JLMoran

If you log in to the Cruise Planner and click the "My Calendar" option in the top navigation bar, then click "Full Calendar", you can see when your scheduled departure time is. Muster drill always happens before then (usually about 45 minutes to an hour before then), so any time after that departure time is safe for booking dining reservations. Here's an example from my upcoming Anthem sailing. Names have been blacked out to protect the innocent. ?

I'd suggest calling your TA and having them check, or if you booked yourself then call Royal and ask them to verify. It's possible, especially if they haven't booked enough interior rooms and are trying to goose the sales at that end.

And I see you also removed Genny. @Lovetocruise2002 will be relieved! ?

No change for me. Still $56/night. I probably have another 3 or 4 months before I'll start seeing any price drops.

Ditto for my Anthem sailing in October. Even looking back at my price history it's higher than all but the day I booked -- where it's within $5. ?

OK, it took me a minute to understand the meaning of your topic title. At first, I thought you were the victim of another IT glitch and had your beverage package dropped (removed) from your purchases for no reason. Got really confused for a minute when I all I saw you writing about was price drops!

One trick I recently heard as a good way to deal with jet lag (actually reported on the nightly news) is to not eat for several hours before your flight or on your flight, basically fast, and only eat next when you've arrived at your destination and it's the dinner hour there. Something about having dinner at the new locale's regular time and following it up with sleep adjusts your body clock much more quickly. Haven't had the chance to try this myself yet, so can't speak to its accuracy, and I certainly wouldn't give it any extra weight over other popular tricks just because it was discussed on the news. But, it's something to consider.

I have to disagree, and not purely because I want a new Q-class in my home port. ? The signature feature of Q-class is that they are designed from the ground up for cold weather -- the massive indoor solarium , the SeaPlex with all of its indoor activities, iFly (which you have to enter from outside but really an indoor activity, the multitude of indoor entertainment and recreational spaces (think Two70, Music Hall, etc; not just the usual Schooner Bar, pub, and Boleros)... and very minimal outdoor stuff. Apart from the pool with its associated bars, and the NorthStar, there's really nothing to do outside. And I felt like the pool on Anthem was kind of small compared to the ones on Freedom. I walked past there during the belly flop competition and it was jam-packed; no way you could get a lot of people using the pool at once. If they put that ship in an all-warm-weather location all year long, it would be a waste of her design and might well result in a lot of people complaining about how they're spending all their time indoors. Cape Liberty, Boston, or Seattle are where I'd see Odyssey spending most of her time in the US. And one other possibility I hadn't considered before now -- California. Royal hasn't sailed out of there for ages, and this could be a way to have a ship on the west coast year-round -- up in Seattle for the Alaskan itineraries, and then down in California to make runs up the west coast to Canada or down to Mexico in the fall and winter months. The Pacific, despite its name, gets really rough from what I remember reading about it; and one of the Q-class' other design features is to handle rough waters better than the other ships.

Anchovies... AND butter?!?!? OH. MY. GOD!!!! WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!?!? ??? EDIT: You laugh, but when my younger daughter and I have a dinner night at home to ourselves, our first instinct is to call the local pizza place and get a small pie with extra anchovies, fresh garlic, and black olives. It's heaven for us!!

On the one hand, that's really awesome that they go to those lengths. On the other hand, this is just another reason I'm glad I keep every one of my social media accounts locked to everyone except the people I've already friended, and only visible for friend requests to friends of theirs. ?

Hi @dlwolf72, welcome to the forums! From what I saw in my last visit (October of last year), the garage building is just a garage. If you need a restroom you'll need to go into the terminal building. Take my comment with a grain of salt, though -- I'm mobility limited and have a handicap placard for my car, so I parked on the ground floor and didn't get to see the upper decks of the garage space. It's possible there's a restroom somewhere on an upper floor; pinging @KathyC, who was also at Cape Liberty last year and parked in the garage there.

You can change to NRD right up until the day before final payment. Once final payment date hits, you can't change or do any further repricing, although you can request to change to a higher category of room if you find a big price drop after that point. And as already noted in the prior comment, right now the only way to view the refundable deposit rate is to go most of the way through a mock booking, until you get past the screen asking for each passenger's information, and then check the checkbox for refundable rate. Bit of a pain, especially if you want to check a couple of categories for possible price drops, but the only option available at the moment.

EFollowing! Someday, my retirement fund will come and I can at least consider a regular suite. ?

Oh, sure. Michelob Ultra is no problem. But can they get a good Belgian Tripel or Imperial Stout? NOPE!!! ?

Hi @Jae B, welcome to the message boards! You've gotten a lot of good advice (and links!) from the others here. I always like to give an example day that illustrates how you don't have to be a heavy drinker to still come out fine with the Deluxe Beverage Package. Since you're on Enchantment, the max covered per beverage is $12: Fresh-squeezed OJ at breakfast -- ~$4.00 Two cappuccinos, lattes, or other espresso beverages; one with / right after breakfast, another in the afternoon -- ~$10.00 A glass of wine with dinner -- $12+ (you'll be charged for however much over $12 the glass costs, plus 18% gratuity on the overage) An after dinner alcoholic beverage (second glass of wine, coffee with some spirit added, glass of Baileys on the rocks, cocktail, etc.) -- $12+ Just from this very light daily use, you're already spending $34 a day. If you decide to have some kind of cocktail during sail away each day on top of this, or maybe enjoy a drink while watching one of the production shows each night, you're already at the typical discounted price for the DDP. Are three alcoholic drinks a day too many for you? Well, if you drink a lot of water you can get 4 bottled waters for $8 each day and be in the ballpark. You'll at least be close to break-even as long as you got the package on a good discount (no more than $45 per night), and then it's really that convenience factor mentioned by @WAAAYTOOO. If you think that even getting 2-3 alcoholic drinks a night is going to be a stretch, then I'd say get the Refreshment package so your non-alcoholic drinks are covered at a much lower cost. Then buy any alcoholic beverages you want a la carte, and simply pay the bill at the end of your cruise.

