JLMoran

Last night's news broadcast said that now Irma is starting to look like it will hit Georgia as well as Florida. Savannah and other coastal areas the obvious risks, but heard that even Atlanta could get hit. Fingers crossed for you!

Any particular reason behind this prediction? Impact of Harvey and Irma on the Caribbean islands and the time that'll be needed for them to recover? Unusually warm weather in Alaska making travel there more reasonable for a longer period time? Other factors?

Is that the Celebrity equivalent of Next Cruise? They actually still make it worthwhile to book on board, as opposed to Royal which now (based on the recent changes in policy) seems hell-bent on making Next Cruise something to "just say no" to?

Is that Suite Sun Deck open to passengers in Junior Suites, or full suites only? Be good to know for the Bermuda trip on Anthem next year. And it would be nice to have some kind of "perk" besides "just" the double points and access to CK for dinner!

It's no longer a New Jersey brewery (they relocated to PA), but I'd love if they started serving the various offerings from River Horse on Anthem. Their Trippel Horse, Summer Blonde, Chocolate Stout, and others are all fantastic!

Based on similar questions and the replies I've seen, you should be able to go to the MDR and review / edit the reservations as soon as you board. If not immediately after, then certainly by noon from everything I've read here. Out of curiosity, which restaurants were those? The one specialty dining venue my wife and I are considering right now for our 5-nighter to Bermuda on Anthem next year is Wonderland. We saw a few YouTube videos from folks who dined there, and while I'm not 100% sold on it, it does look pretty interesting and I think we'd find enough to suit our different tastes in food that we could walk away not hungry.

One other good reason to get connecting balconies instead of a suite for a group of four is that the suites with two actual bedrooms – if they even exist on the specific ship (they do on all the ships you listed) – are not available to you. Those rooms require at least 5 people to book (although some here have gotten lucky and scored one of these rooms with a smaller party), and they're often booked right on Day One when the itineraries come out. So you will have to settle for a suite with only one bedroom / two twin beds for the first two people, and the other two having to share the sofa bed in the suite. My teenage girls gave us a "hell, no!" over that idea, so I can't imagine two grown adults would be especially thrilled at the idea. ? ?

I love your drink-related event names! "Go with the (Lava) Flow", "Most Civilized Bar Crawl", and especially "Labadoozie Appreciation Society"!

@coneyraven and @rjac and @jce2, I think Matt noted in one of his more recent Periscopes that he has to go through each of the compasses and manually enable the download feature. So it's there for some (possibly small number) of them but not yet all. Could be luck of the draw with the ones you tried out.

I just got TSA Pre-Check for similar reasons -- one leg nearly an inch shorter than the other after multiple joint fusions, and walking without my modified sneakers or even standing without them is beyond difficult and pretty painful. Can't wait to take advantage of it next March!

At least for my sailing (Freedom, March 31, 2018), there's no sale in the Cruise Compass. Only "sale" is for cruise bookings.

@ryan.aubin, no option to have the rep you spoke with pass you off to a supervisor, and keep moving up the CSR chain if need be? Like you said, the "line workers" generally have no say on those matters and have to stick to their script; it's only the supervisors who have any authority to look deeper into things and/or make the call to "make you happy". My wife works in customer support and she's told me more times than I can count how she's wanted to help folks out who clearly had some kind of snafu happen that wasn't the customer's fault, but always had to pass them up to a supervisor (and usually then only if the customer directly requests it, unless the script itself states it's a situation where immediate escalation is required).

And you still got to go in to your room before it was ready, just by saying "Star Class"? Wow! It's good to be the king!

