JLMoran

Ditto for still seeing $55/day + gratuity on my March 31, 2018 sailing on Freedom. Like others have said, just wait it out; you'll get a sale sooner or later.

So you can do that even for a cruise you already booked outside of Casino Royale? Would love to do that for the Anthem cruise to Bermuda! Just figured that because I'd already booked it months ago now, it wasn't an option.

The more generous chips on the mobile version is directly tied to the fact that the bets are also much larger than they used to be in that app. Where bet levels were originally 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 chips per line; now they're something like 1.5k, 3k, 15k, 30k, 40k, etc. per line. So you feel like you're making out bigger, but the amount needed to gain loyalty points (in terms of total spins at a given bet level) is still about the same. It certainly feels nice saying "I've got 30 million chips!", though. Or seeing "HUGE WIN!! 1,245,000" ?

Well, depending on how much of a casino person you are, you could conceivably just bring a few hundred in cash to cover your planned budget there. Not all of us gamble like Raye.

For me, a space like you describe would be a place to avoid. I'm not a fan of sports in general, only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. But Vintages is the kind of place I dream of on a cruise ship as it's totally my speed and interests. If it happens to be mostly empty, well, that just means more time I can get recommendations from the staff and sample the wares! ? Also love the chance to hang in a pub and hear the live music playing and just mellowing out, maybe strike up some conversations with other people there. But, if they added a place like that to a ship the size of Oasis or Anthem so it could just be part of a neighborhood that I don't have to go near if I don't want to, then everyone wins. ?

Hate to be a pessimist (or maybe corporatist), but this might also be a way to drive more traffic to the specialty dining venues, especially on larger ships like Oasis or Quantum class that have so many options that are apparently not being used as much as RCI might like (see Ultimate Dining Package). Pre-change, why would someone want to check out specialty dining if the MDR food was so good and so varied, except for a very special occasion? Hoping that Freedom's MDR menu won't become too "commonplace" with its offerings considering the limited specialty dining options.

I talked with her about it, and showed her a video posted by RCI, as well as the sample menu on the Cruise Planner. She wasn't sure about the menu, thought it might be a little TOO adventuresome. She also feels it's as much about the wine as the food and that it wouldn't really work for her because of that. I'm guessing that the average age of the people in the promotional video didn't help. She probably would be the youngest one there by a country mile, and she's already self-conscious about being "old for her age". It was worth a try. I may still go on my own, or she may change her mind over the next 8 months. Will take it as it comes.

Be sure to fill out the comment section of the online review form if you haven't already. By all accounts, RCL does read that feedback and take it seriously.

Just did a quick test, I can add my daughter to the reservation without any trouble at all! And apparently you can reserve that meal for any night of the trip. I thought it was just on one specific night, maybe two, and needed a super-early booking to ensure a seat. So now I just have to talk with the missus, see if she's OK with that plan, and then... YOLO! BOOK IT!

Thanks for the review! I'm doing a "trial cruise" on Anthem next October with just my wife, partly to see how she might stack up as a ship for the full family. Sounds like your kids are a bit younger than mine, but if yours had a blast then I don't see how mine wouldn't! Makes me look forward to next October all the more, hopefully followed up with another trip with the whole family.

Yes, she could easily sit through a 2-hour meal, especially if the food is as good as it seems from the sample menu and some reviews I've seen here and elsewhere. Good idea about just trying to purchase and pulling her name from the linked reservation like I've done for excursions and other reservations! I hadn't thought of trying that. To give you an idea of what she's like -- we went to Lambertville, NJ on Wednesday and had lunch at a local eatery that everyone raves about (Lambertville Station Restaurant, for those familiar with the area). They had a new "cheesesteak sandwich" on the menu, which is a bit of a misnomer since it was served with onion bread with fresh-made au jus on the side, and the meat was slow-roasted for hours and sliced to serve instead of being the typical frozen slab quickly fried up on the grill. She spent the entire meal raving about that sandwich! How the meat was perfectly juicy, enough to melt in her mouth but not so moist that it turned the bread soggy. And the cheese had these hints of spices in it that she was picking up as she ate it, couldn't tell if it was cherry pepper or jalapeno or something else. And the au jus was really good and flavorful and accented the sandwich perfectly. She was still going on about it an hour after we left, and how she's been ruined for cheesesteak sandwiches from anywhere else! And then we went for ice cream at a nearby gourmet place, where she tried Rosewater Cardamom and talked about how the flavor starts off filling your mouth with the cardamom; but as you swallow, that flavor quickly fades and the rosewater almost floats up from the back of your mouth to fill your nostrils as a really nice finish. That was opposed to the Indonesian Vanilla, which she described as just "meh" for flavor compared to the Madagascar vanilla we have at home for baking. And the "I Hate Chocolate", which was the best chocolate ice cream she's had to date. So yeah, I think she'd absolutely love the Chef's Table experience. I just might have to be ready to hear about it for the entire rest of the cruise.

