CharmMicah68

Hey All!
Back from a wonderful Day 8 in Rhodes, Greece!
We once again started our day in Coastal Kitchen for breakfast:

Then, we headed off the ship in Rhodes for some independent exploration of the old town:




We bought some oil paintings as well (I think I mentioned in a previous post that I just bought my second house last year so I thought these would be pretty on my still bare walls and would help me remember this trip):


Then we once again got gelato (gelato and coastal kitchen, our 2 constants):


Then we headed back to the ship a bit early, this cruise has been tiring for both of my parents.
Today's Towel Animal:

View of Rhodes from the ship:

Then I wandered around the fairly empty ship to take pictures, I will go through those and post them after the cruise (when I do the cabin reviews as well), but here is a sneak peak of those in the form of today's towel station towel animal:

Then we had an earlier dinner in Teppanyaki:


(Our Chef, Kevin)




(Olaf made with eggs 🤣)


(That bottom sauce is yum yum sauce, the best 😋)







(Beautiful view as we sailed away 🤩)

Teppanyaki was absolutely delicious but it was definitely a lot of food. It was a nice change up from the typical restaurants and the show aspect of the meal is a lot of fun. We did have a family with 4 kids at our table but honestly the second the show started, they were so entertained so they quieted down. We did kinda expect kids since we did eat a lot earlier tonight due to our early tour tomorrow. Anyways, I would obviously come back to Teppanyaki/Hibachi on other ships since I have done it multiple times now and I definitely recommend it to others.
Speaking of tomorrow, we are in Santorini! This is probably the highlight of this itinerary and I think the cruise line knows it as we have the longest port stay there. We are doing "Pyrgos Village with Mezes and Wine" obviously booked through shore excursions on the ship tomorrow. Given the tender situation, we have heard an excursion is the best deal here and also it means we don't have to do the cable car both ways. We are in Santorini tomorrow with 2 other ships, the Marella Explorer (former Celebrity Galaxy that we have actually been on!) and the Regent Seven Seas Voyager, so the wait for the cable car down shouldn't be terrible but I am sure I will find out and share.
Thanks and TTYL!
- Ashley
 
 

Hey All!
Back from a nice day in Limassol where we are currently still docked. My dad finally wrote something about his Ephesus tour on Day 5 so here is that.
He put a ton of photos in it (like twice the amount I have been doing) and I don't know what can be cut so attaching it all as a PDF here, also the forums don't like copy pasting from word docs I have discovered from a formatting perspective. Anyways, see the attached document!
Thanks and TTYL!
- Ashley
EphesusTour.pdf
 

Hi All!

