The Big Booper

Glad you are back finishing the review. You took months off for Grad School just like I took 3 months off from CC for Tax Season.

 

I had never thought of walking past the Zipline landing station to check out the grounds there. We usually hang out on Columbus Cove.

 

Next time.

Guessing that they didn't think the choice of Rhapsody was optimal, but that it was tbe best option available.

 

Rhapsody is three years younger. 1998 vs 1995.

The two of you were wearing very high heels for those night pictures on the Promenade. Was that safe what with Rachel in a walking boot?

 

There, that's the parent in me nagging.

 

As usual, great pictures.

RCCL licensed Chicago for 5 years in 2010 so now that show has to end. They now have licensed Mamma Mia for 5 years from 2014 on and have to pay the fee even if the show is not produced on any of their ships. So, with the re-location of the Quantum to China, to a market that has no interest in seeing Broadway shows, Mamma Mia will be moved to Allure to replace Chicago.

Move Princess' casual dining (buffet, good pizza, real poolside grill, and International Café) onto an RCCL ship, and that would be the perfect match for me. I find the MDRs pretty much equal. Enjoy the ship layout and entertainment vastly better on RCCL.

 

Right. IC and grill are good ideas. Celebrity has the poolside grill though. We don't do pizza on any ship, living in NY for 65+ years, no cruise ship pizza comes close. Princess buffet layout is not great even if food might be better on P.

Consider this. If A,B,C, and D are the restaurants, then the rotation will look like this. Some will start in each restaurant

 

ABCDABC

BCDABCD

CDABCDA

DABCDAB

 

It will not have, as some have suggested, having every one start in the same restaurant and go through the same sequence. You could do that but I don't think RCI will adopt it because it will mean that one restaurant will have much more limited availability when the classic rotate through it. Hard for folks not in classic to deal with.

 

Some will only have one formal night and some will be in Grande on the first night. Most will have two formal nights. Assign any letter to Grande and you can see how it will work.

 

BTW, Everyone will have at least one night in Grande that is not the first night. Being in Grande on the first night will be a feature for some since Grande is smart casual on night one.

 

And, in each rotation, you will do three restaurants twice and one only once. Depends on the luck of the draw, I'm sure some will find that something else to complain about. But unless it is an eight day cruise, that the way it is. BTW, the fourth letter in each sequence represents the restaurant you will visit only once.

 

I see no reason for RCI to allow people to choose their rotation. As people have reported on this thread, making decisions is difficult and it would just be too stressful for people to have to make decisions like that for themselves.

 

Disney allows you to choose your rotation if you know about that feature. Most pax don't it seems. So you align Lumiere with formal night.

a major reason some people love cruising is that its easy, relaxing, entertaining and there is no agenda. Its pure freedom from the hectic scheduling of normal life. Dynamic dying forces people to plan ahead, schedule every meal and when you add that onto already scheduling entertainment (oasis class) and a horrible new website design that makes it extremely frustrating for even experienced cruisers to book excursions and dinners you end up with not the best customer experience.

Royal needs to keep it super simple and be king of the customer experience.

They have the best ships, lets make sure we offer the easiest experience onboard as well.

 

what you say!!!

I wish Princess had the nice showers that Royal has.

I like both staterooms... but I do like the extra seating- love seat on Royal

 

I like the free internet minutes that I get with Princess.

 

I like Any time dining on Princess.

 

Princess has it (For my DH) for food. Though the escargot on Royal is DH's favorite.

 

I'm looking at Royal for next Christmas. Trying to decide if I could handle Navigator OR Indy! NOT SURE if I want the size... Crown, & Ruby didn't feel that huge...

 

Crown and Ruby Princess carry the same number of passengers as Navigator...but Navigator is almost 20% larger. You do the math especially on a holiday sailing.

 

I don't eat pizza on any ship but Princess pizza is better.

 

Navigator has My Time Dining, same as Anytime, and doesn't let traditional diners sneak in.

 

Navigator buffet is much larger then Princess.

 

Navigator main theater has 1,300 seats as opposed to Princess which has 800 seats.

 

Princess has self service laundry machines.

Nothing you said even remotely answered my basic question of my post. You should be a politican lol (Maybe you are politician) :p

 

Btw, look at my signature closer... I just came off of Quantum and loved DD. DD worked for me exactly, and I do mean EXACTLY, like My Time Dining on all current ships with the slight difference that I dont walk up to the MDR... the only difference being I choose which restaurant I walk up to.

 

DD = My Time ... except you choose which restaurant you want to eat at. Simple as that.

 

Glad it worked for you. People I know have been on Q and said that the stress of lining up all the dining took away some of the fun from the cruise and they won't be doing any RCI ship again where DD is the only choice.

