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First time with Royal Genie!!!


gabeb848

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I'm staying in cabin 1718 (star loft) on Oasis OTS on June 18 this year! (Hopefully?) This will be my family's first time in star class, which means it's also our first time with the Royal Genie... I wanted to know all of the things that surprised you about the Genie Experience, things that you wish you knew before your first experience with the Royal Service and things that surprised you! Do you have a favorite Genie? Share your thoughts!

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Star Class is a fantastic experience.  My advice is not to invest too much into what others say, but to let your Genie do their thing.  Everyone's experience is different and by trying to make it into someone else's experience, disappointment will usually follow.

Most Genies are fantastic.  There is no way at this point to predict or even know who will be on Oasis.  With covid, all the genies have gone home and sadly, some have even left Royal to do other things.

Also keep in mind, that while the overall benefits of Star are the same across the fleet, there are many variances by ship as well.  Sometimes what you hear from others about what is allowed on one ship, may not be allowed on another.  It should not be this way, but some aspects of the program are very ship and Genie dependent.  Another reason to not invest too much into what others are saying and just let your Genie do their thing.

There are quite a few Star class blogs here in the live blog section.  That is a great way to get info about the program.  Just go to live blogs and search that forum for "Star class" or "genie" in the search bar and tons will come up.

https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/forum/11-live-blogs/

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29 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

My advice is not to invest too much into what others say, but to let your Genie do their thing.  Everyone's experience is different and by trying to make it into someone else's experience, disappointment will usually follow.

This is the best advice you will get.  Star Class, by its very definition, is designed to be a personalized experience.  While the overall "rules" are fairly consistent, the specific amenities do tend to vary by ship and even among Genies on the same ship.  A very good example of this is that some ships allowed Starbucks to be delivered to the suites and some do not. Whether this is a Genie-thing or a ship-thing isn't readily apparent to me. I've never asked for this service so I don't know the particulars.

On the other hand, it never hurts to learn from others what THEIR experience was and then you at least have some idea of what to expect.  But as @Lovetocruise2002said, don't let your expectations turn into disappointments if you find that something you have heard about from the past does not come to fruition for you.

What the Genie absolutely will do is help you with planning your days and nights (if you want help !!) with things like specialty dining reservations (or even MDR reservations if that is your choice), entertainment venue seating, help with onshore excursions (this will be dependent upon how shore excursions are organized when cruising returns) and personal escorts onto and off of the ship, as needed.  One of the most important (but hopefully infrequently used !) services that a Genie can offer is related to onboard charges.  If you have a charge on your account that you have a question about, your Genie can help sort it out without you having to go to Guest Services.  My last Genie (Jan 2020, Oasis) told us that she would be personally insulted if she caught us in the GS line.  It was a joke, of course, but she was making sure that we realized that there was nothing related to GS that she could not address for us.  It CAN be a huge help.  We had an issue with our credit card on one cruise a number of years ago and the Genie took the issue all the way to the Chief Financial Officer onboard before it got fixed.  The ship's CFO came to our suite personally to apologize for the problem and make sure we knew it had been solved.  Interestingly enough, that last story actually involved 2 different Genies onboard that ship.  Our Genie had originally addressed the issue and thought it had been solved and then we found out later that day that the issue had NOT been solved so we marched down to GS (hoppin' mad, BTW) and one of the other Genies recognized us as SC guests and asked if he could help.  It was actually that second Genie (Sebastian) who escalated the issue up to the top and finally got it solved.  So you don't JUST have 1 Genie....all of the Genies onboard are there to help if you need it.  What a great feeling !

I've never had a bad Genie.  Going along the lines of what @Lovetocruise2002mentioned, each has their own strengths. For instance, the best, BY FAR, party-planning Genie that we have ever had is Reyno.  He LOVES a party and he is really good at it.  We've had him twice as a Genie.  Yen Lee has been our Genie twice and she is excellent.  I believe Yen is now on Quantum, but I am not 100% certain of that.  Our last Genie was Joyce and she is a HOOT !  She is by far the most fun Genie we ever had...she is a ball of energy and very very personal...in a good way.  She's a chatterbox and you will get a lot of juicy ship scuttlebutt from her.  LOL  Sebastian is all business (as is Yen) but also a very good Genie.  We did not have Sebastian plan a party for us but my guess is that he would have been great at it.  Probably our favorite Genie was Charlie, who no longer works for Royal, unfortunately.  He had the most attention to detail (which I find to be a strong Genie trait) of all of the Genies we've had.  Any time we had room service he would make sure that the table was properly prepared with table cloth and cute little personalized place cards and left small little personal gifts everywhere...even the seats that he reserved for us in the theater.  Indirectly we had Alexandra (I think that was her name).  She was the Genie for friends that we were cruising with on one of our cruises where Reyno was our Genie.  They worked together to plan some dynamite parties.  OMG, that was a party cruise !  Unfortunately, Alex is no longer with Royal either.

