WhiteSoxFan

I have seen in the past where the booking engine will not offer up cabins that sleep 3 as available to book if you only select 2 in the cabin.  I don't know it this is still the case.

The Jewel has just the one hot tub in the Solarium.

Generally 7 day sailing depart Saturday & Sunday, some ships do alternate 6/8 night sailings with the 8 nt departing Saturday and the 6 nt departing Sunday.  

3/4 day alternating cruises tend to depart Monday/Friday.  There is a 4/5/5 rotation that has the 4 nt departing Thursdays and the 5 nts on Saturday or Monday.  Then there are longer cruises so there are a lot of possibilities.  I agree it would be nice if you could pick a range of days and a range of dates because there are so many possibilities.

57 minutes ago, monctonguy said:

Its a good point...the same is true with cruise fares and all these mega ships they are building.....I only started cruising back in 2013 and there has been a big increase in pricing and discount rules and ship capacity since there.....its all fine as long as ppl are willing to pay.....but at some point, things have to change. They always do with economies and markets.....

 

 

As long as they keep filling ships and getting the onboard revenue we can expect more of the same.  A few years back I found my invoice from my first cruise on the Majesty in 1999.  In adjusted dollars it was about the same as we had been paying and it was for an OV not a balcony.  

The absolute best deal I ever had was when the Mariner was on the west coast and they had a hard time filling it.  I had three price drops and paid less than $2000 for three of us in the Deck 10 corner aft in August.

16 minutes ago, whitsmom said:

We are doing a Norwegian cruise Nov 2019 and their unlimited drink package is $89/day before gratuities AND it does not include ANY bottled water or specialty coffees.  Needless to say, we are not getting the drink package as there is no way to even get close with the bottle water taken out of the equation!  

Yikes!!  I've never bothered doing the math on the drink package because I know that I've never had my total onboard account exceed the cost of the drink package alone for 2 of us.  Of course it helps when you're a diamond member.  I'm curious to see what my drink bill is at the end of the group cruise.  I'm sure I'll drink more than usual and I'm sure it'll still be less than springing for the drink package for me and the wife.

9 minutes ago, marti314 said:

you can take a piece of paper folded up enough to make it semi firm and jam that in the slot, works fine to keep the switch inside there depressed.  

Nothing like coming back to a nice warm room on vacation after being in the sun all day.

#FirstWorldProblems  lol

Just now, Matt said:

There's a few reasons why this is not as big a deal as some headlines would lead you to believe....

1. The percentage increase is incredibly misleading figure. It makes it sound way worse than it is.  In the case of all drink packages, we are talking about one extra drink per day to break even. 

2. You don't have to get a drink package! Seriously.  If it does not make financial sense, skip it.  You can have a great cruise without one.  As my mother used to remind me in college, you don't need to drink to have a good time.

3. The prices listed for this increase are onboard prices.  If you are going to buy a drink package, get a discount online via a Cruise Planner sale.  There's no excuse to pay the onboard price!

Item 3 is the one that interests me.  I wonder how many people actually pay the onboard price and what is the average price paid for the packages. 

42 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

You can bet that if the package prices are going up then the by-the-drink prices are going up too.  There's no getting around it....unless you plan to drink only what is provided for "free".

True, it's hard to do the "is it worth it" calculus if you don't know what the normal pricing will be.

Just now, ZOKUEL said:

According to that mariner will be located at (55-E) SST on November 26th will that be the new terminal 

Yes it is.  I believe that the Mariner, Allure and Symphony will be using it all the time starting abut mid November.

Just now, RatedPG said:

What about gift cards and grocery loyalty cards?

From what I've seen if it 's the size of a seapass card, which is your basic CC size, it works.  I'm sure there is just a detector at the bottom of the slot looking for anything that is there.  

I read where someone cut one out of a piece of heavy stock paper and it worked.

1 minute ago, ZOKUEL said:

how do you find the schedule I haven't been able to 

https://seaport2.miamidade.gov/dailydock/Default.aspx

Thanks to @twangster on that!

Just now, RRoman7 said:

Does a normal hotel keycard work in this slot?  We always hot so I would like to bring something that I can put in that slot.  

