TeeRick

We are from the US and cruising out of Southampton next year. In the past we have flown into London, stayed overnight, then booked transportation (car service) to Southampton. Kind of inconvenient and expensive. We are not into trains or public transportation. We are thinking of flying into Dublin, staying overnight, then taking a flight directly to Southampton airport. Then to the cruise port. Has anybody considered this option? Or actually done this? Southampton also has direct flights from a number of Scotland cities, Amsterdam and Paris. These are also options from the US. Thanks!

Book Aqua Class.

We have stayed in the aft corner Sky Suites on most of the S-Class ships at least once. One of our favorite type of cabins on Celebrity. Never experienced constant or even occasional vibrations when sailing. I recall once or twice a brief vibration when docking in port. Not a big deal at all.

Yes but there are far fewer Zeniths than Pins. And as far as I am aware, non-suite Zeniths do not use the suite restaurant (Luminae).

Not sure what ship you were on but 8 Pins is a lower number. Anyway the point I was trying to make was to have separation from the suite passengers and amenities to avoid all confusion. Unless of course the Pins are also in a suite.

We have been told on board that up to 50% of the time slots at specialty restaurants are not sold online pre-cruise for reasons that others have stated. On our last cruise we went right to Murano when we boarded and got the date and time we wanted no problem. In spite of it being listed as fully booked in our cruise planner.

IMO Royal should just keep the suite amenities for paying guests and have separate loyalty benefits for non-suite Pinnacles. Mixing the lounge and dining benefits and areas is often confusing as this thread details. Some suggestions: All Pinnacles on board should have their own loyalty lounge with free drinks 5-8 and no coupons required. This could be the current Crown Lounge. The D+ and D members could use it outside these hours. Or maybe newer ship designs could include a designated Pinnacle Lounge or Pinnacle Club with a Loyalty Ambassador/Concierge. The Pinnacle numbers and rate of increase will justify this. As well as their loyalty. Coastal Kitchen should be for suite guests only and the JS guests need better access (like Luminae on Celebrity for all level of suites). Pinnacles could get substantial Specialty Dining discounts, or get a number of free vouchers to Specialty Dining. As a D+ on Royal, I would be happy with these changes. I am ok with my 5 vouchers at any lounge and have no need for the HH in the Crown Lounge. I will use the suite areas like CK and SL when I sail suites and pay for them.

Not sure why anybody really cares about this one way or another.

Well you can probably tell that prices on everything on the cruise have gone way up. There are a lot of threads on the diminished quality of the food in the MDR. You can judge for yourself. Diamond plus gets you an extra drink voucher (5).

Really good price

That is the current price online for my Indy cruise next year. Thanks!

Looking for feedback on pricing (per night per person) for the UDP on ships without a Coastal Kitchen.

We will be in a suite next year in May on Indy for our 45th anniversary. Indy has no CK. So we are considering the UDP. At this point with a 15% discount offered the price is $553 pp. 12 night cruise. So that is $46 pp per night. Is that a good deal? Should I wait (cruise is a year away)? Can I get a D+ discount on top of this too? We usually do Oasis class on Royal with CK included so we have not considered this before. Thanks for any advice!

We did Symphony recently. Two shows are very popular and definitely are worth trying to get reservations early. The Comedy Show in the Attic. And the Aqua Show (Hiro). The others are less of a problem. We did very much enjoy the Ice Show (1977) and thought Hairspray was ok.

In Florida we always use Larry's Limos.

It might be a better response if you put smoking area on Grandeur in the thread title. Somebody on board might catch it and respond.

Advice. Try to look at the CK menu in advance of your cruise when it gets posted on the Royal app. There might be certain items that you might really enjoy (or not) on a given night. For us, they make an excellent Filet Mignon.

@Lionesss thanks so much for sharing your cruise with us!

We have not yet tried MSC Yacht Club but tempted to follow the crowd at some point. We have done a Crown Loft suite twice on Royal on Oasis-Class ships (Symphony and Harmony). It might be a consideration. They are in a small enclave deck (17) just with other CL suites. Just down the hall on 17 is the Coastal Kitchen suite restaurant and the Suite Lounge. But to get to the Suite Sun Deck you need to go down a deck and cross over.

Corner aft sky suites are the best! We have sailed these on several ships and at least once with the window equipment- which was really not an issue for us.

Have you tried the small, non-smoking casino on Symphony yet? We found the selection to be very limited in there. But the smoke in the main casino is bothersome to us.

We have sailed extensively on both Royal and Celebrity. Onboard experience is quite different for sure. We mainly do destination-type cruises on Celebrity. Longer itineraries, quieter, very few children. We have generally sailed in suites and the Celebrity Retreat product has dramatically increased prices and has decreased in value. So we are trying the Royal suite product again. It is less expensive overall since we have no need for a drink package with our D+ coupons and the included Suite Lounge drinks. On Celebrity this is all built into the pricing so our E+ benefits are not very valuable to us.

Here is my take on the situation. The vast majority of cruise passengers pay auto-gratuities and do not remove them. So the gratuity increases we have seen are not entirely due to other passengers removing theirs. But instead we are all paying the staff more as inflation has rocked the world since the pandemic. Yes I agree that in the US anyway that the "add a tip" line on every credit card transaction even for take-out has become quite unacceptable and it is built into the software systems. You can put aside the machine-made guilt and add zero.

We enjoyed CK recently on Symphony. The CK dinner menu has more choices than Luminae. The food and service was on par with Luminae IMO. Enjoy!

We were contacted by the Symphony suite concierges by email about a week before our cruise.