Pratique

Maybe if you hustle. It took us more like 10 minutes leisurely walk. It was too hot to hustle.

Breakfast in Windjammer has been decent at least for the basic run of the mill offerings. Nothing exciting it’s just breakfast.

Yes they are still on the ship.

Royal seemed to abandon the exterior aesthetic when they gave in and added water slides to their ships. I suppose relatively few people care much about how the ship looks from afar. But I say the same about automotive design. Cars have gotten pretty ugly but they seem to sell just fine Pontiac Aztec being a notable exception. I’m having a difficult time getting excited about Icon. I’m sure it will be a hit though.

My earlier recommendation to avoid the Disney excursion stands unless you really understand what you’re getting into. We are on Oasis out of Cape Liberty and today took the bus to WDW from Port Canaveral knowing full well what to expect. And it went pretty much as expected. The ship arrived at 1:00 and the gangway opened at 1:30. The tour bus left at 2:15 and arrived at the TTC at 3:20 with some usual I-4 traffic that is as bad as it was when I first lived there 33 years ago. Walked to the Poly and waited 15 minutes for the Disney bus. The bus then stops at the Grand Floridian and it took almost half an hour to get to Disney Springs including a short delay unloading a wheelchair guest from the bus. It’s a long ride with long traffic signals on the dedicated bus lanes. So we got there at about 4:25 and had to be back to the bus by 7:00 because for some reason all aboard was at 8:30 (the original itinerary had us departing at 10:00 instead of 9:00 which cut an hour off the excursion). We ate dinner at STK Orlando which was wicked expensive but very good although there was a DJ blasting music so table conversation was out of the question. Recommended for the food but not for the price or the noise level at 4:30 pm on a Sunday afternoon setting off the environmental noise alert on my Apple Watch. We got to the bus stop at Disney Springs at 6:15 and the bus to the Poly left at 6:35. We got back to the tour bus at 7:02 so technically we were two minutes late but we waited for stragglers who arrived at 7:15. With traffic and torrential rain we got back to the ship at 8:35 five minutes after all aboard. They held us in the terminal for 10 minutes waiting for the rain to ease up but still got soaked running to the gangway. Not surprisingly a few folks were anxious about getting back late and worried that the ship would leave without us. I just put my AirPods on and enjoyed the ride. So all in all we had an hour and 45 minutes at Disney Springs but we were gone for six hours and 15 minutes. Do the math and make the call but you have been warned. Even under the best conditions you’ll only have a few hours at Disney. It’s 120 miles round trip and that’s not going to change.

FWIW we went to Portside BBQ last night (formal night) and basically had the entire place to ourselves. With live entertainment. It was great.

Thanks for this review, very nicely written. Just curious why you chose to sail out of New York instead of Florida or Texas. We chose Oasis out of Cape Liberty because we can avoid flying there and we don’t really care where the ship sails (just get me on the water and I’m good). But the itinerary is not great and if we had to fly to the port then I probably wouldn’t choose this itinerary especially with the short stop in Florida.

One must have low expectations and then use the booze to lower them even more.

I hear you. At home when my wife asks me what to get for lunch I always say Windjammer and she rolls her eyes.

Yes but why would Royal want to build smaller ships if the big ones are doing so well?

Your neighbors probably didn’t have enough to drink.

Okay then, do kids and multigenerational families want a smaller ship? Where is the market for Royal to do that and be distinctive from NCL etc.?

Why wouldn’t they just use Celebrity as the platform for this? It seems more logical to me.

Maybe I’m not thinking creatively enough but I wonder how they could get a mega ship experience in a midsize ship. Or if that even makes sense? These ships with the outdoor venues really only work in warm climates and quite frankly people who prefer a smaller ship don’t like the mega ship experience.

They are still rebuilding from the pandemic shutdown. I think they lost a lot of experienced folks. Whatever the reason this guy with 10 years experience seemed concerned.

We are onboard with you and completely concur on the selection at Windjammer, which is our preference for lunch. Lackluster is a good description. As usual the crew are trying to encourage people to go to other lunch venues including of course the up-charge ones. Maybe it's a conspiracy, make the food lackluster to get us to spend more on the specialty food lol. But otherwise the crew have been excellent so far. Although the Captain's jokes are pretty weak. 🙂 We only checked one bag at the curb and by 5:30 our stateroom attendant said he couldn't find it anywhere including Security, so he sent me down to Guest Services where they told me bags were delayed due to the rain. Our attendant said they were delayed due to the short turnaround and early departure. Then my wife calls me and says the bag arrived. The cabin tag fell off and they figured it out from the name on the other tag on the bag. Lesson learned is to never staple the paper tag to the bag. I need to get those plastic holders.