Ummm, what is Luminae, and what makes it wonderful? And that's good to know about the Sky Suites re: it being like a Jr. Suite on Royal, but with true suite benefits. I'm looking at a few cruise itineraries currently serviced by the Eclipse as possible 50th birthday options -- a 12-night Italy & Greek Islands trip (mainly Greece, with 4 out of the 7 port stops, including what seems to be the rather elusive stop in Mykonos); a 12-night Western Mediterranean with with stops in Spain, France, and Italy; and a 13-night Italy and Adriatic itinerary that includes an overnight in Dubrovnik. If getting a Sky Suite gets you the true suite experience, that can be a nice way for me to "step up" that celebratory cruise without breaking the bank on one of those higher level suite categories I saw. Ultimately will depend on whether my kids can go on those iterineraries, which would mean booking two cabins or getting a BIG suite that includes a second bedroom (the kids refuse to sleep on sofa beds any more, especially when they both have to use it). Also looking at Azamara as a possible option. I saw they have a 14-night "Tall Sails and Remembrance" cruise that hits a lot of ports in France as well a few in Spain and Portugal, but I get the feeling that's a one-time offer as it's tied in to a D-Day / landing at Normandy anniversary. Hoping there will be a similar offer for the 2019-2020 or 2020-21 season.

Awesome suite you've got there! What did you mean by, "Just had to open the firedoor from the elevator lobby"? Was that some kind of back entrance way to get to your room, not normally allowable to passengers? Is that why you initially got a raised eyebrow from the crew?

Ditto with flying in an extra day early, and no way would I risk flying in the day of. Being able to explore the port city is always nice, especially for someone like me who hasn't done a lot of traveling until now. And it gives time for getting those two bottles of wine to bring on board! Not exactly the same thing, but "fun" little anectode along these lines. @KLAconQueso , do not read this if you want to avoid pre-wedding stress!! Morning after my wedding. New wife and I are up at 3 AM for the limo that's supposed to take us to the airport for our honeymoon in Hawaii. We've told it to pick us up at the hotel we're staying at no later than 4 AM due to our early flight and needing to be at the airport two hours prior. 4 AM comes and goes, no limo. 4:30 goes by. I'm wigging out. Ask the hotel desk if they can please call a taxi and let them know the urgency. Taxi guy arrives at like 5:15, and our flight leaves at 7. It's easily an hour's drive from where we are, and if there's any kind of traffic we're going to be screwed. We told the driver about our situation, and that taxi driver flew down the highway at speeds I don't want to think about, and thankfully there was no traffic on any of the highways. We pulled into EWR at 6 AM, and I tipped that guy really generously. Had a smooth flight after that and a great honeymoon. Here's the punchline... We get home two weeks later, and after unpacking our stuff I go through the answering machine messages. And there on the morning after our wedding are two messages from the limo driver, saying he's parked outside our apartment and waiting for us! This after I called them a few days beforehand to make clear to them not to go there and made sure they had the address of the hotel we'd be at! That was the last time we ever booked a limo using a Valpak coupon to save a few dollars!!

So let's say they can't figure out a final call until after 7 AM cutoff for leaving Cozumel, and only then they work out that Harvey is going to hammer the port and making docking on Sunday impossible. What do they do as far as keeping everyone safe but still getting back to the US? Do they shore up in Cozumel for an extra day so they have supplies handy to keep everyone fed and watered? Do they reroute to one of the Florida ports instead? Having watched that documentary that showed how the cruise lines have the amount of food on board calculated to just barely get them through the trip, I can't imagine they can just sail around for an extra sea day while waiting for the storm to pass, especially since they're already at the tail end of the trip.

No comments / warnings about noise for that cabin or any other cabin on deck 14 when I checked cruisedeckplans.com, so you should be good.

See if you can find reviews of it on TripAdvisor or another site. Like @WAAAYTOOO said, there are many of these, and the level of care afforded the dolphins varies from place to place. Try to find reviews that indicate the people running the place show consistent care and respect for the dolphins they're taking care of (and let's face it, showing off for a profit). Not trying to be a tree hugger type here, but if the animals are well cared for they'll be under less stress with all those unfamiliar humans around them and you'll also have a better experience. For reference, you can look at the reviews of Dolphin Discovery on St. Kitts. This is the one I have booked for my cruise on Freedom next year; plenty of complaints about the exorbitant photo package price (like all these places), but also consistently good comments about how the people who show you the dolphins and take care of them really visibly care about them and treat them well.

