Lexster

4 Days leeeeeeft!

1 hour ago, Geezer Of The Seas said:

There was erosion/undermining of a section of Southbound lanes in Lake County, but it's been repaired and reopened. 

You should b good all the way south and fuel if needed shouldn't be an issue. Just a lot of seemingly never ending construction in the Central Florida segment.

Thanks! I didn't want to ask but it's hard to get specific info like that right now.

So, I feel awful asking about this because I know tons of people are dealing with things way worse than me, but I'm going to Miami in two weeks to get on Icon and driving down from Kentucky. Anyone know if will things be safe and okay if I'm taking the Florida Turnpike assuming yet another hurricane doesn't hit?

I'm on Icon at the end of October...man, between this and hurricanes I'm stressing out that I might not get the cruise I've been planning for a year.

On 9/8/2024 at 9:24 PM, SeaSirenVoyager said:

Hi everyone, quick question, when can we make a reservation for entertainment for Icon of the Seas on October 26/Halloween cruise?. When I tried to make a reservation for Aqua Action and Wizard of OZ, the system showed a message that they were not available. What is going on?

I'm pretty sure that stuff doesn't open up until like 3 weeks beforehand, if it's even going to be available.

UDATE: Incorrect, I just went in and was able to reserve things, so try again!

6 hours ago, MichelleNZ said:

We are going on the same cruise! We have booked an over pool day bed for day 2 on the infinity pool at the back of the boat. We split 4 ways which made it super affordable! 

I thought about doing that for a casita, but ended up not going for it since no one else was in this thread yet. Wouldn't mind grabbing one for Roatan port day since we're not really going out to port that day.

On 7/24/2024 at 7:48 AM, tjcruisers said:

We did as a cruise coming off a repositioning and were delayed a few hours as they were doing a coast guard inspection (which we were told they had to do on repositioning). It did push boarding out past noon

It's weird, I've had both of my cruises now send me an email about needing coast guard inspection and to arrive a couple hours later, but both times I was already going to the port and there was no delay whatsoever getting on the ship.

4 minutes ago, Ryan79 said:

Nope!! Makes zero sense and you will leave Mexico with several hundred dollars of pesos 

Okay, but why does it make zero sense? I've seen plenty of people say this, but no one has said why. If I bring peso, I would intend to spend them, so I don't see myself coming back with them.

I know this has been asked before, but I'm going to Mexico, Costa Maya, Honduras, and Cozumel. I know these places accept dollars, but, does it make sense to get a couple hundred dollars worth of pesos to bring with me? Right now the exchange rate is 18 pesos per $1, so wouldn't pesos go a bit further and then I wouldn't get screwed by the exchange rates the store might give?

Final payment day coming up! 102 days left!

Wondering if anyone else is going on this cruise who might be interested in doing a casita. We're not currently planning on going anywhere for Roatan. Thought it might be fun to do a casita since port days are cheaper. There are three of us, so it'd be a lot of wasted space with just us.

On 2/26/2024 at 9:50 AM, Cactus527 said:

That's not fair. @tonyfsu21 prefers being at the port early, even if it means waiting there longer to board. Nothing wrong with that. Each of us has our quirks, and that's okay.

That's not what he was saying, but yes I let myself get upset over something stupid. Shouldn't have said that. I'm not going to comment further.

On 2/22/2024 at 8:58 PM, tonyfsu21 said:

To each his own. We will be at the terminal ready to board the ship by 10am and ready for vacation! 

Hopefully you'll have an early check-in then. Not hard to get!

19 hours ago, Reigert2008 said:

Exactly. Everyone has the opportunity to get an early time and I really wish Royal would enforce times at all ports and be consistent.  If more people had to queue outside and wait for their time, maybe people would start showing up at the assigned time and the whole process could be smooth for everyone all the time.

Of course, I’m a rule follower and will arrive during my window, but  I’ve also been able to get early times by being online when they open the check in window.

 

Happy Cruising!

Yep, I always get an early check-in time since I check-in at midnight the night it opens. It's not that hard. If you want to show up early, get an early time. Otherwise, follow the damn check-in times.

14 hours ago, tonyfsu21 said:

That’s just not going to happen. Do you think turning people away and displacing them temporarily would not become a safety hazard? They absolutely do not want masses of people standing around the active exterior of the terminal as it’s already crowded enough. The process of enforcing boarding times would require resources they don’t have and it would also likely cause more chaos at the gate. The company relies on the low percentage of people who actually follow the rules to give them some element of control in the process. The last minute emails mentioning the strict adherence to scheduled boarding times have proved to be nothing more than an empty threat in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Canaveral. 

