JLMoran

@L454S, how did you find the other features and amenities of the ship, as far as entertainment, on-board activities, noise level at night, etc? Curious to hear your impressions after reading the lengthy review from JimZim with the multiple complaints about the entertainment (too much opera, poor comedy shows), crew being overworked and sometimes curt or surly, etc.

IIRC, I saw someone mention here a while back that you have to front-load any cash only account you want to use for your Sea Pass card on boarding day, and then add more to the card as the cash applied runs out. I think that if you wanted to tie a debit card to the Sea Pass card, it would be treated as a credit card automatically and you'll be dealing with all the holds and other CC-related nonsense.

Well, they say that bad things come in threes, and today the third one hit. I'm sick with the flu. Got chills out of nowhere last night, and today I'm achy all over and running a low fever. Will get to the urgent care facility tomorrow when my wife is home to drive me and get on some Tamiflu ASAP, since there's a 48-hour window to start it from symptom onset. Now on the plus side, because this thread is about staying positive in the face of all this: It happened with over a month until I have to fly down, so I will be all manner of better by then I got the flu shot, and so did the rest of my family If other family members catch this (fingers crossed they don't!), they will also have ample time to recover We are still cruising, we are still going to have a grand ol' time... and thank GOD that the third one hit and is just DONE!!! I'm SO looking forward to leaving Winter 2018 in the rear-view mirror!

45 hours?!?!? Ay ay ay!! I hope they cater meals and coffee!

This is a case where the ports you want to see will dictate which ship you take. Only Adventure goes to Quebec, and then only on the longer 10-night open jaw fall foliage cruises in September and October. And on any cruises on Adventure, you will not have a port stop in Boston; the first stop is in either Bar Harbor or Portland, ME, and then it's all Canadian ports (Saint John and Halifax; and then on the longer sailings only Sydney and/or Charlottestown followed by Quebec). Anthem, on the other hand, stops in Boston before going up to Maine and Canada; but the only Canadian ports it visits are Saint John and Halifax.

This is interesting. You reminded me I still hadn't purchased this for my wife for our upcoming Freedom cruise (40 DAYS!!!! ), and I still can't buy this on Cruise Planner even though I see all the different durations offered. So I called up Royal directly and spoke with a sales rep, and they said it's only available for purchase on board the ship and shouldn't even be visible on the cruise planner! No hesitation or "let me check with my supervisor" on that, either. Maybe I'll try calling back and talking with a different rep, but it was a pretty definitive and instantaneous answer, like she'd been asked about it a bunch of times already.

Geez, that's worse than trying to buy a car and figure out if you should go for dealer invoice; or factor in hidden kickbacks they get; or just throw your hands in the air, sacrifice a couple of chickens under a full moon, and say "What'll you give me?"

Hmm, it's not quite all shore excursions. I didn't find the mid-level dolphin swim excursion in St. Kitts that we booked on the cruise planner for my March 31 Freedom sailing, and I also didn't see the all-day pass for the alpine coaster on Labadee that I bought. Maybe the document gets built in real-time and sold-out items aren't listed? But definitely very useful for some quick reference and to get a very good idea of what's available.

This question is somewhat tricky today, because of the fare lock policy that Royal put into place last year or late the year before. Basically, it’s now very rare to find price drops of more than a few bucks after initial purchase, and the lowest rate is the one published the week / month the itineraries are published. I do think the question should still be asked; a TA knowledgeable about Royal should note that policy and ideally should be able to cite some examples of pre- and post-policy savings he/she has gotten for his/her clients. Personal example in the contrast would be my booking on Freedom for this March, vs the one I have on Anthem in October: The March itinerary (originally booked December 2016, announces around May that year) was published before the policy went into effect, and my TA emailed me to let me know she was able to shave off a couple thousand dollars when the February 2017 WOW sale came around. Before that, she had emailed one or two other times with much smaller savings ($50-ish, maybe with some OBC). But this October sailing on Anthem (which I had originally booked the week the itinerary was announced last May), I only got one email from her when the price dropped on my original balcony room by just a few bucks, plus some OBC; after taking advantage of a WOW sale in July to upgrade to a JS, I haven’t had one email with a price reduction, even though there are still a fair number of JS rooms available. And every time I’d email her to ask “what about this sale?”, she’d reply showing how the latest pricing wasn’t advantageous (lower base but poor / no OBC vs current booking, or better OBC with higher base that didn’t work out to a net savings). I will say that if having the lowest base fare is what’s most important to you, and you’d rather have a rock bottom base even if it means giving up OBC, you should let the TA know that. It will alter their strategy when doing re-pricing checks and could result in more frequent updates from them.

