JLMoran

So here I am, blogging while gazing out at the Promenade, while Dan is doing the first of many, I’m sure, saunas.  The man loves his steam room and sauna.  I can’t stay in a hot sauna for more than 60 seconds.  My poor, thin, white skin just rebels.  
 
….which brings me to our stateroom info.  We are in a Promenade view interior room on deck 8.  It is the highest level (in elevation, I mean) of this category and so far, it is VERY quiet.  We’ve been in this category a few times and truly, we’ve had some noise issues in the past - mostly related to shenanigans on the Promenade.  But not so, this time -at least, not yet !
I’m always surprised at how OK I am with this stateroom category, once I’m settled in.  I dread it until I get here and then I’m like - “This isn’t so bad”. Small ?  Sure.  …and the drawer space is very limited but we always manage to get everything put away and I’m sitting on the love seat, looking out the winder (sic) overlooking the Promenade and thinking how lucky I am to be here.
This cruise is a 100% casino comp.  As a matter of fact, I actually downgraded our offer (it was originally for an ocean view) to get this category rather than some porthole room down on decks 3 or 4.  Knowing what I know now, I would probably have upgraded the OV offer for one of the panoramic OV cabins on the front of the ship but at the time that I made this booking, I had never stated in one of those panoramic OV cabins so I was woefully ignorant of that option.  I’m ok with this room though.
I did put in a RU bid for one of the panoramic OV rooms but didn’t win 😥. Not to worry !  Cruise #3 (4-19) IS one of the panoramic OV cabins so I will get to enjoy it, but not for 2 more weeks !
We will be in this room for the first 2 cruises (14 days) and will move to the panoramic OV on the final one of the B3B.

It ain't Wonder... no CK, no 11-11 drinks... abort abort!  🤣

As I’ve already mentioned, boarding was very timely and efficient.  We stopped by our mustard (sic) station on the way in and got that out of the way.  Then straight over to the specialty dining kiosk near the dining room to make our specialty rezzies.  No one else in line…easy peasy.  Woohoo !
 
On our way up to our room to sneak the keys off the stateroom door, we ran into Gigi, the Suites Concierge.  I asked her if there were any Pinnacle exclusions to the Suite Lounge.  Very sheepishly, she said, “Yes.  Only the top 30 allowed in the Concierge Lounge” (EX STILL has not converted their Concierge Lounge to a Suites Lounge despite the fact that they underwent a dry dock fairly recently.  Why ??).  She continued, “If your key works, you’re allowed in”.  My heart sank as I’m certain that we would be excluded.  I’ve been waiting for this to happen.  It was just a matter of time.  “oh well” I tell myself.  It’s not the end of the world.  Truly, the Crown Lounge is actually nicer than the Suites/Concierge Lounge on this ship since the Concierge Lounge is still, inexplicably, located in an uninspired inside room on deck 9 while the Crown Lounge is up in the Viking Crown are with an ocean view.  “We’ll be fine”, I said, as I choked back the tears of disappointment. 😜😜
So I went and snatched the keys from the door (we’re right by the elevators on deck 8 so I was and out like a special forces recon team.  Nobody saw me come or go (except for security, of course)).  Even though I knew it was a waste of time, I told Dan that we had to try the key to see if it would open the Concierge Lounge door.  I held my breath.  I slipped the key in.  I heard the “click” that the lock makes when it magically unlocks the door.  The light blinked.  I couldn’t believe our luck !  Our successful record for Suites Lounge access was still intact !  Yippee !  Now…are we in the top 30 Pinnacles ?  That’s a big “no” unless there are only 29 Pinnacles on board !  So either it’s a one-time lock glitch OR Gigi was hedging her bet.  I guess we’ll find out the next time I try to get in !
I got my cappuccino, and a stale lemon cookie and we waited in the [absolutely deserted] Concierge Lounge until it was time for lunch.  For those who need to know (Mike ?  …the tag-thing isn’t working !) here are some pix of the unimpressive treats in the Lounge for embarkation.
Poor Dan.  He’s all alone in the Lounge !
 