A little about myself since I haven't posted on here before, I am Ashley, a 30 year old from Arizona who has been cruising mostly with my parents (and grandparents before they passed) but sometimes solo, with friends, and with groups since I was 9 months old. I have mostly done Royal Caribbean but I have also done some Celebrity and Princess as well as one each of Holland America, NCL, and Carnival (we don't talk about those, there is a reason it was one each). Anyways, all that to say I am very loyal to Royal with nearly 80 Royal Caribbean cruises under my belt. When I am not cruising, I am a full time software engineer to pay for my cruising habit.
And now for some history on this cruise.... my parents and I first booked this itinerary for October of 2021 in the summer of 2020. Heck, we also booked cruises in June of 2020 when our May cruise was canceled, August when June was cancelled, November when August was cancelled, so on so forth, you get the idea. Fast forward to summer of 2021 and well over 40 FCCs later, the restart was finally happening and the final payment due date for this cruise was quickly approaching. There we still a lot of unknowns about Israel and what the covid requirements would be to go there and as that was the main reason we booked that cruise (more on that later...), after a family meeting we cancelled it and I spent 2 weeks in October on the Symphony of the Seas with a friend (and my parents ultimately joining for the second cruise after some convincing) instead where I finally earned pinnacle after waiting the entire restart only a little more than 1 cruise away (I promise, I am not a snotty pinnacle, I refuse to wear the pin and prefer to go with the flow instead). With that I had finally made it back on a ship for the first time since January 2020 but I still hadn't made it to holy lands.
Fast forward again to February 2023 when my parents were on the Celebrity Beyond celebrating their 40th anniversary without me (to quote Stephanie Tanner: how rude... not, they deserved the vacation without me and they had their neighbors with them to take my place, also I am pretty sure my work would have killed me if I took another cruise at that point). Before they headed out on their cruise, I looked at the itineraries released just a couple months before for Europe in 2024 and found this one, and made the mistake of emailing my parents with the details. It didn't take much convincing that we had to book this cruise. A week later, after a lot of back and forth with them and the future cruises agent on Celebrity Beyond, we finally got this booked and everything confirmed. Note to my future self and really everyone reading this: never book Royal on Celebrity, while we have successfully booked Celebrity on Royal before with no issues, this was a nightmare to say the least, the on-board agent had no clue what the different cabin categories were and after pleading with her that Odyssey had J1s, J3s, and J4s and they were all Junior Suites, she was finally able to find more than just the J1s available.
With the cruise finally booked, let's talk about why we wanted to do it: Israel. My mom and I are Jewish and my mom has always wanted to go to the holy land but has said she would never do it by land, she just didn't feel comfortable due to some experiences her parents/my grandparents had when they went. And similar to me, she loves cruising. So this seemed like the perfect solution. I had also unfortunately aged out of birthright during Covid as a result of them changing the age policy during that time so this would give me a taste of Israel to see if I wanted to join a volunteer trip or something else in the future. When June 2023 arrived and the flights opened up to book, there wasn't a doubt in our minds that we were going on this cruise. Before booking the flights we had a family meeting and I made one important note to my parents: If this cruise doesn't go to Israel, are you still ok with going for the other ports? They both said yes. My mom has always wanted to go to Santorini since watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants so while it was not Israel, there would still be something on her bucket list to cross off. Even though the itinerary at the time didn't have Ephesus, Turkey on it, we knew it was likely this would appear if Israel was removed and my dad wanted to see the House of the Virgin Mary after missing the opportunity to see it while on the Splendour of the Seas in 2000. After that discussion, our flights were booked and we started making hotels and other plans for the trip including booking excursions for every port except Israel since conveniently none were open for Israel and also I knew if we did make it there, we would want to do a private tour so we could cover both the Christian and Jewish heritage there adequately.
Once again, let's fast forward this time to November 2023. Unfortunately, we all know what happened on October 7th. The days that followed made it very obvious that this was sadly not like other times Israel had been attacked. They were not getting out of this quickly. We received the not at all surprising email that this itinerary was changing. Out was Israel and in was Turkey, as I unfortunately predicted, along with Mykonos. After yet another family meeting (I think this is at least the 3rd one in this story, sensing a theme here...) we unanimously decided we were still going, barring any crazy world event. It was full steam ahead and I finally decided to start planning the tours for our pre-cruise stay in Rome. We also booked an excursion for Mykonos through the ship and I left my dad to figure out Ephesus himself. I still don't think he has that planned, you can tell who is the planner and who isn't in this family.
Now let's fast forward to February 2024. It was Super Bowl Sunday and I had plans to go to the Phoenix Open with my dad in the corporate tents on the 17th hole. Instead, I got woken up by a call at 6am with news that my mom had passed out just before midnight the night before and they were in the ER room at Mayo Hospital. This cruise was far from the first thing on my mind, I wanted to know how my mom was doing, what had happened, if there was anything they needed as the hospital is less than a mile from my house, I can literally see it from my backyard. In the weeks that followed, and what seemed like hundreds of doctors appointments, a couple dental appointments, and a surgery later, we finally brought up this cruise again. Her doctor's gave her the all clear to go, they just warned that we had to be careful, she couldn't over exert herself. Another family meeting and the swapping of tours later to some less strenuous ones, we were once again on track for this cruise to happen.
Now finally we have made it to today. We fly out in a little more than 2 weeks on the evening of 4/30. We finally settled on a hotel for our one night post cruise in Rome before flying home so the last thing is planned. As many hurdles as this cruise had and the amount of times we thought this wouldn't happen, we are looking forward to it finally happening, even if it is a little different than originally planned. I am just grateful that we are all still here to enjoy this as a family. I have never done a live blog of a cruise before. Not here and also not on that other cruise board that shall not be named. Something about this cruise feels different, while I hope this isn't my last big European adventure with my parents, I know there is a chance that will be the case so I really want to remember this and document it. Not only are my parents getting older, I am also getting older and who knows what will come for my future as well. While we have plenty more cruises planned as a family out of the US to the Caribbean as well as the Mexican riviera on the west coast, I don't know that I will have a trip like this as a family once again.
I promise my future posts won't be as much of a novel. There was a lot of backstory to cover and I hope I at least made it interesting to read. In the coming days I will start to talk about our plans for both pre-cruise and on the cruise but figured it made sense to start with the back story first.
Since I have never done this before, not sure how to end these, I am sure I will figure that out better as I go. So for this one I guess I should say TTYL!
 

