open as I have specifically made a point for many years now to never book a cruise with a San Juan Port call that arrives later than 3:00 in the afternoon with 5:00 p.m. closing at The Fortress. Did that once many years ago and will not fall for that again, being forced to simply walk by outside the biggest and best attraction on the entire Island and wish we could go inside for the tour, hahaha! Now that I finally have confirmation of this I can start to try and make up for the two months of time I lost in not being able to notify my celebrity guest invites for December 2024 of exactly what ship and itinerary and date we would be on. Half a dozen of them have been patiently awaiting that information so I can now start working on firming that up for them so I will have them ready to announce to my current year cruisers when they arrive on wonder of the Seas in October.

My group is holding a group reservation for a block of 50 cabins on the sailing on freedom for December 7th 2024 but because of this idiotic situation we are also now holding a group of the same size on Explorer Of The Seas leaving 2 days earlier and until they decide what the f*** they're doing we're going to keep both of them open and dump the one that doesn't exist anymore when they finally admit that it doesn't exist. The ONLY reason I haven't dumped it yet is the EXCEEDINGLY small possibility that they MIGHT move another ship to cover for those six weeks, unlikely as it is. In the meantime I am if you'll pardon the pun dead in the water on making any kind of promotional advertising or even invitations toward my celebrity talent for this group until I can tell them definitively which damned Voyage we're on really bad way to run things Royal has me seriously looking at moving to Carnival where this sort of thing does not seem to happen celebration and Mardi Gras are looking real real good to me now...

Much discussion on this subject and the cruise line's extremely annoying silence on the issue on at least two other discussion threads. Apparently it was originally supposed to be dry docked for several weeks during January and February (which is just about the 5-year statutory mark since it was last dry docked, so that made a hell of a lot of sense) and that's why no dates were announced during that time period when the schedules for that late 2024 early 2025 winter schedule became public. Then a couple of months ago the mid-november through late December dates suddenly disappeared with no explanation, and the ship showed up with a scheduled port call on the Harbor Master's public register in Funchal, Madiera, midway across the ocean on its way to Europe in mid-november. Those of us who know the business well enough have already figured out that they switched the dry dock period to an earlier time, but they have NOT bothered to cancel or even inform those booked on the November and December voyages of even the possibility that they may be $#!t out of luck now, nor have they reannounced new dates in January and February for the time that it will probably be available now. My travel agent has specifically inquired on this issue with his contacts at the cruise line and has been repeatedly told that it is a simple clerical error on the website, which is obviously bull$#!t because if that were true it would have been corrected long ago, and would certainly not have caused the ship to suddenly show up on a port register halfway across the ocean on its way to dry dock in Spain, hahaha how dumb do they think we are? Hell of a way to run a cruise line.

To paraphrase a classic Seinfeld episode, "The ocean called, they want you to take your iPad back..."

Damn that does look rather sad, I'd be terribly disappointed with that compared to what we used to get.