 

Yes !  We ate lunch today at Chops, which is a kind of tradition for us.  There were only 4 other people eating in the restaurant which is REAlLY a slow embarkation day for Chops.  
 
We are dining at Giovanni’s tonite and Chops tomorrow night (our BOGO vouchers).  We also have a 3 night dining package so we are doing Izumi on night #4 (skipping the USA menu in the MDR), Chops on night #6 (skipping the Caribbean night) and Giovanni’s on night #7 (skipping Italian night).  That leaves Mexican night (night #3), Asian night (night #5), Royal night (lobster, night #8) and lamb shank night (can’t remember the theme) on night #9 for the MDR.  I actually like Italian night in the MDR so on the repeat of this itin (cruise #3 4-19) I will choose to do Italian night and switch it out for something else….plenty of time to make that decision !

Lol.  Um….no.  I think Mario is a few cruises ahead of us  😂😂🥰
….but we are very proud of the way we have fulfilled our “lifestyle” dream/plan to move to FL to cruise MORE.  It has truly worked out just the way we planned it. I documented the entire move in an old thread from 2020 but I don’t know how to copy the link so anyone that wants to read it will have to sleuth it out.  It’s entitled “House Recon”…something something…. 😵‍💫
Actually, there are 2 S2S following these 3 EX cruises.  We have 1 day in dry dock (4-28) then board FR for 4 days, then 2 days in dry dock followed by 7 nights on WN (5-5)….nearly 6 weeks of cruising ! Things slow down after that !

Glad you decided to blog and that everything went smoothly after the parking. I would not have dealt with that situation well.
CASH ONLY? Is this a Honduran excursion or a business in the US? I thought places were switching to NO CASH ACCEPTED, lol.

Thanks !
Very nice.  They let us in the terminal at almost exactly 10:00 and we started boarding before 11:00.  It was a very quick and efficient embarkation.

Premier Parking (offsite)
I intend to prepare a completely separate post about this b/c there are so many things to say….but I will include it here as part of the saga.
Since we are onboard for 23 days, we needed an option to the Royal Caribbean parking garage.  Frankly, the offsite option will save us more than half of what it would have cost.  Premier was recommended to us by a TA friend.  In the end, I’m sure we will be glad we did it BUT the learning curve on parking offsite is very steep (at least, it was for us)
1.  They only accept cash and you must pay the entire balance when you check in.  The balance due was nearly $300 !  When he said, “cash only” Dan and I looked at each other with the deer in the headlights glare.  We did manage to gather the money together but it was just a bit of luck that we had the cash to do it.  Frankly, I don’t know what the option would have been if we had not scrounged the money up.  I doubt they would have turned us away….but I’m glad I didn’t have to find out !
2.  While we had the street address of the parking garage, it was VERY difficult to find !  There no less than 4 high rise parking garages in this general vicinity and there were NO physical addresses on any of them.  We circled about 3 times before we FINALLY saw a small sign that said “Premier Parking”.  Eureka !  We finally found the right building….but where do we go now ?  We just started going up and up and up.  Finally around the 5th floor we started seeing signs for Cruise Parking.  We actually parked twice and moved both times before we realized that we weren’t “there” yet.
 
