jticarruthers

So I'm on a ship and have to admit to getting a fiendish pleasure heckling the pier runners. Of course the crew can't participate,  but I get the impression they enjoy it too.
However, it also feels rude. Any thoughts?

Well May 10 is the magic day that Covid will no longer be a national emergency , or whatever, in the US.  Maybe then they’ll put that restriction to bed.  Nothing like a good restriction to keep the economy down. 

I cant believe we still have that ridiculous vax requirement to get into the country when every other country in the world (save a very few) have long ago abandoned that pretense.  It’s embarrassing.

I appiled for my Esta 2 weeks ago and as far as i can remember it was just the Usual questions...are you a terrorist? Do you have plans to become a terrorist? Have you used drugs? Etc etc etc 

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.

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.

Hmmm....it looks like you have to book a cruise by 3-31-23 to do the status match.  No way we can do this.  We are booked completely up through the end of April.

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.

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.

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.

Currently on enchantment (8 day) and we JUST sailed away and already the weed is ridiculous. There was a guy walking around on the pool deck openly smoking it without a crewmember in sight to do anything about it. Then, just walking through the halls and using the elevators, the smell is everywhere. I mean everywhere.
 
I ran into this issue quite a bit on Odyssey and also on Allure. I thought at the time it was an annoyance that would clear up eventually. Today I find myself thinking that maybe dealing with the smell of pot everywhere on a cruise ship is just the new normal and it will never go away. There is no drug sniffing dog making sure you don't bring it on the ship and that seems to be the only way to keep it off. I have also seen people smoking pot in the smoking areas and the crew does not address it at all. Balcony weed is rampant, as well.
 
seriously starting to feel like if the smell of pot bothers me I shouldn't be cruising because it's gonna be here.
 

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.

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.

Back on topic, god I hope they don't bring back the old muster drill. What a regressive step.

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.

Chris Wong explains this in his Sign on vlog. 
 
IMHO I have never understood the argument or push for all of these things. We saw from the restart that it didn't matter the Measures in place there was going to be cases. Just how viruses work to be honest. I was one that was comfortable if they would have just opened everything wide open to begin with. 
I'm ok if the crew chooses on their own to mask when and where they feel the need to do so.
I also understand that the cruise lines can't stand to have multiples of crew out sick either but I don't think this is any different then when there were Norovirus outbreaks or Flu/cold outbreaks before 2020. In fact we boarded Oasis just as they finished cleaning here in the same terminal as a norovirus outbreak. Didn't think anything of it.
As a classic reminder that viruses are going to virus with everything thrown at them. https://www.mynbc5.com/article/miami-cruise-ship-positive-covid-cases/38566444
Again not trying to start a debate on this subject just has me scratching my head that we are still doing these things.
 
 

Norwegian has officially announced that they are back to 'old' muster on all ships effective immediately

Things that already haven't been mentioned,  and which might have some chance of happening? Offering the choice of either the classic soda package on the house or a discount on the DBP starting with Diamond. Percent off coupon on an upcharge menu item in the MDR or in a specialty dining restaurant. 

Here's one for the wish list. How about better cruise fare discounts for Diamond and higher on all cabins, not just balcony's. Sure the prices are better when they're at MSRP, but most of the time there's always a sale going on that's cheaper. If there's a sale the discount should be applied on top of that sale price.

RC's card is probably one of the worst out there for accumulating points.

A number of years ago there were beverage waiters in the MDR.  They are long gone.  Now the regular servers have to handle food and beverage.  The overall cut in the number of servers, in general, adds to the problem.  The root cause of all of the problems related to slower MDR dining time is the lack of service staff. Cutting the menu and reducing the options diners have is attempting to address the symptom and not the root cause.

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.

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.

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.

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.