The Fun Researcher

Agreed, and another great reason to do check-in (at least choosing a boarding time) as soon as possible in order to get an early time slot to board the ship. That is also important if you want to book the free iFly.

Nice to see a rescue. Too many of these end up with the persons death.

We’ve had a few wonderful spring break cruises. It’s a fantastic time of year to cruise . It’s the three or four night cruises that tend to bring the party crowd.

I think it is the same pizza supplier across the entire fleet in North America. I could be wrong, but it has all tasted the same regardless of where we have sailed out of. It’s a nice snack. Fairly thin sliced, which is my preference as well. It’s not gourmet, but it gets the job done

Many times the slices go so fast that asking for a fresh pizza isn’t really needed. I suppose maybe mid afternoon when it’s not as busy…

No, you are correct. It is all prepared and ready to make sushi rolls without having to use a knife.

Yeah The timestamp of my photo when the class was done was 11:15 AM. Not really a problem just to make it an early lunch. That is what we have done each time we have done the class.

I don’t think it is too difficult for someone to budget in the cost of alcohol before hand, knowing the exorbitant price that Royal charges. We have been doing that for years. I remember the glory days back in 2012 to 2014 when a simple Rum Coke was $6.50. I think it was 2015 when prices started to skyrocket and never slowed down. I complained about it a lot back then, and still have frustrations about it, but now I just factor in that elevated cost into the overall vacation. That is key, factoring the cost into the vacation beforehand. There really shouldn’t be any reason to be surprised by the prices. It still doesn’t keep me from sailing. I don’t expect we will ever pay for the big package. We are now Diamond and very much look forward to the four included drinks per day, but before that, I just knew that I would be spending hundreds per cruise on alcohol. I’ve kind of given up on complaining about it and just pay the crazy prices.

By the time you are done with class, it is right around lunchtime, so it makes sense just to stay and eat it.

Even though I gripe about it, we still have amazing cruises with Royal Caribbean. All cruise lines and ships have their pluses and minuses. Late night food options are one of the minuses. They more than make up for it many other areas.

That’s one gripe I have with royal Caribbean and most of their ships. Very limited late night food options. You can get room service for eight dollars with unlimited food, but then again, you are waiting in your room rather than out and about.

You could still eat it there afterwards though, right?

Pure assumptions and suppositions, and yeah, I guess you told me. 😂 Requests have been been common practice for over a decade. This is nothing new. Sure, they might stop taking requests but I doubt it. Doesn’t hurt to ask. Now we can debate asking for specific tables, or being overly particular, but simple requests are just that, simple requests. I’d rather have it this way than take zero requests beforehand. Would hate to get on the ship and wait in a massive line at the MDR on embarkation day with everyone trying to get accommodated with their table requests. People aren’t going to stop making table requests so I’d rather have them work on it during their slow times of the day beforehand than to slam them on embarkation day.

If it was the March 19th sailing my son and Mother in law were possibly there with you. Here was their combined takeaway container

You get to make and eat your own food and nobody shares it. If you have other friends or family on the cruise with you, you can share it with them afterwards but you did not share it with other people in the sushi class.

Yeah I didn’t request a certain table, just a table for 9 and a table for 7 preferably near each other and away from the entrance of the MDR

Probably “eel sauce”. Eel Sauce is a traditional Japanese condiment made from a mixture of soy sauce, sake and mirin. It basically tastes like a thicker soy sauce with a bit of sweetness. Very tasty

👍🏼Yeah, that should work. How big is your party? We are all linked also. Made sure of that when we all booked our cruise. We have a very large party this time, 16 of us, so they cannot provide one table that large. I think the biggest table I have seen is 10. So I wanted to help guide them for the two table sizes that would work best for us, which is 9 and 7.

Hmm, never thought of that. I’ve always included our booking numbers and names. Maybe room numbers are easier for them to address. Maybe it doesn’t matter . Anyone know? I will probably resend the email again next week with room numbers as well.

We've done it at least 3 times. It's very worth it IMO, especially considering you get to eat what you make. It's fun to learn and also enough to feed at least two people.

Yeah, that’s what I thought and what I have done on my last number of cruises, but the email confused me with the timing mentioned in the response. Thanks for the reply. Do you know of a specific phone number to call for special requests?

I sent an email for a table request for our upcoming Alaskan cruise on the Quantum July 10, 2023. This was the auto reply. "Please be advised, requests that do not have the ship and sail date in the subject line cannot be processed. Non group requests will be processed 30 days before departure. Table assignments can be found on your Seapass card received at check in at your port of departure." We did include the ship and sail date in the subject line, so all set there. We are all traditional early seating. I found this part interesting: "Non group requests will be processed 30 days before departure." We are not a "group" sailing by Royal's definition, so I'm wondering if I should have sent the response prior to that 30 day mark? I sent in the request 19 days prior to our sailing which means there is the current sailing, followed by two more full sailings before ours. I didn't want to send the request too early in fear of it getting lost or being irrelevant because it was too far ahead. I just hope we aren't too late. We have a large group of 16 immediate family members, with 6 booking numbers. I requested a table of 9 and a table of 7 and gave an example of which bookings could go with each table. Hopefully they are able to accommodate. Since this is a close family group we really don't want to be seated with strangers, and would rather sit with our family. Anyway, thought you all might be interested since I've never received this response before. We'll see what happens once we board and have our table numbers. Hope this all works out as this truly is a once in a lifetime for our group, which is convening from all across the country to make this happen.

You will get no elevator noise, and probably less passenger noise in those cabins versus ones that are in most locations on the ship. I would be good with them.

Can celebrity accommodate her? With the reciprocal benefits celebrity might be a better choice. When researching celebrity versus princess, I would (and have) certainly choose Celebrity.

For that particular week, maybe choose a cruise line that caters more to adults like Celebrity, Princess, or Holland America? We've sailed the week before Christmas on NCL (which caters to pretty much the exact same crowd as Royal) and didn't notice an abundance of kids. Not at all. Felt like most of the other cruises we do, however we are sailing more and more now in the summer months (when kids are not in school)