whitsmom

Hi!  been a busy week but I did find some information.  There are multiple hotels in the area that offer a cruise and stay package, however many still charge for parking at a reduced rate.  BUUUUUUUUTTTTTTT......There are three hotels 10 miles or closer from the terminal that offer free parking for at least seven nights if you stay the night before. In addition these hotels offer free shuttle service to and from the cruise terminal.  While I was looking for a few different "upscale" options, free shuttle transport AND free parking is really nice!  These hotels are:
 
Hilton Garden Inn of Staten Island
1100 South Ave, Staten Island, NY 10314
(718) 477-2400
 
Country Inn & Suites Newark International Airport
100 International Blvd, Elizabeth, NJ 07201
(908) 282-0020
 
Renaissance Newark Airport Hotel
1000 Spring St, Elizabeth, NJ 07201
(908) 436-4600

I'm afraid you are probably correct.  I'm surprised that they went that far ahead; however, it is better for people to know now possibly before final payment is due than to wait until so closed to sail date.  So many people (me included) have to fly to get to the port adding another thing to have to deal with.

For the record I don't work for Royal.  Second I have cruised Carnival and they aren't issuing refunds to everyone either.  They too are issuing FCC.
I am sorry you lost your job and you find yourself in this hardship.  This darn pandemic has hurt a lot of people.
It's easy to think an exception should be made for one family, it's only $800.  Royal had capacity on their ships for over 70,000 guest every single day.   If you do the math, 70,000 guest each with a $250 deposit for a 7 night cruise is $17.5M dollars every week in deposits.  They haven't sailed for 10 months now or around 40 weeks.  That's $700M in deposits that everyone would expect.  No company can pay out $700M while earning no revenue.  It's simple to think it's just my money so what's the problem but it's not just your deposit, everyone would want a refund.  Royal has had to sell off some ships just to survive.  This has hit them hard too.  
I lost $2,500 when the March travel ban was announced and I had to buy a plane ticket on the spot to get home.  Who should pay for that?  The airline?  The government? I didn't like paying it.  I'd love to find someone else to pay it.
I am sympathetic to your situation and you are in good company with so many other good people who have lost so much in these unprecedented times.

Have to agree..I even just hoping us Canadians can travel to the USA for personal travel.

I use this for my belt loop
I bring a mini hole punch for non-RFID cards.  No plastic sleeve needed for those.

Hi Jen,
When you booked it did you book as a non-refundable deposit? If so then you can only get FCC back. Royal Caribbean has been pretty fair with their Cruise with Confidence plan- no change fees and letting people move their cruises a year out for the same price. 

The way it should be!....here in Canada, the provinces with the tightest lockdowns are in the worse shape and continue to be....lockdowns don't work..they just hurt people financially, mentally and emotionally...

?

I havent seen anyone mention my own packing hack, so I am surprised.  Disposable plastic shower caps.  One shoe fits perfectly inside, so the soles (and whatever bacteria may be on them) are effectively prevented from coming into contact with clothing.  

I think this is an accurate summary.
Let's talk about vaccine facts involving the two vaccines we'll see in the US over the next 30 days. Both are mRNA vaccines. They are a new development on the vaccine front. Their composition includes incorporation of synthetically manufactured mRNA that once injected into a naïve host, appears to the adaptive and innate immune system as SARS-CoV-2. This provokes the production of antibodies in the adaptive response and has proven to provoke a robust innate immune system response in the form of T-Cells.
If you have a predilection for the science involved in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2, this is a good scientific paper that is written well enough for lay persons to understand. 
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201125091456.htm
Mutations: Researchers have found over 12000 variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus involving mutations of the virus RNA. There is anecdotal evidence that the virus mutates and can infect hosts other than humans. The lay press has extrapolated this evidence to incorrectly conclude and report to the public that the virus is more dangerous or lethal and can be transmitted by hosts other than humans. Transmission of the virus from an animal, for example, can occur but is exceedingly rare. The current news regarding minks and workers at mink farms, for example, contracting COVID-19 lacks controlled studies. Infected workers could have contracted C-19 by human to human transmission and this mode of transmission is probably more likely than it being transmitted from the minks. Experts in the field of virology and immunology have argued against the culling of commercially raised minks as ineffective with high economic costs and few public health benefits. 
Whether SARS-CoV-2 mutations confer longer virus life or lethality has been aggressively studied.  According to this paper released in the UK, none of them have created circumstances where the life of the virus is extended/made more resistant to containment or eradication or makes it more infectious/lethal. Morbidity and mortality produced by C-19 is a function of viral load and the human immune response to exposure to SARS-CoV-2, not mutations of the virus.
Mutations in a virus are to be expected, not feared. The core targets of vaccines (the S or spike proteins) predict that regardless of common RNA mutations, the SAR-CoV-2 virus, exactly like the H1N1 family of influenza viruses and it's variants, will remain susceptible to degradation and by extension, severity of C-19 or Influenza symptoms through vaccination. 
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201125091456.htm
CDC vacccine facts:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/vaccine-benefits/facts.html

