Doug

Ha you managed to catch part of my family in one of your pictures. I'm wondering if you and I were talking on Day 8 about your Aruba excursion in the Diamond lounge? I definitely agree the Stowaway Piano Player is a lot of fun.

Also worth mentioning is that Adventure Ocean on this ship is unlike any other design I've ever seen. I've taken a handful of bad pictures and a hasty video that don't do a justice but its completely opened for ages 3 to 11. It has a lot of stations where the kids can float between at their will. Towards the front they've used tape to mark of an area where they play games like dodge ball. Along one wall they have nooks with library books around them. There's a rock wall for the kids opposite the library wall with dodge ball in the middle of this. Farther back they have stacked tubes that are padded for the kids to relax or climb around in. Next to that is a dome hockey table. Further back there's a "princess" station which has doll houses and princess stuff. There's a handful of TVs here playing kids shows. Next to this is the arts and crafts table/center with a sink for clean ups. Further back they have a large TV (maybe 75") with bean bags around it and Nintendo Switches sitting above it. They said they play movies there too. Then they have a board game table with a bookshelf of board games. Next to this they have 3 Playstation 4's hooked to 3 50" TVs. They have about 9 or 10 gamer chairs on the floor next to them. I front of that they have a large table with an assortment of wacky chairs that they said is just a free play area. Hopefully someone can get some good shots of this on a future sailing. Definitely my kids most favorite Adventure Ocean experience.

I'm on board this sailing as well so I hope its okay if I add a few extra pictures. Curcao looks lovely at night. Here's a shot of the pontoon bridge from an angle. And here's a shot of the pontoon bridge while on it. We have a late departure of 10:30pm. Most of the shopping was closed when we walked around at 7 to 8pm but most restaurants were opened. Interestingly it appears all the shops on board started to open at 7pm.

The 4 year old redhead running up to Kristin Bell in the outtakes is mine...

I was on board Allure for the 5/5 sailing and we did indeed dock at Roatan just fine on 5/10.

I personally do always. First I'll mention you don't get any better deal or sale or whatever by not using an agent. Royal Caribbean will actually actively encourage you to use an agent. Their main reason is when you need to change something or you have a question you go to your agent first and it helps reduce the load on their customer support staff. Its also similarly the reason I use an agent. Anytime you call Royal Caribbean they've got hold times and need to verify your account, etc. With an agent its typically a quick phone call or an email and if they can't answer your question then they'll get back to you. They're also very familiar with the ships themselves and can give you good recommendations. If you are interested in getting an agent I'll plug the agent I use. Her name is Michelle Cunningham from MEI Travel. Michelle has been outstanding for all the cruises we've done through her. I typically book a my next cruise on board at NextCruise and later have her make tweaks to the reservation.

You'll be find with an extension cord in either carry-on or checked luggage. You can even ask the ship for an extension cord (something I recently learned) if its for a medical device like a CPAP. Now the ship has rules that all extension cords must be grounded so I recommend a three prong extension cord otherwise your stateroom attendant might have someone from engineering come give you a talking to.

So I was a believer in the "towel charges don't actually matter" theory until our last cruise. We had the Royal Family Suite on Liberty of the Seas. Our stateroom attendant made towels disappear every time he came in unlike other trips in lower category rooms where they've left them for us to return. I never once returned a towel and just kept checking them out. When we got home I noticed that our credit card was charged $62.50 more than what our final statement was. After calling I was told it was for 2 unreturned towels and mini-bar charges despite the mini-bars being empty the whole time. It could certainly be a fluke however.

Its important to note you have to enable WiFi Calling on your phone BEFORE you depart. Your phone will need to communicate with your carrier to enable that functionality and if you don't do it before hand you will not be able to enable it on board. Once its enabled it'll work to call and receive calls just like you were home. One thing I've noticed with Verizon is that you won't have any notification of voice mails and no way to access them until you get back home. As far as call quality goes even over the Surf only (the slower package) the audio quality was outstanding. I've had to take a few work calls while on board and everyone is always completely shocked when I'm not in the same room as my team back at home.

So I've got a collection of speed tests from the Freedom, Oasis and Liberty. I've tried Surf as well as Surf and Stream. I'm fairly certain that Surf is capped at 512kb up/down on all three ships. As for Surf and Stream on Oasis it appears to cap at 4mb up/down and seems to achieve it always. While on Freedom and Liberty it could be slower at times. Western Carribbean itineraries seem to have worse connection for certain parts of them and I know they usually include a note in the Cruise Compass or include a note in my room before the connection will be spotty.