You are eating at Mc D's!! That's what Royal, NCL, CCL are all about.... mass market. Sounds like you want a Mercedes for the price of a Chevrolet. You should be sailing on Regent or Seabourn. What are you doing on RCCL?

 

Mickey D just dumped the CEO after years of poor planning and improvements that didn't work out. RCCL just kicked Adam G up to the corporate office and moved Braley over from Celebrity to right the listing mother ship.

Well this is interesting...

 

Avid DD haters being ok with rotational, which forces you to change venues every night, forces you to a new table you don't have a choice of selecting, forces to sit in a different chair facing maybe the wrong direction you don;t want to face, forces you to a menu of a venue you may not like (ie. Silk)... the only thing the same are the waiters and the people you sit with.

 

Now let's compare this with a true DD... If I personally choose DD I can do EXACTLY what you are doing and follow you around from venue to venue. I have the exact same meals, exact same menus, exact same experience... other than meeting new people each night and having a different waiter. I too can choose the exact same time every night by just showing up at the venue I choose and sitting with others.

 

Can someone explain to me and justify how rotational is so much better than DD? I'm not being mean here, I am genuinely confused and curious.

 

From your cruise history you've never been on Disney. We have (3 cruises) and it works just fine there so it should work on RCI.

 

From what I can see, people don't like DD because it puts a tremendous burden on the passengers to figure out all the show times and then try to reserve the shows and dining times, lots of work. Then the ressies disappear from the system or the show times are changed. And the links to friends disappear.

 

Lots of people wanted to sample the new ship, which is a stretched and amped up Celebrity "S" class, which are fine ships. That's all. They were perfectly happy with MTD or Trad dining and didn't need the stress of the poorly implented DD system.

 

So since the proposal seems to be Trad. Early or Late seating, that will go over fine with the unhappy people, assuming that RCI tweaks the menus to assuage people who can't eat fish or meat or whatever.

 

I went to the reveal in March 2014 on blustery W. 34th in Manhattan and I, Mr. Picky Eater supreme, tasted all the weird stuff and actually liked most of it. But still, you need basic food choices on each menu for people like me. Which the company probably knows and will implement. They have to, they thought of the idea of 4 small MDRs on this class of ship with 4,100 passengers.

 

Living in Florida it is a no brainer for us for now. We will not fly to a cruise out of Bayonne, did enough of those when we lived in Metro NY. When a Q class ship comes to Port Everglades, then we'll try it, assuming they expand dining choices to something other then this woefully rolled out DD, whether it is Traditional or "Classic Rotational. The Millennials can have DD and we'll have ours. See, all the customers will be happy.

 

 

<edit> The guy who posted above me likes suites and is a shareholder in RCCL. I only go in balconies and was a shareholder until 3 days before the earnings report. After reading of the problems with DD and the mechanical problems with some of the older ships, I dumped my RCL shares and bought more Apple shares. Good move on both ends. Apple makes fine products and RCL has a "crack" IT team.:eek: And that's a joke, son.

Radio, I was a little late to your 'cruise' ....just finished sailing thru your cruise....love reading your about your journey.

 

Must tell you, aside from enjoying your commentary, your thread is always positive....even those posting...such a nice change from the majority on the main RCCL board which has become such a 'moaner' place...sooooo, thank you many times over and welcome home.

 

Soooooo looking forward to our turn very shortly.

 

Pattie A.

 

Right, Radio is always positive, makes his reports enjoyable.

[quote=Mouse's Shadow;45468563]We're so glad to hear that they are trying to offer something akin to traditional dining. We just got off of Allure 2 weeks ago. We were glad to have gotten to sail her before they split up the dining room. We have no desire to do a ship with DD, so our future cruises will be on smaller ships or other cruise lines. Right now we're booked on another cruise line. We'll just wait it out to see if they are able to come up with an option that is good for us.[/quote]

Your statement is not correct. We just got off Oasis a couple of weeks ago. The dining rooms were not split up, you still have the triple deck setup. The difference is that every level has a different decor but the basic structure has stayed the same.

Hey There! Keep looking.....you'll find something. It just takes a lot of doing these days!! Very frustrating' date=' I know!![/size']

 

Jane, do you ever book off the Tuesday specials?

 

Back to the OP, I can usually wade thru the booking verbiage and figure out the true cost, including airfare, which I buy my self. So what does it cost to fly from Southern Cal. to NO?

 

I haven't booked a cruise in over a year and I've heard that pricing is up. So when we go on the Jewel OTS in Sept., we might be booking something to get the OBC offered. And maybe not.

