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This may be too soon, but I am so excited and quite frankly Matt's videos are addicting! My husband keeps reminding me we don't leave for X months. We are scheduled to sail on Liberty of the Seas from Port Liberty to Bermuda in July 2023. I've never cruised before or stayed at a resort, I haven't even been to anywhere more tropical than Ft. Lauderdale....My coworker highly recommended cruising as the easiest way to see the world with children, so that is what we are trying. I want to make the most of our brief 5 day vacation. We also are looking forward to Adventure Ocean for one or two blocks of the day. I reviewed some cruise compasses already. We definitely want to do Saturday night fever without children, dine one or two evenings without children (not sure if it will be specialty dining), and do a cave tour on the island (it says there are a lot of steps...can young children manage this?), do pool time/water slides with children, mini golf on the ship, rock climbing wall, one spa experience for myself, possibly have my kids try the Flowrider. Can anyone give me a brief list of what may work out? Especially with dining...an option for some sort of kids dining time popped up after I booked....does this work best for going to a show? Is there time for us to eat in peace once they whisk the kids away? Now that I'm writing this my kids are probably going to need to fit a nap in there too, yikes! Thanks!

Good day everyone! First time cruise on Anthem of the seas in July sailing from Southampton, UK for 8 nights. A party of 4 of us are going so have booked two inside staterooms. Having booked the cruise over the phone direct with royal Caribbean I soon realised following email confirmation that each stateroom has been placed under a different booking reference. After looking on the email receipt it shows that neither stateroom had the other linked to the same booking. I went to my online account and linked the bookings manually however I noticed that neither stateroom is linked to use the same cruise planner and instead extras need to be booked/paid for separately for each stateroom!? Is there a way to link the booking references to the same cruise planner so we can all book activities/dining together? Also having linked the staterooms to the same booking via my online account, will RCI recognise this as the same booking and therefore group all parties together in the same dining room to eat together? Sorry for the confusion. Novice cruiser here ?

Hi all! I think I've posted on here before, but I am back as we get closer to our cruise date (Feb 3rd). My wife and I are going on the Majesty of the Sea. We stop at Nassau on Saturday and Cocokay on Sunday. This is the first time we've ever been on a cruise so really no idea what to expect. I do have a few questions though.... With the drink packages I saw something that said that 18% gratuity is automatically added at the bar. I have the drink package where I can basically get anything. Would the 18% be on top of that or is it automatically in the with package? Specialty coffees are not included from what I read. How much does a latte or something similar cost? We have a shore excursion at Nassau (snorkling). Do you think the directions to get to where we need to go for the shore excursion are pretty clear? Once we are off the boat, how easy is it to get a meal and is that a part of the ships complimentary food? How long does it take to get off and get back on the ship? How are the mosquitoes this time of year (zika virus concerns)? We will be sailing during the superbowl. I normally am not too concerned, but I have a few bets placed this year. The superbowl is supposed to start during our my time dinning. Do they have TVs in the room to check the score every so often? Thanks for all the help! N00BCruiser

So I'm taking my first cruise ever, on Freedom of the Seas (8-night Eastern Caribbean sailing in March/April of 2018). I have some general questions I haven't found answers for after listening to the podcast and searching the blog and these message boards. Apologies if these have actually been asked a million times already. First question is about the main dining room. I'm looking at the deck plans for FOTS, and I see that there are three areas labeled "Dining Room" -- Leonardo Dining Room on Deck 3, Isaac Dining Room on Deck 4, and Galileo Dining Room on Deck 5. Are all three of these combined actually the "Main Dining Room"? Or are they distinct in terms of appearance, menu, any background music, etc.? Related to this: I have the Early Dining assignment (5:30 PM) and my family's cabins (connecting balcony rooms) are on Deck 8. Will we be assigned to just one of these dining rooms for the entire week? Any way to predict which one based on our cabin deck? Do we have to eat in that assigned room for all meals where we choose a dining room option, or can we go to, say, the Galileo room for breakfast even if we're assigned the Leonardo room for dinner? Does it even make a difference if we do? Next question is about stargazing and taking photos of the night sky. I've read here that at least some of Royal Caribbean's ships have at least one planned stargazing event on the helipad. Are passengers allowed on the helipad at night when there is no planned event? Just want to know if I have to make sure to find that announcement in the Cruise Compass and tell my family that I'll be doing that no matter what else they might want; I live too close to bright cities to ever get a good view of the night sky, and being able to actually see the Milky Way and maybe take some long-exposure photos to capture it is something of a bucket list item of mine. Related to that, are passengers allowed to bring a tripod onto the helipad in that situation? Long-exposure shots don't work when holding the camera, so at a minimum I'd want to bring a very small (I'm talking 6") folding mini-tripod I own that I could set up, or something like a Gorillapod that I could wrap around a railing or post. Next question is about the Adventure Ocean program. Both my kids will be with me, and they'll be 14 and 17 at the time. Are they able to just go to the teen lounges without actually signing up for Adventure Ocean, or do they need to be signed up so it shows on their sea pass card that they're allowed in? Besides those teen clubs, does the ship staff typically do anything special for teens during the day on sea days? Or is the expectation that kids that age will just roam the ship on their own and do their own thing with or without their parents? Last question is about what people's experiences have been with the staff when it came to special events. My TA has noted on our reservations that it will not only be our first ever cruise, but our 20th wedding anniversary and our daughter's graduation from high school. When we went to Disney the first time, we got big buttons to wear and the staff went out of their way to be extra helpful and make the stay even more enjoyable than it already was. I've heard / read multiple comparisons of Royal Caribbean to Disney in terms of their effort to "wow" their passengers, so I'm curious if anyone here has traveled under similar circumstances and gotten similar "TLC". That's it for now, at least. Thanks in advance for whatever help you can give! - Joe -