SPS

You're welcome. I visited the Buffalo Trace Distillery back in October. (My wife gifted me a Kentucky Bourbon Trail weekend for my 50th) No Blanton's was available, but I did bring home a delicious bottle of Eagle Rare.

The standard list of bourbon that is usually onboard is Buffalo Trace (My go to brand!) Bulleit, Maker's Mark, and Four Roses. There may be others, but I generally stick with Buffalo Trace unless the onboard bar I'm at is out. There are many other brands of whiskeys and scotches available, too. I doubt Blanton's will be available onboard anytime soon. It's hard to find and currently retails at about $150 a bottle. (I know this because I just bought a bottle!)

It doesn't look as though they did any prior research on cruising. It almost is they just booked and went seemingly unprepared. Just some simple poking around the official RC website would have been informative. It's as if she didn't even look at the Cruise Planner page. That alone would've saved A LOT of extra $$$ on dining. Being a travel blogger, you would think she would have put out a pre-cruise blog telling her reader's about the upcoming trip and receive hints, tips, and tricks from her readers. (And I'm sure a reader would have told her about royalcaribbeanblog.com to better prepare her for cruising!)

@USCG Teacher May I ask when you got the initial offer to bid on a Royal Up? I was surprised yesterday to get a Royal Up email offer 75 days before our Quantum sailing to Alaska. Now I'm weighing my bid options.

I tried to organize a professional Hide & Seek tournament, but it was a complete failure. Good players are hide to find.

I don't even know where to start, but all of the reasons above and more. 1. We like the ability to book well in advance and pay over time before the cruise. It's nice after a great vacation to not have large credit card bill or have a considerably lower bank balance. 2. It's much less stressful than a typical land vacation. I don't have to rent a car and get us from place to place on a daily basis. Our "Hotel" takes us from place to place with spectacular views along the way. 3. Other than the occasional specialty dining experience, we don't have to worry about shelling out money for restaurant food several times each day. And where else am I going to be able to try caviar and escargot for no additional charge? 4. So many activities that would cost so much extra on land that are included; Entertainers, Theater shows, Flowrider, iFly Skydiving sim, the North Star, and so much more. 5. We have been able to visit destinations that we had never even thought we would be able to see. 6. We like being able to do "as much" or "as little" as we want. Particularly on sea days. Nothing better than having a cocktail out on the deck while the waves roll by OR while soaking in the hot tub in the Solarium. 7. SERVICE: Sometime during the first day of each cruise, I'm reminded of just how much the crew and staff spoil us! They crew on each ship we've sailed on aims to please. 8. The chance to "unplug". We purposely do NOT buy internet service so we can get away from the usual noise of our daily lives and live more in the moment. THERE'S MORE BUT THIS POST IS GETTING TOO LONG!

If you have not received them by email, your documents should be available in your "Upcoming Cruise" page on the Royal Caribbean website.

I can guarantee my wife will be trying this on Quantum this August. Thanks for this info!

Sorry, everyone, but each time this subject comes up, I have to post this!

This is exactly what we did in January. Did the in-app portions in the "wait to board" area. When we got onboard, we simply walked to our muster station, checked-in with the staff there. DONE!

NOW, thanks to E-Muster, we get that done and out of the way. We follow that up with a first drink at a bar in close proximity to our muster station! Then it's off to eat lunch while we post some nice onboard "vacation envy" pictures to our social media accounts to make our family and friends jealous!

My wife has to eat gluten free and I have to say, cruising on Royal Caribbean has been the best vacation dining experience for her! She never needs to worry about feeling like she's experiencing a problem with cross contamination, having too little to choose from, or feeling dissatisfied by the experience. The staff is always very accommodating to her needs throughout the entire ship. I have made several posts about it on this site whenever this subject comes up. Here are just a few posts I have made. You will most likely only need to mention it the the MDR staff once, they will make a note of it and will then begin to bring you the NEXT evening's menu at the end of your meal so you can make choices ahead of time and have the kitchen modify items you would like to be gluten free. (They made my wife her own personal size apple pie twice!). If you frequent another location on ship, the staff may even remember you and make suggestions or alterations for you. FYI: Sorrento's Pizza should have gluten free pizza upon request (and possibly Udi's cookies). Also, some items in display cases and in the Windjammer may already be marked gluten free on their signage. (Example below) Many ships have a large sign in the Wind Jammer that reads "Gluten-Free Corner", a designated section of the buffet that contains nothing but items that are gluten free.

I assume by purchasing tags, you mean that your bought the plastic sleeves that attach to your luggage. You will receive your luggage tags on the last page of your eDocs cruise documents when they become available. Usually 30 days before your cruise

I can't even get excited about an upcoming cruise like I used to until get through Smokey's "Level 3". These testing requirements really make me temper my expectations. We spent the entire month of January as secluded as we could just to try and make sure we would test negative on January 27th! At about 4:00 pm that day (once my wife's test results were done) I finally got to exclaim "We're going on the cruise!"

Cruises that were BOOKED last year on or before September 30, 2021 and SET SAIL by December 31, 2022 are automatically eligible for double C&A points. https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/topics/crown-and-anchor-society-double-points-offer BTW, welcome to the boards!

It's looking more and more like our upcoming Alaska cruise will be the last one we take with the DBP. The best "deal" that was ever available was $56.99 PP/PD a few months ago (Which I bought) with prices now bouncing around between $66.99 to $76.99. These $98 to $105 prices are just going to be too much to bear. There's just no way we can justify paying as much as (or possibly more than) the cruise fare for drinks.

So far the farthest we've gone is about 2000 miles (Michigan to San Juan, Puerto Rico). In August it will be close to the same distance (Michigan to Seattle) Eventually, we want to go about 4500 miles for Italy and Hawaii (Roughly the same distance to each for us) or maybe even about 9500 miles to Sydney!

That would be pretty awesome for ya! Any idea if anything bigger than the Vision class ships port there for the day? I'm wondering just how big of a ship can be docked there.

Does anyone know who is captaining Harmony right now? As of Monday 5/23, Johnny Faevelen is on vacation in Florida. (Whomever it is, it's not likely he/she will be captaining an Oasis class ship again anytime soon!)

So what you're saying is that you bought TWO lottery tickets!

Here is a link to where I first saw the "Bar Code Trick" mentioned to find your GTY room assignment. The last six digits are supposedly the deck & room number. I'm anxiously waiting for our own bar code to become available to to use this trick for our August Alaska cruise.