JLMoran

Matt announced on the blog today that Royal is having a repeat of the earlier Sip, Tour, and Save sale on Cruise Planner purchases. If you already did the cancel and rebook dance with the last sale, do not assume there is nothing new to see here! Re-check all of your purchases and make absolutely sure! I discovered that the Dolphin Push, Pull, and Swim on St. Kitts had dropped another $15 per person to $119, having just rebooked it on the last promo for $134 each (and original purchase price of $149 each). I canceled and rebooked yet again, even though I just did this dance a week (two?) ago. That's another $60 saved for taking five minutes to through and re-check everything.

I have this in my Cruise Planner for both of my upcoming cruises: Freedom (147 days out), and Anthem (344 days out!). Freedom was something like $85 per person, Anthem a bit more ($95?).

@Matt, does this site offer trophies or badges or anything for the user profiles? I thing @CGTLH just earned a big one here!

Wow! I was not expecting a real-time reply to that! I hope you had already ordered that and didn't just get one on my account!!

Wait, @Matt, I thought that you could still rebook with a non-refundable fare as long as you did not change the ship, room, and sailing date.

Mmmm, love a good tuna melt. I don't suppose you noticed if the tuna was just diner-level fish-and-heavy-mayo-only, or if it was REAL tuna salad with mayo, celery, chopped red onion, relish, and/or...?

To be fair, she was in the front seat that (as far as I can tell from all these videos) has no visible seat belt or other restraints. I suppose there might (must?) be a lap belt, but compared to the regular seatbelt you can see the boyfriend has on...

I've watched several YouTube videos of this ride, there are definitely not restrictions on GoPro or phone use for recording. Just make sure of two things: Whatever device you use is secured to your person in case you lose your grip or it comes loose from the mount If you're using a device hand-held, test the hand brake on the car before you get going and make sure you can manage it one-handed. Even if you plan to ride at full speed (>30 mph), there is a section at the end where it says clearly that you must slow down. If you can't control the brakes well with one hand, put your camera away. I've also observed from those videos that people are basically free to go down at whatever speed is comfortable, so if you want to take video you can slow down a bit and be ready to capture the vistas that open up during the ride. Looks like there are two points where you get a great view of the ship.

To add on to the OP's question -- If you do book a guarantee room, how quickly does Royal actually let you know what you got? I think I've read some stray posts here and there saying that people booked Guarantee rooms and got their assignment as fast as that week or maybe even the next day, but what's considered "normal"? My impression with this room class was always that it's saved until the ship has had enough regular bookings to fill the balance, and then you get your room assignment; that sounded kind of risky to me (like, you could inside cabin right under the dance hall), but it sounds like they don't really wait all that long and you could still get a room in a fairly good location. Does it make more of a difference with the room class? More risk with an inside cabin, much lower with a suite guarantee (just because the Jr Suites are [nearly] all midship and at least on a mid-level deck away from noise / obstructions)?

Ditto

@rjac, actually it looks like you can purchase tickets when you're on the island. I found this thread on CruiseCritic that has multiple accounts of people buying their tickets when they got there, and not in advance. The only caveat that I see is that the Oasis class ships apparently don't typically offer the all-day pass, simply due to the sheer number of passengers. But the thread did note a time where the coaster was doing slow business that day, so they changed the rules for that one sailing and allowed purchasing the all-day passes.

Ah, but there's the grammar fun! If you were gaining balcony space, it would have read "Ocean View Spacious Balcony".

OK, the "spacious" rooms must be longer and not any wider. The section about the beds notes that the regular room has a single sofa bed or a pullman and sleeps 3, where the "spacious" one has a double sofa bed and sleeps up to 4. My takeaway after reading that is that the "spacious" room is just marketing speak to families with kids, telling them they can get parents and two kids in one room. If you're traveling as a couple, better in my view to get the regular room with the bigger balcony.

Note the square footage of the main room area. "Spacious" balcony is 202 square feet for the stateroom, vs. 198 square feet for the regular room. To sacrifice 8 square feet of balcony for +4 square feet of cabin space doesn't strike me as a good trade.

Congrats on the booking! Out of curiosity, where does the cruise depart from? I know Celebrity also sails out of Cape Liberty, and they have Bermuda getaways of a few different durations. Might be another option for you, as I remember airfare is always a cost factor and a Cape Liberty departure might let you drive.

You can, but everything I've read here indicates that they'll be of limited use due onboard to the interference all that metal on the ship causes. You can still bring your cell phones and talk via text messaging. Just confirm your carrier allows texting while outside the US (roaming) and what their rates are. Many allow free incoming texts and only charge for outgoing; rate is something like $0.50. If everyone in your family / group has a smartphone and you were planning to all use an internet package, another option is to use the various chat apps that are available -- Messages if everyone is using iPhones or iPod Touches; Snapchat messaging, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. for Android or mixed Android/iOS chat. The latter is the approach my family will be taking for our cruise on Freedom next March. Important note -- If you do bring your smartphones onboard, make sure they're put in Airplane Mode as soon as you board, then just turn wifi back on to connect to VOOM if you're using that. Without airplane mode enabled, your phones will fall back on cellular data if they lose their VOOM connection, and then you'll be paying a ton for data roaming.

Ahhh, if you mean November 4-11 of this year, I'd wager that's why it's such a good offer. In all likelihood, someone had that room booked and then canceled it after Maria hit (maybe with Royal offering future cruise credit at the time, since it would have been well past final payment), or it was still open and now they were finding it a very hard sell because the hurricane had hit and few were willing to fly out there with things still a relative mess.

Thanks, Matt! I think if booking on board is truly an option for them, I'll let them do that using the $100 OBC they have on their room. Given the price lists posted in another recent thread about the salon, that would work out nicely. They could pay for the tip using the spending cash they'll have on hand.

That sounds like a pretty darn good deal to me, especially for an Owner's Suite! They may not cost as much as a Star class suite on the newest ships, but they still go for a pretty penny. I'd say definitely worth getting excited about! Congratulations on the upgrade offer! Please do let us know the ship and sailing.

I hope none of those trees are hemlock! I really do get a kick of what autocorrect does with your posts. I always get the intended meaning, but those auto-changes are right up there with "Let's eat Grandma!" vs. "Let's eat, Grandma!"

OK, so I definitely wasn't remembering rightly. Thanks for the correction!

Don't I know it! My 14-year old daughter just did a history project on the origins of beer, given the assignment "choose a significant discovery from prehistory that had a major impact on the development of civilization." Learned more about beer from that project than I ever knew in my life. Why, you might ask, would a14-year old pick that as her specific discovery? Well, apart from the fact that her dad has become a total beer snob? Because right before school started, she had read my copy of A History of the World in Six Glasses and loved it. Ironically, she read it before I got the chance to!

@BrianAlt, I might not be remembering rightly, but I don't recall that St. Kitts has a port capable of handling an Oasis Class ship. I think Freedom class is as big as they can safely dock. Could an Oasis Class ship safely anchor outside the port and tender people in?

Heh, I'm not personally upset by this. Just perplexed and wanting to understand. This strikes me as a very logical choice to make, and I'm a Vulcan at heart; seems to me there's some emotion going on at Royal's end that's incorrectly superseding the logic that should be applied in this situation.

Welcome back, Kayla! Ditto on the "glad you had an awesome time" comments! And congratulations once again on the nuptials! And here! are! a! few! more! EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!