I never do well in these exercises because to be king for a day requires that I think like a king for that day. 
That means I must stop thinking about my personal needs or desires and I must think about what is best for the kingdom.  Rarely are the two the same.  

Okay, so you get to be "King" of RCCL.  There are a lot of opinions and ideas floating around on the board (maybe even a few complaints). 
What are changes that you would do to make for a better sailing experience?  Simply saying cheaper cruises in not an option here.  Lowering the price of add-ons is acceptable though.
Mine:
1) Drop The Key or give it some really nice benefits like 1 free Drink of the day. Bring back free room service. 10% or 20% off ala carte on board stuff with The Key.
2) Offer a lower tiered drinks package. Maybe a 5 drink per day package for a set lower price of $30 or $40/pp/day. 
3) Ban all the hard sell tactics at the Spa.  Mrs Fan won't even go to the spa anymore due to this issue (even after she asked not to be barraged with the upsell)

We used to book directly with RC, but we told about MEI Travel, and have been useing them ever since, there outstanding

The benefit for booking with a GOOD travel agent is that you have one person dedicated to your trip.  My TA can make suggestions for sailings, look for group rates, check for price drops, and, most importantly, take care of a problem should one arise.  And they do.  My last problem would have taken me 3+ days of being on the phone to take care of.  But my TA took care of it, solving the problem and saving me probably dozens of hours on the phone.  I know nothing about Direct Cruises, but I would never book through somewhere like Costco, Cruise.com, etc. They are often left out of things like Royal Up and other promotions AND I love that I have someone that I can email/phone or text whenever I have a question or problem.  A good cruise TA will not charge for their services, as they all get a commission from the cruiseline.  Some take their commission AND charge customers a fee (I'm looking at you, Travel Leaders), so know what the policy is before you work with someone.
Many of us use MEI Travel (a sponsor of this blog, but more importantly, some of the nicest, incredibly talented TAs you'll ever find).  If you go to the home page of this blog, there's a big yellow form you can fill out and someone from MEI will contact you.  But if you don't want to go that route, just be sure  you know what you're paying for when you find someone.    Good luck!
  

Does that mean we can “share” in March.  Lowly Diamond so I only get 4 ☹️

Today is Roatan.  We were excited to get off as we had heard that the new port area was done.  Nope.  Far from it.  Still mostly construction going on.  Perhaps that bit of misinformation was referring to the fact that they had completed the land fill....yes, that is done...but the buildings are definitely still under construction.  We will probably still get off but are disappointed that the construction is still under way.  Honestly, deep down, I questioned how the area could be done as the last time we were here (which wasn't that long ago, truly), they were still reclaiming the land where the new terminal area would be located.  I knew it couldn't really be done...wishful thinking.
Last night was Chops.  I guess I'm just getting Chops-overload with so much cruising over the past month.  It was fine...nothing wrong, but I was just - meh.  It didn't help that we had eaten lunch in the CK (we almost never eat lunch) and I was still pretty full from that.
No shows last night but I did FINALLY have a winning evening in the casino.  I just played UTH and ended up leaving with about $80 more than I started with.  That's a huge win, considering the past few nights !  Here's a cool story....for me, at least.  As many of you may or may not know, my real name is Ramona.  I have been "Raye" my entire life but my birth name is Ramona.  It is a very unusual name, for Americans.  [Both the Latin countries and Romania, believe it not, claim that the name Ramona is native to their cultures...anecdote].  So I sat down at the UTH table and handed my card to the dealer who looked so confused.  She turned to the lady to my right and asked to see her Seapass card.  Believe it or not, she was Ramona, too !!!  The dealer thought maybe the wrong person had been signed into the system but no....   I'll bet I haven't met more than 3 other Ramona's in my entire life and here I was, sitting next to another one of me !!!!  She was a much better gambler than me, apparently.  She had many thousands of promo chips in front of her and later went to the cage and brought more to the table.  Yikes !  It must have been good luck for me to be playing with my Ramona-sister, b/c I did have a winning session - finally !!!
I went to GS yesterday to retrieve one of the info pages that details all of the [important] staff members - Captain, HD, Cruise director, etc. and once again (you may recall I had this problem on one of the earlier cruises....can't recall which one it was), the paper they had was out of date....so she promised to have it updated and sent to my cabin.  That sounds familiar....that same promise was made to me on whatever other ship that was....and no bueno.  Never received anything so I'm not holding my breath this time.  I'm trying HARD to provide you guys with some USEful information but I'm getting NO HELP !  😋😍
 

we had hooked on symphony and LOVED it!! i think you will have a great time!!
we are also planning to go back when we are on her again in december 

OMG, Roger & I are talking about dipping our toes back in and have zeroed in on the 3/20/25 10 day on EX.  Is this God’s way of telling me to book?!?!?!?

