Marc

Here's some absolute ridiculousness on my part. We're sailing on Symphony of the Seas on the transatlantic in a few weeks. We booked ourselves a Star Class suite (Aquatheater 2-bedroom)! I've checked numerous times over the past several months to see whether RoyalUp would offer me anything. Interestingly, it always gives me the same error. I guess they're too polite to say "No upgrades for you!"

I'm not intending to be maudlin with this story; these are unfortunate circumstances. We're all okay now. We are very fortunate that we happened to coincidentally earn crystal blocks on the two burial-at-sea cruises we did for each of our sons. It wasn't planned like that at all, but it's heartwarming to have those special keepsakes from those sailings. The first was on Mariner of the Seas in February 2020. We didn't get that block onboard, and the world shut down for a while. We tried to get RC to send us the block in mid-2020, but nothing happened. We called back in spring 2021 and tried again. They found the records where it was approved to have been sent, but there was no record of it actually having been shipped (2020, again). So, that time they did send it to us. The second was on Anthem of the Seas (Dec 2022), and I made darned sure that the Loyalty Ambassador knew how important this was to us. We did get that block. Those two crystal blocks are on our mantel.

Hello, fellow passengers! My three friends and I will be joining y'all on this sailing. We booked it back when the pricing was much better and decided to go all-in for the experience in Star Class accommodations. I used to work in big tech, but not any longer, so this'll probably be my one and only chance to see what that experience is like. Plus, with all those sea days, I figured we might as well really enjoy ourselves onboard. I've done a few B2Bs totalling up to 15 nights, but this'll be my first >8-night single sailing as well as the first non-Bermuda/Bahamas/Caribbean cruise.

That is a cute game, and I also recognized that artwork. The vocals sound the same, too. I have to figure that Royal Caribbean commissioned "Wash Your Hands" from the same folks ("Tangerine Kitty"). I wonder whether the music is a bizarre coincidence. They seem too close to be likely, but I did a bit more searching for some sort of connection or overlap, but I can't find anything.

My pattern-matching abilities are rather good, thanks to a touch of the 'tism. I discovered it while riding an elevator on Harmony of the Seas last week. It was apparently in the Muzak (or clone) lineup being played onboard and immediately used Shazam to identify the song.

I did some searching around and I don't know whether anyone's noticed this, but I just discovered it and it's blowing my mind! The "Wash Your Hands" song is clearly based on Matt White's "Falling in Love (With My Best Friend)". When you get to the chorus around 0:45, you'll hear exactly what I mean.

I did see this accessibility page from Royal Caribbean that does does acknowledge that "only select programs are captioned." From my experience, content coming from the national channels (e.g., news channels) are more likely to have captions preserved, but channels featuring onboard content especially if it was produced onboard are far less likely to have captions.

I sometimes watch TV with captions enabled to help me follow dialogue when it’s not clear. I spent several minutes pressing every button on the TV remote to try to find some way to turn on captions. Apparently, not all remotes have the CC button. Upon asking, a replacement remote was offered. Why not put these in all cabins in the first place since they seem otherwise identical? (I’ve not found that this remote gives me any additional functionality with the TV over the originally-provided one.)

One of the things that I disliked most about playing slot machines onboard Royal Caribbean cruises is that my experiences getting handpays paid is unpleasant, including several times when I've had to get up and walk away from the machine to find an employee somewhere else in the casino to get assistance (during morning hours when things are quiet and not bustling or as smoky). I don't know whether their handpay alert system wasn't working, but on some ships, it seems like they depended on discovering the locked-up machine with an expectant player as they stroll through the casino. (This is compared with my few NCL experiences where it was a very smooth operation with handpays typically paid within single-digit minutes.) I will say that a significant amount of this is caused by me as I tended to be a higher-value player. (There have been times when playing the winnings at $100/spin was just how things were going for me on a handful of nights.)

I saw "wine" listed separately from "snacks" (I think) for Vintages onboard Anthem of the Seas to distinguish when the bar was open from when it was possible to order food (from a limited menu from Jamie's Italian next door). Does the restaurant you're looking at have its own bar? For example, Windjammer has the Plaza Bar that could be open earlier than the buffet itself.

That ended up being my breakfast go-to when we were on in December. Since we're early risers, we were often queued up for Windjammer before the doors open, so I'd usually get my order in at the omelet station among the first few of the morning, so not too long of a wait.

The per-passenger pricing is not an offer, simply a calculation of the total amount paid divided by the number of people booked. It typically doesn't recognize any particular passenger's pricing due to the way RCI often does their pricing (#1 – full price, #2 – 60% off, #3+ – yet a different rate). Another thing to keep in mind is that on top of the $604, there will be taxes and fees, and that can add another couple hundred onto that extra passenger. For example, 5-night cruises may go to Bermuda, and they have one of the higher port fees out there.