IMHO Royal is not interested in the small cruise ship market. They will leave that to lines like Margaritaville at Sea. Royal is shooting for the moon on the megaships and the handful of itineraries that they can sail at full capacity year round. Last night we were chatting with our server onboard Oasis who has been with Royal for 10 years. He said that he is concerned about how Royal is going to staff all of these new megaships with two to three thousand-plus crew per sailing. He thinks they need at least 50% experienced staff on a given sailing to meet the minimum service levels, so they will need to poach crew from other ships while they train up the new recruits. I could sense the apprehension in his voice about how well that is (or isn't) going to turn out. Time will tell whether Royal can pull it off and what the end result will be for the rest of us.

Following this thread b/c I am getting on this cruise this Friday. I will be bringing an Apple Watch for the first time and it appears that using indoor workouts instead of outdoor workouts will avoid the skewing caused by GPS when the ship is moving. I will give it a try.

Agreed from my point of view but not all suites are created equal in Royal's eyes. There are suites and then there are Royal Suite Class suites on the Oasis/Quantum class ships. Apparently free internet is a product differentiator. But don't complain too loudly otherwise they might make internet an upcharge for every suite across the fleet except maybe Star Class.

That's fine if you're done with me. These are the benefits I'm referring to, just to be clear. Anything else is frosting on the cake. https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/what-are-the-benefits-of-royal-suite-class

If a perk on a cruise isn't tangible, then in what way is it a benefit? If one of the perks is a free drink, then yes I expect to be able to hold the drink in my hand. If one of the perks is reserved seating at a show, then yes I expect to be able to sit in that seat. Consider yourself fortunate that the CK and SL have never been so crowded for you to the point where there was nowhere to sit. I have not been so fortunate.

The horse has been out of the barn for about 10 pages now.

Yes, and I think this is a natural human condition. I worked at Walt Disney World in the 90s and 2000s. Back in the 90s just before Christmas they would close the Magic Kingdom to day guests at 6:00 pm and then reopen it exclusively for employees and their families. At first they did this for three nights to accommodate everyone, then reduced it to one night, and then eventually to zero nights. Instead, they gave out passes so the employees and their families could visit the parks with the day guests. Then they started putting date restrictions on the passes so they could only be used during the "off-season." As the years went by, the perks disappeared and each time there were complaints followed by acceptance and rationalization. Win for the company, loss for the employees, but life goes on and memories are short.

I will be the first to admit to having been fooled. Once I was chasing a benefit for free burritos. I had to eat a lot of burritos. But the free ones were especially enjoyable. Until the company realized that they were giving out too much free food. It was nice while it lasted.

I appreciate what you are saying and I don't begrudge you for seeking the benefits. However, you say you are not a class envy type of person and then immediately describe yourself as a class envy type of person. I have learned through experience that chasing benefits is a fool's errand. I have spent a lot of money to achieve a benefit just to see the benefit watered down or eliminated - or granted to others who have spent less than I did under some special promotion - leaving myself to ask whether it was worth chasing the benefit in the first place. I am at a certain tier on one airline that affords me complimentary upgrades when available. But the upgrade is only available maybe once out of every eight or 10 flights, so the benefit is not worth much. It's nice when I get it but I don't choose to fly this airline over another for that benefit because it is not valuable. Not worth chasing. Royal Caribbean calls the lounge for suite guests the "suite lounge," which implies it is exclusive to suite guests, but it is not. They should call it something else. But whatever they call it, it is a watered down benefit to me. I will enjoy it if and when I can, but I don't book a suite for the lounge benefit. I book it for the suite, because that has value to me. I can stew about the overcrowding the lounge but it is not something worth wasting too much energy on. If other people are getting better benefits than me, for whatever reason, so be it. The perks are supposed to be above and beyond the core product. The core product for a suite guest includes access to the suite lounge but it is a perk for the lounge to be exclusive to suite guests. And going back to the topic, the deposits for most suites above JS will now be higher. What I get out of that deal is a big fat zero. It is not for my benefit at all. Royal will charge whatever the market will bear for the cabin, and people will still cancel at the last minute regardless of how high the deposit is. The real way to curb this practice is to make the entire fare due at booking and non-refundable. We may think that is a crazy idea but I don't think it is. When they reduced housekeeping in the main cabins to once a day, lots of people came here to rationalize that the second visit was not worth anything to them or that it somehow keeps fares lower. So if someday suites become due in full on the day of booking and non-refundable, someone will come here to rationalize how that is just fine with them too.