So my Symphony cruise this month still shows being at PDCC on the 19th with Indy.  HOWEVER, Because of the Labadee fiasco Royal changed our schedule and WE are now joining Wonder on the 20th!!  That is TWO Oasis size ships together!  Both arriving at 7am!  Cruise mapper has not updated the Symphony schedules!  
Oh and we will also be with Wonder on the 19th all day in Port Canaveral…but I believe that is their turnaround day.  Royal is bringing us there from 7a-6p.  
We will be with Allure and a few other ships in Nassau (our replacement port 😢) on the 21st.

That shrimp po'boy was so good, I think I had it twice on Wonder.  I am craving Mason Jar now 😋 😩 😫

MJ lunch was great.  I had the chicken sandwich; Dan had the shrimp po-boy.  We shared a cinnamon roll. OMG, so delicious !  I had the tater tots which were kinda bland but not terrible.  Dan had the Cajun fries.  They had cut my chicken breast in half ( thank goodness) b/c it was such a fatty but it made the sandwich so much easier to eat as I removed half of it.
Dinner tonite is in the CK (filet night).  The only dinner we have scheduled in the CK.  We may pop in for lunch randomly and I assume we have breakfast there (I forgot to ask an about breakfast).  I guess I need to confirm that…
Tonite we have inTENse at 10:45.  Hopefully I’ll still be awake for that !

So, I will continue with this thread for the fifth and final leg of this saga.  We boarded Wonder today (5-5).  This is our Pinnacle cruise.
Drove up from Port St Lucie.  It’s about an hour and fifteen minutes’ drive.  Got to the terminal right at 9:00, which is precisely our target for terminal arrival.  Getting into the parking garage was the same madhouse that it always is.  After about 10 minutes of inching along we finally got to the luggage drop area and then circled around to the parking lane.  There, our luck got better as we immediately found a handicapped parking space right by the elevators on level 2.  🎉
We were the first in line for the Suites/Pinn line and entrance into the terminal area began at 9:45 sharp.  We waited a bit in the Suites/Pinnacle lounge area and boarding began at 10:15.
We did our muster drill as soon as we boarded and then went straight to deck 8 to retrieve our Seapass cards from the door.  They were there !  We had a heck of a time getting to deck 17 !  The elevators wouldn’t go up to 17.  There must be a secret of which I am not yet aware.  We finally went to 16 and switched elevators which finally took us to 17.  Then we had to trek around to find the entrance to the SL/CK.  It’s 180 degrees backwards from the design of the other SL/CK !
Finally….seated in the SL, we waited for the CK maitre’d to show up so we could make dining rezzies.  SO glad we did that first thing b/c by 11:00 the maitre’d kiosk at the SL was a madhouse !
We got all of our rezzies the way we wanted them so all is well.
We are going to Mason Jar for lunch in 5 minutes !  Woohoo !

Today is the last day of our journey.  Sea day.  Nothing much going on.
Dan and I both qualified for comp cruises so we spent some of our morning getting our [other] open booking from NC.  We both ended up making Prime on this set of cruises so that is one headache out of the way.
I hate the last day.  All I can think about is the dread of packing....which really only takes maybe 15 minutes but it's the idea that we are leaving....very depressing.  LOTS of people boarded this cruise last week and will continue on the "crossing" as they refer to it.  It would have been nice to stay on for the crossing but as we have made a pledge not to fly for a while, we couldn't justify it.  We'll just have to settle for Freedom and Wonder in the next week or so.
Tomorrow will be an incredibly busy day as we go home to laundry and repacking for the FR cruise the next day (4-29).  I have a ton of "home" stuff to take care of in this short visit but luckily (or unluckily, I guess) this next one is only a 4-nighter so we will be back home much sooner than we were on this B3B.  Of course, when we get back home from the FR cruise we only have 2 days to get ready for our 7 night Wonder cruise (5-5).  THEN we have a bit of a break.
Still trying to get the specialty dining changes all sorted out.  I made a ton of changes again yesterday.  I discovered through higher math (HA !) that it is actually a better deal (on a per-meal, per person basis) to get the UDP on our 4 night Utopia cruise than it is to do the lunch plus 2XBOGO.  That's a rare situation...but there's also the big bonus of getting to dine at all of the "new" (not really new) restaurants on Utopia so we threw that weighting factor in and decided to the UDP which we haven't done in a very long time.  Truly, it is too much food for us but it's only 4 nights so we will just suck it up and deal with too much food.  A good problem to have, I guess (summoning my inner @OCSC Mike).  There's also the uncertainty of whether or not the UT will be excluding low-level Pinns from the CK/SL and I don't want to wait until we find out that little gem to make my plans....so we will simply plan on NOT eating at the CK at all (unless they let us go there for breakfast which is unlikely, based on recent experiences).
Since we will be doing self-assist departing, we will meet the SL Concierge (haven't seen her at all on this leg since we were banned from the SL) at the Schooner bar 7-ish tomorrow morning.  Hopefully the disembark will go smoothly and we will be on the road bright and early.  Being a Sunday disembark will be a huge advantage.  Unfortunately, we will be making the RT BACK to PoM in less than 24 hours and that will be on a Monday morning so we have that fun to look forward to.
It's been an awesome 23 days.  I could learn to live like this.....

