jticarruthers

You cant have (as far as I can tell) the "pre-purchase" discount by booking ahead and also your diamond discount ... like so many of the C&A discounts it is devalued by the fact that they basically give the same discount to everybody for pre-paying for things.

Just did this on Freedom, you get an extra key for each room that does not work for "charging to the room" just as a key. Worked fine just meant you had to think a little bit about who could open which doors

That was part of what caught our attention, there were only 4 people at the HP trivia and the host made a point of saying "how do we get the crowd to come since we cant say HP anymore".

Just off Freedom of the Seas and noticed that some of the "iconic" trivia events were relabeled. Harry Potter Trivia was "The Boy Who Lived Trivia" and Disney Trivia was "The House of the Mouse Trivia". We attended the HP one and the host made it clear that "they were not allowed to call it HP Trivia anymore" ... didnt attend the Disney one but I imagine it was the same explanation. Anyone seen anything similar on other ships? Curious if this is a Freedom thing or a Royal thing and then ultimately curious if it s proactive or a sign of someone getting "lawyery" and threatening infringement.

I was on a cruise right after the announcement that did the receipts by my one in Feb they were gone again. My guess would be it wasn't very popular so it quietly died.

As of early Feb the Liberty of the Seas still did the ice show on the 3 night weekend, may very well have changed since then though.

It feels like Canaveral is losing the 3/4 bahamas route in mid-late 2024 ? I see Allure on that route from late 2023 to mid 2024 and then Allure moves to Miami - apparently replacing Freedom. Liberty shows up doing the 3/4 out of Lauderdale still but I cant find a 3/4 out of Canaveral in the second half of '24. Seems odd that Royal would drop that cruise but I dont see a lot of ships showing up as "undeployed" still

Its definitely happening more, never noticed it prior to a couple of years ago but it seems to happen at least once (and more if the cruise leaves from south florida instead of canaveral for some reason). Its been enough of a problem to complain a couple of times, hopefully the issue is handled now

Reminds me of my first flight back to the US post 9-11 ... the one where the "newly trained inspector" took the time to painstakingly read to me all of the reasons that it would be ok for me to be returning to the US with traces of explosives, gunpowder, nuclear material, toxic chemicals, etc. My numerous attempts to explain that my answer was no and I didn't want to hear the list went unheeded as he seemed to believe it was required for me to listen to the entire list before I could affirm that I was not a trained chemical engineer returning from mining nuclear material with explosives. To be clear I did not have traces of any of those things on/with me but that didn't seem to be relevant either.

I used to be "Loyal to Royal", ended up branching out and trying other lines. For me the biggest differences between the lines have more to do with the age/size of the ships than the names on the hulls. I do prefer Royal, especially for the 3/4 night Bahamas market which they are crushing the competition in (except MSC which is priced so much lower it is hard to compare the two). Tried a Celebrity last year because of the ports offered. Trying Princess for Alaska, again it just fit what we wanted better than Royal's offering. Favorite ship currently is Carnival Mardi Gras which i though compared to Oasis class in many ways. Royal remains my #1 but not the only 1 like it used to be.

It's really not hard to enforce ... just turn off the seapass card if it hasnt been scanned at muster by xx time ... when they cant get into their room, get a drink, etc. they will come looking for help.

I was told it only applied to book on board but have not "tested" that concept so I am not sure that is correct. (DL Concierge explained it to me that way and the one time i did it we waited until on board to book)

Used it once and was disappointed. You cant book ahead so the BOGO applies to the "prevailing price on the ship", think when all was said and done we saved about $10 by not taking advantage of the pre-sail "discount pricing" and although there was good availability on board the timing wasn't as good as what it would have been if we had booked online ahead of time. Went back to booking ahead and not using the coupon since the savings was so minimal.

I picked up the card for the signup bonus and use it just for Royal purchases now (2x points is pretty much my standard earn but it means I get to an OBC award every now and then).

Most of our cruises (on Royal at least) have become the shorter weekend cruises over the last few years and we just dont bother with the dining room anymore. It's easier just to get buffet/pizza/sandwiches when we are in the mood and not deal with dressing up, etc. On the couple of occasions we have done the dining room it has been at least 90 minutes with a lot of "wait" time rather than a steady flow, only reason we go know is if we have travel companions that are interested in the experience.

I get TMobile service in most ports for "free" but its usually 3G quality, good enough for slow data movement but nothing worth sharing. Not sure if the "plan" for your modem includes free international data the way the standard plans do but if so i would say yes, you should be able to connect but you are very unlikely to see 5G.

Just had the "joy" of seeing Cats on Oasis a few weeks ago ... we decided that no one actually likes Cats, its just that having seen it you feel the need to make others suffer as much as you did ... so people encourage others to go see Cats so that they can share their misery .... its a working theory yet to be disproven.

We usually take a cooler onboard with us that has soda/wine. So far we are about 9 out of 10 on it just going through the xray machine with nothing further being said or done. The most recent trip the security guy asked to open it and rummaged through to check that the cans were in fact soda/bubbly water and not beer ... nothing was said about the fact that there were about 24 of them. As in all things Royal Caribbean there is no consistency but I would say unless you are trying to take hundreds of sodas on with you, you should be fine.

Its the new budget cut process ... we tell one set of passengers that its a puzzle room ... if they can solve the puzzle and "save" the patient great ... we tell the other set of passengers that our expert medical team is assessing their needs

Thanks !!

Can anyone confirm that the Escape Room on Indy is up and running? Have done the Mariner and Oasis ones since the restart but Indy is not showing up in the online cruise planner or the app, just wondering if it is still closed for some reason. Also, does anyone know the capacity for the Escape room?

Boosters are asked about in prescreening but not considered as part of being "vaccinated"

Cant comment on the unvaxxed experience but it definitely felt like the policy was "dont ask/dont tell" on the last couple of cruises.

Finally made it back to Labadee 2 weeks ago specifically for this. Did it and the newer Superman version

Mariner was officially mask free when we boarded last week. Most of the staff seemed to be happy with the change with a handful that preferred to keep wearing their masks.