jticarruthers

Hope to see you on board

That email makes to much sense .... Pics sent ;) Quick recap, nobody on board is talking about it. Best guess is that they are putting in an expanded nextcruise area. The space being worked on goes from the R bar to the service counter in promenade cafe. Missing all the seating as it was a nice spot to sit, snack and people watch.

Matt can you post/send an email to send photos to, I can't seem to find it on my phone. Happy Friday from Cozumel by the way !

Will try, nothing new to report but the seating area of the cafe is gone

Onboard freedom, rear balcony dividers are openable

Onbord fots now, not sure what is being built but a construction crew has half of the promenade cafe torn apart and appear to be building walls to split the space into something else. Update you if I learn more this week. Happy thanksgiving all !

Ours has been ordering off the adult menu on the cruise since he was about that age. He has learned he likes escargot, tiger shrimp, lobster and several other things from cruise dinner menus :) Its funny he looks forward to dressing up and being "served" at the dinner table since it is so different than the modern casual dining restaurant.

Hopefully I am far from old and stodgy but I certainly see elements of both sides. The biggest attraction for me when I took my first cruise was being able to tell my boss with a straight face that I would be unreachable for 7 days, period. On too many vacations prior to that I found myself flipping through emails in line for Space Mountain or sneaking up to the room to check my emails on my laptop. The feeling of completely disconnecting was awesome and is the biggest thing I look forward to on a cruise. At this point I have a better boss and I have trained myself to stay disconnected but things like high speed internet are the last thing I want on a cruise. Having people yakking away on their cellphones on the pool deck, etc. are not what I cruise for. The bells and whistles of Q class are largely lost on me, might be worth a try at some point but "getting away" is my biggest reason to cruise.

Royal likes to make a major production out of it and do a month long "schedule" of releasing the schedules, would be so much simpler if they just put them out there earlier so people could plan ahead but I guess it works :)

Bad news .. I think the exact equidistant point is somewhere in the Everglades .... not a great place .... maybe settle on Orlando as being close enough :)

I thought FUBAR was just an alternate way of referring to the Royal Caribbean IT Department ....

Allure was probably the tightest cabin we have been in with the bed open (Central Park Balcony). It seemed they had stretched the room so it was longer and narrower than "normal", made it very hard to move around with the bed open in particular.

Suit and/or sport coat are also no longer necessary.

To diverge slightly further from the group, not a major fan of the Oasis class boats but have enjoyed the Voyager and Freedom (near sister) class boats and would highly recommend the Navigator as a start point. I do agree with Scott's point that going straight to the best of the best can make it tough to like anything else, plus its cheaper (almost always), plus its a day longer, plus its plenty big enough not like its a small ship with nothing to do :)

They have added a 5 nt before the THanksgiving cruise (yay, someone else can be the guinea pig) but still show her as out of service from mid-October to mid-November ....

Dammit Matt, you made me go and look at some great sounds menus and now I have food cravings at 8 am , 6 months away from the cruise still !! I have heard that NCL is more nickel and dime, but I figure the savings on the free alcohol package more than covers any nickel and diming from a "lets try it" standpoint. I talked with my TA for a bit before booking and she said most of their clients that have liked Royal don't have a big problem with NCL except for those that don't care for the flexible dining options ... all I know is they have a free pub with some good sounding food to go with my free beers so worst case I can just live there or at Margaritaville for the cruise :)

Pretty sure there is a strategy, not totally sure what it is. When cruising by ourselves we almost always seem to get a large table with a couple of other families with kids of similar ages, I assumed that was planned rather than accidental but could be wrong :)

Scott to be honest I wouldn't put Chops the last couple of times I went far above the Outback/Longhorn/Texas Roadhouse level. First time or two we went it was not quite to the level of Bern's Steakhouse or Capital Grille (both here in Tampa) not sure if you know of either one but both excellent high end steakhouses. We had signature cocktails made at our table, signature salad made at our table, waiter constantly checking on us (I think he had 2 or 3 tables max), lots of signature "touches" that made for an incredible dining experience for the extra $25 or so (several years ago). The last couple of times everything has come out ready to serve, the menu has been slimmed down, the waiters are much less attentive, etc. and the price has gone up .. no longer competes with a top steakhouse in my book. Its better than an Outback but not by much and considering the $40 does not include alcohol at all, I can get a pretty darn good feed at Outback for $40 ;) Again not saying its bad by any stretch but it isn't what it was.

Booked NCL Escape (new build) with a free drinks package for less than the comparable Freedom OTS sailing the same week. Booked Carnival Vista (new build) for substantially less than Harmony OTS for next summer (Less of a true comparison as Harmony is O Class but weren't impressed enough by O Class to mortgage the house for it). Turning Diamond this month and then taking a year off from RCL as their prices have pushed up high enough that it is worth considering the alternatives.

Late October/Early November, the Thanksgiving 2016 cruise is supposed to be the first out of refurb .... little nervous about that but it should be fun :)

I think Marc's list is still current, the big jumps are from nothing to Platinum and then up to Diamond (almost there)

Basically the benefit is a vastly reduced deposit. There is a lot of confusion on the OBC offer. When I booked back in March they gave me an OBC for the cruise I was on equal to the deposit I was putting down on my nextcruise. So, the deposit for the 7 night cruise on Adventure OTS next Thanksgiving in a balcony was $100. They charged my card $100 and then put a $100 OBC on my account onboard Jewel OTS. Essentially my card got charged exactly the same amount as it would have on Jewel anyway but now I have a deposit of $100 on AOTS for next year. FYI the deposit is non-refundable but since it didn't cost me anything that's fine. I had heard that if you elect to take the OBC on the future cruise then the deposit is refundable still, this wasn't offered to me and I didn't ask but I believe it is the case.

Just to be contrary, I would say Chops was really, really good the first couple of times we did it, over the years it has dropped to being better than the MDR but not by enough to make it worth paying for IMO. Its good but no longer great.

I think Carnival and NCL are each popping out one a year for the next couple of years as well. Haven't been impressed by the Q class reviews and since there aren't any out of Florida I don't see myself on one anytime soon. O class is too freaking expensive for the minimal upgrade over Freedom and her sisters. Hopefully all the capacity drives down pricing but at least on Royals side they just seem to use it as an excuse to jack up the price for the "premium" ships.

I just added a 6th to a family cabin, no reprice or anything like that just added a 6th at the "extra" person rate. However, I also asked about removing a third from a different cabin at the same time and that was a whole different animal. That would have resulted in me only having 2 people in a triple cabin which would require that I move to a double cabin and trigger a reprice (in addition to losing the aft balcony) and would end up costing me more for the double than the reservation for the triple .... so I will have a phantom third person along for the cruise in order to keep the lower price ;) I would definitely do it over the phone though so that you can determine what impact (if any) there will be before you pull the trigger.