barbeyg

Thank you. 🙂 He is in great shape.

We have an old listing too. Loved looking thru and seeing where people were from. 😁 A funny, my husband still wears a St Thomas t-shirt he bought at a market in St Thomas, on a cruise in 1993. 😳 And yes, it is still in perfect shape.

I sleep six hours most nights myself. 🙂 I figure the OP would have had some distressful posts in between if an all-nighter. 😁 Glad to see you are excited about your cruise, @rae8836 ! Hope you have a great time. I must confess, a few years back, I stayed up for an iPhone launch. 😁 These days I just get up early if I want one release day.

Sorry to hear you got Covid during that trip. We’ve cruised multiple times since Covid and got it on only one cruise trip…but, we flew across the country, and also took a bus tour the day I believe I picked it up. Really have no idea whether we picked it up on the cruise or one of the ports. We won’t give up on cruising ourselves. Covid is endemic and here to stay, so we must live with it. I can understand you deciding to vacation in other ways with your experiences so far. 🙂

We would enjoy meeting up with you there! 🙂 And if you have any questions about the area, I would be very happy to answer them. Just tag me here, and I will get the notification. We lived on the MS Gulf coast for our first 45 years before relocating to east TN, but have travelled back home regularly to visit family. Really looking forward to longer stays down there after retirement. When you get moved, two communities that are very enjoyable for great food, eclectic stores, and enjoyable music are Bay St Louis and Ocean Springs. We usually stay in Ocean Springs, because we love the quaint little town. Living in Gulfport near the Biloxi line puts you right in the middle of everything, and easy access to it all. If you like to walk for exercise, besides the campus where you will be living, we can highly recommend driving down to the service road (parallels Hwy 90, just elevated) in Pass Christian for a nice walk in the shade of the big live oaks to downtown Pass. Great walk with beautiful old homes to enjoy. Nice sidewalks, and great food once you get to the downtown area. A couple of our favorite restaurants are there as well. 🙂

You will love the area, and the people. Of course, I'm biased because I was raised in Biloxi, and worked right down the beach from the old retirement complex in Gulfport when Katrina hit. There are several very enjoyable festivals in the area. There are always seafood festivals, including the Blessing of the Fleet in Biloxi. If you love old cars, wait till you experience your first Cruising the Coast, when people from all over come down and cruise between locations across the coast from Biloxi to Bay St Louis. We always enjoyed taking lawn chairs and an ice chest and parking on the service drive in Pass Christian to watch them drive by. Also, Peter Anderson Arts & Crafts Festival in Ocean Springs is not to be missed either. We live in TN, call it home now, but will be travelling down next year after retirement for our niece's wedding, and will go early enough in November to do the Peter Anderson festival. Hope you get a placement soon. Welcome to the Gulf Coast, where the food is awesome (proximity to NOLA doesn't hurt), the people friendly. 🙂

I guess my sarcasm was subtle. I happen to agree with you. Just stating what RCI must me thinking. 🙂

Agree. I’m expecting them to announce the “adults only” area of Icon is an up charge. Shocked they haven’t already.

But, but, but…..the little ones won’t be there. Gotta be worth the price, and not having to explain your behavior to them on Cococay when you get home, right? 😉 What happens in Hideaway Beach stays in Hideaway Beach. And pizza has to be worth something, right?! 🍕

I suggest sending an email to Michael Bayley directly. I would be polite and include all the facts (parents names, date of sailing, cabin number, medical emergency, port, who was spoken to at RCI, etc). It is always helpful to include everything so you don’t have to waste time going back and forth. Ourusualbeach (Ken) recommended this in his reply. He is very knowledgeable and reaching out to Michael Bayley has rendered results for others with hard to resolve issues. I wish all of you the best. It must be very stressful for them to be dealing with this on top of the medical emergency.

I’m sorry your parents are going thru this. and I hope your dad has a full recovery. I don’t have any info that would be helpful for RCI. It could take a bit for them to reach the ship and get the answers necessary to deal with this. A couple of suggestions otherwise. If your parents have travel insurance, it’s worth contacting the insurance agency to see if something like this is covered. If they had a travel agent, possibly the agent would have better contact info for RCI. I see Ken has shared Michael Bayley’s email. And a last resort would be posting on their wall at FB and X. Sometimes that gets a response.

It’s nice we have reached the point where a Covid thread is sorta rare. That said, no one knows what this will be like a week from now, much less a month away. These variants usually burn thru pretty quickly though. Do what is best for you. 🤷🏻‍♀️

If they release like last few years, November. 🙂

I agree. Some might throw their money at anything. But, I think many of us would never pay $5k for a balcony cabin. Not when there are so many great choices for travel, by land or sea. 🙂

Sometime in 2025, that one will begin sailing, according to the press release. https://www.royalcaribbeanpresscenter.com/press-release/1634/the-next-iconic-adventure-begins-with-royal-caribbeans-second-icon-class-ship/

We love the CL and have no issue with the luggage. DH carries it up before the steward even gets there. We also prefer Oasis and Allure walk-in showers upstairs, over the tubs put into newer ships.

Excellent idea, Ken. We always have something booked with our cruises from the planner….that is, after they begin selling. Still waiting on pre-Bella, Bella 2.0 and Symphony 2025 to have something to buy. 🙂

As others have stated, unless there is a local curfew, the ship serves as a 'hotel' overnight.

After skimming thru this thread, I have decided that it is a really good thing I'm mostly not too observant of the people around me. Ignorance can be bliss. 😃

There are many threads here about the crazy pricing. We have sailed RCI exclusively for years, because we were happy with the product. But, we have booked another line recently, and are considering others. We will continue to sail RCI, when we find deals, and there are deals to be found. You just have to be flexible. 🙂 But we will also consider other lines too. Hope you find a good price on a cruise. We do love RCI and expect it to stay our line of choice. We just don’t choose to throw all our $$$ at them. 😂

We used to be people who go, go, go on vacation. We have found over the years that we love the sea days. Our first cruise back after Covid, we never even got off the ship. 😂 It was the most relaxing, rejuvenating trip so far. We look forward to our retirement TA in April, and our TP to Hawaii in September. We are never bored on sea days.

While many of the cuts don't specifically affect us, the "chiseling away" of the product, while dramatic increases in prices, has caused us to look elsewhere from Celebrity and RCI. We just booked a Iceland/Norway cruise on NCL (never thought I would say that) because the itinerary was better, the ship was newer, and the pricing was much more reasonable. We are also looking at other 'premium' brands. My loyalty is to my budget, and what I'm willing to pay for a cruise vs a land vacation.

I have the same $200 issue with our cruise next year. We are currently within the final payment for one cruise, and that pricing hasn't changed, but one further out has.

This made me laugh out loud! 🤣 I used to fill my Dad’s cigarette lighter, unscrewing the little screw, then filling up, and loved the smell of the fluid. He stopped me from doing it when he caught me taking a big sniff of the can of fluid. 😂 I was 8 and had no idea it made you high.

I hope you told them where to get off. 😀 Politely, of course.