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Anthems Pre-booking Entertainment


mworkman

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I just came back from Anthem this afternoon. We cannot book North star and i-Fly online either but be able to book all the shows online. When you board the ship there are many tablets to use for reserving your activity or you can do on Royal IQ when you board. I downloaded Royal IQ ahead of time. I really easy to use and work most of the time. IMO Dining room food is not good but Solarium Bistro is excellent. Suggest booking activities early for day1-4 of  7 days cruise because sometimes it will be cancel if weather bad so you still have time to reschedule it. We got canceled on the "We will rock you" and i-Fly day 6 of 7 days cruise. They reschedule the next day for "we will rock you" but i-fly you really have to work hard to get on the flight. We lucky enough to know one of the activity guys, he is an instructor for i-Fly. He reserved 3 of us to one of the last 2 flights of this trip. Don't miss i-Fly if you can do it, it is the best experience ever.  We have a blast. Service is excellent but the food not so much, however, we managed to find solarium bistro that we love. 

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On 11/25/2018 at 5:59 PM, Susie said:

I just came back from Anthem this afternoon. We cannot book North star and i-Fly online either but be able to book all the shows online. When you board the ship there are many tablets to use for reserving your activity or you can do on Royal IQ when you board. I downloaded Royal IQ ahead of time. I really easy to use and work most of the time. IMO Dining room food is not good but Solarium Bistro is excellent. Suggest booking activities early for day1-4 of  7 days cruise because sometimes it will be cancel if weather bad so you still have time to reschedule it. We got canceled on the "We will rock you" and i-Fly day 6 of 7 days cruise. They reschedule the next day for "we will rock you" but i-fly you really have to work hard to get on the flight. We lucky enough to know one of the activity guys, he is an instructor for i-Fly. He reserved 3 of us to one of the last 2 flights of this trip. Don't miss i-Fly if you can do it, it is the best experience ever.  We have a blast. Service is excellent but the food not so much, however, we managed to find solarium bistro that we love. 

Not happy to hear the food wasn't up to par.

 

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4 minutes ago, yaya luvs to cruz said:

We sail on the Anthem, January 6 - 38 days - we booked activities but cannot book entertainment or couples spa pass or Escape Room. What's the holdup?

Couples spa pass can only be purchased onboard. Go to the spa on embarkation day, and don’t wait long after you board. There are a limited number of passes available and they go pretty quickly.

Escape room is also only bookable on board, afaik. You’ll need to visit Guest Services for that.

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6 minutes ago, yaya luvs to cruz said:

We sail on the Anthem, January 6 - 38 days - we booked activities but cannot book entertainment or couples spa pass or Escape Room. What's the holdup?

I don't think you will have a problem with the entertainment reservations. Normally the shows are not filled up and easy to find the seat. You can still reserve when you onboard. When you get onboard walk into the ship, there are stations fill with tablets that you can reserve whatever you need but you need your Seapass card or the band to get it to work. You also can use Royal IQ apps to reserve everything. Just make sure download the apps to your phone before you are on the ship.

IMHO MDR foods were not good but the Solarium Bistro foods were excellent so I will suggest checking Solarium Bistro for dinner. You will need a reservation for Solarium Bistro though. 

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16 hours ago, Susie said:

I don't think you will have a problem with the entertainment reservations. Normally the shows are not filled up and easy to find the seat. You can still reserve when you onboard. When you get onboard walk into the ship, there are stations fill with tablets that you can reserve whatever you need but you need your Seapass card or the band to get it to work. You also can use Royal IQ apps to reserve everything. Just make sure download the apps to your phone before you are on the ship.

IMHO MDR foods were not good but the Solarium Bistro foods were excellent so I will suggest checking Solarium Bistro for dinner. You will need a reservation for Solarium Bistro though. 

Thank you. We have the three nights specialty dining package and two nights reserved in the Solarium Bistro.  We'll wing the rest. Thanks again.

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19 minutes ago, yaya luvs to cruz said:

Thank you. We have the three nights specialty dining package and two nights reserved in the Solarium Bistro.  We'll wing the rest. Thanks again.

What is your itinerary? 7 days? Example My cruise was 8 nights and the night 7 was a second formal night which was the lobster. I think the lobster night menu was good in MDR and taste good. I wish I take pictures of the menu. So if you have a second formal night that will be the night that they serve lobster. 

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1 hour ago, Susie said:

if you have a second formal night that will be the night that they serve lobster.

Even if there is only one formal night, they will sometimes serve lobster on a later night in the cruise. This happened on my 5-night Bermuda sailing, where formal night was Day 2 only but lobster was still served on Day 4. So definitely try to get an advance peek at the menus if you can, and try to plan a bit around that.

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4 hours ago, Susie said:

What is your itinerary? 7 days? Example My cruise was 8 nights and the night 7 was a second formal night which was the lobster. I think the lobster night menu was good in MDR and taste good. I wish I take pictures of the menu. So if you have a second formal night that will be the night that they serve lobster. 

