harryfat1

My sister lives in San Mateo do we park car at her house and my brother in law drops us off

Thank you fir your kind words. Happy Holidays to you as well. Sometimes I wonder why we travel during the holidays when it's expensive and crowded but with kids in college, their break time is limited to next week.

Thanks. Happy Holidays to you as well. SFO typically has the best prices and the most number of direct flights to FLL so we continue to fly from here. It's the Holidays and thr flight is 100% full. Will get at max 5 house of sleep in the direct flight. Probably less than 4 hours realistically. Arriving in FLL for breakfast and hopefully a nap. Part of the glamor of traveling nobody talks about...

At SFO now waiting for the red eye to FLL for the cruise this weekend.

That's interesting as many of the YouTube videos I have watched online on the Curacao port area have the ships tied up on the port side. Wonder if that's the Oasis class ship exception? We are on the port side of the Odyssey. Was hoping to see the ship approach the port from our side of the ship or else I have to drag my lazy buns to the top deck on the starboard side to take pictures of the mooring line for the club.

Packing for the Odyssey cruise this weekend. Got more than enough Christmas themed items. Ho, Ho, Ho Glowing Christmas rings for the dance parties onboard...

Mark, As they say in the Caribbean - “YOU DE MON” in setting more track and field records daily. Maybe the Captain will acknowledge your accomplishments at the next daily noon time briefing from the bridge as RCI is honored to have a world-class athlete in you sailing with them. Looks like you guys are doing the steady 18 knots daily southbound. I think the Odyssey will probably be traveling at a similar speed as well as we are all scheduled to be docking at 8 AM on day 4 (be it Aruba or Curacao) so no need to speed up. The difference in the speed might be in the northbound sailing as the Odyssey is leaving Aruba at 10 but getting to Labadee earlier. Maybe it has to do with Aruba being more west and closer to Labadee compared to Curacao and that accounts for the 4-hour difference in departure time and 1-hour difference in arrival time. Odyssey: Symphony:

Good cruising speed at 18 knots. Not sure if I'm more impressed that you took this picture at 6:30 in the morning or doing the 4 minute mile without breaking a sweat...🤪

Cool info. Sorry to bother you on busy embarkation with such trivial question. Have a great cruise and we will share info when we both get back.

Thanks, Mark. After I compared the two ship's itinerary, I became curious on why the Symphony seems to be spending less time in port than the Odyssey and arriving at the next port at a slightly delayed time and coming back to Florida 45 minutes later even though both ships are leaving Labadee the same time. If you get a chance, take some pictures of the cruise map while on board to see how fast the ship is sailing and I'll do the same for my cruise and we'll compare notes afterwards in this non scientific comparison. I'm wondering if RCI is slowing down the Oasis class ships compared to others due to its size and less fuel consumption in order to save money.

Have a wonderful cruise. We will be on the Odyssey sailing next weekend with a similar 8-day itinerary except we go to Curacao first it's from 8 AM to 8 PM and then Aruba is 8 AM to 10 PM. Labadee is from 7 AM to 5 PM (not that I'll be getting off the ship at 7 AM)... I would rather go to Perfect Day myself as I have never been there but for whatever reason, our sailing is the one exception of the Odyssey sailing that is going to Labadee. All other sailings are going to Perfect Day for the next 4 months...

I have AT&T Fiber Optics for my Internet Provider as we only have AT&T or Comcast as the two top ISP in our area. Verizon Home Internet is supposed to be coming soon to many cities in the bay area but we'll see how fast they expand out. You can use any ISP with YouTube TV. If you are happy with your ISP, no need to switch. Here's an article comparing YouTube TV with Hulu+ as they are the top 2 Streaming TV services: https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/youtube-tv-vs-hulu-live-tv I'm paying $70/month for 1 Gig speed and that includes a subscription to HBO (or Max as it's now called). If I switch to Comcast and downgrade to a lower speed, I could potentially save some money but Comcast has iffy reliability issues out here, and since we rely on the Internet to work from home, a good ISP is key to our work. On a side note - many employers in California are now required to reimburse/subsidize employees working from home in using their home Internet/cell phone for work purposes. The standard price I'm seeing is $25 to $50/month reimbursement from employers for WFH folks. https://calemploymentlawupdate.proskauer.com/2023/07/court-of-appeal-clarifies-employers-expense-reimbursement-obligations-for-pandemic-related-remote-work/ I'm not a baseball fan so I don't know about MLB network. My son watches the SF Giants on NBC Sports Bay Area Network so it will cover the local sports teams but maybe not all National teams.