BOTTOM LINE:  Premier Cruise Parking is on level 7.  You must go ALL the way up to get to where you’re going.  Don’t stop until you see the sign below.
4..  The website says that they offer continuous shuttle service beginning at 7:30.  Perfect !  What they DON’T tell you is that they don’t start shuttling people TO the port until 10:00.  We were there at 8-ish.  The parking attendant said they would call us a “special” shuttle to take us over early.  Uh…not so much.  We stood around waiting for over an hour until we finally got a ride over.
I will stop here to say…I know this is the primary beef that most people have against shuttles (from anywhere…hotel, airport, etc) so I understand.  What infuriated us was that shuttles were coming into the garage with departing cruise guests nearly nonstop.  Why wouldn’t they get just let us ride over to the port on their way back to  pick up more departing guests ?  Yes, I understand that they service all of the Miami terminals and a “drop-off” is out of order with the “pick-ups”…but it seemed like an  unnecessarily strident rule.  In the end, that’s exactly  what they did, but they could have done it MUCH earlier.  
Once we got in the van, it was a quick, efficient and easy trip to the port.

So what “firsts” are we doing on this cruise ?
1.  First time ever parking offsite.  The second “first” (how confusing is that ???) is really just a subset of the #1.  This is the first time we have used Premier Parking in Miami.
2.  The only other “first” has nothing to do with boarding day - we will be calling on Grenada for the first time ever.  Rare for us to have a new Caribbean port, but we do.  As a matter of fact, we will be calling twice b/c our third cruise in this trilogy is identical to the first so we will be visiting twice.

I struggled with whether to do a live blog for these 3 rather mundane EX cruises but I decided to give it a go.  I even have some photos !  Shock, I know….these might be the only photos you get but at least there will be some !
Absolutely nothing interesting to report about our drive in.  Left Port St Lucie at 5:30AM and arrived at the parking garage (finally….more about that in a minute) at 8:00.  Since we had an 8:00 reservation, right on time.  We normally do not plan to arrive quite THAT early, but since we have a couple of “firsts” on this trifecta, plus, it being a weekday, we decided to leave a bit early.  In the end, it was a very good thing we did.

And he would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling bloggers !

So it wasn't really him?
 

ngl, I had to check the post date of this multiple times to confirm it wasn't an April Fool's joke.
Matt! Matt! Why hast thou forsaken us?!?
 
😉

See, this is why their "sales" and "promotions" are so often just bunk. It really comes down to, "How well are we meeting our quotas for these packages and offerings?" It's only when the sales numbers are in the toilet that the steep price cuts actually seem to come out. What I consider a reasonable deluxe package price (which would be about $45-$55 PP PD) doesn't seem to be offered any more, even though I was able to snag that price on both of my 2018 sailings.
Not that I'll stop checking, mind you. I'm a firm believer in miracles.

Given the description of the elevators on Odyssey, this might be an issue for my wife. She has benign cerebellar tremor, which causes her hands to shake all the time. If using those elevators requires steadily pointing a finger in front of a button but not touching it, she may get very frustrated if she constantly sets off all the neighboring buttons due to the tremor.

I've always defended @Matt when someone claimed he was being a princess.
Now I'm not so sure.
🤣🤣🤣
 

No wedding ring I see.... Smart man keeping his wealth to himself 😎

See! That guy is a true baller, not us lol

Did the Royal bling necklace come with the cup?  
He just needs Royal bling grills now.

100kroyalbling.com 

She won't have any issues, one can just press the buttons like a normal elevator; 3/4 of the time that's what I did just out of habit.

This could happen, but really it's not as big of a deal as reading this thread leads one to believe.  We met a lot of different people on the elevator.  We always had a conversation starter w/"don't get too close to the elevator buttons, or we'll have to stop at all the floors".  Yes, sometimes we stopped on some extra floors.  Twice we even got to ride in the elevator w/ the surprise piano player!   We enjoyed the journey.  We were on vacation.  The elevator can be one of your favorite memories of the ship.  It's all in the  perspective.

Count me on this sailing. Gonna be my first time on Royal in a good six years! Haven't sailed with them since before the pandemic hit. And this sailing will mark a few moments for me:
I turn 55 four days before sail-away I finally hit Platinum status (for all that means these days 😏) First sailing on Odyssey First time in Antigua and Barbados (too bad no Curacao, but 2 outta 3 ain't bad) And yeah, it's been a minute since I posted to these boards. 😉