jticarruthers

Not mid-ship but sailed the Oceanview on Deck 2 on Voyager class a couple of times. Rooms are essentially the same as the balcony, just with a wall/window where the balcony door would be. Same layout/furnishings and roughly size.

If you were planning on spending significant time in San Juan around the cruise .. maybe a concern. If you are just flying in/out to take the cruise, i would not have any worries. Keeping the cruise terminal and airport running for the tourism $ are high on the to-do list.

Sail aft on the voyager class regularly and have never regretted it. Yes the superstructure is there but so is a whole lot more balcony and a whole lot of water/wake.

I will check tonight but 99% sure they are UL certified. I usually have them in checked might have carried one on once but cant recall for sure.

Depends on what type of space it is and the activity. I have been above/below restaurant/bar spaces and maybe you can hear a little bit of talking/chair scraping type stuff but no big deal. I have also been above/below a nightclub space and that was a nightmare in one case and a non-event in the other. My recommendation would be stay away from an "entertainment" venue that might have loud music playing but other spaces should be fine.

My experience has been that if you book on board and transfer to your TA you get the onboard booking bonus and whatever deal your TA would have given you as well. I think the second part depends on your TA more than anything else though and what their policy is.

Dont have a link handy but i have a couple of plastic fans from Best Buy that i have never had an issue with. Think they were about $10-$15 each and are 9" fans. Pretty much anything modern is going to be UL certified as far as i know.

Flowrider has a signup/waiver form. Laser tag, escape room, trampoline thing all have "signups" for riding them (at least some of the time) but not waivers that i know of.

Not a huge benefit but nice to have. According to the Royal FAQ that i managed to find one time: You MUST have a passport You MUST scan the passport into the app, not enter the data by hand The picture you upload must "work". Then you get Expedited Arrival preprinted on your boarding pass and you use the expedited line. A couple of people pointed out on a different thread that it didnt seem to be 100% but its been perfect for me/my group on about 20 attempts now. Contrary to advice above though, if one of you has it and one does not ... DO go through the expedited line together (they should let you based on my experiences) and they will finalise the details for the one that doesnt have it in that line rather than the regular line.

Bingo, trivia contests, arts and crafts, less "Adventury" activities like Mini-Golf, ping pong, scavenger hunts.

Sounds like the internet development team is branching out into shipboard activities 😞

Had the good luck to have three cruises on Mariner in may/june and got to enjoy the new cococay before the pricing went nuts. Went back in november and after picking up my jaw looking at all the prices, just sat at the pool for free(mostly because i couldnt find my favorite beach through all the construction). If/when we go back again that would definitely be my plan, the zipline and waterpark were both nice but neither one is worth the prices being asked.

The key to scanning the passport into the app is to focus your camera on the "string of gobbledygook digits" along the edge. That is what it is scanning. The first couple of times i was going crazy trying to figure out how get to the picture and all the other information in a readable "picture" and then finally realized all it cared about what was the gobbledygook part.

Oops i forgot to answer the part about "what is it". I can only talk to the experience at Port Canaveral but imagine its similar elsewhere. At Canaveral there is a seperate line when you arrive at the terminal doors (look to the left). You walk way down to the back of the terminal, as you walk you will see facial recognition scanners and TV monitors. Assuming they match you to your photo succesfully they hand you an "expedite boarding" card and wave you over to the security scanners, if they dont match cleanly they pull you aside to retake your picture, etc. and then wave you over to the security scanners. When you go through security and head upstairs you dont have to check-in with anyone, just wait for them to call expedited boarding and you are on-board and good to go. 1st time we went they called expedited before all the status groups, which made it seem awesome. 2nd-4th time they called it after the suites and the C&A groups so we were already onboard and it didnt make a difference other than having a "dedicated" security scanner which had a very short line.

After multiple sailings on Navigator, I am 99% certain that it is triggered by 1)using the app to check-in AND 2)scanning your passport to fill in the check-in information rather than handkeying into the app. On our 4th trip we had a group of 20 ... every person that did both of the above was marked for expedited check-in, every person that did not do both was not. Not conclusive but that did match what i was told by Royal rep on our 2nd and 3rd trips and also matches the text i found buried on a Royal web-page after the 3rd trip when i got frustrated and spent a day digging. Impact of getting expedited is pretty minimal but darn it, if it's offered i want it !