JLMoran

You can definitely walk around OSJ in the time frame you gave. That was our exact window on my trip last April, and all-aboard time is 1:30. Here's my recap of the day: My only comment on timing is that you may want to skip having a sit-down lunch there and just go for some street food; we found a place at 11:30, right when it opened, and didn't get out until 1. We barely made it back onto the ship in time; not pier-runner close, but uncomfortably close. I think in hindsight that I'd have rather spent a little longer with sightseeing, grabbed something small as we walked along, and then had a bigger meal after getting back on board.

I second this. We were on Columbus Cove and it was nice soft powder-like sand. Every review I’ve ever read or watched on YouTube shows that Adrenaline Beach is rocky and wearing water shoes is mandatory if you want to avoid getting your feet cut up.

Or if you want to catch everything from CruiseHabit.com, and you happen to use an RSS reader like NetNewsWire, Reeder, etc. (possibly including news aggregators like Apple News and Flipboard), you can subscribe to the site's RSS feed and not only get their review of Edge, but every new article they post as it comes out! ? From your RSS reader, just create a new feed subscription, and enter https://www.cruisehabit.com as the site URL. The reader app will figure it out on its own and then you'll have another source of cruise news and trivia in your news feed. And who doesn't need more cruise-related news and trivia? ? Pro tip -- do the same for this site, so you get all the updates from @Matt as they get posted to the main blog feed. You'll still have to come here for the message boards, but at least you can keep your browser window on that page and let the reader get the news.

"Hey, first robin of Spring! Lemme book an ABC island run!" ?

Following! Hope the flight is smooth, and the cruise spectacular!

Oh yes. Not home from Bermuda even two weeks, my wife asks if there are any cruises that go to Bermuda during Teachers Convention week, "so we could at least bring our younger daughter with us." This was after *I* was the one saying we kind of needed to think about being in dry dock for 2019! Well, nothing available during that week (at least not on Royal; NCL had a sailing there, but I've heard enough negatives about NCL in general plus recent reviews of that ship in particular that we decided not to try them, at least this time). We kindly offered an alternative cruise option for that week to our younger daugther, and after she declined we basically said, "Ah, the heck with it. Let's just go back to Bermuda again in October next year! The kids got by fine on their own last time, they can do it again." ?

Well, for sure LNG is coming to Port Canaveral. I just heard on the Cruise Radio podcast that Carnival's newest ship, which is LNG-fueled, is going to home port in PC and that they're constructing a new terminal building for it.

Thanks for a fun and very entertaining blog, @Ray! I was sipping my stout when I read about the woman at the Schooner Bar; had to fight back a spit take! ? Guess the full moon came a little earlier than usual? Awesome to hear how much your wife enjoyed it and that you'll be having more adventures in the coming years!

Yeah, the packages are definitely being priced appreciably higher for 2019 than they were for 2018. $42/day seemed to be the best sale price for most 2018 cruises, but I'm not seeing anyone who's reported less than $52/day for a 2019 sailing. The good news is that it "only" translates to one more cocktail, or a couple of beers, per day if you typically drink the same amount most days; if you're like most vacationers and do most of your "celebratory imbibing" on embarkation day, you may find that it's enough to make the Chefs Table day and port days more manageable. Here's a quick, rough example of a way to easily hit $52 on a sea day: Grande cappuccino / latte / espresso with breakfast, and one more in the afternoon: $8 1 "lighter" cocktail (e.g., mojito or one of the sake-based drinks in Izumi, where the alcohol / calorie content isn't crazy) around lunch time, or a sail-away beverage on port days: $13 2 glasses of wine with dinner: $26 (bearing in mind that most decent / good wines will have you going over the $13 per-drink limit by a few bucks) 1 beer at the pub while watching the evening entertainer: $6-7 Total for the above is $53-54, and in my view not an unreasonable or difficult "target" on a daily basis. Throw in a fresh-squeezed OJ with breakfast, and there's another couple of bucks shaved off, which would let you replace a cocktail with a more-manageable beer or two. You definitely don't have to drink like a frat boy on hazing night to break even or keep up.

?

Better late than never? ?