Thanks, all! I do recall the trolley to get up the hill to (I think) El Morro, and @Matt saying on a podcast that the plan in general was to do that, see the fort, then meander downhill back to the port, taking in the sights along the way. Hopefully that meander doesn’t have to become a trot! ?

Yes, whatever the port fees and taxes are, those must be paid as a single payment and you must also have about $50 left on your cruise booking fare if you intend to leave those fees for the final payment. So figure your monthly payment as something like (base fare - $50)/(months until final payment date - 1), and you should be good. Also keep in mind that if you are booking more than one stateroom, you'll have to decide if you want to pay off one room (final $50 plus taxes/fees) a month early, then pay off the other room on final payment date, or deal with a "double payment" on your final payment date so you have both rooms free to reprice or upgrade in the event of any last-minute sale / promo. Just based on my experience so far, it's rare that you'll actually have a full two years to pay things off, just because most itineraries are released about 18 months in advance and you have a 90-day final payment date. Figure more on 12-15 months average and you should be good. And of course, depending on how many cruises you have booked in a year, there could be overlap.

So I have what I think is our final itinerary as far as arrival and departure times. Our day in San Juan will be the shortest by far – We arrive at 7 AM and depart at 2 PM. We were already planning to just make that day a day for walking around Old San Juan, seeing the forts, and just finding what we find as we make our way back to the ship. But with such a short amount of time in port, does it make sense in this case to just scoot to the Windjammer for a very quick breakfast, get off the ship by 8:30, and then see maybe just El Morro and have a leisurely walk back to the port, with a stop for street food or maybe a restaurant lunch if time permits? I'm assuming all aboard will be 1:30 or even 1:00, which means if we got off the ship at 8:30 we'd have 4 1/2, maybe 5 hours for exploration. Is El Morro really big? Would there be enough time to also see San Cristobal, or would that be pushing it given the amount of walking required and distance between the forts? (keeping in mind that I'm mobility limited and can't really manage more than a few miles in a day before pain gets pretty bad) Any recommendations on what / where to eat that could work in this time frame? Thanks in advance!

Just to expand on my earlier comment, it’s not like sharing a drink package where the drinks are a consumable item that will eventually run out if too much sharing goes on. Here we’re just talking bandwidth usage; it’s not infinite, but compared to the cost of the physical consumables on board it has a much lower per-unit (let’s say one megabyte of data) cost.

I doubt Royal would care. Even if the two of you are in different rooms, how is it different than me buying the 4-device plan for my family that’s using two cabins?

You can start the process, but if you plan to use your passports as your ID for boarding, you’ll need to have them in order to finish the online check in. Just fill out as much as you can and save progress, then go back and enter the passport info when you have them in hand. I had to do that with my wife’s check-in since we hadn’t yet gotten her renewed passport back.

Ideally, check the itinerary the same day / day before you board, so you fall inside the same promotion window. If you have purchased Voom, maybe even check the itinerary on your phone the same day before going to Next Cruise. The way the base prices seem to change with every promotion so that they can claim the various percentage discounts or whatever, you'll need to have the same promotion in effect to truly compare apples to apples at the Next Cruise desk.

Definitely looking forward to this! Want to hear all about the ship as we’re looking at sailing her for a CA / NE trip next year. And we definitely want to hear / see the latest on repairs in San Juan and also St. Maarten.

As a parent of a high school senior, I can say that 9th grade is the easiest it will be for everyone. The coursework just gets harder and more intense, at least here in the US where it seems everyone is obsessed with taking as many Honors and AP classes as possible, just to make those transcripts as appealing as possible to the colleges and scholarship grantors. Ater they’re accepted to college, you can take them wherever and whenever. “Senioritis” will have set in and they will have no f***s left to give. ?

So what you’re saying, @monorailmedic, is that in Ft. Lauderdale it’s impossible to find fantastic beer and awesome food in the same place? If someone did, would it be like crossing the streams? ?

Awesome news! Does this mean you’ll be able to recover the photos, as long as the media card wasn’t damaged?

For what it’s worth, I did get an email this morning about this sale for my upcoming March 31 sailing on Freedom. I only started getting emails about sales when I was inside about 4 or 5 months from sailing (earliest I remember is emails from December), I would hazard a guess that’s the soonest you could expect to start seeing emails for your own cruise.