Not sure about on the Facebook side, but Lotus Land on the mobile app has no mini-games that I've seen. Also seems to pay out regularly enough that if you follow that "200 spins" rule I mentioned earlier, you can pretty much keep going infinitely and just re-up the auto-spins as needed.

At least you weren't eating a Cockroach Cluster or Anthrax Ripple. ;)

I'm suddenly reminded of the "Bruces" sketch from Monty Python (albeit kind of in reverse): Bruce #1: "Right, let me introduce you to the other faculty. Michael Borwin, Bruce. Michael Borwin, Bruce. Michael Borwin, Bruce." Bruce #2: "Is your name not Bruce?" Michael: "No, it's Michael." Bruce #2: "Well, that's going to cause a little confusion. Mind if we call you Bruce just to keep it clear?"

I know that the Chefs Table is themed around the pairing of the wines with the food, but do they allow minors to attend and just miss out on the wine part? My 14-year old daughter is a major foodie, and I know she'd love the chance to try this out. I was looking at the description in the cruise planner, but surprisingly there are no restrictions listed as far as ages allowed or anything else. If they don't allow minors, I'll be looking at trying this out on my own, if at all. My wife doesn't eat fish and doesn't drink wine, so bringing her along would be an overall poor experience for her, and my other daughter isn't as adventuresome in the food department as the younger one. Would have to see at that point how the rest of the family would feel about me having dinner without them while they went to the MDR or maybe did a specialty restaurant of their own.

@coneyraven, Matt indicated in his live blog that he and his wife ate at Izumi twice on their just-ended Harmony cruise with the ultimate dining package, so I'd imagine there's nothing stopping you from making two reservations for Chops. I agree that it's odd to see dining packages for more nights than there are specialty restaurants. Freedom only has Sabor, Chops, and Giovanni's Table; but I'm still being given the option to buy an ultimate dining package for our 8-night trip! I couldn't imagine eating at those three restaurants two or three or more times each.

So what is the Bad Thing about having a surge protector? I mean, if ship's power can't guarantee a steady 60Hz / 120V, wouldn't you want a surge protector to keep your laptop, phone, or other electrically sensitive devices safe while plugged in? Will the surge protector cause a "back-flow" in the outlet's wiring, potentially creating a fire risk due to increase resistance / heat in the wiring? Risk of blowing out other outlets on the same general circuit for the room block? Sorry, this is the science geek in me wanting to understand this rule that clearly must have not just a safety reason, but also engineering and/or physics reasons behind it.

@Stephanie, you're correct on all counts. The best advice I can give (which I forgot, causing me to go "bankrupt" and have to start building my chips up again) is look at how many chips you currently have and then divide that by 200. That's your max bet, and pretty much ensures that you'll be able to ride the ups and downs as you hit winning streaks and losing ones. This should also allow your chip stack to grow over time, so you can make larger max bets. And you need to be able to do that, because as you go up in levels, the total amount you have to bet before you get that next loyalty payout steadily creeps upward. Where you could get a reward with 25 or 30 1,000 chip spins in the early game, that quickly changes to needing to make 25 or 30 40,000 chip spins or higher. It's a balancing act to keep the bet high enough that you get loyalty without too many spins, but not so high that you quickly build loyalty but also quickly go bankrupt. I got to 68,000 loyalty (almost entirely via the mobile app) and decided to take a break from the game after bankrupting out. My chip stack is back up to 8 million now, so I can bet a half-decent 40k per spin, but I figure I'll keep building it up until I can bet at least 100k per spin (so I'll need 20 million chips). At level 71 where I am now, 100k per spin is kind of the minimum to build loyalty at any kind of decent rate. Only other advice I can give is to only play whatever games you need for your Journey quests. Don't try out other games just because they look interesting; trust me, you'll be playing them eventually as part of a quest. The best tip I read was for the "loyalty quests", where you need to get X loyalty in a particular slot game. Don't actually play that game if you find it's one that doesn't pay out well. Instead, go to a different quest where you can play a different game, and keep an eye on the loyalty gauge. It fills up five times before you get loyalty rewarded, so when you see that it's filled up four times and is almost done with the fifth, stop spinning and switch to the "loyalty quest" game. Spin once or twice, get the loyalty award, and go back to the other quest. Rinse and repeat until you've completed the loyalty quest along with whatever quests you were working on at the same time. If anyone here wants to give out their Facebook names (maybe by private message so we don't get spammed), we can all build up a friend network for daily chip gifts that would also help to keep the spins going longer. ? My own account is only visible to friends and their friends, but I can make it public for a short time if someone here wants to friend up for this game.