The menu seems to be standard fleet-wide, with minor variations based on what the chef chooses to do with a given course's preparation and whether a given seating has a significant number of repeat guests -- One the live blogs on the main site, by Ric, noted how he and several others who did Chef's Table on night 1 with a discount then went back for a second time (due to an even better discount that was offered); because there were so many returning guests, the chef altered the menu so that they didn't get the exact same menu a second time. The menu does get updated every so often (annually?), but at least on my April 2018 sailing on Freedom, and @ellcee's / @Broons77's / my October 2018 sailing on Anthem, it was the same menu with slight differences in preparation and presentation. And the wine pairings for all 3 of us were fairly different, which itself made for some interesting conversations between us about the merits of the wines and whether one pairing worked better than another. Chef's Table is definitely not something that fills up, even after embarkation. Each night they can accommodate up to It think 18 or 20 guests, and I've yet to hear of a fully-booked seating. My own seating on Freedom was only 9 people (I went solo), and I think @ellcee and @Broons77 were only a few more than that on each of their times. You can most likely wait until the cutoff date with Cruise Planner (3 days before embarkation) and still have your pick of the days. Drink fatigue is real. The better a price you can get for the Deluxe package, the easier it is to "break even" across the trip and not feel like you need to be having a "party like it's 1999" day every day. If you think that bringing your allowed two bottles of wine would be enough, at least with MDR dinner drinks, to cut down the amount of drinking you'd be paying a la carte to less than the daily package cost, consider skipping the Deluxe package and just get Refreshment packages instead. Then you have all the non-alcoholic stuff covered and you can get alcohol as / when / where you want it.

If you want a really, really, really good filet -- then you will absolutely want to do Chef's Table, and kill two birds with one stone. I didn't have it, but @ellcee did when she went to CT on Anthem; she said it was the best filet ever, and even better than Chops (which she'd had just the day before). The rest of the food is equally awesome, IMO, and you're getting some really good wines with the meal. It's also very much a social experience, between talking with your table-mates, learning about the meal first-hand from the chef, and learning about the wines from your sommelier. Yes, Chef's Table is pricey when you buy it on the Cruise Planner, but if you're OK with going to it on day 1 and not buying the seat for it until you're on board, you should likely score a discount for that night from the specialty dining folks who will be hawking specials the whole day. That said, I paid full price as I didn't want to miss MDR and meeting our table-mates on night 1, and I felt the meal and wines were worth every penny I'd paid and then some. If I'd gone to NYC for that meal I'd have been out more than double what I'd paid in the Cruise Planner. If I'd gone to a restaurant in Morristown or Montclair that was on par with NYC, I'd still have paid a lot more. And keep in mind that if you pay full price, you can expect to be able to have as many glasses of wine as you like; from what I've read here, you do not get that perk if you buy the meal at a discount on Day 1. So while it says you get 5 glasses of wine in the description, you can easily have several more than that. I want to say I had more like 8 or 9 glasses by the time it was all said and done, and they don't do light pours either. If five glasses of wine is your limit, then no reason not to grab a discount if it's offered. The only other specialty dining venue I've been to so far is Wonderland. I happened to like it, but it wasn't a blow-my-socks-off experience the way Chef's Table was. You definitely need to be a seafood lover, given how many of the appetizers are seafood-based. It's good for a one-time experience, but after that I'd spend my money on other specialty dining venues.

Yup, that's totally allowed. It's one code that's given to you, and their system tracks how many devices are simultaneously logged in with that code. They don't care who the devices belong to, so if you and your kids were in separate cabins down the hall from each other or even on different decks, you could still share the code with them and they can log in with no problems. Last April I got a 4-device VOOM package to cover my whole family (one device for each of us). Much more economical than buying four 1-device packages individually.

Did you book with a travel agent? If so, they can quickly tell you, just email him / her to find out. If you booked on your own, I think you'll need to call Royal's reservations number to find out.

I can't help you with those ports as I've never been. But, assuming you're departing from San Juan, I can heartily recommend the restaurant Tropical Taste in the Old San Juan area, maybe a five-minute walk from where the pigeon park is located. Hole-in-the-wall little restaurant tucked out of sight at the back of a souvenir shop, with really good Puerto Rican food and awesome mojitos. Went there for lunch and everyone was very happy with it.

when I did a 5-night Anthem sailing I was only charged $100, not $120. They actually do just charge per night spent.

Did my daily price check in the Cruise Planner, had a nice surprise. After buying 2-device VOOM for $18.99/night on the Black Friday sale, today the same package is listed for $17.99/night. Canceled and re-bought, easy peasy. All of $5 saved, but that's almost half a sail-away margarita (or 1/3 a glass of my preferred red wines) right there! Here's the weird part -- banner on Black Friday said the $18.99/night price was 50% off on-board pricing, and today's $17.99/night rate is listed as 40% off. ? So check your Cruise Planners, folks! Maybe you'll also find a random drop on something. I certainly doubt I'll find 2-device VOOM for a better rate than this, but then again I thought the same thing about $18.99 just a couple of weeks ago!

