Al Miller

For Anthem's return to NJ in November I got a solo inside for dirt cheap. I'd been following their price for a few weeks, and they were slightly cheaper than paying the supplement. Then all the sudden they dropped over $300 for an 8-night sailing. Scooped that up. After taxes and grats it actually was right at about half the price of a regular inside cabin. Prices jumped back up a few days later. Not sure what caused the drop, but for once my incessant mock cruise bookings paid off for me.

16 hours ago, Plumlee2028 said:

Anecdotally, I have found pretty shortly after the inventory is released for sale, the studios price higher.  I think the system initially looks at "There are only 12 of these" compared to over a thousand normal balconies etc.  Before long they come back down to pricing where they should.  

This has got to be it. Like the automatic pricing algorithm can't account for these types of cabins until they get manually fixed by some sort of managing auditor.

Anthem in April looked practically new still to my eyes. Granted, it's only a 7 year old ship that didn't see passengers for a year and a half. So it's functional age is only a little over 5 years.

Be aware that the ship is basically in the middle of a yard full of industrial shipping containers and perhaps a cargo ship or two. It's not a pristine vista of the city. It's cool enough, but you are pretty far away. Notice how grainy most folks pics of the skyline are? That's because they are zoomed all the way in. For me the ease of getting there compared to the Manhattan terminal more than makes up for it. On the other side of the ship is the teardrop memorial and its worth a picture as well IMO.

Once all the infrastructure is in place, this is going to blow the doors off all current Internet on ships. I wonder if Starlink will even let their service be exclusive to one line. Glad to see Royal getting in front of this now.

Our AW on Anthem picked up that generally we would finish the first soda or tea pretty quickly on night one and from night 2 onward he just brought out two of each right off the bat. I thought that was pretty smart. He was always working that crumb sweeper too. I told him early on it was not necessary, but he insisted. Darschand, if I remember correctly.

Scion of the Seas, Mythos of the Seas, Titan of the Seas, Legacy of the Seas...

Matts link provides what is included with no package at all. Soda Package is Just Soda or whatever is available with the freestyle machines. I think they had various varieties of Powerade, Minute Made, Dasani, Vitamin Water in there too. WHEN the machines stocked and are up and working.

Hmmmm... If this becomes a popular venue in Vegas and other Entertainment meccas, perhaps there will be a lot of content made for it and they can keep it from getting stale by getting a trickle of new content on the ships.

I hope it's not just that universal sphere thing. That is a TON of space to be wasted on a single use venue like that. Maybe I am wrong, but that is the kind of thing in a theme park that gets one, maybe two different shows that run all the time. So after you've seen them once you never go back. But I guess the aqua theater and Ice rink is like that too. Maybe it will be cool. I dunno.

Y'all got it all wrong. It's the next logical step up from Indoor skydiving and bumper cars... 

5:30 seems too early and 8 too late. We did My Time in April and 6:30-7pm seemed perfect to us.

I think Matt discussed this once on a live stream. If you want to chance it, you can cancel your booking right before final payment is due and then as soon as it becomes available again re-book it with a non-refundable fare. There is a chance someone could snipe your room between the time you cancel and rebook. So, it's probably not worth it to chance it. But it could be done.

The safer way to do it only works if there is another set of rooms still available that is satisfactory to you. Book the two new rooms at the non-refundable rate and then cancel the refundable rooms. Thats a lot of work though.

On Anthem a few weeks ago, and the regular old bolognaise sauce was amazing to me. The penne pasta sitting next to it was not the best as it is sitting out and getting cold and dry, but that sauce was awesome. Also, I had one of the best pork chops I've ever had. I think they had just reloaded the station, so it was probably very fresh. So, if they look like they haven't been sitting very long, I recommend the pork chops too.

Well, it was lightly raining and none of the Xray Machines had much of a line, so maybe they got ahead of the game and were trying to get folks out of the rain. I Dunno.

Cool. Thank you.

We had an Areosmith cover band on Anthem for 4/3 sailing. And I think they had a Led Zeppelin cover band in before that.

FWIW - At Bayonne NJ for our 4/3 sailing, we arrived 25 minutes before our time, and we were prepared to wait outside. But the lady greeting/directing people at the entrance seemed annoyed that we were hanging around outside and told us we HAD to go inside and start the embarkation process. She never even asked what our time was. And we were eating a roast beef sandwich in 270 by the time our actual embarkation time rolled around. That may just be a New York/New Jersey attitude thing. I have also heard most other ports are enforcing the time pretty strictly.

So if I want to start with a new TA for my next cruise do I just book with them or do I have to alert RC that I am switching TA's? I have nothing currently booked so it would be from a clean slate.

Thanks in advance

A casino dealer on my last trip told me that in Coco Cay they have special permission to keep the casino open. (Though table games may be limited) So if that is your thing, you can do that as well.

On 4/7/2022 at 9:40 AM, Chili said:

They still hype North Star and bionic bar , I think think they are the biggest waste of space I’ve ever seen.

The one redeeming quality of BBar is I do not feel any pressure to leave any extra gratuity other than the included. 

I got 4 tests from Optum the last week of February and they are good until Jan 1st '23.

Anthem for 4/3 check in opened 45 Days Prior for what that's worth.

Well it's not a lot of data, but they now also have a couple of months of data showing them how "no smoking" actually affects the gambling income. I've always wondered if the increased amount of people who would be willing to come to a non-smoking Cruise ship Casino might offset the loss of the smokers. Especially in the old days when lots of smokers would come to the casino just to light up and not actually gamble. Personally, I can put up with the smoke for short spurts, but I'd probably stay longer (ie - spend more) if the air was clear.

I applied on 12/28 and received the passport on 1/24. Got my Birth Certificate back on 2/9.