Yeah, if driving on the left is the thing then I'll be taking the bus when I go next year . Being a lefty, I don't think my brain could safely handle the idea of driving where I'm finally "right". ? As far as drinking warm beer goes, I'm fine with that. At least I'll be able to taste the beer, unlike every cold glass I've gotten that's been in a freezer and fills my mouth with ice crystals on the first ten swigs.

Also, Netflix recently added a feature to download select TV show episodes and movies to your device for offline viewing. So you don't necessarily have to buy them on iTunes or another service. From the device you plan to use, open up Netflix and go to the show you want. From the list of episodes (for TV series) or the main info screen (for movies), look for an icon labeled "Download"; icon image is a down-pointing arrow above a horizontal line. If you see that icon, you can download that episode / movie. I'm in the US, so this may not be available yet in the UK. But from my own account, I can see that I have kid-friendly movies like Madagascar 2 - Escape Africa, The Angry Birds Movie, Minions, and Kubo and the Two Strings available; in TV series, I see the original Voltron series (yeah, I'm dating myself here), Flash, Arrow, and Supergirl.

Anthem is an odd beast. They started off with no regular dining, just what they called Dynamic Dining (basically, everyone did MyTime Dining). Part of that plan was that they had no main dining room; instead, there were four separate smaller dining rooms, each with a different theme and menu. Last year, after a lot of negative feedback, they did away with Dynamic Dining and went back to the same dining plan used everywhere else. So now all four of the dining rooms serve the same menu; two of the dining rooms (All American Grill and Silk, on deck 4) are dedicated to MyTime Dining passengers, and the other two (Chic and Grande on deck 5) are dedicated to traditional dining passengers.

As @tiny260 said, we already hashed this out a while back regarding AppleTV. Chromecast will have the same issues, which boil down to: Most important -- the remote has no way to change the input on the TV, and the TVs don't have obvious on-device controls for menu navigation Next most important -- The Chromecast / AppleTV has no ready way to connect to the ship wi-fi since you need a web browser to manage the log in, and the device has to be on wi-fi before you can stream to it from another device Also -- You can't stream from a phone or tablet that's connected to the ship wi-fi to the Chromecast / AppleTV; a device can't be both a wi-fi receiver and transmitter Are there really convoluted hacks to let you get around all of these issues? Sure! But as also noted, why go to all the trouble when you're on a cruise ship and can enjoy all she has to offer? ? If you really need the media, say for a child who has a particular bedtime routine or the like that you're trying to preserve, best bet is probably to see if the programs you want / need are available for offline viewing on Netflix (this is a recently added feature). Then you can download them to your device and just watch on there.

So this would mean that Chic and Grande are the two dining rooms on Deck 5, and held for traditional dining? While the menus are the same in all four, the decor in photos I saw before the removal of Dynamic Dining was pretty different in each. Is that still the case, or has each venue had its decor made a little more generic / utilitarian so it doesn't "clash" with the cuisine on offer each night?

Karen, my family and i were originally looking at this excursion for our own cruise next year that stops in St. Maarten. I read a number of reviews on TripAdvisor indicating the horses were not well treated -- visible scars on them from bites, several of the horses were skittish / aggressive, etc. Equal number of reviews indicating wonderful times were had, but given the negative reviews that were prefaced by statements that the reviewers were experienced dealing with horses, we decided not to do this excursion. If RCI is no longer offering it, those claims may well have been valid and RCI chose to no longer support them either.

That definitely sounds like the older package, where there was one above it called "Ultimate" that covered everything including spirits. Those two were basically "merged" into the current Deluxe package, and back when that happened people with the older packages were grandfathered in and just had whatever was on their purchased package available to them. You may want to cancel that purchase with Cruise1st and just buy the drink package through the Cruise Planner on the Royal Caribbean site. You have to set up your account on there with your reservation number, but after that you'll have full access to the cruise planner and can buy drink packages, dining packages, excursions, etc.