FManke

Those are acceptable for your guys. In the end dress for yourself, not for others. If it's allowed by RC, others have no right telling you what to wear. If others can't enjoy their meal because people are not wearing what "they" think they should, that's on them.
Happy cruising!

Those are acceptable for your guys. In the end dress for yourself, not for others. If it's allowed by RC, others have no right telling you what to wear. If others can't enjoy their meal because people are not wearing what "they" think they should, that's on them.
Happy cruising!

Those are acceptable for your guys. In the end dress for yourself, not for others. If it's allowed by RC, others have no right telling you what to wear. If others can't enjoy their meal because people are not wearing what "they" think they should, that's on them.
Happy cruising!

Those are acceptable for your guys. In the end dress for yourself, not for others. If it's allowed by RC, others have no right telling you what to wear. If others can't enjoy their meal because people are not wearing what "they" think they should, that's on them.
Happy cruising!

This is available on a lot of cruises I've been on! 
And it's free! ???

Those are acceptable for your guys. In the end dress for yourself, not for others. If it's allowed by RC, others have no right telling you what to wear. If others can't enjoy their meal because people are not wearing what "they" think they should, that's on them.
Happy cruising!

Huh? My head hurts just reading this. I'm old!

I wasn't sure I would live blog this trip but Empress is secret favorite of mine and she doesn't get much attention here in the live blogs.
Empress is a small ship yet she doesn't feel small on board, as long as you pick the right cabin.  In the wake of the abrupt Cuba changes fares have been very reasonable including Junior Suite rates.  On a small ship the added space and balcony of a Junior Suite goes a long way to not feeling the size of the ship. 
The fact that cruising solo in a suite will net me triple Crown and Anchor points wasn't lost on me.  That's a whopping 42 points for the price of a 7 night cruise in a balcony on an Oasis class ship.  
Since I'm flying to the ship I always prefer a B2B.  If I'm coming all this way I might as well cruise twice.
I thoroughly enjoyed my last Empress cruise so given the great last minute rates and affordable suites I couldn't pass up the opportunity to sail this little beauty again.
Itinerary 1 - 6 nights
Key West, Costa Maya, Cozumel
Itinerary 2 - 8 nights
Key West, Costa Maya, Belize, Cozumel, CocoCay
I like to scuba dive so the opportunity to visit Belize again was appealing.  This will also be my first trip to see the new Perfect Day additions.  Cozumel is a perennial favorite as is Key West.  Costa Maya is also an easy port to spend a day at. 
Put it all together and the answer computed to... YOLO, why not?
I am going to take a more relaxed approach to blogging this one.  It is after all a small ship and I've got two weeks to spread my posts over so I may not be as active on this one as I have on other cruises.  
Flying in the night before my plane takes off in a couple of hours.  Time to finish packing and get moving. 

Darn it John, I was JUST going to book that stateroom and YOU pulled it offline for 15 minutes with your mock booking. Shame on you! ??

I hope it doesn't go to @twangsters head! 
Oh wait. As @WAAAYTOOOmentioned more than once. He doesn't have a head because he's a bot! I keep forgetting. 

Nope. Just me again!

We've been trying to coordinate booking for our family vacation on Oasis October 2020.  Well this weekend's balcony sale convinced part of us anyway to go ahead and book  :)  Not only did we get a deal on our neighborhood balcony, Michelle Cunningham hooked us up with a resident deal for additional $80 off.  I love that we upgraded for just over $100 a piece.

Yup, Royal doesn’t seem to like having base prices that aren’t round dollar amounts. The real fun one is when the base works out to $65 and you then multiply by .7 to see what a theoretical 30% discount offer should be. You get $45.5, which leads to why some days showing a $46 sale price, and the next day it changes to $45 (this actually happened to me once).
Love it! ?
Still more love! ??

This is a prime example of the difference between cruisers who use the ship as a means of transportation and the ones that use it as a all-inclusive resort. Still others pick and choose parts of both. Isn't that the best part of cruising? Choices?

The first thing that comes to mind is that if people are off the ship as in port, they can't consume as much alcohol, for those on a drink package. I'm not sure what the % of cruise passengers are actually on a drink package per cruise, but I'm sure that would add up. The less they pour, the more profit they make. I may be way off track. Just a thought, although this would apply to all classes of ships.
 

This is a prime example of the difference between cruisers who use the ship as a means of transportation and the ones that use it as a all-inclusive resort. Still others pick and choose parts of both. Isn't that the best part of cruising? Choices?

Hey @JLMoranstill more math!

Hey @JLMoranyou should like this. More math!

I looked at that one and basically the same without the 3 hrs of free time. Last cruise we did too any 6+hr tours. Not enough time to relax. Looking at shorter excursions this time around.
Maybe I'll wait and see what the wife thinks. It's a surprise 30th anniversary cruise, so I will have to keep it a secret until I tell her on our half anniversary next April. I booked the cruise this April. So far so good keeping the secret.

This is a prime example of the difference between cruisers who use the ship as a means of transportation and the ones that use it as a all-inclusive resort. Still others pick and choose parts of both. Isn't that the best part of cruising? Choices?

This is a prime example of the difference between cruisers who use the ship as a means of transportation and the ones that use it as a all-inclusive resort. Still others pick and choose parts of both. Isn't that the best part of cruising? Choices?

Didn't they just have to move The Key lunch to MDR on one of the ships because of the numbers of guests with the key?

We took that exact cruise for our 27th wedding anniversary in 2017 although we did not do either of those. We did do regular dinners in Chops, Giovanni's and Izumi's. 
I hope you love it as much as we did!
Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions or suggestions I could make.
Happy cruising!

Maybe if it's raining, I'll get lucky enough to get a deck chair by the pool! Unless somebody is saving them with rain ponchos.

I think this is great but again I really wish they would publish and standardize all perks across the fleet.  Otherwise guests end up with incorrect expectations when booking ship to ship.