Sea Squirrel

Does anyone know if the 1hr early boarding time via concierge is still a thing on Harmony?

I feel the same way about Nori. I didn't even know about soy wrappers until I saw a comment from @WAAAYTOOO and tried it on my last cruise. All I can say about that is life-changing. Now I love Izumi.

We weren't able to get those knock-out prices but were still able to get HB for 38.99 for two of our Utopia's...thanks to this thread! It has been 74.99 since we booked when Utopia opened.

Hi @Ryan79, was the cooked shrimp the crispy shrimp roll?

Our UDP dropped from 287.98 pp to 249.99. We rebooked and saved 134 for 3. DBP steady at 81.99. It was 72.99 a few weeks ago.

I didn't see this posted so apologies if it is a duplicate. Europe for summer 2025 (Jun-Oct) is now available for booking. Odyssey, Voyager, Explore, Independence, Allure and Brilliance.

Hi @Jessi Patterson, unfortunately the Harmony escape room is closed for maintenance since March '23. We chcecked with CS for our upcoming sailing. I think they are doing puzzle break as a replacement.

We're on HotS for spring break so I asked Customer Service. Something tells me it is down until dry dock. Big sad face.

Sorry. That was Endicott.

Yes. A small boat came along side almost as if tendering. Excursion guests left the ship to the smaller boat that went to the glace face. The smaller boat met Ovation as it docked in port and excursion passengers offloaded back onto Ovation. You can see how far away Ovation really was from the glacier face. The small boat gets very close.

This seems to be the general consensus on here; makes sense. I totally agree on the service. I can't remember a time the CK staff hasn't consistently gone above and beyond and earned extra recognition beyong the AGs in our eyes. Always top notch.

Thanks, that makes sense. I never paid attention to them asking our cabin number.

We did the excursion at Endicott Arm in August. I can't speak for Tracy but I'd imagine they are similar. Although I have heard Tracy can be much too icy for the ship to get close enough and the excursion gets cancelled. In our Endicott experience, the smaller boat used for the excusrsion easily maneuvered around the ice. Ovation stayed maybe a mile or so back. Hope this helps because it is a fantastic excursion. Wouldn't have even noticed it on the CP if we hadn't seen it mentioned here at RCB.

I'm cautiously optimistic but I believe this will be how it works. I've noticed this with Hibachi already even when reserving individually through the CP. YMMV but on our last Oasis, we started checking months out, never saw a 7 or 8 slot. Not one. After boarding, Genie moved our 530 to 8 with no problem. Told us most prime slots are held back and never hit the pre-boarding reservation system (for hibachi). We've noticed the same on our Harmony in March.

Does anyone know if CK staff gets a cut of the auto-gratuities? Also curious if the 18% for specialty goes into the overall AG pool or is it split amongst the staff in the specific restaurant.

Sandals Royal Bahamian is great if you're traveling without children. It is a little pricey but very nice and the all-included food and drinks are great. Baha Mar looks nice but check reviews, I believe pools and some of the other areas are restricted to resort guests unless you pay additional for Beach Club access.

Lago Mar Beach Resort & Club (not to be confused with Mar-a-Lago, lol) is also a good option for 1-2BR suites in Ft. Lauderdale. I believe they've just renovated.

I definitely understand what you're saying but should they really feel less entitled if, when they earned diamond, there was no restriction? Afterall, they also earned it. I agree that there are capacity issues since so many tiered-up quickly due to double points. But those double points were offered to entice people to book in the early days when sailing restarted and not too many folks wanted to sail due to mask restrictions, covid tests etc. I don't think it is too much to ask that Royal recognize that all the double-point folks were instrumental to their recovery and should't let their earned benefits slowly erode away due to capacity issues. As a company, they can do better and find another solution. Just my humble opinion.

This is a pro tip, thanks. We asked for an actual cooler/ice chest with ice in July. It was waiting for us when we arrived, attendant changed ice daily. It was much better than the fridge cooler. I’m not sure if it was a fluke that we got it but we’ll ask if there are any unused med fridges in the future. Thanks for your post.

I vote to bring back metal tipped lawn darts in Central Park. Are you listening Bayley?

Honestly, sounds like fun to me, lol. I could throw it at my $1 slice from Sorrento’s.

We had archery on Oasis in July at the sports court. We didn’t do it but it uses as foam tip so I assume the target senses where the arrow hits. Ax throwing might use the same technology so not so far fetched to believe that it could soon becoming to a ship near you.

We also used Rony’s. We went to Daniel Johnson’s first thing in the morning and beat all the ship excursion buses/crowds. Then we crossed over to spend the rest of the day ar Infinity Bay. We had a great time at both. As others have said, Rony’s will customize for whatever you’d like to do.

Has anyone tried Nacional Beach Resort? It gets pretty good reviews and the pictures look nice (less sargassum). Maya Chan is our first choice but we are sailing in mid-March ‘24 and we are concerned about sargassum on the beach. We are traveling with our 17 yr old daughter and think she might be bored if the beach is unusable. From what we’ve seen, it overwhelmed the smaller places like MC this year but the bigger places were better equipped to handle the huge bloom.

Our hotel was easily walkable to Pike Place Market. I believe the Uber was 50-75 from SeaTac. Since we only had one day, we did an early morning food tasting tour at the Market which was great. After, we headed to the Space Needle and bought a combo ticket which included Chihuly Garden and Glass for about $65. Chihuly Is right next to the Space Needle; highly recommend both. We opted for a hotel shuttle (35pp) to the port rather than ride share. We had a lot of bags so we wanted to get dropped off at the terminal. Also, maybe it has changed but we noticed all the taxis seemed to be small hybrids. Those were too small for our bags so another reason we chose the shuttle. We used a shuttle from port to SeaTac on departure (about 35pp again I believe).