JLMoran

I hope this doesn't muddle your "sign" too badly, but at least in 2018 the Adventure of the Seas will also be doing NE/Canada itineraries into / out of Cape Liberty. I've been seeing 7 and 10 night options; the 10-night ones are open jaw itineraries, two northbound from NJ to Quebec, and one southbound from Quebec to NJ. I'm sure more of these will be made available when the 2019-20 itineraries are released. Mentioning as others here have said a lot of really nice things about Adventure and how it's among their favorite ships.

OK, I've gone through all the salon options on the cruise planner, and for the life of me I can't find anything, not even a manicure or pedicure, that's available to those under 18. Why on earth not?? I have a 17-year old daughter and another who's 14, and I know both would love to be able to get a manicure, or finally get those highlights they've been begging for, while on the ship during a sea day or after we get back on board after a shorter port day. Every land salon I go to has no problem offering these services to teens, including teens who just walk in without any parents nearby. What is the issue with making these salon services available on the ship? Is this just a limitation of the Cruise Planner, and once on board they (or my wife) could walk in and schedule one of these services without any hassle? Believe me, I totally get why they can't offer these things for the spa; I'm sure they have all kinds of liability concerns with giving massages or the like to minors. But I wouldn't think that a salon service should be any kind of issue in that regard.

@BrianAlt, I don't think the issue is staying in the balcony cabin. The issue is that the OP found a cabin upgrade option at what they deemed was a very reasonable price on Royal's own website, but when they tried to make that upgrade (OK, technically cancel and rebook) for that listed rate, they were refused and told they had to pay significantly more to get what they were looking for. Even when presented with direct evidence of what they were advertising. I have to agree that's rather untenable, and strikes me as another case in what seems to be a continuing trend: Royal has customers willing to pay extra money at what they've deemed a reasonable advertised amount to move up a cabin level, and Royal has told them absolutely not unless they pay what is effectively "sticker price" instead of the advertised sale rate. It makes no sense to me; they're stubbornly holding out for passengers willing to pay full freight and risking totally losing those cabins, when they have existing passengers saying "shut up and take my money!" to fill that cabin, and then they have a "lower-grade" cabin available again that's easier to sell.

Actually, not everyone is C&A; you still have to sign up, and not everyone does that. Also, even if you signed up when you booked your first cruise, you don't reach that first "Gold" level until after that cruise is done. There's a boarding line for people not in C&A or who haven't yet "ranked up", and then separate lines for each of the different levels. Suite guests (including Jr Suites) get top priority along with Pinnacle C&A members, all of whom get to board first. Amusingly, @Matt pointed out in one of his podcast episodes that sometimes the line for the non-C&A guests is actually shorter than the other lines, because as you noted so many people do join it. But then he still takes his "designated" line because, well, he's earned those perks! You can see all the different perks for the C&A levels here.

Sorry, @Floski. My brother is a huge IPA fan, and he convinced me to taste a few of the offerings at that beer fest he and I went to. Pretty sure at least one of those was a New England style IPA. He swore they were nice and mild and I'd probably like them, but they still tasted like drinking a glass of leaf extracts. Of course, every time I try and get him to taste a great porter or stout, he makes a crack about not liking to drink his bread...

