reedl

On the form here: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cuba/content/uploads/2017/04/Cuba.Guest_.Cert_.Final_.pdf What have people been selecting?

Or do you need to fill this form out?

I always have a rental car and stay in the Orlando area before cruises. The drive from Orlando to the port is not long, and then I drop the car off at the rental location near the port.

A quick suggestion. Drop your luggage and family off at the port and then return the car. That way it is just you taking the shuttle back to the port. It is much easier than carrying your luggage on the shuttle.

It is usually in the large multi language book in one of the drawers.

Or on newer ships, you can order on the TV.

We generally cruise about 3 times each year, and have done for many years.

It just seems that most future cruises have doubled in price from last year.

What is going on here, are the cruise lines trying to get rid of us oldies and just looking for new money!!. We think that they are taking a big risk.

Any thoughts on this subject would be most appreciated

 

Chris & Pete

The cruise lines can charge whatever they want. You can decide to pay that if you want.

If they cannot sell the ship out at the price they are charging, they will lower the price. If they do sell the ship out at that price, the price will not go down.

They are a for profit company, not a charity. They have no interest in giving away anything for less money than they can extract from everyone.

If they could charge $5000 a day for a cruise and people would pay it, then they would charge that amount.

It always amazes me when people complain about the price of something and compare what they paid for the service/item previously and wonder why the price went up.

We should get ours on this cruise next week. Plan to give it to the DH who is turning 18 this cruise and will be on her own as a Diamond member.

Darling Husband will be 18? Do you mean DD?

Most devices do pretty much constant data connectivity. Things like getting email, and WiFi Calling have heartbeats which transmit data on a regular basis.

So I would not worry about the disconnecting issue.

To test WiFi calling, set your phone to airplane mode, and then re-enable WiFi when you are home. After you have connected to your local access point, you should be able to make and receive calls. If that works, then you can use voom to do the same.

Just show up at 2pm like we do and your on in 15 minutes. No old hags and screaming children just a smooth transition!

Wait a minute. Aren't those 'old hags and screaming children' going to be on the ship for the entire cruise?

Or do you lock yourself in your cabin for the entire cruise?

You do NOT need to print anything....you don't even NEED to do the online check in....it's "busy work"...that's all.

Do you absolutely HAVE to print the Setsail pass? No. It is not required. But if you do not print it, it adds a few minutes to the check in process.

Now imagine if everyone did not print it out and there were 20 people in line in front of you. That extra 5 minutes could add significant time to the check in process. Imagine you are standing in the waiting area, and you can see the beautiful ship, but it will take you longer to actually board.

I just print it. It makes things smoother and easier.

Do not discount the idea of renting a car. Car rentals in FLL are not expensive, and then you can sightsee and see a lot more than what is located near your hotel.

You can even rent two cars. One for before the cruise and one after.

Pick up the car at the airport, and drop off near the port, or use Alamo which has a free shuttle to and from the port.

Have you checked the phone application called "Whats Ap". I learned of it from an Italian couple visiting the US. You can call anywhere in the world without a special sim card, as long as the other person also has Whats Ap installed in their cell phone, no roaming or extra costs.

But you need some sort of internet connection to use any of these apps.

There is nothing 'magical' about these apps.

So either way you end of paying. On the ship you would need to purchase the internet package, and in port, you need to find a Wifi access point that is not overloaded.

If you find yourself travelling a lot, I would recommend either tMobile, or Google Fi. Both have very good roaming agreements. I have a Fi phone which charges $10 a gig in about 145 countries. It does not work on the ship, but works in every port.

Maybe the Captain had to use the "little captain's room"?

:)

Here is what I usually do. I do not use the spreadsheet or anything like that. When we book a vacation I use a large mailing envelope (think 9" by 12" envelope) into which I put everything we will NEED for the vacation. Things like passports, tickets, luggage tags, etc. That stays in one place and a few weeks before we leave I check to make sure everything we need is in the envelope. When I check the envelope, I also pack the daily pill containers with medicines. That goes either into the envelope, or my carry on if it is on the dining room table.

On the day before we leave, I transfer that envelope to my carry-on directly. I do not remove anything.

As has been posted by others here in this thread, all I really NEED is documentation, credit card, boarding passes, etc. I can purchase clothes, food, and pretty much anything else I need.

But another thing to think about having is a passport card. You can board a ship with just that, and it stays in your wallet as it is the size of a credit card. That would have made the whole forgetting the passport issue in the OP's post a total non-issue.

Anyone who has your card can get an approval to be able to charge your card at any time. This is common, and happens all the time. For example in the United States, when you pump your own gas and use the card reader on the pump, it gets an approval for $100 or so so that you can pump up to $100 of gas into your car.

After you finish the transaction, there is a second step which finalizes the transaction to actually charge you the amount that you purchased. The approval is typically removed at that point.

With credit cards, unless you are near your limit, there is no problem with this as it would lower your available credit, but that is usually not an issue. If a merchant gets an approval, unless it is finalized, the approval drops off within a week or so.

OTOH with Debit cards, if you get an approval, the amount of the approval is no longer available to you in your checking account. This is why I never use a debit card for purchases.

Every cruise I have been on, the cruise line gets approvals at the end of the day for the amount that you owe them.