We're sailing Anthem for the second time this October, exactly 1 year since our last sailing on her. Partly it's for the same reason as @mom2mybugs, as Cape Liberty is an easy drive for us and we eliminate plane fare, so we're trying to focus all bookings for the next few years to be out of there. But we had a good time on Anthem and wanted to go back to Bermuda again, so she's our lady for that trip! Apart from this, I'm personally more interested in the itinerary than the ship as I'm still so new to cruising and view it much more as a way to visit places I otherwise wouldn't / couldn't because of comparative cost of a land vacation to those places. So if a new itinerary means revisiting a ship I've sailed on, that's fine. And if it means trying a new ship, well that's fine too! ? I'm guessing that over time my wife will find a particular ship or set of ships she likes most and start asking for more sailings on those. Just the nature of our sun signs -- I'm an Aquarius and always looking for the new, while my wife is a Cancer and likes things to be predictable and stable. ?

Hi @Darren, welcome to the forums! To answer your last question first -- As long as you know the reservation numbers of the other two couples, then when you making the booking online you can enter their reservations to pull up their names and add them to the reservation. To the best of my knowledge, the three reservations do not already have to be linked in Royal's systems. But, should you happen to want to also eat together in the main dining room and have one table, then linking the reservations is a good idea. Now for your first question -- The BOGO sale is generally offered because the ship has a hard time filling up the restaurants on nights 1 and 2, and this a way to get more people into them. You'll have one restaurant selected for you ahead of time, but you're not locked into that restaurant or the time slot chosen; the other restaurant is your choice but must be booked on night two. The key here is to go to any specialty dining venue as soon as you've boarded and make / change your reservations to what you want. Don't worry about rushing over there the second you board, at least not as long as you're boarding early on, but do try and get there before lunch time is over. You can see more information about BOGO dining and other specialty dining plans at this blog post.

Let the speculation on home port begin! I'm guessing that Odyssey will be the replacement for Anthem in NJ, while Anthem takes a more permanent position in Europe, which would give Royal some additional winter-season sailing options in that region. Purely basing this on how Anthem replaced Quantum, which was originally ported in NJ as well, plus the fact that all Q-class ships are designed for colder weather sailings. Apart from NJ and Seattle, which would be problematic for Anthem to get to since she's too big for Panamax, what cold-weather ports could Odyssey call home? Honest question, since she can't fit under the bridge to go to Baltimore and I'm not sure if it would be worthwhile to Royal to home port her in Boston while keeping another Q-class vessel in NJ.

My experience has been that the fresh-squeezed OJ is actually offered only in the Windjammer and MDR, and then only during breakfast hours. In the Windjammer, there is a station set up by the bar where you can get it after showing the person there your SeaPass card. In the MDR, you'll just ask your waiter for fresh-squeezed OJ when you put in your order, and give them your SeaPass card. Do be sure to specify fresh-squeezed to him/her, and not just "orange juice"; doing the latter will get you a free glass of the stuff from concentrate. For most kinds of premium coffees (cappuccinos, espressos, lattes, frappuccino-style beverages, any "spiked" coffees, etc.), you'll generally get those at places like Cafe Promenade, La Patisserie, Park Cafe, etc; specific venue will vary by ship. You'll also find a more limited selection in the MDR menu, mainly cappuccino, espresso, and spiked coffees. If you're in a specialty restaurant, you may or may not have access to specialty coffees; when I was on Anthem, I had asked for an after-dinner cappuccino while we were in Wonderland, and our waiter ended up going to La Patisserie and getting it for me from there!

With luck, Bayonne, NJ! ?

Where is she taking you?

Functionally, I'll agree with you here. But in terms of how they feel, YMMV. We used magic bands on our Disney trip about 7 or 8 years ago now, and they worked great and were very comfortable. I had great expectations of the WOW band for our Anthem sailing last October. While they worked great on the functional end of things and I never had a problem, I ended up getting rid of mine because the material made my wrist sweat like crazy. Never had that problem with Disney's bands, so it's something about the specific variety of fluoroelastomer Royal uses (which I noticed is thinner / less rigid and doesn't have the same nice feel as Disney's magic bands).

Hi @LindaPinNC, welcome to the boards! I dined in Wonderland last October on Anthem. Will be somewhat different (some might say better) on Harmony, as you get some extra elements in the experience (like The Mad Hatter) and a bigger space than Anthem offers. It's primarily seafood in various forms, plus a few meat and egg items (but not enough for someone who doesn't like seafood to get something in every course), and some really awesome desserts at the end. The food is presented in interesting and, some would say, "whimsical" ways that aren't as extreme as molecular gastronomy, but just different from what you're used to seeing normally. I did a write-up on my experience with my wife, that you can read if you'd like. Based on some other posts here, it looks like they are making some modifications to the menu on Serenade of the Seas to make the venue more appealing to a bigger set of passengers. Depending on how they're received and how fast Royal chooses to spread it out to the rest of the ships that have a Wonderland, you may find that you get the same updated menu on your sailing.

Thought of another one, @twangster -- iced coffee with Bailey's Irish Cream. Had one of those every night on my Bermuda sailing as an after-dinner drink and really liked it! But be warned -- have it after dinner and you'll be awake until the wee hours!

Nope, no extra grats applied unless you go over the per-drink limit; in that case, you'll only be charged gratuity on the overage.