Well I looked through at least half of the reviews of Meraviglia (there are currently 65) during my lunch breaks yesterday and today, with reviews from July through this month, and it's really disappointing. I'm not going to bother being the numbers guy, because from what I could see it didn't matter if the person doing the review was an experienced cruiser or a novice, new to MSC or a longtime passenger of theirs. Almost everyone who wrote a review had the same set of general complaints, that boiled down to just two main categories: Staffing of the ship – Meraviglia is coming across as seriously understaffed, at least with the booking numbers I'm seeing When I see a specific number, it's generally the passenger to crew ratio of 3.8 or worse (1500 crew to about 5700 passengers, which is more than the 4500 she's rated for [I assume at double occupancy]); it was often noted that the ship was overbooked Even without specific numbers, far too many of the reviews cite the visible exhaustion and strain the crew is under; I saw this comment in multiple reviews from Sept/Oct as well as June/July, so it does not appear that it's being addressed by MSC I saw this observation even among the positive reviews (4 or 5 stars) This is probably the most concerning and severe of the issues, simply because of all the trickle-down effects: slow service, rude staff, inattentiveness, food preparation, impacts on overall ship cleanliness, etc. Food Quality is consistently cited as a problem by pretty much every review I read: served cold and/or bad preparation (overcooked / undercooked) were the two most common complaints here Buffet is also cited by everyone for being the same exact thing every day and night, as well as having no crowd flow management Apart from these two categories, the only other semi-common complaint is about the other passengers. Some of this is probably a rub-off from the irritation of dealing with overworked crew, and I'd wager the rest is from "culture shock"; it's hard to say for sure, but it did seem as though most of these complaints were from American or British citizens, just going by the style of writing and level of familiarity with the English language. That said, some of those complaints absolutely had merit in my book; I mean, a mother let her toddler who wasn't potty trained into the hot tub, where he proceeded to soil his diaper (#2), and the mother just changed him right there and put him back in?? The hard thing about this is that it's only 65 online reviews. Without getting all mathy on everyone (I can certainly give my numbers if you really want them ), suffice to say I've confirmed that's well below 1% "participation" from all the passengers who've likely been on her. But I compared this against Harmony (almost exactly a year older) as another very new ship: Her rating is 4.0 with just over 1,000 reviews. And the estimated "participation" for her works out to almost exactly the same percentage as Meraviglia. So I have to say that these issues with Meraviglia are real, and they can't just be dismissed as the bad apples getting all noisy in the cart while all the happy campers and at-least-OK campers stayed quiet. @DocLC, I really hope that by the time you sail on her they'll have resolved whatever staffing issues seem to be going on, or at least gotten a grip on how (over)booked they're keeping her.

For #1 and #6, I recommend budgeting a fixed amount every month, on top of any monthly payments you're making toward the actual cruise fare (you're doing that, right? ), and use that money to purchase one thing each month at its current price. Then, if a sale comes along and you see something you bought in the Cruise Planner is now less, you just do the following: Click the "Purchase History" link at the top of the Cruise Planner screen Find the old purchase and cancel it; you'll get an email immediately confirming the cancellation, and your credit card will be refunded within a few business days Now look up that item in the Cruise Planner again, add it to your cart, and buy it again I've had some cases where the site didn't take my perfectly valid card for the new purchase, even though it was the same card I used for the original one. In those cases, I just called Royal at the number on the bottom of the Cruise Planner pages and had them re-purchase it for me. Advantage of this approach is you spread out the cost, like @Matt mentioned, and also you lock in the price on the off chance it increases later on. It does happen every so often, so better to have some price locked in and then re-purchase if needed.

To be a little more specific, those people would book 4 or 5 cruises at one time, all in a suite, and then decide last minute which one they actually wanted to go on and cancel the rest a couple of days before final payment was due. This left Royal holding the bag on multiple suites across multiple ships that they now needed to try and fill, leading to those last minute deals the day after final cancellation, along with greatly reduced revenue on those rooms. So Royal started the new policy this year that suites now require a non-refundable deposit and also incur a change fee of $100 per person for canceling the booking or moving it to another ship or date. Net effect is to seriously cool those casual suite bookings and make sure many more of them are locked in when bought. I'm sure there will be some who keep on playing the game, simply because they're well enough off that losing a few thousand dollars in deposits and change fees doesn't even register as a blip on their radar. But most people looking to book a suite will now be kept honest.

I think at this point I'd say that it's "normal", if not necessarily common. The costs will sometimes go up (see the above-mentioned cabanas, which are currently $495 but much earlier in the year were $395 or $450 for my particular sailing), and sometimes they'll mysteriously go down without any announcement (see the multiple threads here over the last couple of weeks as the Deluxe Beverage Package mysteriously dropped from $55 per person per day to $45 or $43 or even $41 for a couple of people). I think one thing that everyone has agreed on at one point or another is that the presence of a "sale" banner means very little, either for excursions or base cruise fares. Those are just a way of drawing attention, and the actual prices are whatever the sales and marketing folks at Royal think they need to be at that time based on availability and demand vs. what they need to sell to meet their sales and profit forecasts for the shareholders. If there's a really big price drop, odds are it's because they're selling way below the required quotas (say, because they changed the rules around drink packages and suddenly no one is buying them) and they need to make up some of the slack to get back to where their forecasts say they need to be. Better to have a discount promotion and get a flood of sales that provides modest profit, than to lose money because they overpriced or pissed a bunch of people off and didn't take corrective measures.

