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We are past final payment and now all checked in for a four day on Freedom of the Seas January 23, 2023!! It will be the first time away from the babies (both under two) for me and my wife for more than a night but, as I told her, we deserve it and at some point we just gotta do it (very fortunate to have some awesome nearby grandmas to help). It's a cruise of many firsts, we are fortunate to have cruised a fair amount, we will pass into Emerald status on this cruise with a goal of being Diamond in a few years, this will be our first time in a Junior suite as well as first time with Ultimate Dining and first time at Coco Beach Club. I have done almost all of the Voyager class earlier in younger days on family trips and together we've done two Symphony cruises and a Navigator (the most recent Symphony was during spring break of this past year which was unfortunately not a great time with the crowds, lack of activities, pretty poor service level overall compared to previous voyages and yes a cruise is better than no cruise, yes spring break is always busy but we were limited by teachers and school aged children in the group of family we had with us, so that's a whole other conversation, but looking forward to things being somewhat more normal and not have to worry about the testing drama for a large group, masks, blah blah blah) so while we don't have the time or budget for a big 7 day cruise every year we are very much looking forward to a getaway as the two of us and splurging a bit as our Christmas gift to each other. I have been getting free interior and ocean view stateroom Casino Royale offers on all of these Florida based 3/4 nighters as well as a variety of older/smaller ship 7 nighters since before the shutdown and not being able to take advantage of them yet due to the babies and work commitments had been killing me! We were on one of the very last cruises in Feb 2020 just before the shutdown to check out Navigator in her newly amped state as well as the brand new south beach and other additions at PDCC so this is a bit of a retread in a way, but hey, we know what we like and this ship appealed to us the most. I say that because we really preferred Navigator over Symphony - I totally understand and respect of course that different folks like different things and Wonder looks amazing, lots of fun things to do, but for me the size and access to most areas, the connection to the ocean, the price, the familiarity to get around the ship easily .....that 2020 trip made Navigator our favorite of any ship we've been on and so that led us to being very keen to see Freedom in her relatively fresh state having been amped and then empty for two years. We likely won't be onboard any Oasis class 7 nighter again until we can afford to truly go all out, stay in a suite, get ultimate dining etc to fully take advantage of all the things those ships can offer. Being in a 'normal' non suite room on Symphony (without access to my favorite part of the Voyager class, the Viking Crown) and without doing specialty dining etc just created a lot of FOMO if that makes sense? The base level approach was not for us, I don't think I would recommend it for other seasoned cruisers but would love to try Odyssey and will try to keep an open mind - we're all different and clearly Royal knows they had some challenges on the service end with the recent news about the main dining room menu etc and I applaud them for acknowledging that, but there's plenty of chatter about that elsewhere. At the end of the day we are well aware of the business model, if you want more than the basic experience be prepared to spend more to get it and so on this particular four nighter we can afford to do just that. It's good marketing and Royal clearly knows what they're doing, I'm fine with that. Through a great travel agent we've used in the past we paid a very reasonable upgrade fee on top of my casino royale offer to get ourselves into one of the brand newly built out Junior Suites on Deck 11 (thanks @Matt for the tip in a previous live blog of Freedom). Final price was a third or less per person than what they have been going for in recent sales. We both have DBX with Wifi at a great black Friday rate (imo the key is a very expensive, unnecessary clump of word salad for any experienced cruiser who is organized even a bit) we grabbed Ultimate dining for the first time as well as a Coco Beach Club day pass for $89. We're flying into Miami from Ohare around noon the day before using American Miles and staying with Hilton points I've racked up at work (can't tell you how much I love having 99% of this entire trip already paid for aside from the cash we'll bring onboard). Have yet to choose the exact hotel but we will stay on Miami beach so we can escape winter and start vacation mode as soon as we land! Checkin is all set for 10AM Monday to take full advantage of our time aboard. In the mean time, I'll be lurking around here and taking in as much content as I can to survive a busy stretch at work and get through the holidays. I know we will miss our baby girls at times, but it's just a few nights and without them I will have time to review and be a blogger wannabe, looking forward to some time to play with my Nikon D5200 and various lenses, will link to my Flickr if necessary. 40 days and counting, happy holidays to everybody here and thankful for all I've learned so far. Cheers

I would like to schedule spa service for 8:00 PM, however we have the Ultimate Dining Package with a time span of 6:30pm to 8:30pm. When I attempt to book the spa service in the Cruise Planner, it tells me that there is a scheduling conflict. Can I go ahead and schedule the spa service or will it cancel our entire Ultimate Dining Package?

My husband and I head out on Allure in 8 days. As this is our 10 year anniversary and our last cruise before we plan to start bringing our little kids with us, we decided to both upgrade to a JS and go for the ultimate dining package so we can try all of the restaurants. I'm wondering if it is still worthwhile to try dinner one night at CK since we already have the ultimate dining package. So, I guess my question is, would you rather dine at one of the specialty restaurants or at CK? Is it worth experiencing once? Thanks for your help! Maggie