Disclaimer: I'm not a virologist or immunologist; I'm a Physician Assistant, now retired after 22 years of Emergency Medicine practice. I write about the SARS-CoV-2 and COVID in a completely unrelated blog that I manage. If there is something to read about the virus and the disease it produces, I've probably seen it and have reviewed it with a medical eye. I want to make sure that if I am asked about the virus or the disease it produces, COVID, and write about it, I'm not passing bad information.
Researchers believe that an infected individual will infect others in proportion to the viral load of that infected person. Multiple factors are determinants of a given viral load. Super-Spreader events are believed to have circumstances where very high viral loads are present and more people are easily infected in a ratio that exceeds the accepted R value of 1-3 (the average number of people one infected person will infect). Theoretically, the lower the viral load (virions) of an infected individual, the less people he/she will infect.
It is also believed that COVID severity is a function of the quantity of virions a SARS-CoV-2 infected individual actually make the trip from the infected persons exhalations to then be inhaled by and find a home in the respiratory tract of the naïve person. The more virions received by the new host, the faster and more plentiful the replication and this is especially true in a naïve host with no immunity at all to the virus.*
By extension it may be accurate to say that a vaccinated person, having already been prepared by the vaccine to build antibodies will respond much more rapidly to invading virions diminishing their number and potentially making that individual less infectious......theoretically, and asswering your question, diminishing asymptomatic spread. TBF, we just don't know if this will actually occur outside of a lab where these theories are developed. The lack of certainty here is what has made vaccine producers reluctant to make claims that the vaccines they developed will stop or slow the spread of the virus.  They might. They might not. It will be a while before scientists and medical researchers will be willing to say, yes, the vaccine is slowing the spread ..... and if that is the case, then, like some diseases, SARS-CoV-2 will be eradicated. But, lets take one step at a time. The goal right now is to reduce disease burden as defined by hospitalizations and deaths. 
* A comment on the human body's immune system. There are two parts: adaptive and innate. Vaccines target the adaptive system directly prompting antibodies to be developed and prepared to meet and defeat the real thing should it be contracted. Vaccines also have a stimulating effect on the innate system. There are several classes of innate cells. You may have heard of Killer T Cells. These are examples of an innate immune system cell. They can be provoked by the presence of a manufactured, synthetic look-alike virus (a vaccine). In part, the presence of these in a competent immune system can meet the virus, recognize it as foreign, neutralize it and completely prevent or lessen COVID symptoms. Replication of the virus is impeded, less virions are reproduced in the host, less illness ensues.
The 96 year old grandma who tested positive for COVID and was supposed to succumb to it but didn't get sick at all is demonstrative of this phenomena. Unfortunately not everyone has powerful innate immunity to SARS-CoV-2 but most healthy people have some; its thought that in the absence of a vaccine, the degree of innate immunity may determine, in part, the severity of COVID.    

Wearing a mask will be a personal choice, if it is mandated to be on the ship, then people will have to chose. I think it will be a small choice in the bigger picture. There will be new rules when ever we start cruising again, I guess following the new rules will be a choice people will have to make.

Sounds good to me

Given how outraged people have become at the simple request to wear a mask, I can just imagine the outrage here if someone was turned away from a venue for no vaccine.  
The next 12 to 24 months should be an interesting time in America.  Get the popcorn ready.  

As mentioned at the time in my live blog from FOTS, seeing an american woman slightly worse for wear sitting in the Schooner Bar with her husband lift herself up off her seat a little , then proceeded to slip off her underwear and tuck them into her husbands jacket breast pocket ( i hope it was her husband lol ) 

I love how all the crew members wear a badge, which has a picture of themselves smiling on it!
 
This way, we can still greet you guys whilst wearing a mask.

I actually like the fact that crew members will handle doling out food at the buffets. It'll eliminate hundreds of folks touching the same serving utensils and keep people from actually using their hands to pick up bread, fruit, etc. and then put it back on the buffet. This alone may help eliminate the risk of norovirus & covid spread, let alone all of the other lovely germs that that one can acquire on any common carrier.

So far, I have been very impressed with all the pictures I've seen from Day 1.

Yes, it does appear that's the case

Good luck to all my fellow crew members who are currently on Quantum Of The Seas.
 
Lets prove to the world that cruising can be done in a healthy and safe way!
 
Hopefully it won't be too much longer before I get asked to rejoin a cruise ship, and head back to work. I'm amazed at how much love for the cruising there still is, and it's people like you that will keep this industry alive!
 
 

Our favorite cruise to date was our Alaska cruise on the Radiance.  Hubby had just had a heart attack and stint 27 days prior to our cruise.  Thankfully, we did good and the doctor said that a cruise would be restful and gave us this blessing.  He said no fly for 4 weeks and we missed that by 1 day so the doctor said he could fly.  To make this cruise even more memorable, we were schedule to go with two other couples (one from Grand Rapids and the other from Houston).  Long story short, the husband of the Grand Rapids had a heart attack two weeks after my hubby and he had to have open heart surgery so they had to cancel.  The other couple from Houston, the wife blow her Achilles tendon and had surgery.  But she came with a scooter and did great. 
We did a humpback whale excursion but instead of humpbacks, we saw lots of Orcas. 

No it won't!

All this unnecessary "pick me, pick me" individuals will finally go away !!

Not so fast!!
https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2020/11/11/royal-caribbean-has-no-plans-ask-volunteers-test-cruises-are-not-employees