Add me to the list of people who like YouTube TV. I used to have Cable TV, then moved to Dish and the ATT Uverse, and now YouTube TV for the past 2 years. You can go to their website and drop in your zip code and it will list all the channels you are eligible to receive for your area. They typically have all the major networks like ABC/CBS/FOX/NBC/PBS as well as a few other local channels. YouTube TV gives you around a week of free trial period to try it out for free. So if the channel list is acceptable, you can sign up for a one-week trial period to see if you like it. Besides the advantages others have listed, I also want to point few more in case others are interested: 1 – It’s $73/month out the door. No taxes or no additional DVR fee or regional sports add-on fee or the “we are greedy and want to charge you more just because we don't like you” fee. So if you have multiple TVs and want to watch TV at various places, no additional charges setup box in each room. $73 out the door 2 – My son is in college a few hundred miles away but he can access the same account as ours remotely and he can watch TV there without having to pay for his TV fee. Especially if he wants to watch the local sports team on TV. He can’t get that from another region even if he gets TV services down there. He just needs to come “home” every 3 months to re-set his account to prevent people from sharing the accounts with their brother-in-law living out of state 3 – If you are late for a sports event that you are mildly interested in and don’t want to start from the beginning, there’s a feature that will show you the highlight plays of the game up to where you are so you don’t need to miss anything 4 - If you watch any old series in syndication, YouTube automatically records and sorts them by season by episode so you can watch them in order. For example, I’m a big Law and Order fan and it’s annoying to watch them live in syndication as they mix up the years but YouTube TV automatically records all the episodes (even from different stations) and drops them in the season order so I can just follow the story season by season similar to Netflix format And no, I don’t work for Google and don’t get any sales commissions…🤪

Yeah, some people's cabin doors are crazy elaborate. I will make a mental note to take pictures of the various Christmas decorations next month for my trip report. They are probably the same people going over the top in decorating their house/front yard for Christmas. Like the classic National Lampoon movie with Chevy Chase: We cruised out of LA during December in the past where we drove to the port but not like I'm going to pack anything major even if I had space in the car to toss in another carry-on. Don't have that much Christmas spirit. Bah hambug...🤪

Thanks. Yeah, we have been collecting souvenirs from all the places we gave visited but not all the places sell Christmas ornaments if you go during the summer period. So our alternative souvenir is getting a magnet instead. Almost everyone sells those. We have couple of magnetic boards in the home office and one board is already full from the magnets/pictures that's travel related. We are working on the second board now. Speaking of magnets, cheapo me bought a whole set of these wooden Christmas pieces. My wife didn't like them that much so we converted them to magnets by gluing a small magnet behind each one. The plan is to use them for the doors on the Holiday cruise next month so we can find our cabin door easily from the endless doors on these long hallway. Some people get really festive on their holiday door decorations from previous cruises but I don't want to fill up my precious luggage space for that. This is the cheapo dad's DIY Holiday door decor...

Put up the Christmas tree last night with my son back home from college for the Thanksgiving break. Few pictures of ornaments from our various travels. Trying to build our own fleet

We had both the '70s and '80s dance parties on the Navigator back in August. Maybe it depends on the demographics of each sailing as to how popular each party is. For our cruise, the 80’s dance party was DEAD. Hardly anyone participated. I think they had more people looking at the Invicta watch sale than the 80s party. Whereas the '70s party was packed. 80’s Dance Party. Not many people cared as they kept on walking 70’s Dance Party. Wall-to-wall people Personally, I hope the 70’s party lasts for a while longer as I’m looking forward to my grandkids pushing me to the Royal Promenade in a wheelchair and I will raise my arms up at the YMCA song and just be stuck there at the Y part as arthritis would lock my arms in the Y position. So my version of the song is Y-Y-Y-Y...🤪 There must still be enough boomers out there remembering the Disco era as Capital One just brought back Travolta for the Christmas commercial as dancing Santa for the Holidays:

Mark, I wonder how old is the data from the article? This can't be correct as many insurance companies have left the state from all the damages from wildfire in the past few years due to the drought and then last year's floods. The insurance rate hasn't gone down at all with more companies leaving high-risk areas like CA and FL. https://news.yahoo.com/why-insurance-companies-pulling-california-122420247.html The only reason I can think of rates being somewhat lower may be because the state created a bureaucratic office of Insurance Commissioner that regulates the insurance industry so that might have artificially kept the rates lower. If the insurance company wants to do business in the state, the commissioner's office has some pricing rules/restrictions that may have influenced the rate. But now if they just pull out and leave, that means less competition for the remaining few companies and that can't be good news on the rates...