We are home.  Earliest disembark ever and earliest we have ever gotten home.  Off the ship at 6:30, pulled into the driveway at 8:00.  Unpacked and laundry under way.
We enjoyed watching Effectors II again even though we had already seen it.  Not sure I would see it a third time, but it was fun.  I had forgotten about all the tech - the lighting and drone are incredible.
So the 5 week saga is finally over.  I'm super glad to be home.  I guess there is a wildfire blazing somewhere near us.  We came home to a hazy, stinky place.  Hopefully it will burn out quickly.  We have a FEMA "mulch pile" (I don't really know what it is, TBH) not too far from us and it mysteriously catches fire from time-to-time.  I don't know if that's the source of the fire of it it's an actual fire.  Hopefully it will just go away, soon.
Thanks for continuing to read this rather lengthy missive.  I know blogs are boring without pictures.  I still have some pix of the Suites Sun Deck to share if I can ever get them in the same place at the same time.  The photo debacle is totally my fault as I refuse to pay for the Cloud.  I'm sure this is their way of getting back at me.  That's ok.  

Ok, first of all, the horror 😱 at those of you who struggle to use your drink vouchers! I will never understand this! 🤣 Ever!!!
And i had no idea your given name is Ramona! OMG did i love the Ramona and Beezus books growing up! 🥰😍 But you may be the first "official" Ramona i "know!" 🙂

Mariner seems to be tailing us.  She was in Roatan with us yesterday and is in Costa Maya with us today.
We had intended to get off and go into Mahahual to get a $20 massage on the beach RIGHT up until we realized that the ship was sailing at 2:00.  😪😪. Just not enough time in port to go into town so we’re staying onboard.
Tonite will be our only MDR appearance.  Lobster night.  Not that we’re such huge fans of the MDR lobster but I truly dislike the CK’s version of lobster and they no longer serve the MDR lobster in the CK so we will join GenPop tonite. We get the lobster as an appetizer (since it’s so small) and then I get the chicken Marsala as my main course.  I don’t recall what Dan got as his main last time.  He might have gotten the chicken Marsala, too.  I’ll report later.  I’m sure it’s of broad international interest…😂😂

I was shocked at the cost for sailing on Enchantment.  I have friends who are sailing on her 6-22-24 and I thought about going along but 7 nights on that crap ship was over $5K (JS) !  ...even more once you added in grats.  No f'ing way !  

Wonder all the way based on Mason Jar alone! I’ve been in both 3x each and I would say Wonder is the better choice (but you can’t go wrong!!!). 

@Matt has made the news in an article in the UK’s Daily Mail detailing his Empire Supper Club experience. 
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-13115163/icon-seas-expensive-restaurant.html
Some good publicity there.

Just got off 6 nights aboard Odyssey of the Seas and thought the Bionic Bar seemed like a huge waste of space. Kinda cool to get one drink from it but never had anyone sitting and enjoying the space like other bars. I definitely prefer the Champagne Bar that they have been getting rid of an replacing with Bionic on some ships. Just an observation. 

The most annoying cruiser is the one who has no concept of space and think they're the only people around. Walking down the middle of a busy promenade and they just stop randomly.

Probably the same people that take their good ole time stowing their bags while boarding a plane.

...sounds like a preface to removing/restricting some loyalty levels to me....but who knows.