12 nights out of Bayonne. I think we'll be in Jamie's the first formal night but we'll definitely catch the second for the lobster.

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I’m a first time ever cruiser on Freedom in Feb. I have kept looking to book our entertainment but it says to book on board. I was hoping we would be able to see what type of shows and entertainment we have to look forward to. I really would like to be able to plan and know what to expect. Kind of bummed.

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2 hours ago, Nay said:

I’m a first time ever cruiser on Freedom in Feb. I have kept looking to book our entertainment but it says to book on board. I was hoping we would be able to see what type of shows and entertainment we have to look forward to. I really would like to be able to plan and know what to expect. Kind of bummed.

If you haven’t already, I would recommend you look at past Cruise Compasses for Freedom. From what I understand the shows and entertainment type things do not change very often except for maybe the comedian and special guest. Here’s a link to the Freedom Compasses filtered: https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/cruise-compass?ship=278

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Going on Anthem in mid Feb - (70ish days out) same experience as mworkman.  Was unable to book any shows until Yesterday ... then they showed up but had an issue selecting times and days in the AM .... then finally was able to get it all done and booked in the evening .... seems like it was  less of a number of days out thing and more like they uploaded several sailings all at once yesterday.

Glad to have at least one more box checked off the list!

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On 11/29/2018 at 8:27 AM, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Anthem had a shake up in their Cruise Director staff in the last two weeks.  Wonder if that could be the hold up?

Just returned from twelve days in Eastern Caribbean and Dennis Charles was the Cruise Director.  He was quite good, funny and entertaining.  Shows were Beatlemania, We Will Rock You and Spectras Cabaret.  All were very good but reservations required as there are too many aboard to fit everyone in the theater.  That is a problem as both the Captains Corner and Allow Me to be Frank, a show with Paul Rich, were held in Two 70.  Unless you arrived very early you would be standing for both.  Don’t know why it wasn’t scheduled for the Royal Theater.  Finally, after cruising with RC for the last ten years, it appears to me the food quality has gone down dramatically.  Still have lots to eat but the flavor is lacking.  Can’t be sure but questioning if they want everyone in the specialty restaurants.  Have fun.

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1 hour ago, DD6334 said:

Going on Anthem in mid Feb - (70ish days out) same experience as mworkman.  Was unable to book any shows until Yesterday ... then they showed up but had an issue selecting times and days in the AM .... then finally was able to get it all done and booked in the evening .... seems like it was  less of a number of days out thing and more like they uploaded several sailings all at once yesterday.

Glad to have at least one more box checked off the list!

We will be on a B2B on Anthem 15 Feb - 3 Mar.

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2 hours ago, billdon44 said:

Just returned from twelve days in Eastern Caribbean and Dennis Charles was the Cruise Director.  He was quite good, funny and entertaining.  Shows were Beatlemania, We Will Rock You and Spectras Cabaret.  All were very good but reservations required as there are too many aboard to fit everyone in the theater.  That is a problem as both the Captains Corner and Allow Me to be Frank, a show with Paul Rich, were held in Two 70.  Unless you arrived very early you would be standing for both.  Don’t know why it wasn’t scheduled for the Royal Theater.  Finally, after cruising with RC for the last ten years, it appears to me the food quality has gone down dramatically.  Still have lots to eat but the flavor is lacking.  Can’t be sure but questioning if they want everyone in the specialty restaurants.  Have fun.

No Beatlemania shows this go around.

 

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On 12/8/2018 at 10:02 AM, billdon44 said:

Just returned from twelve days in Eastern Caribbean and Dennis Charles was the Cruise Director.  He was quite good, funny and entertaining.  Shows were Beatlemania, We Will Rock You and Spectras Cabaret.  All were very good but reservations required as there are too many aboard to fit everyone in the theater.  That is a problem as both the Captains Corner and Allow Me to be Frank, a show with Paul Rich, were held in Two 70.  Unless you arrived very early you would be standing for both.  Don’t know why it wasn’t scheduled for the Royal Theater.  Finally, after cruising with RC for the last ten years, it appears to me the food quality has gone down dramatically.  Still have lots to eat but the flavor is lacking.  Can’t be sure but questioning if they want everyone in the specialty restaurants.  Have fun.

I guess they get rid of "The gift" or I miss something. "The gift" was my favorite show on Anthem out of 3 shows. I think "We will rock you" was too long. Spectra Cabaret, if you like the movie "the Fifth Elements" then you will like it, it really reminds me of that movie. Spectra is a great show but not my favorite.

Agree with you on the food 100%. I had been sailed with RC since 2000 so a lot to compare. The food's quality has gone down for sure. I now booked my specialty restaurants for the first time in my cruise traveling on my upcoming cruise with Symphony OTS. However, the activity and entertainment are getting better.

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