Yes any card will work, old Seapass, hotel key, etc.

What kind of recovery time is there on cooling the room.  I imagine that if you're in port on an  excursion the room will get a little warm.  Or does it act more like a "setback" on the thermostat and merely raise the thermostat setting?

1 minute ago, Keeves said:

Ditto what ReyRod said. I don't understand the OP's question. Does the power go off in the stateroom when all the people leave? If two people enter and only one leaves, does the power stay or go? Do I need to reset my tabletop alarm clock every time I come back to the room? I don't get it.

I am under the impression that it is a master switch for the A/C and lighting.  Not all the power in the room.

Looks like the 11/4 Allure sailing may be the first to get to use it.  The port schedule shows the Mariner there 11/1 though, maybe that's the soft opening.  

Add that to the list of reasons to use a TA.

I have sailed the Allure twice and I think the Oasis class may be the best at distributing the people around the ship.  There is so much on these ships that I feel they feel less crowded, generally speaking, than some of the smaller ships.

Short answer is no.  Like Matt always suggest, take a UBS charging hub where you can charge multiple devices at once.  It is allowed and most of what you're probably needing to plug in is a USB charger anyway.

On 4/26/2017 at 1:37 PM, tiny260 said:

I would like to see RC cruise the Mexican Riviera out of LA or San Diego,  now it's mostly Carnival or Princess.

I loved our Mexican Riviera cruise on the Mariner out of LA.  Not only because it was something different, but also because it was super cheap with 3 price drops.  That is the reason they aren't there anymore.  They couldn't get enough revenue out of that market.

2 minutes ago, RBRSKI said:

I wish they would change it to Cococay!!!!

That would be 1000% better.  Of course they would need the pier to be open by then.

8 hours ago, RatedPG said:

When I sailed on the Disney Magic, I was probably one of the last to board.  I came from a church service in Jacksonville that ended at 12:30PM.  I made it to Canaveral just a little bit before the boarding ended. But the departure time was at 5:00PM.

RCL ships leave at 4PM so with the average drive time from Jacksonville, I’ll arrive at Canaveral about 45 minutes before sail off.  I don’t think they’ll let me board.

What do you think?

Wow! You like to live the life of adventure.   A little traffic or a problem like a flat tire and you could have been out of luck.

Even though I fly in early I often fly to Orlando for cruises that leave out of South Florida.  I always leave around 6AM to make the 3 - 3-1/2 hour drive, leaving plenty of room for error. Of course, I'm of the Matt school of thought on getting to the pier as early as possible.  

I have no problem with the adjustment but I'm curious of the reasoning.  The NOAA tide predictor shows the low tide on the 24th occurring at 3:06AM local time.  Leaving early would make it seem like arrival will be earlier and more coinciding with the low tide.  Or is it a matter of them making the journey through the channel at a slower speed thus requiring more time?

17 hours ago, monctonguy said:

So now I am not going to get to use/see it?...boooooo

Well I'm sure you'll be able to see it as you sail past it.   

I'd love to see some recent photos to see how much construction equipment is still sitting onsite.  That was the biggest indicator to me that they weren't going to have this done for tomorrow's Mariner sailing.

Looking at the updated port schedule it appears that currently the first planned use of Terminal A is for the Mariner on 10/29.  It seems that with the exception of 11/5 & 11/9 it will be the regular terminal for the Mariner. 

It will also be home for the Allure starting on 11/4 on of course Symphony.  

I'm really looking forward to it as I'm sailing on her in 47 days!

48 minutes ago, RBRSKI said:

Thru some internet searching, I am 99% correct that the sofa will be by the balcony!

I agree. That room is shown as having a sofa bed.  Rooms with sofa beds have the sofa near the balcony and the bed near the bathroom.  I think the reason for this, and I speak from the experience of having a daughter on the sofa bed twice on Allure, is due to the fact that the space between the sofa bed and the desk is really small and hard to negotiate with the sofa bed out.  Getting from the bed to the bathroom could be difficult if the bed were near the balcony.

In fact there is so little floor space with the sofa bed out that we actually put our packed bags on the balcony the last night of the cruise (we did self disembarkation).