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What is something you'll never do again on a cruise?


Matt

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The 'Learn to play' session in the casino. I'm not a gambler and never been to Vegas but I thought it would be fun to have a 'play'session to learn. No one else was there and the staff were not very enthusiastic so they only explained some rules to me very quickly. Not exactly the fun session I had envisioned!

 

Also, the art auction! It promised champagne that never materialised and was painful to watch as an art conservator! Haha. ?

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Never going to take a pain med when rough seas are forecast and maybe not at all. They always make me a little nauseated but no matter what I did I couldn't get it under control. And I had some motion sickness stuff but had left that in Jamaica with my dive gear. Had two pretty I miserable days heading back to Galveston.

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I'm not sure if this qualifies since we will most likely do it again, but the one thing my wife and I wish we had done differently on all our cruises is stay up later.

We tend to keep our normal schedule of up by 3 or 4 am....which means we follow our normal schedule of going to bed early.  

It seems like every day we see things in the cruise planner that we want to go to that night, but we fall asleep.

On the flip side, the ships are pretty much deserted that early in the morning.

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14 hours ago, cruisellama said:

Good for a quick nap..

Power nap or "American Adventure at Epcot" nap?

For one of our cruises we had way too much OBC so used it for an "island tour" in Roatan. The tour was fine, but it wasn't worth the cost. So I'll be making better use of my OBC from now on. 

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We will never get off the ship with all of our luggage WITHOUT getting a porter again.  What a nightmare lugging it all through customs.  Then, in 2019, in Tampa, we used a Porter.  SMARTEST MOVE WE EVER MADE!!!  They knew the "ins and outs" of the port to get us through customs in record time.  We almost felt guilty the way we passed everyone in line.  Needless to say, we tipped well.  From that moment going forward, THIS is the method we use.  Porters are the Rockstars of the ports.

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I won't sail through Port Everglades without having my NEXUS/Global Entry card. Similar to pp, it speeds everything up in the arrivals hall and allows you to book earlier flight times. You also get TSA precheck which, if I'm being honest, hasn't provided too much in terms of time savings at FLL. At YYZ I've saved over an hour versus my colleagues when we've flown out for business.

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4 hours ago, Crazycruiser50 said:

Eat dinner in the Main Dining Room...

After experiencing the specialty restaurants, we are unlimited dining package type of people for life.  The service and quality of food is what the MDR used to be.  Well worth the money in my opinion.   (Especially when you catch it on a 50% off cruise planner sale)

I agree with this one.  We have not had a meal in the MDR in a number of years.

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One thing I will never do again - book an Oasis class ship in the month of January.  There is a lifestyle group that charters an O class ship every January and they got me this year (along with @twangsterif I'm not mistaken).  It really screwed up my B3B Star Class cruises !  They chartered the Oasis for the middle leg so I now have to come back after the first leg, go home for a week, come back for the second leg (which originally was the THIRD leg), change rooms and stay on for an extra week now.  What a complete PITA.  I will steer clear of any O class ship in January from now on.

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27 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

One thing I will never do again - book an Oasis class ship in the month of January.  There is a lifestyle group that charters an O class ship every January and they got me this year (along with @twangsterif I'm not mistaken).  It really screwed up my B3B Star Class cruises !  They chartered the Oasis for the middle leg so I now have to come back after the first leg, go home for a week, come back for the second leg (which originally was the THIRD leg), change rooms and stay on for an extra week now.  What a complete PITA.  I will steer clear of any O class ship in January from now on.

Some of the Voyager class are popular charter ships in the winter after Xmas.  There is a car dealership that offers a free cruise with a car purchase and a few other companies that like the Voyager class to charter.  Smaller, cheaper, easier to fill, amplified, cheaper in winter, etc.  

Charters are a definite down side to Royal.  I've had a number of charter takeovers and it does completely mess up plans including the January 2022 Oasis date.  I'm secretly hoping that masks are still required just to mess this charter up.  ? 

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Main Dining Room - We really like exploring other options (when we travel as 4) - having said that, when we travel as 10 with the whole extended family - MDR is their favourite, especially lobster night, which we don't understand but we go (it's never as good as it's cracked up to be - cracked... ha - see what I did there ?)

Stay up later and take an afternoon nap to support this decision ?

Try staying on board on a port day when we've been to the port before (except Puerto Rico - where it seems a lot of people stay on board).   I've yet to experience a quiet ship while everyone is off beaching.

 

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The art auction goes without saying but for me it was not getting off the ship/visiting CocoCay.

I have been on quite a few cruises but my first one with RCG I went with a complainer who didn't want to do anything and whined when I tried to leave her alone. We never left the ship and was always in our room by 10:30. My next cruise I plan to get off at every port, stay up later and enjoy as much as possible.??

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8 hours ago, Crazycruiser50 said:

Eat dinner in the Main Dining Room...

We will eat in the MDR on occasion, usually with friends but that's about it. However, this gave me another reminder...

I'll never do traditional dining again. Don't like to be locked to a time & we had a bad match with table mates. They spoke a different language most of the time. They were friends and speaking natively was easier for them... It made it awkward for us unfortunately.

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46 minutes ago, Gears said:

Any and all 'Port Shopping' seminars...

One of our first cruises...naively thought this was a good idea. Ended up being "Make sure you visit the Diamonds International and pick yourself up some rare crap-o-lite jewelry!". Curious how there is a Diamonds International at every port of call...

Yeah this is something you learn after your first time going to one of their "seminars". Only reason to go is that they sometimes have giveaways. Personally, I'd rather do just about anything else. 

In the past I've read that the Port Shopping folk aren't a direct hire by the cruise lines but rather by a third party representing some of the onland shops. It seems to make sense given that I've seen the same stores pushed on Princess, DCL and Royal, but I wonder if anyone can confirm?

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