smost

I was just on Liberty last week. Some of the bars had 2 liters of the very popular sodas- Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite. Unfortunately, a lot of them were flat. Others used the guns

I had no idea you weren't supposed to mix them. I have mixed them in the past and been okay (as far as I know).

I want to start off by saying that I am not trying to scare anyone. I'm trying to give information given to us by the medical staff on the Liberty of the Seas. On June 10th, my Brother in law had a seizure while on board. It didn't last very long but it was quite serious. They were able to stabilize him in medical and there is no lasting damage. While talking to the medical staff, who were absolutely amazing and genuinely tried to make the entire experience as least scary as possible, they told us that they have been seeing an increase in what they called an 'allergic' reaction to the scopolamine patches. My brother in law was unfortunately one of those who had the reaction. *The reaction is not a seizure* It just so happened that his reaction coupled with many other factors led to a seizure. The medical staff says it's impossible to know who's going to have a reaction until you use the patches. The reaction mimics seasickness so it's a little hard to differentiate. It's nausea, tiredness, lightheadedness, and sometimes fever. They recommend that if you do feel like you're having a reaction to take the patches off with a cloth of warm water to help wipe away the residue. They also said that the patches and Dramamine shouldn't be mixed together. I have used the patches myself on many cruises before and not felt any of these side effects. Again, I am not trying to spread fear, just information.

I parked in the lot for out June 9th-13th cruise. We got there around 10:15am. It took us 30 minutes to get parked. When we walked back to the car around 9:30am on the 13th, there was already a line of cars waiting to park but they must wait til a certain time to let them start parking. There are employees with the QR code to scan when you first join the line, then once you get inside, there are employees that check to make sure you have done it right. If you haven't, you are asked to pull your car to the side until you have completed it. Once you get to the area to park, the direct all larger vehicles to the left and all smaller vehicles to the right. I have a 2024 HRV and I was parked with the small cars. There is one employee on each side that assists in parking the cars one at a time. They park them very closely together. They recommend you drop extra people and luggage off before parking. The 'free' portion of the parking is 45 minutes. The app starts counting down 45 minutes from the time you press start. After that it was $150 for our 5 day cruise. I would recommend downloading the app and making an account ahead of time. It saves time the day of. There are shuttles from the parking lot to the port and they run very frequently. They do not wait for the shuttle to be full. The drivers look around and see if there is anyone waiting and if there isn't, they take off. It wasn't awful. The worst part were the small vehicles that thought they could get ahead by parking on the left but were turned away and then tried to merge back into the single file line as a clump of cars. It definitely confused things.

Mine closes tonight and I was able to get $70 savings on the UDP. It's not a ton but every penny counts!

Has anyone had this happen to them and if so, how did you fix it? I booked a cruise through my TA, who is amazing. It has been booked since March. It was showing on my Royal Caribbean account, and then one day, it disappeared. I thought maybe it got unliked somehow so I went to link it again. Told me it was already linked to my account. I reached out to my TA to see if anything had changed with the sailing. They said everything was fine. So then I tried different browsers, different computers, different internet, uninstalled/reinstalled the app. Still not showing anyway. So I contacted Royal's customer service to see if they could help me figure out what the issue is. They say everything is fine and it's linked and I should be seeing it. I did have them escalate it to the IT team and supposedly, there will be a resolution in 24 hours (I'm not going to hold my breath for that one) The cruise is in April of 2027. I'm wondering if since it's that far out that's why there's a glitch? My anxiety is not liking not seeing it on my account.

I started to bring this stuff and using it on every bed that I stay in outside of my own. Not sure if it actually does anything but it does give me a bit of peace of mind. And no bed bugs yet.

I got the survey yesterday. I've had the card for about 3 years now and that was the first time I've gotten that survey. I agree that an annual fee would make me consider dropping the card. The benefits I would need to see for the card to be worth it with an annual fee would far outweigh what they would want to offer. I remember the card options being $0 annual fee, $99 annual fee, and $550 annual fee with various combinations of perks and rewards attached to it. They also had a section on whether I'd be interested in one card that covered all 3 of their cruises lines and whether I would want options for improving my loyalty with the card. Purchasing loyalty points with the cards, increased earning of loyalty points, etc. Personally, I would love to see changes as the credit card is one I exclusively use on Royal Caribbean because it's not a great rewards card. I imagine if they introduced purchasing loyalty points, it would either be ridiculously expensive or they would drastically increase the points needed to reach each tier, or both. But I know people would do it. I would only consider it if I was 1-2 nights away from the next tier and it wasn't plausible to fit a short cruise into my schedule.

The first time we went we paid around $25/person and thought that was pretty reasonable. The second time was around $34/person. I wouldn't pay more than $40 for it. We've been to Coco Cay without it and don't feel like it made much of a difference to us. We enjoyed it but not at the price it's being listed for now.

I found a few micro ducks on the paintings in the stairwells on Allure in September. Before that, I hadn't found any. But I wasn't going out of my way to look for them.

On my last cruise, we would go get seats in the solarium saved with towels and bags and books. Then we would get in the pool and have some drinks and occasionally come back to the chairs to sit and put on sunscreen a couple of times in an hour. We would only be there for like 2-3 hours. There were 7 of us but we would only grab like 4-5 chairs. On the last day we came back to a couple who had taken over two of our chairs. They moved our bags off the chairs and laid out their towels and our towels on the chairs. We were irritated but we were also leaving. I asked the couple if I could grab our towels off the chairs. The woman refused to get out of the chair and instead simply leaned forward and I had to pull the towel out from under her butt. The kicker was there were plenty of open chairs in the solarium. That has been one of the weirdest situations on a cruise ship yet for me.

I am seeing some new to me options on my cruise planner.

I just did a 9 night out of Baltimore in June that sailed to Bermuda, Nassau, and Perfect Day. I like Perfect Day. It's easy and nice. We got off at Nassau to look at the new port area but probably won't get off again. We don't really do excursions and Nassau doesn't do it for us. In the past year, I've been to Nassau on all three cruises I've taken and I'm quite bored of it. I probably won't get off again at it unless I'm with people who have never been before. I just see it as a less busy sea day on the ship. I don't mind the older ships out of Baltimore and unless they raise the bridges, that's all Baltimore will get. The older smaller ships are a different vibe. They're a much more relaxed vibe than the new, bigger ships. It's a nice change of pace sometimes.

I just got off Allure on Friday and had none of my usual outlet extenders confiscated or unplugged. Now it could be that it was too recent of a change for it to be implemented. But I do carry multiple with me just in case. I use USB multipliers as well as multiple outlet extenders. My next cruise on Royal isn't until next June so we'll have to see if things change then.

Won RoyalUp on Mariner in 2022. Went from an Interior to a Spacious Balcony for $200 per person which was a little above the minimum. I think the minimum was $160/person. I was notified about the win 2 days before sailing. And when we got to the room, there were papers in the room for the couple that had booked the room originally.