My husband and I have been sailing in junior suites at least on ships with Coastal Kitchen, so we'd opted-out of the main dining room. Thus, we chose MTD so as not to take a table from anyone else. We'd typically have dinner no later than 6 PM, usually 5:30-5:45. My problem is that in my older years, I've turned into a full-grown adult who used to stay up until 2 AM into an even-more-grown adult who's now up by 5AM and I really don't want to be eating a full meal somewhat close to my somewhat early bedtime. So, I've called RCI to request that my upcoming cruise on Independence of the Seas be waitlisted for early dining. I'm probably more likely just to rely on Windjammer, though, since I'm sailing solo.

I discovered a while back that if your email address is on multiple Crown & Anchor accounts, you won’t receive promotional emails from Royal Caribbean. In my case, casino offers dried up. When I got them to remove my email address from others’ profiles, including some woman who lives in Australia — who knows why she had my address on her profile — then the offer emails started again.

Would it make sense to book the likely-more-expensive one (Chops) in the Cruise Planner to get the discounted price offered there and then ask them to grant me the second-half of the BOGO in another restaurant?

My husband and I have adopted healthier eating habits over the years and find that we eat much less in quantity than we used to. Remember when they taught that 3 ounces of beef was a full serving? Well, I'm actually closer to satisfied at that point now. Anyway, one of the problems we often face is that we'll order a modest amount of food, and we may very well leave some food leftover on the plate. We'll likely skip dessert, too. The servers' protestations suggest that this contrary to their expectations of Americans dining. We don't want the servers to feel concerned that we didn't like our meals, so we do what we can to explain that we just don't eat that much, but they almost seem to have a look in their eye like we're going to have a word with their manager. I would imagine that others may have had similar experiences, so I'm curious whether there are any good ways to smooth over these moments. (I think that, as someone who currently weighs in the mid-200s, people may get an incorrect initial impression of me.)

Our third ever cruise was on Grand Princess back in 2002, I think. We ate at Sabatini's (their Italian restaurant). When it came time to select our appetizer, the server came around with a large tray of all their antipasti appetizers. He then proceeded to put one of each one onto our plates! We were practically stuffed after all that since it would've been rude not to eat it after he so kindly gave us everything!

Well, that aligns with the regular implementations of BOGO. I just didn't expect them to have it together enough to figure out how to deal with it considering it's a different process from typical.

Independence of the Seas is coming out of drydock, so she'll be refreshed (to some degree anyway). That's a slight benefit to her.

Our last two sailings got the "So sorry!" after we were already in our booked cabin. I guess RCI wants to get those extra dollars all the way until the last minute. Upgrade JS -> GS then frees up a JS to upgrade a prior balcony into (cha-ching!), an oceanview into a balcony ($ Ding! $), etc.

Thanks for saying this. I'm going on my first solo cruise soon and I was believing/hoping that this was the case. It seems a good strategy would be to choose the cheaper dinner on the first night.

I wonder whether it's 110 kg which is about 243 pounds. They're way more metric onboard than we imperialists. Huh… Coincidentally, my last weigh-in was just under that (down 90 pounds from peak — finally fit into the one-size-fits-all bathrobe on December's cruise). Interesting.

I'll support your motion if you'll agree to accept my amendment for a somewhat larger glass of wine.

I'm not sure whether @WAAAYTOOO was referring to the points-per-cruise earning or the Club Royale tiers. I think she meant the points earned during a cruise. You may be interested to know that 2,500 points would also qualify you for Prime status which would also earn you one free cruise per year. Other than that, since she seems to have completely answered your question, I thought I'd offer a mathematical aside from a slots perspective since that was my game of choice. I hope y'all will forgive this tangent. Slots players earn 1 point per $5 wagered through the machine. What then matters is how many times the bankroll can be replayed given the house advantage, and that is determined by the slot machines' payback rate. I have no insight into this, but I do believe that Las Vegas casinos tend to be in the 90-ish% range, and the belief is that cruise ship casinos have little incentive to be that high. Still, I assume the casino wants people to win enough to keep playing, so I'll estimate the payback rate at 80%. I ran some numbers through a spreadsheet, and a $7,000 bankroll, given an 80% payback rate, would ultimately play $35,000 through the machine, thus earning (coincidently for this exercise) 7,000 points. From that, one can look on the various tables to see what one would qualify for since it's just down to the numbers when playing on machines. I think that would that should get a comped balcony cruise, maybe a junior suite, but I've not paid attention to the charts they have listed in the casino lately. Other rates: 85% – $46,663 or 9,332 points 87% – $53,843 or 10,768 points 90% – $70,000 or 14,000 points So, somewhere between 7,000 and 14,000 points for slots players, maybe?

While onboard my last cruise, the app didn't even reflect reality in terms of scheduling of bars' open hours. The app had one time, the (online) Cruise Compass said something else [that was taken as accurate by the crew, who were surprised to see that the app said that the bar wasn't open yet]. On the other hand, the Cruise Compass on Anthem of the Seas didn't even list the Music Hall as one of its bars & lounges at all. By the way, lest anyone think I might be kidding about the Music Hall not being listed, here's the days 5-6 combination Cruise Compass. In this one on day 5, I remember the app saying that Two70 opened at 5pm, but here it shows 3pm and, indeed, it was open when I happened across the bar being open at 3:30. cruisecompass56.pdf