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Explorer B3B 5-28 April 2024


WAAAYTOOO

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1 hour ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Back to the Crown Lounge discussion…

Some photos below (with permission from the folks in the room).  Yes, the CL Concierge is Vanessa.  Lovely lady.

Like @JustMeJoe, I am tiring of the CL/CL confusion and writing out “Concierge” every time is tedious, so, heretoforth, I will refer to the Concierge Lounge as the Suites Lounge (SL).  When you see CL, I am talking about the Crown Lounge.  Ugh

It seems that most of the Pinns are doing the same thing we are - going to the CL vs the SL.  I guess the only unfortunates that are doomed to the SL dungeon are the Suites who are not yet Diamond or above.

They have removed the once-present computers from the CL.  To make more seating available ?  Who knows.  I am using the computer area on deck 8, which is a mere few steps from our room and it’s very convenient.  I guess now is the time to mention that the Internet has been awesome so far.

 

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The exact same thing happened in the CL versus the SL on Serenade World Cruise. All the Pinns were in the CL and the SL was empty. 

We find the CL attached to the “Viking Crown Lounge” to be the best combination for the CL. 

Thanks for all the pictures …

Curt from Canada 

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Continuing day 2.

Today is the first full sea day and is traditionally the day that they have the Top Tier Event and the Cheer With an Officer luncheon.  Typically, they have the Top Tier event at 10:30 followed by the Cheers luncheon at 11:45/12:00.  For some reason, today, the TTE was held at 5:00PM.  The Cheers luncheon went as expected at 11:45.  There must have been some kind of scheduling conflict for the morning TTE but if there was, we never heard what it was.

The Cheers luncheon was typical; the food was surprisingly good.  The event was held in the MDR, deck 4.  The Pinns were on the port side of the dining room and the D+ were on the starboard side.  Dan and I both had the clam chowder and filet.  Lots of wine was poured.  We skipped dessert as we usually do.  We did manage to nap past the beginning of the TTE (most likely due to the wine consumption !) so we skipped it.  😂😜

Since our lunch was so filling, we decided to change our second BOGO reservation (Chops) from 6:00 until 8:15 which is very late for us, but we both knew we would not be ready to eat another big meal so soon. Looking forward to that, but no way will I eat another steak as I had a half of a filet yesterday for lunch and a filet today.  I am actually not much of a steak eater so I’m “steak-out” right now.  Probably get the shrimp. Tonite is formal night but we left the tux at home (intentionally) so we will relax the formal attire this time.

Things have been pretty positive so far in the casino, which has been surprisingly slow.  I expected lots of gamblers to be on this cruise and so far, there hasn’t been much evidence of that.  Since we have now started a new casino year, I thought everyone would be scrambling to make Prime right away.  That has been Dan’s plan and he’s succeeding nicely.  I have decided to wait and make my “push” on our Wonder cruise in May.  We are both pretty much dead even (money-wise) but of course, he has accumulated far more points than I have, which is by design.

I may have spoken too quickly about the internet performance.  Suddenly it is sluggish and has kicked me out twice today.  Probably a gap in the Starlink coverage or some such thing.  Hoping for a return to the robust service we had yesterday.

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10 minutes ago, JustMeJoe said:

Are they allowing BOGO dinners on other than nights 1 or 2?

We didn’t even ask and I cannot remember whether we tried to use a BOGO on any night other than nights 1 or 2 the last time we sailed on EX.  I will check it out next cruise (4-14) as we will be wanting to do a different night on that cruise.  Since it’s only a 5-nighter, there is no 3 night package and we will only be using our BOGO’s.

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10 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Since we have now started a new casino year

Casino Royale Annual Comp cruises come out around Apr 17th give or take.  Will they let us make and place those comp cruise choices while sailing onboard?

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Just now, JustMeJoe said:

Casino Royale Annual Comp cruises come out around Apr 17th give or take.  Will they let us make and place those comp cruise choices while sailing onboard?