Not enough of one, apparently! ? I got about 2/3 of the answers.

Yeah, suites are solidly out of my budget and lower-category cabins have been consistently less expensive per person / per night for roughly equivalent sailings. I looked at Celebrity Summit as an option for going back to Bermuda, but her last sailing is still in peak season (last 2019 sailing is Sep 1, with October sailings). I compared the base category pricing for that Summit 7-night sailing against Anthem's Sep 7, 2019 five-night sailing; on a per person per night basis, Celebrity was more expensive once I got to Balcony or JS level: Anthem, Sep 7 (5 nights): Interior -- $564 = ~$113 pp pn Ocean View -- $644 = ~$129 pp pn Balcony -- $681 = ~$136 pp pn JS -- $1,182 = ~$236 pp pn (well outside my budget) Celebrity, Sep 1 (7 nights): Interior -- $599 = ~$85.50 pp pn Ocean View -- $899 = ~$128 pp pn Balcony -- $1,249 = ~$178.50 pp pn Aqua Class -- $1,399 = ~$200 pp pn Sky Suite -- $2,499 = ~$357 pp pn (WAAAAAY outside my budget!) Now, with the current promo that includes a hefty $400 discount on the cabin price, plus the drink package and other included perk, the premium for Celebrity is probably worth it after factoring in the price of a Refreshment Package for my wife and Deluxe Package for me (not to mention getting an extra day in Bermuda!), but man, did this require a lot of math to figure that out! Also, I can't remember if Aqua Class is equivalent to a JS room on Royal (it does give exclusive access to Blu, similar to CK access in a JS, but it's not the true suites-only restaurant), or if I have to go to a Sky Suite on Celebrity to get equivalent level of amenities / service; while the jump in price to Aqua Class from Balcony is nominal on a pp pn basis due to the current promotional sale, and might be worth considering, a Sky Suite compared to a JS is nearly 50% more expensive and well outside my budget.

I think Freedom is an awesome ship for a first-time cruiser to experience. She was mine and my family's first ship, and my wife and I thought she was great!

Yes, the way this reciprocity works is that you get "bumped up" to whatever corresponding level each agrees to cross-honor. So if you're Diamond on Royal, and never sailed Celebrity before, you'll start off with "Elite" status in Celebrity's program... and zero points. Until you've sailed with Celebrity long enough to have earned the points for "Elite" rank, you have no way to move past "Elite". And likewise, nights you sail on Celebrity don't get applied to your Royal C&A points total. You have to sail on ships belonging to the cruise company's loyalty program to continue earning points in that program. That said, there's a big difference in how points are earned between the two lines. With Royal, it's purely based on number of nights, doubled for a sailing if you sail in any kind of suite or if you sail solo (and tripled if you sail solo and in a suite of any level). But on Celebrity, the points earned vary with each room category. If you go to this page on Celebrity's site and scroll past the table, you'll see how many points each room category earns. I'd argue that if you want to sail Celebrity, and have already built up some loyalty with Royal, keep doing that until you at least hit Platinum in Royal and auto-match to Select with Celebrity; at least then you can start getting some discounts and such. Celebrity already carries a premium price vs. Royal, so if your per-cruise budget can't increase then you'll most likely be sailing in a lower category room than you did on Royal, and that means slower point buildup with Celebrity. Maybe @twangster has a different feeling on this, as I know he's cruised both. Speaking personally, I can't afford Celebrity right now unless I just sail an Inside cabin, so I might as well stick with Royal for now and build up loyalty that will eventually translate to some breaks on Celebrity that should make Verandah rooms more in my reach. Either that, or by that time I'll also be an empty nester and then I'll have all the budget in the world! ?

BOGO 2-night does enforce the meals being taken on night 1 and 2. The reason the price is so good because you’re helping to fill the restaurant on nights that are traditionally the slowest sellers.

Even if there is only one formal night, they will sometimes serve lobster on a later night in the cruise. This happened on my 5-night Bermuda sailing, where formal night was Day 2 only but lobster was still served on Day 4. So definitely try to get an advance peek at the menus if you can, and try to plan a bit around that.

That page also had a link to the Blue Chip casino loyalty program. Tiers for that are listed here, note the use of gem names: https://www.celebritycruises.com/content/dam/celebrity/pdf/Blue-Chip-Club-Benefit-Chart.pdf