JLMoran

@Blondie511, if you have any port days with evening (well after sunset) departure, try to get on the Northstar then. There is typically little demand for the Northstar on a port day, so even without a reservation you could ask to be wait-listed and not have a problem getting on.

Seeing the port area at night from an elevated POV is really something. Did that in Bermuda and it was great. Tricky to get photos because the glass is very reflective, but workable. You can see pics I was able to take that came out decently in this specific post from my last live blog:

15 minutes ago, LovetoCruise87 said:

Does anyone know if the tests were antibody tests?

I believe that if you had the virus, and were asymptomatic, and got the vaccine, antibody tests could show that you at one time had the virus due to the antibodies showing up. Thus giving a false positive.

I would imagine the tests are the RAPID antigen (viral protein) tests, rather than antibody. Assuming they were, there is still a chance for false positive compared to an RT-PCR test; but, I can confirm from personal experience that even if you were very recently vaccinated and therefore full of spike proteins (which I believe is the antigen being tested for), it does not generate a false positive. I had to get a RAPID and RT-PCR test at the same time ahead of my last surgery, and I had received my second vaccination shot just a week prior. Both tests came back negative.

As The Washington Post article linked by the OP notes, there are expected to be some measure of "breakthrough" cases in vaccinated people, which includes infection by one of the variants that the vaccines don't completely protect against. The two who tested positive clearly hit that low-chance lottery.

52 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

I think @JLMoran was referring to the Solarium.

Yup, that’s correct. I was replying to @alamode123‘s question about whether Solarium Bistro breakfast was free on Adventure. Unless I missed something in the context and he was actually asking about JR.

3 hours ago, cruisellama said:

Sorry, this was mis-captioned. Last two words should be "live blogging".

3 hours ago, FionaMG said:

best of all NO line because most people don't want to part with a dollar to pee!

You clearly haven't seen Urinetown.

"It's a privilege to pee!"

2 hours ago, AshleyDillo said:

Johnny Rockets is free on Oasis class for breakfast.  OP is on Allure, so it's available on that ship.  I don't even think they have breakfast hours on the non-Oasis ships.

Solarium Bistro is free across the fleet but reservations are recommended for dinner and maybe even lunch 

5 hours ago, alamode123 said:

Royal doing something consistent across the fleet? Why start now?

Well, you know... law of averages...

15 minutes ago, barjpoe said:

Do you think they'll close the bars, etc. for a ; like about 15  min. before and after the actual time to start the muster drill? ie drill was to start at 4, so from 3:45 to 4:15 they wouldn't serve?, but you could still sit there if you had been to check in at the muster station.

On Celebrity Millennium at least, @monorailmedic noted that all bars were open during the e-muster time window. I imagine it’ll be the same on all ships with e-muster implemented.

37 minutes ago, alamode123 said:

Isn't it free for breakfast on Oasis class ships only? I don't recall free breakfasts on Mariner.

Can't speak for Mariner, but for sure it was free on Anthem (might have required a reservation due to limited space, but no charge). Just a guess, but I imagine Royal would want to keep it consistent across the fleet to avoid confusion.

4 hours ago, Fairlynew said:

When my kids were looking at colleges, we tried to turn some of the tours into "mini-vacations" by exploring surrounding areas of interest.  I hope that your family is at least able to do that.

We are actually hoping to visit the Salem Museum while we’re there. Next town over from the college we’ll be visiting and one of those things we figure we have to see once.

This college, Montserrat College of Art, is her first and almost only choice. She’s looking at a couple other schools as backup plans, but this is the one she’s been pining for and talking about nonstop since her sophomore year, when I convinced her to read their brochure and not just throw it away with the dozens of others that flooded our Mail back then.

1 hour ago, Elnoz said:

Thanks for the udpate! Glad all is well in your world and that cruise planning is what has been keeping you too tied up to post! 

I think you meant WAAAYTOOO tied up.

Welcome to the forums, Nate! Happy to meet a fellow lover of anime and gaming; plenty of folks around here who love musicals and drinks, but those other two interests are hard to come by.

Glad to see you back here, Raye! How is the new house and (sorta?) new job coming along?

5 hours ago, coneyraven said:

Which is why, I tend to work with Credit Unions ... they're more local when it comes to the decisions they make, less restrictive when it comes to services and fees..... just an overall better experience.

+1 for this. I've been a credit union member since my first job out of college and love them. Haven't even thought about switching to a regular bank in 30 years.

So the latest update is not a great one. Things were just not showing any sign of improvement last week, and on Friday I sent the latest pics to the nurse assistant along with a question -- Should I be calling the wound care center at this point?

The answer was a firm yes. Especially so since I'm supposed to be going up to Massachusetts the last week of July for a college visit with my wife and younger daughter (high-school junior). No chance to schedule that later, it's the last week they offer it for this year.

I had my first appointment with them today, and they took a sample for bacterial culture (hopefully the infection is cleared out again, but gotta cover the bases) along with coming up with an initial treatment plan. Real treatment won't start until next week when they have the culture results, and at that time I'll be going 3 times a week for cleanings and bandage changes for at least 3 weeks. After that we'll see, could be going down to twice a week if I heal well.

Given the mounting medical bills (although my new insurance plan with Anthem BC/BS has been phenomenal with how much they've covered), and the fact we learned our 20-year old refrigerator is on its last legs, we're giving up on any cruise plans for this year. A bitter pill to swallow, but there's only so much money available and it's being rapidly eaten up.

I'm not going to make any more updates to this blog until I'm healed. Not really much point at this stage, as there's a long slog ahead of me.

