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Sailing on Symphony of the seas June 18th. Does anyone know the bourbon situation? I know they have buffalo trace, my personal favorite. I'm hoping they have other offerings from the Buffalo Trace family. I found Blanton's on my 2018 honeymoon cruise. There is nothing better than drinking Blanton's neat out of a plastic cup on the pool deck. FOR FREE!!!!! If anyone knows shops in St. Thomas or St. Martin let me know. I will update my findings once I'm back. Cheers.

We booked Millennium this June out of St. Maarten. Decided to book through Flights By Celebrity (FBC). Paid more for a direct flight to and from and also for leaving at reasonable times. Paid approximately $450 p/p. More specifically, the flights I purchased were leaving JFK at 11 a.m. the day before embarkation and 2:00 p.m. on the return. Connecting flights and earlier times were significantly cheaper. First, FBC changed the out bound flight to 7:00 a.m. This is a problem since getting to JFK is always an issue and this adds $150 since Uber is a premium at 3:00 a.m. - Complained and they changed the flight to 8:30 out of Newark. Today they change the return flight to a connecting flight - now making this a 9 hour return flight and again adding an additional $100 Uber premium by the time we get out of the airport at 1:00 a.m. If I had booked this flight originally it would have been $80 less p/p. Now FBC wants $225 p/p to change the tickets. Really?? So I paid a premium for the direct flights that they were selling, they change them to the less expensive fairs and keep the difference...and want to charge $225 per ticket to change the tickets. Watch Out...

For the benefit of everyone on this forum, I decided to book the June 26th Millennium cruise sailing from St. Martin to BVI, St. Lucia and Barbados. 50% capacity, verandas only. As of right now everyone over 18 needs to be vaccinated, PCR test 120 hours before the cruise and everyone 2y and older to have a rapid test by Celebrity prior to boarding. Ship departs at 10:00 pm. I am sure all of these protocols will change before we set sail. Millennium is currently off the coast on Ensenada and I do not know if it has a full crew as right now. Hopefully it will have a full staff and get through the Panama Canal in time! Let me know if you are on board. I would offer everyone a drink but we are all required to buy the drink package now so I guess we can order round together!

Greetings! So doing some research today, I found out that we will be in St. Maarten during their 2 week Carnival time frame. I think the day we will be there is 4/21. Has anyone been during that time? If so, are there any special activities during the day? I know the parade is happening a week later so we will miss that but was hoping to get to get to see some other things.

In April when we were on a cruise visiting Sint. Maarten we decided to go on a tour we booked before arrival on the Island. We had read good things about the tour on trip-advisor and decided to go on a snorkeling tour with the Swaliga 2 with a group of 4. When we arrived at Bobby's Marina (very close to the cruise facility) we were welcomed by the crew. Captain JP and his mate / hostess Jessica introduced themselves and after waiting for some other groups that were also going on the excursion in the same boat we left the marina around 9.30 AM. The boat was a fast motorized yellow catamaran and before we knew it we were on our way with a total of about 30 people. After about 25-30 minutes we arrived at the airport location were the boat stopped for a while so we could take pictures of the planes that were landing and arriving. After the short stop the boat headed on to the other side of the island, the French side. It was a beautiful experience floating along the beautiful beaches of the French side of the island. Around 11 AM we arrived at a location called Creole Rock where we were able to snorkel and swim in the beautiful blue waters. We stayed there for about 45 minutes before the boat left again to go to Pinel Island. We arrived at Pinel at about 12.15 and enjoyed a very good lunch at a restaurant called karabuni's which is located on Pinel Island. The options for lunch were Mahi Mahi (fish), Chicken or Ribs. Our group choose the fish and we really enjoyed it. The atmosphere on Pinel was really breathtaking. After lunch we were able to swim and snorkel in the waters around Pinel or enjoy the sun on the beach in one of the many beach chairs available. While in the water, the crew took excellent care of the passengers, there were plenty of free drinks and the boat was clean and nicely equipped. The rum-punch was the best! Also very nice was the knowledge the captain shared with the passengers by telling things about the history of the island and telling about the nature that surrounds the island. Around 2 PM the boat left again, taking the passengers to another island that was called Tintamarre. We really had the most wonderful experience there while swimming with the turtles that are living in the waters near that island. After about an hour, the boat left back to Philipsburg and dropped us of very close to the cruise facility. We really had a great day and were on time to be back on the cruise ship in time. If we ever will be on St. Maarten again, we will definitely go on the Swaliga 2 snorkeling excursion again! Because of the good experience we had on that tour, i decided to share this with other people that will be on a Royal Caribbean cruise to St. Maarten and that would love to see the Island in a special way.