No, at least, not at Next Cruise - they don’t do any casino bookings anymore BUT I’m confident that they would allow you to call Club Royale on the ships phone and book that way if you wanted to.  I guess that’s a good thing for me to ask about some time this cruise.  I hadn’t even thought about that.  Let me see what I can find out.  I suspect that hold times in those first few days will be ungodly long.  Not sure I want to spend my day on hold.  Since I have -0- confidence that either us us would be able to snag an Icon casino comp, I’m not all that worried about booking our comps.  We haven’t even started looking at possible ships/dates yet !  😔

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TL;DR - I’m fairly confident that I will be able to use a BOGO on a night other than nights 1 and/or 2 on Explorer

Man, that was waaay more complicated than it should have been….😵‍💫😵‍💫

I stopped by Chops this afternoon and asked the simple question - can I use my BOGO on a night other than nights 1 or 2 ?  I got the deer-in-the-headlight look from the Junior-est-looking officer I have ever seen.  He had a bare epaulet with no stripe or insignia of any kind.  I’m betting he hadn’t had it a day !  He was clueless.  Had to make a phone call…to someone similarly clueless.  After an unbelievable long wait, I began hearing Junior saying, “Yes….ok…only nights 1 or 2…ok…thank you”.  So I was prepared for a “no” answer to my question.  No worries. I knew I had a 50-50 chance.   Then, the Boss walked up to Junior and asked if he could help.  I asked the Boss the same simple question I had asked Junior and got an immediate, no-hesitation response - “Of course !”  
 

So, I think the answer is - yes, you can use your BOGO on a different night, but I will suggest that (as is the case with most everything at Royal Caribbean) it may well depend on who you ask. I plan on asking the Suites Concierge to make my BOGO reservations for me on the last day of this sailing and see how it goes.  This, in itself, might present a new problem, as I have heard from other Pinns that some of the Suites Concierges are hesitant to assist non-suite Pinns with such tasks, although this has not been my experience so far in my very young Pinn-life. I will report back on how all of that goes !

FYI, Chops, which is located adjacent to the WJ, is used as secret overflow seating for the WJ for both breakfast and lunch (on port days).  I knew they used to do this in the “olden” times but I thought it had been completely discontinued.  Apparently not.  There were a few secret squirrels sitting in there munching on their WJ grub when we stumbled in.  It is definitely NOT publicized. The Suites/Pinns breakfast location on this ship is Giovanni’s, which is located forward, port side, between the casino and the theater.  I have seen Chops, Giovanni’s and Izumi located in this area on different ships.  This space used to be a 2-story disco which they removed quite a few years ago and replaced with this specialty dining venue and, I think, some new cabins on the once-upper section of the old disco.

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Pulling away from Puerto Plata, DR currently.  At least, I think we are.  I can feel some movement and all aboard was supposed to be at 3:00 (it’s now 4:17).  Those 2 pieces of evidence together tell me we’re on the move since I can see NOTHing of the outside world from my little Promenade view interior. 

We did not leave the ship today as we have called here twice in the past couple of months and we will be back here during Part III on 4-22 (I think).  On that visit, we will be swimming with sea lions and sharks.  Yikes !

Dan is napping (again) so I’m sitting in the dark tapping away on my iPad.  Dinner tonite is in the MDR.  It will be our first visit to the MDR this cruise.  Mexican night, as I recall.  It’s not a fab menu but I can tolerate the controversially-named pork enchilada/burrito/chimichunga.  Dan likes the carne asada (I think that’s what it’s called).  We have MTD.  Hopefully EX has “caught on” to the way other ships are handling MTD and there won’t be any lengthy lines.  My recent experiences have been that they are simply seating MTD folks amidst the traditional folks at vacant tables as they become available.  It seems to be working fine but I think it’s very labor-intensive and stressful for the dining staff as they are turning tables over (figuratively, of course) many multiples of times per meal. They’re damned good at it, too.  I’m amazed at how quickly they can re-set a table and have new folks seated.  Impressive.

Then it will be off to the casiner (sic) to try and put ourselves back on our earlier “winning” track.  We were derailed last night…we both had miserable gambling experiences.  We actually ended up playing a little Dancing Drums (actually, a LOT of Dancing Drums), which is extremely unusual for us but as I’ve mentioned previously, this is Dan’s push for Prime so points are important and the tables just don’t cut it for us as we aren’t big wager-ers.  Slot machines are mindlessly boring to me but we played together on 1 machine and it was kinda fun. I was THAT person last night.  I was sitting next to Dan, playing with him (no smart-ass remarks) so obviously I was sitting on a stool, in front of another Dancing Drums machine.  I heard someone make a loud [intentional, I’m sure] remark about all of the machines being “taken” so I was guilted into putting $20 into the machine in front of which I was sitting, and pressing the button every minute or 2 just for the pretense of playing.  Since I was paying absolutely NO attention to what was going on, on that machine, I actually ended up breaking even !  Too funny. Of course we lost, eventually, on the machine we were jointly playing, but Dan got a good number of points, which was the goal.