2 hours ago, cruisellama said:

Has the carpet, tables, decor and area around Murano been updated?   Hadn't been after Revolution upgrade when we sailed her (and looked pretty tired)  so hoping they did it over the downtime.

I thought I remembered reading that Murano had been removed from all of the M-class ships during Revolution upgrades, so only Solstice class has it now. For sure Summit doesn't have Murano.

3 hours ago, CruiseGus said:

Every credit card i have ever dealt with is this same way, credits / refunds DO NOT count towards you minimum payment due, unless it pays off the complete balance.

But this is exactly why I called them. My statement balance was $X, refunds processed were ~$X+25 (port fees plus airfare refund worked out slightly more than my initial deposit amount). And all refunds applied were for charges made in the prior billing cycle and completely negate that statement’s balance. The remaining cruise fare balance, which is what I’m still waiting to be refunded, was charged in the current billing cycle when I made final payment.

Had this been my Amazon rewards card or my UPromise card, I would owe zero for the prior billing cycle. B of A says that’s bunk and that I owe them for what was already refunded. Purely because I have additional balance from the current cycle’s charges.

33 minutes ago, Pack02 said:

I lost 100,000 reward points because I booked an Easter 2020 cruise with points, and all I was refunded was taxes, etc. to the card.  No points went back on.  So there's another reason it's less than valuable.

I'm out 25,000 reward points. But on this matter, I called B of A, which had me call Royal, and the rep at Royal confirmed that they still have my OBC redemption on record and will transfer it to a new booking if I make a new one by April 30, 2022 for any sailing through Sept 30, 2022.

Had Royal not all-but-abandoned Cape Liberty and left a ship there to do Bermuda sailings, I'd have easily taken advantage of that. Now I'm probably not going to be able to make a transfer work unless my wife agrees to do a second cruise in September of 2022, almost right after our Mediterranean cruise in late July / early August.

I would wager that Celebrity absolutely wanted as close to 50% as they could get. Hard to say if only having about 25% on board is enough to make her profitable, but I'd wager not. The ship is fully crewed, so no savings there. And Royal said they needed about 30% on a newer (generally interpreted as O-class) ship; Celebrity may not need as high a percentage to be profitable since sailings are more expensive to start; but Millie is neither newer nor big, and she probably still needs closer to 50% to turn a profit.

@monorailmedic and his wife are on your sailing as well, and he's blogging over on cruisehabit.com. He said the ship is way below the desired 50% capacity, something like only 26%. So a lot of the ship looks like a ghost town at times.

Maybe you'll bump into him. Just look for the guy sitting at the sunset bar trying all the whiskey options.  

Just got off a long call with Bank of America, and I am not happy.

I just had a bunch of refunds applied to my card for the canceled cruise planner purchases I'd made for my now-canceled Vision sailing, along with a refund of the port fees and taxes. All told, the total in refunds is more than my last statement balance.

Every single other credit card I have will apply refunds or other credits against the outstanding statement balance. But this is apparently not B of A's policy. They are telling me that unless I were to receive the remaining cruise fare credit and get my outstanding balance down to zero before the close of this statement on June 13 (which I know won't happen) I must make at least a minimum payment or be assessed a late fee. And if I only make the minimum payment, I will still be assessed interest on the remaining balance. I never pay interest or leave unpaid balances, but even if I did decide to just make a minimum payment (which would more than offset whatever interest charges would accrue), B of A is still forcing me to give them an interest-free loan to avoid penalties, just so they can pay me back at their leisure when my balance goes into credit territory.

I can understand if I had paid off the card months prior and then the cruise was canceled / refunds were issued. But this is all within the same statement cycle and their policy here is total BS when they know they have competition from other card issuers who always apply credits against the statement balance.

If you were thinking about getting this card, this is another big reason to not get it. And you can believe that once this is all settled out and my balance is at zero with everything they'll then owe to me paid back, I'll be canceling this card and I don't give two spits about what it might briefly do to my credit score.

10 hours ago, DandA said:

The main dining room is not open for lunch on port days; however it is open for breakfast.

While true, it’s good to keep in mind that breakfast service in the MDR will be a lot slower than grabbing something from the Windjammer. If you have an excursion that leaves right when the ship’s gangway goes down, give yourself at least an hour before that if you plan to have breakfast in the MDR.

So nothing at all is sailing out of NJ now for the rest of the season. I guess that just made my plans for October a lot easier to figure out.  

EDIT: At the moment, Oasis is still showing for 7-night Bahamas and Perfect Day sailings in September and October. But that's not the itinerary we're looking for, so I'm still going to be trying out NCL for the first time.

@coneyraven, you are WAAAAAAY more comfortable around bugs than I am! If I had even one of those ugly suckers land on me, I'd be running back into the house and you'd hear my girly shriek all the way down in your part of Delaware!

From the linked article (emphasis added):

Quote

Royal Caribbean International has not made any official announcements yet; however, the cruise line has cruises scheduled for July from Port Liberty. These cruises are a 5-night Bermuda cruise first sailing on July 3 onboard Freedom of the Seas and a 7-night Caribbean and Bahamas voyage first sailing on July 2 onboard Oasis of the Seas.

Whether these voyages will be canceled or Royal Caribbean is confident these voyages can go ahead remains unclear at this moment.

The RCG Universe at play again!! C'mon Royal! Spill that tea already!!

56 minutes ago, UNCFanatik said:

It’s the RCG multiverse! 

Not good enough. I want the ULTIMATE RCG Multiverse! Get the ships upgraded with those warp drives and teleporters that @twangster dream-blogged about a while back.

And while I'm there, I'll see about a cosmic accident to get my super-powered form!