KLA

I was on 1/29 Jewel which was Labadee, San Juan, St. Maarten, and Antigua - 8 night.

More likely due to the health and safety of their crew, if I had to guess.

What a bummer! Trying to take this and get myself in to a suite over my birthday in May instead.

Prices can vary wildly sailing to sailing and ship to ship with a lot of factors going in to play and sales happen often. I grabbed the Refreshment Package for $17/day over Black Friday (I think) and I haven't seen it go below $23/day since. $88/day definitely seems high for the Deluxe package though.

Similar happened with our excursion to the rainforest at the beginning of February. It was cancelled a couple weeks ago but other excursions in Old San Juan are still available - I suspect it's related to the increase in cases but not necessarily any indicator that we'll still be turned away at that point. Everything is still speculation.

Ah, bummer. We loved CK on our Odyssey Cruise (Junior Suite) and they let us make as many reservations as we wanted for dinner - granted, the ship was fairly low capacity at the time, too. Really loved the CK crew on that ship (not that we have much CK experience to compare to!) We'll make CK our first stop on Allure in October and just see what they say.

If they're booked through the cruise line you'll get refunded, but off cruise line might be best to have a plan for when you get in to port but keep it changeable. I'm sure excursion operators understand that things are pretty all over right now, and will work with you. Even in non-Covid times, there are usually clauses that will adjust non-cruise line excursions to missed port days (at least from what I've seen in my experience).

Have a wonderful day in port! We're scheduled on the Hike and Beach excursion there at the beginning of February. It's also pretty easy to grab a taxi there and head towards one of the beaches - very pretty island!

Aqua Theater movie sounds great, actually.

My speculation without any further investigation or insight is that Royal is much more targeted towards families and kids where Celebrity is targeting adults as opposed to families with children - so probably fewer children on board and less chance for sharing Covid. I could be incredibly wrong, though.

This likely isn't necessarily the case - a lot of changes are being made very last minute because of how quickly they are changing and the volume of port changes need to be made due to protocol changes. You still could miss these ports. My sailing at the end of the month is scheduled to visit Labadee (which no ship has visited since the restart) and San Juan (which has been turning ships away) and I still don't expect to see either of those. Cruising now requires a lot of flexibility. Also, hello fellow Cincinnatian!

You can also order a bottle/can of water along with your alcoholic drink.

Even if ports of call are being cancelled now, things are changing quickly enough that the situation by the 29th could be completely different at the end of the month (more or less closures or other cruise changing events). We're also cruising on the 29th (Jewel OTS) and keeping an eye on things, but still plan to go. We have two ports we believe will be changed or dropped (Labadee, San Juan). As has been said here many times, just need to be willing to be flexible. Even during normal cruise times, ports can be missed or changed for many reasons.

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/empty-water-bottle

Empty bottle? That shouldn't have been an issue. I carry empty ones with me often and fill it after security.

I imagine this will be similar for us at the end of January with the status of both San Juan and Labadee. Maybe I'll just book some extra time in the spa instead.

I don't foresee this being something that the cruise lines adjust to - this would require testing everyone in the middle of the cruise if San Juan is a stop, which also means they would have to consistently have enough kits and personnel to carry this out for every single passenger and crew member. I suspect that this would ultimately mean cancellations to San Juan for a few weeks.

I'm actually pretty excited about the swap from plastic to cans. Already planning on taking along one of my Yeti bottles to keep water cool and allow it to be resealed.

Same, honestly. Time has flown.

My condolences to each of you - I am so sorry for the loss of your son and daughter. I lost my younger brother 4.5 years ago, and while it never really gets easier, it does get easier to navigate and grow around your grief with time. While not a parent myself, I've seen my parents navigate it and I've seen how unimaginably difficult it is and those early days are day by day in navigating those waves of sadness. I wish you both peace and happy remembrance while you sail the seas. The being on the water is truly a place of healing.

The thing that I think I see as a key difference (and why I don't think sailings will cancel - although I do think they'll reduce capacity where they can) is that if you are vaccinated (as everyone on board these sailings are) is that Omicron will not put you in the hospital if you are vaccinated. While it is more contagious, it is also reportedly more mild. The main purpose of the vaccines is to keep you out of the hospital and keep those who are vaccinated from overwhelming the hospital system (or, the on board medical center). The concern remains that the virus will continue to mutate and we'll see a variant that is both more contagious and deadly, but for the reasons I stated above I don't think that we will shut down. We are much better equipped to understand this now than we were in March of 2020. The only thing we can do is control our own actions (and, continue to work to help keep others safe where we can).

I'd be curious to see if the smoking ban makes the casino more profitable somehow - that would probably get Royal's attention.

This is actually the second story of a cancelled cruise in this same fashion that I've seen posted here in the past week - definitely think this could be a genuine IT issue.

Ugh... I really need to book a star class cruise - the lofted rooms are my dream cruise rooms. The key here will be getting my husband on the same page... we only just started booking Junior Suites It looks like you are having an incredibly relaxing time. So glad it worked out and you were able to get back to sea!