Anticipating a Star Class cruise is easily as exciting as actually being on a SC cruise.  You will have an entire month of direct comm with your Genie before you board.  That is the time to let them know your wishes (exception being the Cabin Crawl party that we discussed in another thread).  The Genie will give you a good indication of which wishes they can accommodate and which they cannot.  Keep in mind that there may well be changes to the Genie program when cruising resumes.  While I do not have any knowledge of how things might change, it is my impression (gut feeling) that having a Genie in the future is going to be an even bigger advantage than it has in the past...but that's just a guess.

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49 minutes ago, gabeb848 said:

I'm in the Star loft, so will people in larger/more expensive suites (Royal Loft & Panoramics) get better attendance by the genie?

The only time 'suite pecking' order comes into play is on show seat preferences....and in those case...for instance if you say "I want to see this show, on this night, in these seats"....the Genie will rather diplomatically say "this other night might be better"......this is one of the reasons the first thing you get is a calendar when you get on board.  They look at all your planned excursions and tried to schedule things for you 'around' other Genies and other star guests so that they minimize overlap (allowing them to focus on you at the time) and to not have competition.

The one and only time suite pecking order REALLY shows itself is when it comes down to Labadee and cabana choice......at least that's what it seemed like....I was in Royal...so I got the cabana I wanted....no questions asked.

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14 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Anticipating a Star Class cruise is easily as exciting as actually being on a SC cruise. 

? agree! The excitement of receiving the genie questionnaire, the first genie email, finding out who your genie will be, and then live genie communications is one of the best experiences IMO. It was so fun to share my genie in this forum and get some early genie intel! It really is the best feeling. ?

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Great topic.  I just signed into the Blog, but have been reading for the past week.  I booked my first cruise on Royal Caribbean and booked the GLS on Anthem.  Thanks to @WAAAYTOOO, we changed from a corner to middle GLS on deck 10.  I have lots of time to anticipate and learn from everyone…we don’t sail until Oct 2023.  We have 4 other cruises booked before then on other lines, 3 on NCL in the Haven and one on Celebrity.

 

Thanks again to everyone for sharing info.  The planning and anticipation of our first Star Class cruise will be fun but excruciating!  

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42 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

At first we grabbed a middle one on Deck 8, but then moved up to Deck 10 because there were mixed reports of noise from Deck 8.  We sail in July 2022.

I did the same !!  On the Honolulu-Vancouver leg of our Australia/NZ/HI/CAN cruise-about (Quantum), we are doing SC for the last leg.  I originally booked deck 8 but then remembered the noise from 270...so I changed to deck 10.  We are now in 10724.  The only SC left on that sailing is a corner GLS.  Glad we got ours in time before the good ones were gone !

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53 minutes ago, gabeb848 said:

Wait, why are the middle ones better, don't you get 3 balconies on the corner ones?

While you get the 3 balconies with the corner ones, you lose a lot of square footage inside.  It's 696 sq. ft. for the corner ones, compared to 840 sq. ft. for the center ones on Deck 10.  If it's just two people, it doesn't really matter, but when I travel with my teenage girls, we'll take all the extra square footage we can get!

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56 minutes ago, gabeb848 said:

Wait, why are the middle ones better, don't you get 3 balconies on the corner ones?

It’s a personal preference but some prefer the middle GLS due to the layout and larger size. We preferred a corner GLS 10320 on Anthem last year because our son wanted the 2 side balconies and there were only 3 of us, so it wasn’t a big deal.  And we were totally fine with the split main floor bathroom. Nothing wrong with either; just good intel to help with decision making. ?

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8 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

While you get the 3 balconies with the corner ones, you lose a lot of square footage inside.  It's 696 sq. ft. for the corner ones, compared to 840 sq. ft. for the center ones on Deck 10.  If it's just two people, it doesn't really matter, but when I travel with my teenage girls, we'll take all the extra square footage we can get!

Posted at the same time. We seem to do that a lot. Too funny ? 

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58 minutes ago, gabeb848 said:

Wait, why are the middle ones better, don't you get 3 balconies on the corner ones?

Not only is there less square footage in the corner units, but the space is very "cut up".  All of the spaces are smaller.  The upstairs bedroom and dressing area is very small compared to the center GLS.  We could not even get all of our clothes into the small MB closet upstairs in the corner GLS.  The bathroom downstairs is split - with the toilet on one side and the sink on the other.  Those 2 additional "balconies" are nothing more than 1 chair seating areas.  They were useless to us.  We were on a B2B SC cruise in 2019; we stayed in 8724 the first cruise (beautiful but a bit noisy due to 270) and then we moved up to 10720 and what a disappointment !  Even Yen (the Genie) said, "it's very cozy" when she saw how disappointed we were.  In my opinion, the corner GLS should not even be SC.  