They already have masses of people standing around. And the "last minute emails" don't work because they DON'T have strict adherence to the boarding times and everyone knows it. It would only take a month of them turning away people until it's their boarding time for people to get the message. Otherwise, don't bother having check-in times because it just means people who actually show up at the right time get pissed off because certain people think they're more important than everyone else.

5 hours ago, Cruising Granny said:

So I am sailing out of Miami Sunday, had 11:00 - 11:30 check in and got an email and text today saying if I had that time to please wait and arrive at 12:00. Thoughts on what you would do. I to am a rule follower but want to make sure I get a parking place too.

I've gotten those emails the past two cruises and showed up at the normal time and got on just fine. The second time I didn't even see the email until I was on the ship. I would just go by your original check-in time.

2 hours ago, tonyfsu21 said:

I will be there at 10am regardless. 

The mindset that causes the back-ups to begin with

7 hours ago, Hoppy2BHere said:

On Feb 10 for Icon, we had an early check in time and were in a suite. We were there around 9:30 - 10 and it was crazy. 6 lanes of cars backed up trying to pickup people and drop off people/luggage. We took an immediate left and up the ramp (just before the backup) into the parking garage and parked. Waited just a bit to finish our morning coffee and rolled our luggage down to the drop off (to the right when you get off elevators). Second in line to check in and second to board the ship. Worked well for us. There was a bit of a delay to start check in, but once open went very quickly.. YMMV.

J&S

It wasn't until we got through the porters and I went to park in the garage that I realized I could have just turned left to go up there instead of doing the U around to the porter area. I was sooo mad, but will probably do that next time.

So, back in May of last year, we went on Harmony of the Seas. The Miami terminal was utter chaos. We had a check-in of 10:30, but there were a ton of people there. We drove and waited for probably 30 minutes to even get to the porter and then we had to wait in a long line to get to check-in. Once actually in the terminal, we were on the ship within like ten minutes.

I recently saw a video of some vloggers going on the Icon in Miami and they took an Uber, drove right to the porter and got checked-in within ten minutes for the entire process. Were we just unlucky the one time we went or were these vloggers lucky? I think they had a later check-in, but still, it was like no one was outside whatsoever.

6 hours ago, Ampurp85 said:

I have sailed on Halloween and feel like it's a regular sailing with extra decorations.

However it might fall within a KSF promotion, so it could be heavy with children.

I will be honest I sail primarily Oct/early Nov, Jan/Feb. Those times are usually less children but now they can have as many children as a summer cruise.

Interesting. Like I said, doesn't really matter either way, but good to know! Were there themed events like costume parties or anything outside the decorations?

Hey all, booked on Icon during Halloween week. I'm just curious, not that it matters either way, but anyone know how generally busy is that week as far as being kid-heavy? Is that a holiday lots of people cruise on like other holidays such as Christmas or Labor Day? Just wondering since it's not a federal holiday or anything so no one generally gets it off by default from work or school.

10 hours ago, OCSC Mike said:

I know it varies greatly by sailing, these things always do, but FWIW, the price for my Wonder 3/17/24 cruise is now on sale for even less than it was during Black Friday.

It's $19.99pp now.

Dynamic pricing is of course driven by supply and demand so it could be because we are the only ship there and it's a spring break cruise so more kids means less adults able to go there even if they wanted to. Just thought I'd share in case those who are interested and/or already booked wanted to check the price.

EDIT: Apparently it's a "Hideway Beach Opening Day Sale"

WTF. It's 54.99 on sale for mine! It's normally 80 freaking dollars. Utter rip-off.

It's definitely subjective. I generally enjoy the food all over the ship. I think there have only been a couple of times where I had to complain about how bad something was and they replaced it no problem in the MDR. My last cruise was last year May. I'm going on Icon in October, so I suppose I'll see if it's true that the quality has gone down since then. I will say I HATE the new menus in the MDR, but that doesn't really have to do with the quality, more so there's usually only one or two things on the menu I am interested in now.

The Icon has an entire Suite Neighborhood. There's the Grove and also mention of a Suite Lounge on the RC page about it.

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-activities/suite-neighborhood-icon

8 minutes ago, ScottD said:

It's a small group of tik tokers drumming up drama and trying to put negative spins on everything. I'm following quite a few people on reddit and IG and they've had nothing but glowing reviews about the whole trip so far

Well, that's good. Personally, I don't think I could handle 9 months on a cruise ship, let alone one of the smaller ones like Serenade, but nothing I've seen complaints about are, like...novel. It's just people who don't know that's how things are.