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A new Royal ship takes about 12 - 18 months to build. They have been talking about Discovery in broad terms for years so I suspect the design is mostly complete. I think I first heard about the Discovery project in 2022 and Michael Bayley even mentioned a smaller ship concept on the 2019 Presidents Cruise. If they formally announce it later this year, 2027 is feasible. If not, I agree it will be later.

The Radiance Class ships are beginning to have serious mechanical issues that have caused cancelled and shortened cruises. IN March we had a cruise on Brilliance to Vanuatu and New Caledonia cut short due to an engine problem. Radiance in Alaska had a big propulsion issue that caused a cruise to be cancelled and everyone to be sent home. I am sure the bad publicity and expense are things they want to avoid in the future. The ships are not getting any younger and refurbishing them at this point is probably just throwing good money after bad. I suspect that the first Discovery won't sail until 2027 or 2028 and after that they may build at most one every year. This is going to play out over time and they will squeeze every penny out of their older ships between now and then.

It is so sad to hear about Shelton's passing. He was a great guy and we cruised with him and Leslie a number of times. He was always fun and quite the character. RIP Shelton. Condolences to his family and friends.

Could very well be the case but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The only reason we are hanging on to our 20 Oct 25 and 27 Oct 25 Voyager bookings is waiting for cancellation and hopefully some meager OBC that we can apply to the Odyssey cruises we replaced them with!

Yep!

The Fall 2026 port schedule I quoted shows 6 and 8 night gaps between LA stops. What am I missing? Edit: I went back and saw what I am missing. Oh well, it ain’t happening the way I thought it would.

It is nice to see Quantum settling into alternating 6 and 8 night cruises in the Fall of 2026. The Quantum itineraries out of LA starting in Fall of 2025 are a horrible kluge of short sailings with no imagination at all. I wonder what the ports may be for the 8 night sailings?

I wonder if they might replace a few cruises with revenue cruises around Africa to Dubai like the Serenade is doing this year?

If your cruise left on a Sunday (as most do from Galveston) where did you drop off the car? All the car rental companies in Galveston seem to be closed on Sundays.

21 nights?! Our April 2024 TP cruise on Ovation is only 18 nights. Must be the addition of Picton and Wellington to the itinerary.

Great memories for sure. Hopefully our paths will cross on a cruise again before too long! I think the extra 10 days they talk about is not how long it takes to go around Africa. It is the additional time that going around Africa adds to a trip to Northern Europe or North America. Even with no port stops it takes about 25 days at 23 knots to go from Dubai to Athens around Africa. It only takes about 8 days to go from Dubai to Athens via the Suez with no port stops at the same speed. There are a couple of websites that will calculate port to port times based on ship speed. In any case it will be interesting to see what happens. Hopefully they don’t have to change anything but that is looking less likely as each day passes.

I am also engaging in speculation here. The UWC gets to Singapore on April 24. If they decide to skip all of the Middle East and most of the Eastern Med, they could start a new itinerary from Singapore and resume the original itinerary in Italy (probably Venice) on June 19th. That would give them 56 days to get from Singapore to Venice going around Africa. I saw scheduled cruises by other companies that go from Singapore to Cape Town that last 32 days including many port stops. A cruise from Cape Town to Lisbon is about 24 days also with many stops. By cutting a few ports and not stopping in Lisbon, they could probably make it to Venice in 56 days. The biggest difficulty would be Royal's total lack of any relationships at the new ports. Just arranging shore excursions would be a major undertaking for Royal not to mention resupply and fueling. Not sure if Royal can pull it off or not. This would be an amazing alternate itinerary though. People on segments would need to pick up the ship at different ports such as Cape Town. The plus is that although it is a major disruption, it does not cause an interruption of the UWC.

We are booked on both Anthem cruises. They should be moved into my TA's groups in January. My TA (same as MuyBueno's) seems confident there will be group pricing for both legs. Even if they are pulled back for one leg, we are booked at the prevailing refundable price in a cabin we want which should be OK.

In this case, the refundable deposit fares through my TA are a few hundred dollars less per cabin than the nonrefundable deposit fares available from Royal for the same balcony category. If you booked refundable deposit fares directly through Royal, you can always transfer your bookings into a TA's group as long as they still have group space in the category you booked.

We will book the Anthem B2B as soon as my TA gets their group pricing straightened out!

For those who are interested in Celebrity deployments, there is a CC thread here: Not nearly as good as this thread! 😁

Ok, thanks for the information. Perhaps it is only my TAs policy?

1) the booking must be refundable to move it into a group. 2) if outside the 30 day window you can cancel and rebook in the group.

Interesting because Voyager's already released schedule has it in Rome until Nov. 3rd, 2025. Could it be repositioning to Australia via the Suez Canal?

When will the EB Panama Canal cruises be released for Fall 2025?

We are also booked on the 4/8/25 Millennium cruise but would jump ship in an instant if a suitable sequence of Anthem cruises came out that get us back to North America! Fingers crossed! 🤞

On the President’s Cruise in the Q&A session, Michael Bayley was asked if they ever might have some sort of private island where cruises from Galveston could stop. In response, he gave a knowing smile and said “Very Interesting, what a great idea!” Of course that means something is in the works. Later in the cruise we had Royal Day which was a port takeover party in Costa Maya. The scuttlebut is that Royal is working some sort of deal with Costa Maya to create a Labadee like facility. Watch this space. This could certainly make Galveston sailings more popular, especially for families and would help justify keeping larger ships sailing from there.

Does anyone know if Radiance, Jewel, or Brilliance have Pickleball? Apparently, Serenade does so it is possible.

You can take a Voyager class ship from Florida. Don't take the only Royal ship on the west coast! 😂