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2 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Pulling away from Puerto Plata, DR currently.  At least, I think we are.  I can feel some movement and all aboard was supposed to be at 3:00 (it’s now 4:17).  Those 2 pieces of evidence together tell me we’re on the move since I can see NOTHing of the outside world from my little Promenade view interior. 

We did not leave the ship today as we have called here twice in the past couple of months and we will be back here during Part III on 4-22 (I think).  On that visit, we will be swimming with sea lions and sharks.  Yikes !

Dan is napping (again) so I’m sitting in the dark tapping away on my iPad.  Dinner tonite is in the MDR.  It will be our first visit to the MDR this cruise.  Mexican night, as I recall.  It’s not a fab menu but I can tolerate the controversially-named pork enchilada/burrito/chimichunga.  Dan likes the carne asada (I think that’s what it’s called).  We have MTD.  Hopefully EX has “caught on” to the way other ships are handling MTD and there won’t be any lengthy lines.  My recent experiences have been that they are simply seating MTD folks amidst the traditional folks at vacant tables as they become available.  It seems to be working fine but I think it’s very labor-intensive and stressful for the dining staff as they are turning tables over (figuratively, of course) many multiples of times per meal. They’re damned good at it, too.  I’m amazed at how quickly they can re-set a table and have new folks seated.  Impressive.

Then it will be off to the casiner (sic) to try and put ourselves back on our earlier “winning” track.  We were derailed last night…we both had miserable gambling experiences.  We actually ended up playing a little Dancing Drums (actually, a LOT of Dancing Drums), which is extremely unusual for us but as I’ve mentioned previously, this is Dan’s push for Prime so points are important and the tables just don’t cut it for us as we aren’t big wager-ers.  Slot machines are mindlessly boring to me but we played together on 1 machine and it was kinda fun. I was THAT person last night.  I was sitting next to Dan, playing with him (no smart-ass remarks) so obviously I was sitting on a stool, in front of another Dancing Drums machine.  I heard someone make a loud [intentional, I’m sure] remark about all of the machines being “taken” so I was guilted into putting $20 into the machine in front of which I was sitting, and pressing the button every minute or 2 just for the pretense of playing.  Since I was paying absolutely NO attention to what was going on, on that machine, I actually ended up breaking even !  Too funny. Of course we lost, eventually, on the machine we were jointly playing, but Dan got a good number of points, which was the goal.

I like dancing drums. I like the banging of the drums. Must be the steel drums in me.

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Dan and I hit a Royal Flush on video poker tonite !  Woohoo.  Too bad we were only playing a quarter. 😔

…but it made us much healthier than we were !  He will definitely make Prime on this cruise as he’s more than halfway there and this is only night 3 of 9.

image.thumb.jpeg.70777dd4ebc1fde9a79e83724e55abe6.jpeg
 

Yikes.  Sorry this picture is so big !

About 5 minutes ago we had an Alpha, Alpha, Alpha call come over the stateroom speakers.  I don’t recall them usually making that announce inside the rooms.  It is for a passenger cabin on deck 12.  I hope whoever it is will be ok.

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We’re pulling into St Thomas 2.5 hours early (Crown Bay).  It’s 9:30 and we aren’t scheduled to arrive until noon.  The Cap made an announcement that we pushed to get here early due to a medical emergency so I’m assuming it’s related to the AAA we heard last night, but that’s pure speculation. We are scheduled to leave at 8 PM.  Strange schedule.

We’re not getting off today in St Thomas but this remains one of my favorite ports as far as the view is concerned.  It’s truly lovely here.  Now that my expensive jewelry-buying days are behind me (thank goodness) I have little reason to disembark.  …but for those of you who are still IN their expensive jewelry-buying days, St Thomas is an excellent choice.

Today is my first W&F laundry day for this cruise.  You’ll all be happy to hear that I have achieved a new “personal best” by stuffing 24 pieces into that W&F bag.  I just keep getting better and better !  😂. I have begun using the “rolling” technique and it’s proving to be a game-changer !

So, today is doomsday for those who care.  Apparently we will be treated to the partial solar eclipse at approximately 2:44 PM.  Since NASA will be firing 2 rockets into the atmosphere, willy nilly and CERN has decided that it would be a great time to push the world’s most powerful particle accelerator to its maximum power for the first time in history, it should be interesting.  I’m fully expecting the black hole to materialize whereupon the demons of hell will be transiting to our dimension.  That should be fun. Put on the Armor of God and all should be fine. (I’m only partially kidding)

Sitting in the CL as we dock in St Thomas.  I’m very surprised at how few people are here in the mornings.  We avoid all lounges in the evenings so I have no idea how things are in them during the happy hours.  I guess I should pop in an evening or 2 just to report out.  

