CookieDiva

 

I meant $50 for each 7 days cruise. $50 for 7 days, $100 for 14 days, etc. ]

Thank you for clarifying that! Sometimes I see things in quite the dramatic fashion. [emoji16]

You're getting a floating resort where your room and meals are included. I don't know if your 15% was based on per person or total cost, but $333 for a week is a great deal for a

I guess that I didn't explain my math very well. We are paying right around 2K for 2 of us for a 7 night cruise - including prepaid gratuities, taxes and fees. The pp said to bring 50 singles for EACH of the 7 nights - $350 for extraneous tips. $350 is just a little over 15% of $2000.

The poll is right before the first post in this thread.

Could it be that it doesn't show up in the iPad and iPhone apps? I've been using both of these and I don't see it.

Kind of off topic, but is there an actual poll to vote on or is someone tabulating the totals based on the posts? I belong to another message board that has actual polls - but I'm not seeing this on this thread.

 

It's a good idea to bring between $50 in ones for each 7 days.

Never considered this before. That's 15% of our cruise price (including gratuities, taxes, and fees) just for extraneous tipping. Woah! Then we add in travel to and from, a hotel room the night before, maybe one or two excursions, a few adult beverages and we've easily doubled the base cost the of the cruise.

Maybe cruising isn't as economical as I had originally convinced myself. [emoji53]

If you have an iPhone, ask Siri "What is zero divided by zero"?

Well, I'm glad that Cookie Monster DOES have cookies and I'm glad that I DO have one or two friends. But I'm not going to ask RC about it.

Thanks for sharing. Sounding good so far. Will enjoy reading the future installments.

Thanks for your thoughts and experiences everyone! Sounds like it'll all work.

When we booked last November, the only option available to us was MTD. We could not even wait list ourselves for a MDR seating. Don't know if that's changed at all.

I recommend that you try to relax and enjoy your cruise (and your meals) without rushing around trying to cram everything in.

We'll try! We are traveling with another couple and we will want to compromise on what we do and how we do it. It's my personality. Just ask my DH. I always have to have something to worry about.

So Bob, I was going to ask you this on our Roll Call - while I do enjoy great conversation at dinner, I also don't think that we will want to spend several hours each evening having a meal.

As I said, with this being our first cruise, I think that we are going to want to try everything. Do you feel that the value of building a relationship with your table mates outweighs other experiences? Is there a way to mix it up on different evenings?

Hi all! We are first time cruisers sailing the Freedom on her Eastern Caribbean itinerary next April and I'm ALREADY worried about not having enough time to do everything.

We want to swim, relax, play the slots, see the shows, play the games, visit the ports - you know - just EVERYTHING!

Anyway, I've been reading how long meals in the MDR can last. So I was wondering if, with MTD, you can enjoy a nice meal in the MDR but get out of there in an hour or so. Because, you know, there are places to go, people to meet, things to do. ;-)

 

Oh yeah...... Vegas is also o e of those places that the scale and size is unimaginable!

Oh! That's another place that we've never been and I'm looking forward to going to someday. We are empty nesters and beginning to explore places where we've never been.

So jealous and happy for your first cruise. The sense of awe and wonderment the first time on a ship is amazing!

 

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Thank you so much! It's not until April16 - and we booked Oct14 - but I do enjoy the planning and anticipation. I definitely understand what you are referring to when you speak of awe and wonderment the first time. We are big, big Disney World people and I often thought how nice it would be to recapture that first time. And we loved sharing with people who had never been.

We're going on our first cruise. On the Freedom of the Seas! These pictures are GREAT!

So then, is it common knowledge on these boards to wait to buy your drink packages on board?

When we paid online in March it was more online. I was not happy to see it cheaper on the ship. Quite surprising.

Just so that I understand, a drink package that you had purchased online before the trip was more expensive than the were same package that they were selling onboard?

Well. See how things change in 10 minutes? [emoji53] Guess it wasn't meant to be. Maybe it will just be better for us to use our OBC for our drinks.

Has anyone booked this promo on the website? And if so, how? I see the promo info that says Buy and Ultimate and get REPLENISH for free (still there at 6:30 pm edt) but i cannot see how to get the promotion in the shopping cart. I figure that I'll just buy it now and if it ends up actually being the REFRESHMENT then I will cancel both.

I was offered the package for our July 10, 2016 cruise. But it was for the REFRESHMENT package, which we're not interested in.

Thanks! I've sent an email to our TA and will see what info she has.

I was just told that it does not apply to my October 31st Oasis cruise only those traveling between June 15 and August 31, 2015

Has anyone been able to book this package for any sailings past August 31?

It's not that I don't believe you Marko, it's just RCL's reputation for double speak.

Repositioning cruises are very popular. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if traditional seating is already filled.

I suspect it is because the TAs gobble them up. We were on Liberty & cruised the Med last fall and MTD was the only thing available until we transfrred the reservation to our TA. Then we were given the opportunity to move to early or late.

I am completely new to RCI and cruising in general, but I have to believe that something else is at play here.

1. We booked our cruise 17 months in advance and was told the same thing as the OP - no MDR available and no wait lists.

2. We booked with a TA. She attempted to get a straight answer from RCI because, she too, could not believe that no MDR seats were available. She contacted RCI and pressed for an answer. The rep told our TA that she too did not understand, but could not change our reservations.

Don't know what it is, but I don't believe that both seatings of the MDR are filled on our cruise. (And I even did a search to see if there was a charter on our cruise, but found nothing.)

I too am enjoying thread. DH and I are new cruisers and I would love to make friends with our Roll Call. We are still almost 14 months out so we have time - but there are only about a dozen signed up on our Roll Call so far. :-( Do we still have a chance for having an active Roll Call and successful M&M?

We have one of CC's and the RCI board's "stars" on our cruise - clarea (Bob) - so I'm hopeful that he'll help get things rolling.

I'd love to set up an activity or game -but since I am so new to cruising - I feel like that's rather forward. Thoughts?

I think that a game on our Roll Call thread could be fun and it would encourage people to visit the Roll Call regularly. Any ideas of something to do for that?

I also like the idea of meeting somewhere at before (or for?) Sail Away.

And a Slot Pull sounds like fun since we and our friends like to play slots.

(Yes, I AM excited for this cruise. 😁)

We booked FOS for April 2016 back in October. Was told at that time that MDR dining was not available. Our TA pursued that matter with a RCI rep who questioned it as well. The RCI rep couldn't book us for MDR nor could she put us on a wait list.

Being that this is our first cruise, we have no experience or expectations. We'll just go with the flow.

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Sounds like a great cost to me for a balcony cabin (at least compared to what I'm seeing now). Have they gone up since?

Oh yeah. Just priced it and it's $1105 pp ($157 pp per night) right now. Guess we did well. And we have $200 in OBC now too.