Sure. Here's the original prices and then what I rebooked to: Refreshment Package -- Originally purchased just for my wife a week and a half ago at $26/night + 18% gratuity ($245.44 total for 8-night sailing); sale price $18 + 18% gratuity ($169.92 total, saved $75.52) Zip line -- 3 tickets originally purchased back in June at $104.75 each ($314.25 total), sale price $83 each ($249 total, saved $65.25) Alpine Coaster -- 4 tickets originally purchased in February at $35.75 each ($143 total); sale price $28 each ($112 total, saved $31) Dolphin excursion -- 4 tickets originally purchased in May at $149 each ($596 total); sale price $134 each ($536 total, saved $60) Total savings: $75.52 + $65.25 + $31 + $60 = $231.77 So I was actually off with the total savings by about $10 with my mental math, but still a significant savings across four purchases. And then I bought the two additional refreshment packages for my daughters at the sale rate of $18 / day per person, for a total of $339.84, or net additional outlay of $108.07. Hard to believe this is the first actual sale I've had on my sailing, apart from a massive sale on cabanas that I took advantage of in February (when I also originally purchased the Alpine coaster tickets); that let me get the aforementioned over-the-water cabana on Nellie's Beach for only $255.75 instead of the usual $450-$495 I've been seeing every other month. Do note that I didn't make all the original purchases at once. I've been budgeting about $400 a month for excursion and package purchases, so I'm spreading out the costs. When I did the cancel and repurchase, all the original purchases were returned as credits on my credit card and then the new purchases were charged. If I hadn't bought the two additional drink packages while I had this sale going, I'd have had a net credit applied to my card.

That's OK, what we have here is mostly presidents, plus a couple of founding fathers, one of whom was "a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean."

Heh, took advantage when it first came out on Friday. Saved just shy of $240 on everything I'd previously purchased with them -- refreshment package for my wife, our zip line and alpine coaster tickets on Labadee, and our dolphin push/pull/swim excursion on St. Kitts. (I actually realized as I was typing this that I hadn't rebooked the coaster tickets, so just took care of that! Thank goodness they extended it another 24 hours!) Savings were enough to let me get Refreshment Packages for my daughters and only be $100 net additional out of pocket. All that's left to buy now is our internet package, which I'll get on my next billing cycle to lock in the price, and then hope for another sale to get some back. Only thing that I had previously bought that wasn't any better off was the Nellie's Beach over-the-water cabana (which was a crazy 40% off when I booked it). So I'm a seriously happy camper!

Given we all know the low-ish signal to noise ratio on CruiseCritic, I'd be curious to see what percentage of people who would recommend Meraviglia were if it was filtered to only those who did do their homework before booking, instead of just looking at the cheap price tag. If it's still that low even after factoring that in, it would not be a good sign that MSC is learning the lessons they need to know in order to successfully crack the North American market. Guess I'll have to put my "numbers guy" hat on again tomorrow night, when the missus is at work and the kids are tied up with homework, and see if I can work that out!

Well, considering that a medium to high end Yacht Club room on most MSC ships doesn't seem to cost much more than an ocean-facing balcony room on an Oasis class ship, this isn't necessarily a difficult thing.