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That is a long day in St Thomas. But congrats on the Royal flush, I have no idea how to play video poker, but dancing drums is the only game my brother "knows" how to play in the casiner. You are also right; I can get two dancing drums all the time and 3 or more rarely but the sound of them keeps you hooked. 

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Sushi at Izumi tonite.  For some reason, they brought Dan 2 full portions (8 pieces X 2 = 16 pieces !) of sushi when they normally only bring half that amount….OMG we are stuffed ! …and we are both dying of thirst now after all that soy sauce !  I got 2 rolls that were the normal size but I still had too much.  I don’t know how he ate everything he did…God bless ‘im.

We hit another $1000 jackpot on video poker….this time we hit 4 deuces on Deuces wild but luckily this time we were playing for $1 so it paid $1000.  I totally forgot to take a picture this time.  We were both so stunned !  Believe it or not, we are both still slightly “down” since we both had abysmal casino sessions on day 2….but it’s not horrible now with the 2 big (for us) wins last night and tonite.

Tomorrow is Antigua.  We’re swimming with the stingrays somewhere.  We don’t have to meet our excursion until noon so we don’t have to worry about an early wake-up.  Good !

 

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8 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Tomorrow is Antigua.  We’re swimming with the stingrays somewhere.

You are brave!  Can’t wait to hear all about it…perhaps a pic or two?   
Congrats to both of you with your ‘almost getting even’ Deuces Wild win!  Explorer is being very kind to you 😜.
Enjoy today!  

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11 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

For some reason, they brought Dan 2 full portions (8 pieces X 2 = 16 pieces !) of sushi

Sounds like a proper portion to me. 👍

11 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

We hit another $1000 jackpot on video poker

Awesome!

11 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

We’re swimming with the stingrays

Have fun! I'm more of a swim with turtles guy but did see a few rays gliding across the bottom while snorkeling off St. Msrtin last month.

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36 minutes ago, OCSC Mike said:

Have fun! I'm more of a swim with turtles guy but did see a few rays gliding across the bottom while snorkeling off St. Msrtin last month.

We love swimming with turtles.  We would have chosen that one over the rays (if they had offered that….which they didn’t) but I have to say -we swam with the rays in The Caymans a number of years ago and really enjoyed it.  I hope the Antigua rays are as docile as the Cayman rays !

I sometimes have a struggle getting back onto the boat, especially if the seas are rough-ish so I hope that’s not the case today.  Fingers crossed.  Being waaaytooo fat and having 2 questionable knees doesn’t help !  😜😜😂

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My wife has stories of swimming with rays as a kid (I think it was Grand Cayman). Apparently one of them liked her mom so much it jumped up onto her chest. I can only imagine my MIL freaking out, lol.

Our swim/snorkel excursions are more for my wife but I had a great time on St. Martin. The water was very calm and I felt like I was just kinda floating along with almost no effort. There were enough turtles out that day that we didn't even have to get that far from the boat and since they have to come up for air every so often, I like how they kinda come to you or at least closer for a better view.

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We had a super awesome day with the rays.  They are really so sweet.  They had a much nicer setup for the ray encounter in Antigua than they have at Cayman.  In Antigua they have some floating platforms that really make getting into and out of the water much easier.  Aside from that, the encounters with the rays were the same.  We had such a nice time. We snorkeled with them, fed them, held them, petted them.  Of course, they were there for the free meal.  That was plain, but we didn’t care. We had a great time with them.

We were in the “hot rod” of boats that were shuttling folks out to the platforms.  All of the other boats had 115 hp outboards on them but our boat had twin 250’s.  Woot !  We kicked a$$. 🤭🤭

We had the cutest bus driver -Romeo.  When we first got onto the bus Dan asked Romeo if they drive on the left side of the road in Antigua (since the steering wheel was on the right side of the bus).  Romeo said - “Yes.  The left side is the right side and the right side is suicide”.  We got a good laugh out of that.

I got a little sun but nothing extreme.  It was overcast and actually rained a little bit while we were getting ready to board the shuttle boats.  But when we got out in the water, it was perfect.  Not hot, not cold, not windy.

I took some photos but they are on my phone so I will post them once (if ?) my devices synch.

Dinner tonite was in the MDR - a taste of Asia.  It was really quite good.  They should put this one in the regular menu lineup, IMO. They could definitely replace French night.  Ugh.

