Faster To The Fun Spoiled. Verses having the key to the castle .

[Diamondntherough]

I have gotten spoiled !!! This is what I was expecting from purchasing the key. @ $29 dollars a day Verses a flat fee of $69 for faster to the fun. 

Faster to the Fun offers Carnival cruise passengers the following priority access:

Priority security lines, check-in and boarding
Early access to cabins on embarkation day
Priority delivery of checked luggage
Dedicated phone line to the guest services desk, as well as an exclusive line at the desk itself
Priority dinner times (early, late or Your Time Dining -- does not include priority reservations for flexible dining passengers on a daily basis)
Priority tender service
Choice of early or late debark at the end of the cruise

Thank you all for answering this burning question. I will take everyones advice and cancel  the key. I was soooo excited to purchase this, because I thought my family would be able to board early and just relax in our room until the muster call.  Generally how long does it take to get your checked bags into your rooms if its not ready until after 1pm? 

[twangster]

As a former Carnival cruiser I'll take a shot at this...

Royal Caribbean in general doesn't have the chaotic boarding day experience that I experienced nearly every cruise with Carnival.  Royal boarding is a breeze compared to Carnival even when I had no status with Royal.  After experiencing my first Royal cruise I felt like Carnival created chaos on day one then created FTTF for purchase to overcome it.    

In general, even on the largest cruise ship in the world with twice as many passengers Royal boarding is not the chaos I always experienced with Carnival. 

Royal's My Time Dining offers reservations for everyone.  Anyone can make reservations that work.  You don't have to buy The Key to get this perk.

I rarely ever call or visit guest services on either line so FTTF's dedicated phone line had no value for me.  

The value of The Key lies in the benefits beyond boarding day even though it does come with day one perks.  If those are not a value to you, you don't need The Key.  

On Royal cabins are ready by 1pm at most home ports.

Luggage will be delivered anywhere from 1:30pm to 5:00pm with 2pm to 3pm being average.  This varies with home port, some dock conditions at some ports are less efficient.  

I purchased FTTF six times I think, starting when it was $39 if I recall.  Every year it went up by $10.  My bags never arrived with priority despite being tagged F2F.  This was on Breeze, Magic, Dream, Miracle, Freedom and Valor (twice).  Priority FTTF tender on Miracle in Cabo never happened.  When I sailed smaller ships like Imagination I wouldn't buy FTTF because boarding day was tolerable on Carnival's smaller ships, FTTF didn't have value for me on the smaller ships.  

The only thing I really ever got from FTTF was walking past the chaos of boarding lines on day one.  The rest didn't do much for me.  When the price hit $70 I refused to buy FTTF, it's too much for what you get.

The Key provides a lot more than that but you don't need The Key to have a great experience on Royal.

[Andrew72681]

At some point, perhaps during my navigator blog back in May I compared the two. FTTF’s benefits don’t have a value you can really attach, the key however, we can easily assign value to the specialty embarkation lunch, and WiFi we can as well. The key’s benefits provide diminishing returns based on the length of the sailing for two reasons; 1) its harder to amortize the value of the chops lunch, 2) you’ll have more time to do the “signature activities” and the special times hold less value. 
If you are doing all carry on bags, dropping off the bags at the theatre is a great value, when we did the key the bags were already waiting for us when rooms were announced ready at 1pm. The room steward said to us that we were his key guests and he went and got the bags to have them ready. 

[JohnK6404]

Our group also really enjoyed the reserved seating for all of the shows which you get with the Key.

It was so relaxing to simply wander into the venue 10-15 minutes before the show and get prime seating in the reserved section next to the suite guests. On our prior cruises without the Key, we were always looking at our watches and racing down to the venue at least 30-40 minutes before the show in order to get decent seating.

I know it's not necessarily the norm, but the cabins on our sailing when ready around 12:15 PM or so. The announcement was made while we were eating our Key lunch in Chops Grille. We finished a little before 1:00 PM and headed to our cabins and the checked luggage AND carry-ons were there waiting for us.

Also, we wanted the VOOM package which made the decision very easy for us to get the Key at $19.99/day... all of the other perks were a very nice bonus for effectively less than $10/day.