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Better Resource for RC Ship info?


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It surprises me how difficult it is to get a straight answer to the following kind of questions:

  • which ships have which Broadway/Westend shows?
  • which ships have an escape room? or a puzzle break game?
  • which ships have El Loco Fresh or a Playmakers?
  • which ships have an ice rink? or a flowrider?
  • which ships will visit Cococay or Labadee this year?
  • etc, etc, etc

RC advertises all of these things on its websites and emails but they are often surprisingly vague about which ships have exactly which offerings.

This seems like a fairly simple database problem, which I'm attempting to build for my own satisfaction.  But so far, the closest resource I've found is the charts and lists at loyaltoyoualways.com. Upon closer inspection, however, I was surprised to find errors and omissions there.  And it's not updated very often, sometimes just annually, often not completely.  Finding a few errors there sends me searching the message boards and youtube videos for recent firsthand accounts to verify what is currently available on a ship or not.  I am looking for a resource of ship data that is more comprehensive and more accurate than this.  Does one already exist?

Thanks for your help on this; the Royal-obsessed among us who want to track down every Mason Jar, Wonderland, or Samba Grill appreciate your help!

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29 minutes ago, Thumper44 said:

It surprises me how difficult it is to get a straight answer to the following kind of questions:

  • which ships have which Broadway/Westend shows?
  • which ships have an escape room? or a puzzle break game?
  • which ships have El Loco Fresh or a Playmakers?
  • which ships have an ice rink? or a flowrider?
  • which ships will visit Cococay or Labadee this year?
  • etc, etc, etc

RC advertises all of these things on its websites and emails but they are often surprisingly vague about which ships have exactly which offerings.

This seems like a fairly simple database problem, which I'm attempting to build for my own satisfaction.  But so far, the closest resource I've found is the charts and lists at loyaltoyoualways.com. Upon closer inspection, however, I was surprised to find errors and omissions there.  And it's not updated very often, sometimes just annually, often not completely.  Finding a few errors there sends me searching the message boards and youtube videos for recent firsthand accounts to verify what is currently available on a ship or not.  I am looking for a resource of ship data that is more comprehensive and more accurate than this.  Does one already exist?

Thanks for your help on this; the Royal-obsessed among us who want to track down every Mason Jar, Wonderland, or Samba Grill appreciate your help!

Not to my knowledge. This sounds like something to add to Wikipedia and let the masses keep it up to date.

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43 minutes ago, Rackham said:

Not to my knowledge. This sounds like something to add to Wikipedia and let the masses keep it up to date.

When I started cruising several years ago, there was a limited version of this on wikipedia but the moderators there have taken it down.  Maybe we need a Royal-wiki… Matt?  It would be an awesome resource!

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If you go to the Royal Caribbean website, and look at "Ships", you can find a lot out about what an individual ship has.  You just pick the ship and then scroll down to "Things To Do".  It will list all of the restaurants and bars, as well as many other features and activities of the ship.  It's a good place to start.

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On 3/18/2023 at 8:02 PM, SpeedNoodles said:

If you go to the Royal Caribbean website, and look at "Ships", you can find a lot out about what an individual ship has.  You just pick the ship and then scroll down to "Things To Do".  It will list all of the restaurants and bars, as well as many other features and activities of the ship.  It's a good place to start.

Yes, but what if you wanted to search from the opposite direction?  e.g. which ships have a flow rider surf simulator?  You can't just get a list of ships with this feature; you'd have to scroll through the "things to do" of 26 different ships.  I've been collecting this data for years now, and trying to keep it updated, but gathering the info is surprisingly difficult.

Do you think there's a reason to keep this info vague?  Maybe not to disparage smaller ships in the eyes of the customer, maybe?  I don't personally care either way, I'm coming at it from a "let's sail every ship, and try everything there is to try" point of view.  😊

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totally get where you're coming from, the fleet guide is out there publicly anyone can google and find it.  usually people know which time of year they're going and which country/which port (or handful of ports) they're going out of, things like that all filter the list down pretty dramatically and then go from there.  they did just redesign most of the search for a new cruise and you can filter based on those criteria all very easily.

https://creative.rccl.com/Sales/Royal/General_Info/2021-2022_Fleet_Guide.pdf

you'll also probably hear some say "a good travel agent will know this or help you find it" and that's true, but the other part of this equation to your earlier point, is "why is all the flashy stuff from the commercials and marketing materials not on every ship?" and that's just marketing 101.  General Motors has truck plants that all start with the same body frames and engines, some trucks and SUV's come out the end of the factory with really high end leather and premium features - some come out more budget friendly mid level and some as bare bones stripped down commercial work vehicles to say nothing of the used truck market and the prices all vary accordingly.  We don't see delivery vans and thirty year old trucks take up much space on their website or magazine advertisements, but they're still running, still out on the road, and they're still a Chevy. 

In the business of selling a vacation, doesn't matter if it's Florida or California, New York or Chicago, they'll all brag up their main attractions and conveniently leave out their less desirable neighborhoods/weather months etc.  It's on the tourist to use the guides and info at their disposal to figure it out.  Just how it is.

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Not sure if this will be helpful but stumbled across it while looking for something else and it has a lot of information:

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/plan-a-cruise/brochures/view

The info that I really wish was available prior to booking is the list of excursions. There used to be a place on the website where you could download a PDF of the excursions but that has disappeared.

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A lot of this information is dynamic. It changes on a regular basis, sometimes, daily.  Keeping data bases updated requires good communication and hands on the keyboard. Companies have a lot of focus on this when it comes to cash flow. Public schedules and such, not so much. Its more localized by cruise directors and ship.

People usually choose their cruise by port, destination and cost. Smaller details like an Escape Room can usually be found out by drilling down to each individual ship once it is chosen.

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On 3/21/2023 at 5:25 AM, Ditchdoc said:

Smaller details like an Escape Room can usually be found out by drilling down to each individual ship once it is chosen.

Yes, that's kind of my point.  If you want to know exactly what you'll find on a particular ship, it takes "drilling down" to get that info, if you ever find out for sure.  Today, Matt wrote that 4 ships have Sky Pads (which are being replaced) but how does one find that info?  I trust that Matt knows, but how would I, regular joe vacationer, find out that kind of information?

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I think you are asking for something that does not exist per say.

Almost every one of your examples can at least be queried in a search engine like Google or Bing. For instance, I looked up "which ships have a Flow Riders' and quickly found not only which ships but most anything you want to know about Flow Riders. Most of your other questions returned similar results.

Lately, there has been a lot of news about AI search engines that in effect can answer very complicated questions by searching tens of thousands if not millions of web pages, find what is being asked and present it in what ever format you want. This is pretty cutting edge but it is the near future.

Even so, as I stated before, much of this information can change day to day just like the availability of Sky Pads. The info you get may not always be current. It is the way of the world.  It takes some skill with research and sleuthing to find some answers. That is where sites like this, where the information of many minds with experience come together, are helpful.

Good luck in your future travels and I hope you find what you are looking for.

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I found the following this weekend while searching online. I don’t remember where I saw this link, but this seemed very helpful and is marked as being updated as of 12/2022. Maybe RCCL keeps this up to date?

https://creative.rccl.com/Sales/Royal/Misc/22006272_Fleet_Guide_2022_Update_LR.pdf

I hope this helps!

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Funny... I actually got my hands on a physical cruise guide for 23\24 and it gives a run down of all the cruises available out of each port, but when it comes to ships...it only has info on Oasis and Quantum class ships. And even that is pretty vague

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