There was a thread a few years here on CC about couples and cruises. The gist was that only one person did the planning and the other person just followed along, frequently not even knowing the name of the ship.

Great writeup and photos as always.

 

You had one of the highly desirable "angle" balconies based on your photos. Are the balconies as large as on the Celebrity "S" ships, on which this ship is based? And are they bumped up a notch in cabin categories as Celebrity does in pricing.

 

We now live in S. Florida and will not fly up to NY for a cruise out of Bayonne any more so I guess we have to wait for Anthem or Ovation to be based in Port Everglades for a stretch.

 

The just announced rotational dining sounds good to us.

 

Safe trip home.

Here is how RD works in Disney ships. Caveat, we have only been on the smaller Disney ships where there are 3 dining rooms, buffet and one alternate expensive restaurant.

 

The entire table plus waiter and asst. waiter rotates thru one of each dining room every night, same table number in each room. The rooms are (Magic in this example)

 

Lumiere's Castle

 

Caribbean room

 

Animator's Palette where the dining room starts out in black, white and gray at the beginning (including waiter's vests.) and transitions to vibrant full color by the end of the meal. Pure Disney entertainment.

 

There is only the one alternative small expensive ($75) room so most people stick with the rotation, the dining experience is a fun part of the cruise.

 

With a new big RCI ship there will be many reasonable alternatives so the plan will have to be implemented differently then the way Disney does it. IMHO the menus to some extent will have to be normalized with a wider range of choices for each of the big rooms. Plus part of each main room will have to be MTD for those who want to create their own schedule.

 

It can be done, the company is innovative. Otherwise, with DD, even my current TA, a veteran cruiser on many lines, came back from the Quantum cruise today and said that their nerves were frazzled from the scheduling required:eek:. And they have done 7 NCL freestyle cruises.

We were on Oasis a couple of weeks ago. Each dining level has a different look and I was hoping that RCI would drop DD and just go with the redecorations on the three Oasis class ships. If RD is instituted then the menus will have to change. On Disney you can choose the dining sequence so you wind up on formal night in the castle from BATB, for instance. Lots of talk of this planning on the Disney boards here on CC

When I 'm following along on one of your cruise reports, at the end of the trip I feel somewhat down as if my cruise was almost over, too.

 

Then I realize I've been sitting at a computer keyboard working to earn money so that we can do trips. And haven't been on a ship at all the last few weeks.

 

Tax season will be almost over when you go on your next cruise so I won't be missing your daily write-ups. :D

 

I'm going up north next week for 10 weeks or so for tax season, one of quite a few accountants who are reverse snowbirds.

Yes, every ship has it in the lowest deck MDR on seadays. You can be in and out fast and it is custom made for you.

I thought the two new cabins were designated RS

 

Don't remember. In any case, off limits now to us. Which is the main point, we didn't even go up in the elevator to check out that floor. That's always an issue with Oasis class, always forget to go and look at places we want to check, a week is not long enough.;)

RCL cruise's out of Australian use US dollars for on board charges princess use AU dollars the Aussie dollar is now 20% lower against USD this means a beer could cost Aussies $10. Princess have lowered prices and do not charge tipping or gratuities plus good on board credit RCLare losing business because of this have g/day Aussie

 

Interesting.

 

RCCL is spending a fortune on big new expensive ships, billion dollars each to build? They have to recover the costs somehow.

 

That's why the Q is being hustled over to China, lots of newly rich people with money to spend.

I don't think my wife and i are RCI's target audience.

 

When we went on the Oasis we found like you stores like Kate Spade, Michael Kors, and Coach.

 

We just don't shop in those kinds of stores.

 

We also ate at Sabor which was very good. Our total bill was $31 with $19 being for the meal and $12 for one margarita to which my wife said, "If I knew it was that much money I wouldn't have gotten it.

 

I guess Princess and NCL and more suited for us.

 

Unfortunate as we really like the RCI product.

 

Bill

 

Ya think Princess and NCL don't try to upsell and market to you. Check out those boards on CC.

 

We only go into the general store on Oasis Class, no Spade Kate, Coach etc for us. But the wealthy people from all over the world who sail on Oasis class love the expensive stores.

The last guy to brag about dumping his stock did it in the low $60's. He was short sighted. ;)

 

I switched out of RCCL and bought more Apple stock. Check out the pricing of the two stocks.

 

I watch daily - here comes tax season, with more $$$ to invest. I'll buy into RCCL again.

I should have asked this in my post that I just posted. Does this mean that RCCL is getting rid of the Viking Crown lounge throughout their fleet. That was always their signature lounge.

 

Don't know. It was always underutilized on our 4 cruises with this class of ship. 2 GS now + the suite lounge.