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20 minutes ago, gabeb848 said:

Weird. Also, did you notice that Odyssey OTS only has 5 star class suites? On deck 8 there's the RL, 3 GL, and an OL. 

Yes, I did notice that.  TBH, I suspect that there were enough complaints about the corner GLS that they just designed them out.  ....and they get more suites/cabins into the same area with the smaller categories, so that may have had something to do with it, too.  Plus I guess all of the cabins on deck 10 are now only 1 story.

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13 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

We could not even get all of our clothes into the small MB closet upstairs in the corner GLS. 

True, that was dedicated as mine and I put  the boys in main floor closet.  Which was fine because I also had them share main floor bathroom  LOL 

 

14 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Those 2 additional "balconies" are nothing more than 1 chair seating areas.  They were useless to us. 

True.  The upstairs balcony came in handy with our HVAC issues. We propped it open when sleeping when temps hit high 80s. I was thankful we had it. LOL 

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25 minutes ago, gabeb848 said:

I saw the post where he took all the pics... there just weren't any of the balcony. -_-

I can't believe @CGTLH didn't manage to take one.  

All of his photos from our cruise are located here: 2017-08 Anthem

There's one shot of the living room where you can see the balcony out the doors, but there isn't a full balcony shot from outside.  Maybe he can dig some up from the shots that didn't make the website.  I'm pretty sure someone was always in the way when he tried to.  My father enjoyed falling asleep out there with a bottle of wine.  PS: It isn't a covered balcony, so wear sunscreen if you plan to do that even on a NE/Canada itinerary! ?

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9 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

We did too, thanks to @WAAAYTOOO.  At first we grabbed a middle one on Deck 8, but then moved up to Deck 10 because there were mixed reports of noise from Deck 8.  We sail in July 2022.

we had 8724 but 10324 came available again so we nabbed it.  Like others, I am thankful to @WAAAYTOOO because I very well would have booked a cornerif I didnt see the blog she wrote.  That is why I love this blog site.  I thought I knew all there is to know about cruising before joining, but boy was I wrong LOL.

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12 hours ago, gabeb848 said:

@WAAAYTOOOI just noticed that Odyssey OTS has a deck 13, why do you think its like that?

All of the Quantum-class ships have a deck 13 (maybe because Asian cultures doesn't hold such a superstition, and most of the Quantum-class were designed originally for the Asian market?).

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8 minutes ago, SpeedNoodles said:

All of the Quantum-class ships have a deck 13 (maybe because Asian cultures doesn't hold such a superstition, and most of the Quantum-class were designed originally for the Asian market?).

Curiously, Asian superstition is the number 4 as it is associated with death. 

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21 hours ago, gabeb848 said:

Wait, why are the middle ones better, don't you get 3 balconies on the corner ones?

From what @WAAAYTOOO reviewed, the corner GLS are smaller than the middle ones.  Also, you have less storage for clothes upstairs with only one closet instead of two.  You do have three balconies and if you have multiple people or kids it may be an advantage to get some “alone” space; or if you are on a cruise with a lot of scenery to see, like Alaska, it may be worth the trade off.  We are going on a 12-day transatlantic cruise, with only three stops. Also, you still get a 180 degree view with the rear balcony, that will be enough for us.

I recommend you take a look at some of the videos.  While the actual size of the corner suite is only 144 sq ft less than the middle GLS,  the living room on the corner suites is more cramped as that room is used for the entry and access to the side balcony.

 

Good luck!

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On 2/19/2021 at 1:26 PM, Lovetocruise2002 said:

We did too, thanks to @WAAAYTOOO.  At first we grabbed a middle one on Deck 8, but then moved up to Deck 10 because there were mixed reports of noise from Deck 8.  We sail in July 2022.

I've stayed in the owner's loft and the royal (both on deck 8 book ending the central grand lofts.....I never noticed noise from the club below us.

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46 minutes ago, dodgestang said:

I've stayed in the owner's loft and the royal (both on deck 8 book ending the central grand lofts.....I never noticed noise from the club below us.

The reports are very mixed.  Quite a few people also said they heard nothing.  But then many also said go to Deck 10.  We don't really go to bed that early but we figured we'll just play it safe and go to Deck 10.  And according to cruise deck plans, the center lofts on Deck 10 are actually slight larger than Deck 8.  I always thought is was the ATS, smaller as you go higher, but it's the reverse.

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