jticarruthers

Have not done it personally but my understanding is that a no-show gets you a refund of port fees/taxes but not the cruise fare paid. AFAIK nothing else happens.

Although with more new ships being announced I would imagine Majesty will end up leaving ... who knows when though,

With the "Oasis" class terminals in Ft Lauderdale, Port Canaveral and under construction in Miami it would seem 3 of the sisters are likely to be based in Florida. I could see Oasis herself headed to China though with Allure, Harmony and 4 remaining in Florida.

I think they usually advertise that the new itineraries open to C&A members a day or so before they are open for general booking but AFAIK in reality everyone gets access at the same time. The next wave of new itineraries should be released between February and April (probably late march).

Tough question to answer as the sizes vary by ship and occasionally RCI relabels their cabin types. I have stayed in both D and E cabins that are rated for 3-4 people on several classes of ships and have never had an issue ... our son is now a teen and it is starting to get a little tougher to fit him on the bunk and/or the couch so I would suggest that assuming one of your three is a kid .... no problem. If the third is an adult it's probably doable but getting uncomfortable. If you have a specific ship/class in mind I might be able to give a better recommendation :)

On Adventure this Thanksgiving, will be our 7th in a row at sea. I would say the biggest attraction has been not having to cook & clean but still getting to enjoy the turkey day fixings as well as sitting poolside to watch the football slate. It now appears though that RCI has decided to implement holiday pricing for 2017 for thanksgiving, curious to see if that brings new benefits to the table or just a premium price in which case our tradition is coming to an end.

I'm with you on that, I was interested in Anthem back when it was meant to be in Florida but I am not flying up to the northeast to cruise back to Florida, then back to the northeast and then fly back to Florida ....

Bob, we just did our first European cruise over the summer and I definitely agree. We spent a ton of time walking and looking and walking and looking, options for snorkeling, scuba, etc. were definitely few and far between. That was our expectation though so by no means disappointed or complaining but I was in dire need of a few days of rest when we got back !!

Ultimately all of the deals they throw our are just marketing spiels, have checked every deal that came out on every cruise I have booked over the last few years. Last time a deal did anything for me was the very first week of the never ending BOGO sales when RCI misunderstood the plan and actually just applied the logic directly to the price that existed the day before without bumping up the prices first over night. I know there are people that do save a little bit from time to time as the sales mutate slightly but in general if you book within the first month of them rolling forward their schedule I will pretty much guarantee that you wont see a sale between then and your sailing 2 years later that saves you money. Its just a never ending stream of "sales" to try and attract new cruisers to the table and it seems to work really well.

I would imagine its fairly infrastructure intensive, all new locks on all the doors, tracking stations all over the ship, electrical connections, computer connections, etc. so probably not high on the list of items to add to an existing build vs. incorporate from scratch on a new build,

At least the first official blog vote was in my favor , 1-0 baby !!!

Assuming you are booking under US rules (full refund up to cancellation date) you are probably better off to book now and then wait to see if a KSF sale comes along. If it does and it actually does lower your price you can switch to the lower rate. In many/most instances if you wait for the sale you want to come along the prices will have increased so much by the time that the sale hits that you end up paying more under the sale than you would do by booking now.

The carnival party cruise thing I think has more to do with the fact that Carnival traditionally had older/smaller and therefore significantly cheaper ships that tended to attract a crowd that was more interested in partying than the amenities. With the newer/bigger ships I think as RCVoyager said they are more alike than they are different.

Speculation was that Q class was designed for more of the northern/Alaska cruising back when it first launched. Havent tried one yet so I cant comment from experience but it seemed to have a lot of "inside" activity options which was the driver of the speculation IIRC. Not sure about the size issues but I thought Q was similar in size to V class ?

You listed primarily florida ports which would exclude the Quantum class. Oasis/Freedom class are probably your best bets. Oasis class is going to cost you more typically but they are the "best" of the RCL fleet.

Depending on how you are with "handling" credit, the BofA cards are worth signing up for to get the signup bonus but there are many better cards to use on an ongoing basis. Wife and I each signed up last year and bought about $3 worth of stuff (total, about $1 and change on each of our accounts). We each received the 10,000 pt bonus from BofA for a total of $200 in OBC for $3 of purchases we would have made anyway. Multiple other cards out there offering 2% or more on purchases with higher rates such as Wilson gave above available as well depending on what your credit usage patterns are.

Never had an opportunity to try it, wasn't particularly interested in trying it either so I wont miss it but will never know if I would have like it I guess.

Thought this was an old post at first, thought something like this happened a year or two back when the drink packages first started, suddenly the pretty menus with all the choices to inspire you to try something weird and exotic disappeared.

As stated the card will do for boarding and taking the cruise but will not do if there is a problem and you need to fly back for some reason.

bc, I read that for holiday cruises RCI is restricting the specialty restaurant reservations ... since they are now applying holiday pricing to Thanksgiving this might be the same logic getting applied ... or could be a coincidence :)

Couple of posts on Cruise Critic on this as well, sounds like it is a "test" program of some sort.. Hopefully it makes into production, definitely nice to be able to prebook with OBC rather than having to choose between OBC or sold out and not available.

Do you think RCI knows that their prices went down yet ? Sounds like an IT glitch that will get fixed as soon as someone a) notices and b) finds where IT works so they can let them know ...

Don't need the package for this Thanksgiving (5 ports, 1 sea day, diamond drinks for the first time) but had planned on it for next Thanksgiving .... not seeing the value right now though. At this rate it will be $20 a drink by then so it will mathematically make sense again ....

They always have been included, doesn't mean that they always will be included though ...

Will report back on our success or lack thereof :)