Nancy, Since you are in Florida you can jump on a cruise much easier than most people who are thousands of miles away so there will always be another 8-day cruise for you in the near future even though April 2024 didn't work out. Thanks in advance for planning to read my upcoming trip report. We were just within the 45-day threshold of check-in. Being 9.2 anal, I set a reminder on the calendar and got registered at 9:20 PM (12:20 AM EST) of day 0/day 1 and the best time slot I was able to get was 11:30 AM. I'm not sure if there was a 10:30 or 11 AM time slot for our sailing. If there was, hundreds of people must type really fast to fill the earlier slots. By day 2 of the check-in schedule, the earliest time slot left is 1 PM. This means that less than a 2-day window, the 11:30, 12, and 12:30 time slots were all gobbled up. So be sure to set your calendar reminder to try to do it ASAP after midnight. Although from Biker and others posts that Port Everglades is not always very strict on adhering to the pre-assigned check-in time so all this early sign-up is meaningless. Maybe because Terminal 18 is super-sized for an Oasis-class ship and it can accommodate thousands of passengers in the waiting area. Unlike San Pedro that can at best seat 100 people inside. We also just pre-paid the gratuities before the price jumped to $18/pp as we were grandfathered. Actually, since our reservation was made in an earlier period, we were great-grandfathered only obligated to pay $14.50/pp at the earlier 2022 prices. Now the issue is what do we do with the OBC we have to the account as we have TA OBC as well as RCI shareholders OBC in both cabins. In the past, we used the credits to offset gratuities but now they are all prepaid, need to find uses for them. I also bought the photo package last year at the Black Friday sale at 50% off so no need to reserve money there. So now I'm looking to spend it on possibly reserving specialty restaurants with the current Black Friday promotions to use some of the credits. Harry, the cruiser formerly known as Cheapo Dad, is currently looking at YouTube videos for specialty restaurants to see which one is worth booking and spending extra $$$...

These are dreamland numbers for CA folks. The cheapest gas price today via the GasBuddy App is $4.25 at Costco gas. The most expensive within a 5-mile radius is $5.79. That's double the price out at SC. You have a great cruise as well. By the time you sail, I should be starting my Odyssey trip report by then. It takes me a week to come home to get back to routine and gather all the pictures/info before I start my typical spiel. What ship will you be sailing on and which itinerary?

Speaking of Shore Power, this cruise news came in via my news feed and it mentioned that Port Everglades won't have shore power until at least 2027 as they are still in the discovery phase. https://cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/2023/11/port-everglades-new-lines-new-ships-and-a-new-terminal/ A little surprised by that as many ports have already done the shore power setup (high cost aside). Think Seattle is at the forefront of US ports going more green: https://www.portseattle.org/page/cruise-ship-shore-power-facts I was actually going to look for the shore power line connection next month when I board the Odyssey at Port Everglades (and naturally take a picture) but that won't be necessary as it won't be ready for the next few years.

Wow. I’m surprised you remembered this little tidbit info from last month’s posting given you must read over 500 posts daily from other people’s comments and yet you came back to tag this thread from the news article. To quote Darth Vadar: “Impressive. Most Impressive”. Yeah, nowadays these ships are like the Hybrid cars people drive in that you can fuel it via gas or electricity. So if the math for someone to fill up their Prius is $50 at the gas station or $60 at the plug-in electric charger, what would they do? Most likely go with the cheapest solution and save $10 per tank to buy milk/eggs/bread/beer (not necessarily in that order). Companies are just trying to find the lowest cost option to make their costs look good for their shareholders. I wonder how things will change with more LNG ships being built as they are supposed to be cleaner emission? https://www.cruisehive.com/lng-cruise-ship-top-pros-and-cons/79671

As others have said, thanks for doing a cruise review. Being a fellow reviewer, I know how much effort it takes to do one of these. I especially appreciate you doing a live report as I could never do one. Too dumb to walk and chew gum concept. Being cheap, I have never dined in any specialty restaurant so it's good to read and see pictures of your experience. Best wishes on the surgery and recovery quickly as you need to run after the sea lions at Ensenada's Mooring Line next year...

On the Navigator sailing a couple of months ago, we ordered multiple courses to try out the new menu so we know what to order again for the December cruise. Our waiter brought them all out and when I took a picture of all the food (10 dishes for 6 of us), he asked that I not share it on social media as he would get in trouble with his boss. So I didn't post it on my trip report. He said he normally wouldn't bring both main courses at the same time but since we are dining as a family and sharing some of the food, he gave all the food to us at once. I guess it might depend on how anal the head waiter is on that particular ship if they don't think it looks good to plop all the food down at the same time versus you eating it one at a time. If you want your main courses to be served together, maybe you need to ask for it that way when ordering. If they won't serve both dishes, ask the head waiter to come over and explain why.

Haha, Thanks for the shoutout, Mark. I’m nowhere near the top bean counter on these forums as there are many people who are smarter than me but I was just anal enough to dig into the cost info from their SEC reporting. Impressive that you remembered the cost to the penny. How high is your anal scale score? Will be interested to see what the food cost is on an annual basis when they file their 10K in February of next year. By then they will have had the new 2023 menu for almost the entire year so we will see how much their average daily food cost is on a yearly basis. Speaking of food cost, the parent company RCCL just released earnings yesterday for Q3 2023, and to no one’s surprise, they beat Wall Street expectations with higher revenue and profits. We all know the higher revenue part whenever we try to book future cruises and see the sticker shock. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/royal-caribbean-rcl-tops-q3-124600149.html The strong trend continues with a 110% load factor (100% is double occupancy being filled) and higher passenger deposits for future cruises of $5B versus $4.2 from the prior year. That tells us don’t expect cruise prices to go down anytime soon with very strong demand heading into 2024. In the meantime, get up and get yourself a couple of donuts before they become just donut holes next year as their cost accounting team realized they can save more by just offering donut holes instead of the whole thing…🤪