If it helps you can see the kids daily planner (the cruise compass for kids) from the Oasis of the Seas for a January 2017 sailing at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8ushpspqsr3k0mu/AAAfs6gwv6uXc_LBCTSfFzQ5a?dl=0

On both the Liberty of the Seas and the Oasis of the Seas, I was told by AO staff that the rule is 3 and under the parents must get a phone if one is available. Once the kids are 4 and up its at the discretion of the staff and/or parents. e.g. if the staff has had issues with the kids in the past then they might insist the parents take one. FWIW, it seemed like the Oasis has a lot more phones. The only reason I asked is I have twin boys who tend to bicker over pointless things (literally one argument was if it was sunny or cloudy outside that day) and one decides that they MUST tell mommy or daddy and so they would cry for one of us. The AO staff would call us and ask us to come and every single time by the time I got there whatever the spat was over was long forgotten. I tried to insist I didn't need or want a phone but my boys were weeks away from 4 and I had to have it.

I too was not aware of the extension cord and distilled water (though I'm a weird one and don't use water in mine). I've always brought an extension cord. As far as traveling through the airline. I've flown with mine quite a bit and I'd recommend keeping it as a carry on and not as a bag within a bag. TSA gets a little hands-y with your luggage when you put it in a checked bag.

Tony, My completely uninformed guess would be that your phone has a provisioning profile on it from work or some bad app installed.

I'll filter myself slightly from getting too technical but your phone periodically chatters with the network services based on apps you have installed (and running in the background). That's typically enough to keep it active. A trick to keep your service active almost the whole time is to enable your carrier's WiFi calling. Your phone will automatically check in with your carrier often enough to keep the service active. But there's other little things you can do to keep it active at the expense of battery like have your phone check your email every 15 minutes. Its basically tracking web requests to check for activity. There's apps that do activity on non-standard ports that won't trigger the meter as well.

I'll also concur with adjoining cabins and kids. I've got twin boys that are about to be 4. However another option that people overlook are family rooms. We've had an Ocean View Family room on Freedom (cabin 9500) that was pretty good. There were bunk beds with a curtain to close the area off. The downside of that room was the one normal bathroom. Most recently we had a Royal Family Suite (9708) on Liberty and that room has an internal hallway with an interior cabin, a master bedroom and a living room. Price wise it was better than all the suite rooms (except a Junior Suite). Effectively it was an adjoining room. Future sailings we've got adjoining rooms except for Oasis class where the Junior Suite was big enough (the kids could share the fold out sofa together). But I think with kids that aren't the same age I would definitely go the adjoining cabin route.

I'd recommend reaching out to your travel agent (you are using one right?) and tell them this is your desire. That way when there's a sale going on you can ping your agent to double check if something has opened up. If you've got connecting rooms there's literally 0 chance you'll get an upgrade. The people that get upgrades are the ones that book "at least this X category room" and those bookings aren't available for connecting rooms since you don't get your room assignment until very late in the process. I will also echo the likelihood that RC will upgrade you is slim. My wife and I have been doing this for 10+ years now and we go multiple times a year and the only time we got an upgrade was on our honeymoon. Sorry to be a bit negative but I figured its worth a dose a reality. Your best chance is that a sale lines up and your agent can change your booking.

Alright. One more to go but you should have all of them available as PDFs.

I've got PDF scans of the Cruise Compass. I haven't uploaded our western Oasis from January yet but I can try to do that today. Here's the Dropbox link. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/e99a6fcjsq3u76o/AAAK0pZbZcZao9f-0-xAtmB1a?dl=0

I just finished an 8 night on the Freedom on 11/20. I've got the Cruise Compass, the Adventure Ocean Kids Planner and the menus. I'm halfway through scanning them for Matt to post on the website.

Just want to bump this up because there is currently a kids sail free going on for select ships and select sailings. I even spied a few Harmony's listed.

FWIW, the sale this weekend is better than BF/CM sale. I actually rebooked the two I did then at cheaper prices.

I think it's probably hit or miss. This is our 5th time on the Freedom and the mattresses in 8557 / 8559 are way to hard. They don't have any foam toppers but instead a few 1/4 inch thick toppers that look like the top of a mattress. But last cruise in August on the Freedom on deck 8 had outstanding mattresses.

Sadly I can't tell you about the Tall Ship on St Maarten as it was canceled due to operational issues.

I'm on board this trip. Departure was a mess and half. Normally for Freedom out of Port Canaveral we arrive about 11 and we are on board by noon easily. This time we stood in line while nothing moved until about 12:30. We were told CBP didn't clear the ship early on and the last passengers weren't off until 12:15. The terminal was very small so a lot of people were outside in the heat and at least one dropped out and EMS / fire dept came to help. We were suppose to leave at 5 then it was pushed back to 5:30 after Harmony. Then due to a luggage scanning issue it was 6:30. When we finally were ready to go there was a medical emergency and someone was taken off. Not sure exactly when we got under way but it was after 7pm and probably close to 8pm. I'm not sure if the medical emergency was related to the something kitchen but we were told there was an issue in the kitchen and we would have to wait a bit for dinner.