That sounds like a nice little class to take! Long as you have an Apple Store nearby, they're a great resource! There is also "iTunes U", which was offered directly through iTunes but is now an app that you download to your phone. Bunch of free classes there that are like Udemy in that you go through them at your own pace, but a lot of them are affiliated with colleges and other institutions that have real teachers who will evaluate your work.

Sorry, if we’re talking shrimp then I’ll have to insist on cooking up some shrimp etoufée with dirty rice. No one else here besides my BIL wants my Cajun cooking (courtesy of Chef Paul’s classic cookbook), and he rarely visits on his own, so I have to insist when I get out-of-towners with discerning palates.

Actually, since you have an iPhone 8 I'd make one other suggestion, if you want to start seriously learning the manual camera controls and getting a little more control over your pictures, rather than letting the phone make all the decisions. There's an app named "Halide" that has gotten a lot of positive reviews. It's $5, and while it has its own automatic mode that's generally gotten good reviews, it also gives you the option of full manual controls while also shooting in RAW format if you want (not required). It's gotten a ton of positive reviews from experienced photographers, and supposedly doesn't have too steep a learning curve. Many controls are gesture based so you don't have to deal with really deep menu controls or the like. This app has become the one after Camera+ that I pretty consistently see as a "must have" app for serious iPhone photography, especially on the newer models that support RAW format. As far as other apps that I'd recommend, there's Camera+ and then a pair of long-exposure / slow shutter apps I've installed for night-time photography: Slow Shutter and NightCap. The latter seems to be the better of the two from playing around with both, but I've kept them since each has slightly different features.

Well, if you're mostly looking to improve your photography skills, it might not be a bad idea to start off with a photography class or just read up on some general techniques from sites like dpreview.com. There are a decent number of classes on Udemy.com, and most of those typically go for around $10-15, so it's not a big outlay compared to getting a lens set or the like. I've used Udemy for some tech training I needed at work and I can say that the well-rated classes do seem to deserve that rating, and the typically low cost of a class makes it easy to try out a couple and see which ones work best for you. Not being flip here, I've read a lot of sites that all say a variation on, "Don't worry about adding lenses or other things until you've got the basics down for things like framing, composition, any manual controls your camera offers, etc. After you have a solid grasp on that, any investment you make in lenses or other kit will return even more to you." I've tried to follow that, and for the longest time I've just worked on trying to take good photos with my iPhone even knowing all the limits it has. I've gotten enough positive feedback from friends and family that this is the first year I'm seriously looking at extra lenses and such. If I had to pick just one item to start with, I'd personally go with a clip-on CPL filter for my phone. Most of my photography is done outdoors on vacations and family outings, and a CPL helps a ton with eliminating glare and improving the overall photo in bright sunlight. You can find those on Amazon, and they tend to be fairly cheap (under $20). If you want an actual lens set to try out, then I'd say go with the Olloclip 4-in-1. Gives you wide angle, fisheye, and two macro lenses. No telephoto option, but their separate tele clip with a CPL on the other end has gotten fairly uneven reviews and probably isn't worth the money. This was an expensive investment, for sure. Almost $300 total: Each lens cost $99, plus the cost of the phone case (which is like another $35 IIRC). Then there was the travel case, wrist strap, and the lens cleaning pen. You don't have to get all of those, of course; each lens comes with a cover and little microfiber travel bag so you can just throw it in your pocket or backpack if you'd like (and feel safe letting it jostle around). You could get the phone case and one lens, then build up from there as your funds allow. The good thing is that the design of these new lenses allows them to work with any current and future iPhone or supported Android model -- you just need the case for the specific phone and your lenses are perfectly good to go. So the initial cost isn't complete throwaway. I mainly bit the bullet on this after asking for birthday money from family instead of gifts, and getting enough to cover it, as I've had a lot of other expenses for myself and the family this year besides covering cruise fare, and buying lenses is definitely a "can put off another year if needed" kind of thing. May spend a little of my year-end bonus as well to "fill the gaps" for the filter adapter and filters, but have to see after I've taken care of other outstanding items. A big driver for me was that tele lens, as there are very few lens add-on companies that sell telephoto lenses, and Moment was one of only a couple that got generally good reviews and also worked with a case instead of requiring a "naked" phone or some other attachment mechanism like a small plate or other incomplete covering for the phone. I do as much video recording as still photography, and having a good telephoto lens to get me closer to what I'm recording and "neutralize" the inherent wide angle view of the standard iPhone lens, is really handy. And since I'm a total klutz, having it attach to a case instead of through a clip or other means that could detach is really helpful, too.