An interesting thing has happened to me. I bought some tires at Sam's Club here in the States. I also paid for the installation when I purchased the tires, but their system cannot handle that so every six months I get a $60 authorization on my credit card even though I am never charged. I have tried to get Sam's to stop doing this, but their system is messed up. I cannot dispute it because it is not a charge, only an authorization.

So, what you are describing is not a scam at all.

As long as you were charged the correct amount, then everything is fine.

On my early November Serenade cruise, the craps table had a lower limit of $5. But the single odds (unless you put $25 on the pass line) was the real killer.

I would have made a bunch more money if they had 3-5 X odds.

HI all!

 

Hlitner ~ thanks for that info. I hope I find that line in October. I've used my NEXUS card twice & am so glad I have one, it really cut down the waiting in line at Toronto airport, both going & coming back.

Hope it helps in FLL & Miami ports too.

 

~ Jo ~ :)

I do not know if the Nexus card will help at all in Florida. The Nexus card is for US <-> Canada transport. I have gotten conflicting information about whether it is also good for global entry in the rest of the US.

Some people have told me that it works for all Global Entry. Others have said it only works for Us <-> Canada travel.

I leave the water on, the hot water furnace needs water to heat the house.:(

if you have baseboard heat which recirculates the water, then you can usually turn off the water supply for a short period of time since the system will not consume that much water.

A good friend of mine has multiple houses, and one of them is on Cape Cod. When the house was built about 15 years ago, he put in multiple tankless water heaters. They work well since the only heat when water is needed.

About 10 years ago, we had a very windy and cold storm hit Cape Cod which resulted in about 2 feet of wet snow which is not common for the Cape. Anyways, what happened is that one of the tankless water heaters was in a upstair attic and the cold air came in through the exhaust pipe and froze the water in the heater which resulted in the water heater leaking water.

It ran for probably a week (since he was not at the house for two weeks).

The total damage was in excess of $600,000. There was two feet of water in a basement that was at least 50 feet by 100 feet big. That is a LOT of water.

He installed a cool device which turned off the water when the alarm is turned on. The other thing he also did was to install multiple water sensors near every water heater, and device that uses water (washing machine, under the sink, etc.) and if it senses water, it turns off the water supply also.

 

Sent from my LGLS990 using Tapatalk

That is at Canobie Lake Park in New Hampshire. I recognize that building.

Something doesn't make sense here. Celebrity does not allow smoking in their casinos which are packed. Certainly every night and on sea days. They are owned by RCCL so the comparison should be easy for the suits to make. If X was losing money by not allowing smoking they would probably allow it.

Another thing, only 15% of Americans smoke. Let's say that of those half cruise on a regular basis. Are we to believe that 7% of the cruising population contribute enough to incremental profit to risk pissing off the other 93%?

This logic does not work. If 15% of Americans smoke, that means for every 100 Americans, 15 smoke. Therefore on a ship of 4000 people, 600 people should be smokers on average.

So the numbers would be on average 15% of the people on a ship would be smokers.

Of course, no one really knows if the people who cruise are representative of the general population. Also keep in mind that non Americans also cruise, where smoking is more prevalent.

It is National "Phone Us for a Free Cruise Day"..................

That was yesterday. :D

As to someone living paycheck to paycheck, using a online savings account (like Capital One 360) is a great idea since you can put money into it every month to gather the amount needed for the cruise. Just have the commitment to not take money out of that account.

I use a Capital One 360 savings account to put the money into for my upcoming cruise when I book the cruise. Given that some of my cruises are very expensive, I always transfer into the account (and only into) the amount I need to each month to have enough to pay for the cruise on final payment date.

Then I pay the cruise with a credit card, and a couple of days before I need to pay the card, I transfer the money from Capital One to my checking account to pay the credit card.

This way, I keep the money and typically (depending on the closing date of the credit card, and the final payment date of the cruise), have my money in my account at least 70 days before departure, and can have it at most 40 days before departure. This is done when the closing date of the card is the day before you have to make the final payment. You then have 20 days to pay the card after the 30 days you would wait until the card closes for the next month. On my last cruise for example, the closing date on my card was the 5th. The final payment was on the 6th, so the amount was not put onto the statement until 29 days after final payment, and I had an additional 20 days after that to pay the card. That gave me 49 days after final payment before I had to send the money somewhere.

Since my last cruise was $8000, I made about $50 on the interest. Not a lot of money, but it was $50 I did not have.

Thank you Steven Wright

On my last Allure cruise in 2013, smoking was allowed, and it was awful. Luckily my last two cruises in balconies did not have any smokers so I did not have to do anything.

But had this happened to me (even without the health issues), I would be asking for the Hotel director after the second time of nothing happening.

I would be quoting to them the smoking policy that is on the website that says this:

Smoking is not permitted inside any stateroom and any stateroom balcony. This applies to all stateroom categories onboard. If a guest is in violation of this stateroom policy, a cleaning fee of $250 USD will be applied to their SeaPass® account and may be subject to further action pursuant to the "Consequences Section" of the Guest Conduct Policy.

Unless the smoking stops in the first couple days, I would go up the chain of command until it stops.

First timers will not be in the gold line. The gold line is for repeat cruisers.

But I would not worry about it. The check in process in Lauderdale is quite good, and will move quickly no matter which line you are in.