NoobCruise

Thanks for your response. That seems like a good sugestion to sit closer for our boy to be more engaged. 

As long as you are off the ship before 8am and heading to the airport around then your 11:30 flight might be doable.
However, keep in mind the boarding process, lots of people fail to factor in that boarding ends no less than 20 minutes before your departure. That means you only have until 11:10 to be on the plane before doors are locked and closed. Only in MCO have I heard and seen many people who cruised missing their flights because of this. 

This is horrible news as we have an 11:30am flight. I guess we will skipping breakfast and self disembarking as early as possible.

The first cruise I booked I think I received $50 OBC with no travel agent. The next cruise with a travel agent it will be $75 OBC.  While waiting to book on NEXT CRUISE onboard might not always be a good idea since you can miss sales and early discounts you WILL get more OBC. So I think I will be taking that approach moving forward.

also Foxboro Forever!

Yes, you can still pay them but you will have to call Royal (or have your Travel Agent do so, if you used one).  There is no way to pay them online or through the Cruise Planner (that I am aware of).

Does the 20$ per venue reflect the new changes to the unlimited dining package?
 
Can we have $20 early lunch at playmakers and then a $20 late lunch at mason jar or port side bbq?

Look in the Samoran BLVD area. Just about every hotel chain in every price range you could want, most offer free shuttles from the airport.  Plenty of restaurants that you can easily walk to.  The shuttle companies I mentioned earlier both pick up from that area.  This where we stay when sailing from PC.  We’ve used the Marriot, Sheraton and Fairfield Inn & Suites.

I still do all my own research when planning and most every time I go ahead and put a deposit down. Then I send the reservation to my TA (Sharla with MEI) and she gets it transferred from Royal to MEI. She then services the booking. 
 
I use to book direct with Royal but decided to go with a TA when we started looking at Mediterranean cruises. This was back in 2019. We had never been to Europe and with international flights, I wanted someone in my corner should something goes sideways. 
 
I decided to give Sharla a trial with a 3 night on Mariner. Went well so booked Odyssey in the Med and Symphony. Then the proverbial 💩 hit the Covid fan. 
I honestly can’t thank her enough for dealing with multiple cancellations and Re-bookings that ultimately got cancelled (Covid goal posts kept moving) and FCC’s that were applied, then re-issued only to be wrong amount, then fixed then applied again only to be re-issued. HOURS on the phone she spent with them. 
$50-$100 of OBC is so not worth it to me. 
 
Yes we’re moving back to more normal cruising but I find no reason to shop elsewhere for a little bit of OBC. Just not worth it. I think I suffer from Covid cruise PTSD 

This topic is discussed a lot on this site.  The bottom line is that more credits and/or cheaper price = less service.  
I used to book all of my own cruises either through Royal directly, or through one of the large online travel companies.  Then I had several cruises cancelled due to Covid and had to get them rebooked, etc.  I ended up spending a huge amount of my time and aggravation in handling the different issues that arose - in some cases they actually messed up my booking. I also never had enough time to look for price changes, so I always paid the price I had booked the cruise for in the first place.
I now use MEI (sponsor of this website) and have a TA to handle any issues that come up.  I have also had quite a few emails letting me know that my TA has found a cheaper fare and repriced my cruise - all without any prompting from me.
I can see how some would want to cheaper prices I sometimes see on sites like the one you mentioned.  Just understand that if anything goes wrong, it may be difficult to get a person on the phone who knows what they are talking about.

Thank you all for your feedback. Very helpful. My takeaways...
If your cruise is cancelled or there is another global pandemic having a trustworthly and hardworking TA can be very helpful. In my 30 years of adulting I have never changed a flight or changed a vacation once. I have had flights cancelled on me and it stands to reason that having a cruise cancelled is a lot more problemeatic than a flight because when flights are callencelled it usulally means you are leaving later that day or the next morning. I certainly don't need to gel with a TA when I already know the exact date, ship, itinerary, and cabin number of the next cruise I want to go on. Maybe if I ever stop enjoying researching ships, and destinations this could be very helpful. Alerting me to when sales begin and end and how often they happen could be very helpful. Explaing to me the difference between balcony room type 1D or 3D could be very helpful. I still don't know that.  Customer service is important. When I used Cruises online last time and I tried to change my dining time from 8pm to 5:30. I called cruises, got someone on the phone without much effort and changed it to 5:30pm EXCEPT when we got on the ship it was still 8pm!  Turns out we liked 8pm better but if we didn't that would have stunk because when we tried to change in on the ship they couldn't do it unless we wanted a different table every night.
If the price changes and you don't check the prices some TA will do it for you but most big ones won't. Thanks Wordell1 for letting me know that MEI will do it automatically. That is huge. This seems like the most important TA attribute to me.  With that said I do check the prices of drinkpackages, dining packages, etc almost everyday already myself but pricing out cruises is a lot more difficult. I only did it a few times on our first cruise. 
I learned that all the prices displayed online have to be the same as RCL, unless group bookings. Two things I didn't know before this post. Thanks.
And thank you devils advocate Crimson Cruiser (Roll Tide!) for letting me know about cruisesnmore. That is great a great extra. Turns out last cruise using Cruises I only got $50 OBC (although I thought it was more) and a $50 virtual gift card which I only noticed this week when I started researching this topic. A tentative booking with Harr will give me with $75 OBC and it looks like Cruisesnmore with give me $270. Not a small difference.

I'm gonna play devil's advocate a bit here and recommend the "big box TA" we have: cruisesnmore.
We've used them twice now (our TA being Giovanna) and have had a great experience. We get about 10% of the base fare as refundable OBC (meaning if we don't use it we get that money in our pockets - haven't done that yet as we happily spend it all), 1 specialty dining voucher for two and 1 spa voucher. It's great for us who only cruise once a year because we can really make it special.
That said - we've not had any large issues they have to deal with, so no idea how good or bad they'd be in those cases (such as mass cancellations, refunds, FCC etc) and every price drop we got on our current cruise was found and requested by me.
For me...not a problem. I have the time at work on my breaks to do the faux booking to check prices and I cross my fingers and toes that we have no problems. I'm generally a hands-on planner so I don't mind not reliquenshing all the control.
 
I won't say don't listen to the others but it's *very* important to know what you're getting when you choose and weighing what matters most to you overall.
 

Yes. You can buy a "rest of cruise" package on any day. It will just be prorated for however many days are left.

I personally have not seen pre-cruise sales in the Spa, but they do run "sales" on board...usually it's not really a "sale" as much as it might be a package of more than one thing at a "discounted" price...hubby and I did a couples massage on our 25th anniversary cruise and it was discounted but not enough that we will ever do it again on a cruise!