Also be aware that there are both studio interior and studio balcony rooms, although I recall there are only 2 or 3 of the latter on Harmony (seems to be a bigger thing with Anthem). If having that ocean view is important to you, the option is there if you grab it quickly enough! ?

Which strikes me as really odd when they're supposed to be the best line for families with kids and teens. What do (at least a lot of) older teens like to do at night? Go to a club with their friends and listen to music while (awkwardly) checking out the attractive members of the opposite gender and/or socializing with the friends they've made on board. Even if the adults among the guests aren't so into the club scene any more, a loud driving beat with complimentary drinks is like the candle flame for the moths. Spoken as the parent of two teen girls who would roll their eyes at the thought of doing that, but then go along and come back raving about the time they had. ?

Only thing that I'll add, being a native and lifelong New Jerseyan, is to allow some extra time on embarkation day for construction delays when driving the last leg to the port. Newark is one of those cities that always has some road or another under construction / repair and causing delays. If not Newark itself, then one of the myriad highways that surround it. Assuming you're using GPS to make your way, just listen to it if it says it can save you two minutes here five there and shows any red marked roads ahead of you. I didn't listen a few times and it cost me FAR more than the alleged few minutes. Everyone else's comments about the weather have been spot on, nothing to add there. And I don't live close enough to the port (solid hour away) to recommend any places other than what was already given by @BrianAlt and @whenismynextcruise.

Types of cruise lines (mass market vs premium vs luxury) Reasons to choose a particular line (e.g., strongly consider Royal if you have kids due to great programs and activities; choose MSC if you want a more European style trip and are OK with that, or if the cost is a major factor) Consider what matters most to you – ship or itinerary – and plan the rest around that Maybe lead off with an image of "classic cruising" from Titanic (movie) and point out that unless you go on a luxury liner, it's nothing like that any more. Followed up with images of people wearing shorts in the MDR. ?? As for title, I think Resting Birds got the clear winner!

I am expecting a full report on the Maraviglia, as I was just looking at that same itinerary a couple weeks back as one option for a 50th birthday present to myself. She only started sailing last year and is reported to have fixed some of the food quality / prep consistency issues that I see reported on pretty much every other current MSC ship. Not keen on that "Polar Zone" aqua park, but the rest including the Cirque du Soleil performances, looks pretty darn great!

Some Celebrity itineraries are nice, some seem far less impressive to me. In particular, Royal has a once-a-year trip that goes to Norway and Iceland, before either returning to England some years or doing a full transatlantic to the US with additional stops in Canada and New England. The TA is a really port-intensive trip with hardly any sea days, maybe 5 out of a 14-night run. With Celebrity, I've also seen just one itinerary that goes to Iceland; but that one has fewer port days in Iceland, no visit to Norway, and only other country visited is Ireland. IIRC, it was a 15-night cruise with 9 sea days!! That is not something I want to be paying Celebrity's premium over Royal for, thank you very much. It also seems like Royal offers better itineraries if you want to visit Croatia or other parts of the Adriatic sea, based on some research I was doing the other week. I turn 50 in 2020 and I'm starting to look for ideas of a "step up" cruise to celebrate, would like to maybe go for a more "premium" line and/or step up to suite class for that trip. I also don't get why Celebrity doesn't offer more longer itineraries vs. Royal. On Royal I can find itineraries up to 16 nights (generally TAs). On Celebrity I have yet to find an itinerary longer than 14 nights, even for TA cruises. Maybe I misunderstand the point of a "premium" line, but for me it's not just to have a nicer ship. I expect more / better port options for that extra money, longer itinerary options than the "mass market" lines offer, and fewer (or at worst the same percentage of) sea days on any given itinerary. Maybe I'm just not looking at the right "premium" line, and for Europe I need to consider other lines outside the RCCI family.