@Sabrinaklai, regarding the mixed reviews -- If they're posted by American cruisers who've never sailed a European line, you have to take it with a grain of salt. My TA made that very clear to me when I asked her about MSC a while back. The most consistent critique I've seen is about the quality of the food, and the most frequent of those complaints is that it's cold by the time it's served. Quality has also been described as hit or miss, although I heard that was a lot better on the Meraviglia than earlier ships; hopefully with Seaside it will further improve, since they're learning from Meraviglia and that ship was already moving its menu a bit more Western (e.g., they now have a Teppanyaki restaurant with the other specialty dining venues). My TA also advised me that MSC still applies a very European style of service and entertainment, and by all accounts they're still trying to figure out what the American market likes while holding to those European roots. So you get things like the shows presented on board are still very much cabaret or Cirque du Soleil style rather than Broadway (including, per some reviews I read, occasional toplessness with the women performers). Service staff can seem (but aren't always) a bit gruff or distant. And I've seen some reviews that reported apparent "classism" in terms of the service level provided for Yacht Club (suites) level guests and the regular cabins. Overall, my TA said that cruising on MSC can be a really enjoyable trip, but you have to change your mindset about what to expect and be prepared for something that doesn't give all those American bells and whistles. Definitely looking forward to the reviews from @DocLC for both Seaside and Meraviglia (which I think he's sailing in January).

@Sabrinaklai, I seem to recall that @DocLC is sailing the MSC Seaside just a few weeks after she makes her launch. He's promised to provide a review of her here, so you'll definitely have a review you can trust.

@Matt, there some separate scuttlebutt over the Celebrity and Azamara forum that Edge might end up home ported in Australia (see the comments from @Boston Babe and @monorailmedic). So not necessarily the Edge taking that berth in Port Everglades, although I'd wager that's an even bigger rumor than Anthem being relocated.

If I remember rightly, Grande and Chic are the two used for traditional dining, while Silk and American Icon are used for MTD.

No no no. That's your sister-in-law who you mentioned, right? Seriously, your family has some really good genetics working for it, just going by this photo!

That would be the Classic Soda Package, which seems to go for $9 per person per day and basically never goes on sale (because it's already pretty cheap, as long as you have 3-4 sodas a day while on board).

I can see it two weeks from now... @kimberussell has gotten over the buzzkill of getting off the ship for the last time. She's finally back into her routine, and has some friends over for dinner Saturday. She serves them a new soup they've never had before, and all rave about it. An hour later, as they're sitting and chatting, one of them comments, "I think I'm buzzed from this soup." And @kimberussell smiles quietly to herself.

@mom2mybugs, you and I are pretty much alike in our beer tastes. For me, drinking an IPA is like drinking a glass full of leaves. I much prefer the coffee and malt flavors of a rich stout or the sweetness of a good porter. Even better than those brews, I've found, are dubbels and tripels. A good tripel for with my burger, followed by a chocolate porter for dessert, and I'm in heaven! I was just at a craft beer fest here in NJ and found no less than 6 new brews I never knew existed and absolutely loved. Hopefully at least a few of them will show up at my local craft beer store in bottles.

@Wilson, maybe you ought to fly in the day before Thanksgiving, rather than on the day? Isn't Thanksgiving day always reported on the news every year for the flight delays, overbooked flights, huge crowds, etc? Just seems like the sort of thing where the normal advice to "fly in the day before departure" ought to be extended out a bit.

While I'd love that kind of an itinerary, I think if an entire cruise were going to be based on that then it would have to be the absolutely smallest ship they have to do it. I've learned from talking with my local craft store owners that a lot of these places are so small that they only do draft offerings, no bottles. They also don't brew in enough volume where they could likely satisfy anything as big as a mid-size cruise ship with a couple thousand passengers. Probably a better way to go would be to just get a bunch of friends and colleagues together, and set up a group booking through a travel agency. Find an itinerary that happens to hit a lot of ports known for having craft breweries or pubs, and then make custom excursions to hit them up. Wouldn't surprise me to find out there are already things like that.

And let's not forget that one of the allowed exceptions is "does not drink as personal preference". That is a huge open door to let pretty much anyone who doesn't want to buy a package have an out, whether it's true for them or not. As long as people know they can call to request the exceptions, and they're willing to make the effort, it's easy enough (although I'd still prefer a way to opt out via the Cruise Planner site, or at least a way to get notified better of this option). Personally, I like that they have this particular exception as an option. I had a good friend in college who truly didn't drink simply out of personal preference and life choice, so it's not a bogus or cop-out reason by any stretch.