Good luck tonite in the casino.  We had abysmal luck at the slots/video poker but I got lucky and hit a straight flush playing Ultimate Texas Hold’Em so I actually won a little bit in the end.  Still a little down, overall, but very little.  I think I read somewhere that the casino had FINALLY managed to synch the table games with the slots so now, the points that you see on the screen (slots) reflect a total of table plus slot points.  Dan confirmed that, tonite….so it will make it much easier to know where you stand -points-wise, if you play both tables and machines, like us.

Tomorrow is Grenada.  It’s our first time to call at this port and we’re looking forward to it.  We have an island bus tour scheduled.  Should be fun.

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39 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

Yeah! My novena is working! You're welcome! 🤣🤣🤣 I shall continue until you're ahead.  💰🤑💸💲 

Actually, I give the credit for my good-ish casino luck to my red underwear.  I have a friend who told me that if you wear red underwear you will win.  Go figure…but the chants and prayers are appreciated !  They can’t hurt, right ?

❤️❤️❤️

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2 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Actually, I give the credit for my good-ish casino luck to my red underwear.  I have a friend who told me that if you wear red underwear you will win.  Go figure…but the chants and prayers are appreciated !  They can’t hurt, right ?

❤️❤️❤️

Dare i say ... I'm glad you remembered to pack your undies!!! 

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UGH.  I had this witty and VERY lengthy post ALL done and was about to hit "submit" and LUCKILY I checked to be sure I was in the right thread and lo and behold I was NOT, so I lost the entire thing !  I blame @OCSC Mike.  He told me to shut up with the negativity and get on with my blog for Grenada and SO I DID....but in the wrong thread.  (Mike, you know I'm just teasing you.  This was TOTALLY my fault).

Anyway, I am in no mood to recreate that masterpiece so I will summarize Day 7/Grenada.

Island - awesome.

Tour (Grand Etang, Annandale falls and Fort Frederick....or some name similar to that) - excellent coverage of the island.  WAAAYTOOO long.  The roads are treacherous - narrow and bumpy.  We hit every f'n bump on Grenada.  Both Dan and I were never happier to get to the end of a tour.  Enjoyed seeing the island though.

I do have some photos but as with Antigua, they are on my phone and I have to get it to synch with my ipad (which may or may not happen)....so will post later.

Dinner last night at Chops.  Excellent as always.

Casino - More good luck. Keep up the prayers - they are working !  We hit a "Major" (second to the highest) jackpot in Dancing Drums (close to, but not quite, $1000). Dan is still in the "hole" but I am now out of that damned hole !  YIPPEE !

Today - St Kitts but we are staying on the ship.  Dinner tonite at Giovannis, which is our last specialty meal on this leg.  We will be dining in the MDR on lobster and lamb shank nights.

Thank goodness I finally remembered to verify that the ship knows that we are going to be staying on for 2 more sailings.  Vanessa, the CL Concierge checked for us.  They already knew we were staying on for next leg but they did not know that we were staying on for #3 (4-19).  Now they do.  WHEW.

A new personal best for laundry-cramming.  I got 29 pieces in this morning !  ECLIPSED (see what I did there ?)  my previous best of 24.  I am really getting good at this !

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2 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

He told me to shut up with the negativity and get on with my blog for Grenada and SO I DID....but in the wrong thread.  (Mike, you know I'm just teasing you.  This was TOTALLY my fault).

Sorry you lost your post but that was a little harsh, lol. I just wanted to hear about your day. 😢

Glad you enjoyed seeing a new island (minus the bumps). We usually do something similar if it's new... look for a general tour.

6 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Casino - More good luck. Keep up the prayers - they are working !  We hit a "Major" (second to the highest) jackpot in Dancing Drums (close to, but not quite, $1000). Dan is still in the "hole" but I am now out of that damned hole !  YIPPEE !

WOOHOO!

6 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Dinner tonite at Giovannis

Our favorite! 😋

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On 4/8/2024 at 10:21 AM, Ampurp85 said:

That is a long day in St Thomas. But congrats on the Royal flush, I have no idea how to play video poker, but dancing drums is the only game my brother "knows" how to play in the casiner. You are also right; I can get two dancing drums all the time and 3 or more rarely but the sound of them keeps you hooked. 

I swear Dancing drums hit non stop on Oasis in October. We hit a hand pay with a slot pull, I went back to the same machine and hit about $400 bucks in a few spins, and apparently someone hit a mega jackpot on the SAME machine 2 days later. 

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