Al Miller

...and also "Who the **** is Alice?"

There's that long table in the hall just before you get to cafe 270 too.

Yeah, that sucks. I always try to bring something that I can mark my table with. Hat, jacket, over shirt, water bottle, freestyle cup, walking cane... Cane is the easiest for me since I usually have it with me anyway and I can get around the WJ well enough for short trips to the stations. I sort of just lay it across the table when i get up to refill. Folks seem to get the message.

It's not a "Club" Club. There is no loud music or dancing.

Jamie's is not open late at night or early in the morning. So unless you are an incredibly early to bed person or sleep in late, it will probably be a non issue. I suppose if they are doing prep work in Jamies kitchen early in the morning, you might be able to hear that?

Not really. Best you can do is look up a past CC for your ship with the same itinerary.

Mr. T's buddies used to just drug him and he'd wake up in a new country! Things were much simpler in the 80's

I am sure managing stock levels in a kitchen on the scale of a cruise ship is a tough job. At low stock levels they probably have to limit it and at other times they probably need to get the old stuff out of the way they can. So they make it much easier to get them. Even frozen, that stuff has a shelf life. I thought I remember someone saying that they even offered the tails in the Buffet occasionally on lobster night. May have been on NCL. I cant recall.

The one on the Prima was done smarter than the other NCL ships with go carts. Apparently the track goes around the stack. So you still loose some deck space , but not as much as the Breakaway Plus ships. Even though I am sure no one has the Exclusive patent on Go Carts, I'd be surprised if Royal Went with that. It's so Identified with NCL at this point. I think some version of a Lazy River could be done in a cool way on a super big ship.

Thats the only thing that makes the 3 night and 4 night Florida itineraries appealing to me. B2B them and get 2 stops at Coco Cay in a weeks time

Yeah I am afraid people will not see the astronomical jumps in speed they are hoping for. They cant open the pipe full throttle for everyone like they did on that first couple of testing weeks. They need to load balance to give the most users the best possible experience. I think a modest bump would be nice. Say Surf and stream up to 6 or 8 DL/3 or 4 UL. Surf like 3 DL and 1 UL. And Probably the addition of a third tier at 10-20 DL/5-8 UL. A "Business Class" so to speak. Just a guess. Or maybe the Surf tier just goes away. Also most of the older ships with the retro-fitted Wifi (Which is still the majority of the fleet) still have plenty of dead spots that no matter how good the Service to the ship is will not be helped. That "Last Mile" as they say, is still going to hinder the quality of the connectivity.

Chops seemed pretty set in what you could get on Anthem. Although, TBH, I don't think we asked about multiple apps. I do know there did not seem to be a limit on side dishes. Jamie's you can get pretty much whatever you want. Two of us got probably 5 apps altogether, including the meat plank and Garlic bread (which we kept to eat with our pasta and entree. I've heard of people getting two pasta courses. Or getting 2 half size pasta courses. Or skipping the Pasta course entirely and getting 2 of the entrees. We each got one desert and split a third at our waiters suggestion as we were deciding. You wont go hungry there. Wonderland - they just brought us what they "suggested" for apps. Which seemed like most of the things. Come to find out, this was at least partly because they were out of a couple of things. We got to choose our main entree and I think my brother ended up with two deserts because his first one was too weird, with no taste and the texture rubber. ball. Pretty much, if you can have chocolate and peanuts, go with "The World" IMO.

Kieron Cox has played on many Royal ships over the last ten years. I caught him in April in the pub on Anthem and I saw at least part of his performance every night. By the last night, word got around, and it was standing room only. He probably gets that a lot. Other than his traditional closing song, I don't think he repeated a song all week. He also did something I've never seen before. He broke a string mid set. Rather than take an unscheduled break, he recorded a loop into his little ipad setup, and sang an extended intro to the current song. All while replacing the string and tuning it with one of those little electronic tuning meters. It made the song go about 7 minutes, but the music never stopped. I was fascinated. What a pro.

I still have dreams of that Epic Brownie dessert in Jamies Italian.

I hope you all enjoy this sailing. As of today it is still scheduled to be the only ship at Coco Cay on the 16th. That's rare for Anthem.

I'll be there too. Had to book this one after seeing that as of when I booked it, Anthem was the only ship scheduled for Coco Cay on the 9th. Hopefully that holds up. That's the only bad thing about Coco Cay. Two big ships almost overwhelm it. The following week they are scheduled to be alone at Coco Cay as well.

Hehe... I aspire to have a credit card one day that would even allow a $100,000 charge.

I went out of Bayonne on Anthem at the beginning of April and I found it kind of cool to leave NJ at a dreary 55 Degrees and over the next 2 days it changes to 80 degrees and beautiful at Coco Cay. The indoor pool and the solarium are great for that time of year. On any given night there will be a big show in the theater, a guitar singer in the pub, a piano singer in the schooner bar, live bands in Boleros and the music hall and something going on in the 270 lounge. No Ice rink or Aqua theater and no water slides on Anthem. The Seaplex is super impressive. Even though I've not been on Oasis yet, everything I've seen seems like you can't go wrong with either ship.

Seems you mostly only get credit for your buy in at tables. We played for a couple of hours and the only time we saw the pit boss was to verify a big win. If they were keeping track of bets or anything then I don't know how they did it. He was never there.

They need to figure out a better way to reward table players. Seems you only get credit for money you initially exchange for chips. Like if you buy in for $100, hit for $500 but end up playing it all back out in the same session, you only get credit for the $100 toward points. You do that at slots, you get credit for playing all $600. You are better off always quitting when you get a little bit ahead at tables, exchanging for cash, and then buying back in if you want to maximize points from table games. Big Pain in the butt IMO.

Dealer on Anthem told me they are allowed to open the casino at Coco Cay since there is no Casino there that it competes with. However, I went to the island all day, so I did not see it for myself.

On my last cruise my brother cut the waiter off the third time he was giving the speil. He told him we promised to give 10s if he'd just spare us the sales pitch that night.

I find it hard to believe they get none of it. I find it easy to believe they do not get as much of it as they should. And, I also find it easy to believe that a server might just say whatever they need to to get as big a tip as possible. Not saying they all would. But some might.

Youtube is an awesome tool for this. Ship tours and cruise vlogs abound for basically every ship at this point. Only you know what you will like and stuff you don't care about.

Definitely a your milage may vary situation. Give the piece of meat they are slicing from a good look beforehand. Look at the previous persons serving if you can. If the hunk of meat sits for too long under that heat lamp it gets dry. If they slice it with the grain, it will be tough no matter what. If it looks dry to me or they are slicing it wrong, I'll get something else. If it looks okay, you can ask them to slice it thin. They may not have the knife skills to do it, but you can ask. It's better if they cut it thinly. They also seem to want to skimp on the amount, so you can ask for another slice. They could say no, but usually they will oblige. It's not a very authentic Kummelweck, but it okay when the stars align, you get a good carver, and the beef is not overcooked and dry.