martinez78717

@OCSC Mike and @Ryan79 where did you book these excursions outside of RCCL? What company did you use? Booked a trip in May 2024 and the Cruise Planner's selections are very limited, only two are sold out, it looks like all the excursions are just not loaded yet. Thank you!

@pattywac we just came back from Roatan and booked an excursion directly with Daniel Johnson -> https://monkeyandslothhangout.com/site/our-excursions/ It was $55 per person and we visited their wildlife exhibit, got to hug the sloth and play with the monkeys, then went snorkeling and hung out on a beach afterwards. Hugging the sloth was awesome! My daughters really like the snorkeling as well. There was 5 of us so we had private transportation to and from the location.

Family of 5, ended up costing us $144 per person at the time of booking. That was the average, I don't know if our kids were less, we had 3 adults and 2 kids under 12. Overall thoughts was the Royal Swim was a good experience, however the only thing it provided was to be pulled/pushed by two dolphins instead of 1. That was the highlight, spending time in the water with two dolphins and getting in the water with a manatee as well! Lowlights: Transportation and group size. They use regular taxis and you have to queue to get a taxi and to enter in the place as you wait for all the taxis to arrive. All the dolphin swims at Dolphin Encounter are grouped all together, so there were a lot of people coming from the ship. Note: There are only three departure times available to return back to the port: 12:30, 1:30, and 2:30 pm Food and drink - The buffet for Royal Swim was worse than the other ones, we didn't realize we had access, as other had hamburgers and hot dogs. Royal Swim was in the BIg Fish restaurant second floor and the food was not good or flavorful. Refined beans were the only good thing. If you go, go to the restaurant downstairs Also the drinks were sub-par, and not mixed very well. It started raining during lunch so we were not able to see the sea lion show, we really wanted to, or hang out at the beach or the pool. We also did not tour the Tequila Museum which was recommended by our tour guide. We took the first departure at 12:30 pm and were back on the ship by 1 pm.

@Macfoot we found on our most recent sailing that if the individual restaurants showed as sold out via the Cruise Planner, they were also sold out once we got on board. It took us several attempts to try and snag a reservation, and one we think we got due to a cancellation (Izumi Hibachi). My advice is to book early.

@Kimslice we just got off a cruise, Allure/President's, and didn't feel the three night dining package was worth it for one main reason. On a full sailing, most specialty restaurants are already reserved. For the dining package you can only make reservations once you are on the ship. We, and a bunch of other people, waited in a long line only to be told what we wanted and when was sold out. After a lot of leg work, talking to multiple people at multiple times we ended up eating at Giovanni's the first night at 5 pm, 150 Central Park (not good) day 5, and Izumi Hibachi day 6. While the discount is attractive, in the future we will book two specialty at discounted rates and reserve our dates and times.