daze6399

It's not great. Well.....not compared to the glitch from earlier this week. [emoji12]

Always worth two minutes to look and see if there's any savings though.

Glad to hear they fixed it. I'd love to see them do more with the vbalconies. There's a ton of potential there with very minimal extra cost. Having an option to see the compass on there would be pretty cool and provide some value.

Boss in St Thomas dropped about $15 pp. between that and the drinks packages we saved about $200 rebooking everything. Website worked fine, took about 10 mins. If only I could get my boss to agree to pay my salary at that rate. [emoji2]

#popcornthread.

I have absolutely no complaints about the weather so far.

 

Seems a bit cloudy. You should complain and see if you can get your next cruise free, settle for nothing less than a Grand Suite, 12 days minimum.

Both packages you mentioned cover specialty coffee but NOT Starbucks from branded locations, if cafe promenade is serving Starbucks beans that's covered but if you're on a ship with a Starbucks location that's not covered. If that makes any sense.

Thanks for including the kids compass'! Great info for those of us with kids, and often overlooked in reports. Great report so far can't wait to read the rest!

I did not realize this was a common thing. This happened to us at the end of our Navigator cruise in April 2016. I called the customer service number and we had a credit for the almost $25 in "mini-bar charges" a few days later. Is it a system glitch? Is Royal working on a fix. Surely, they notice this trend in the customer calls.

The current belief is that this is less of a "glitch" than an easy way to make $13 per cabin extra. It seems to be pretty frequent, and it's been going on for a while. Best policy is to watch the credit card the accounts are attached to, or keep a cash only account.

Martin is right. Almost all sushi in the US is frozen per FDA guidelines.

There are some hints of humor in the posts. [emoji12]I suspect shenanigans will be afoot. Following!

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They are open now. Call 866-562-7625 and it prompt #5 and then #2 for a new reservation. They can adjust your price.

Thanks for the tip, just saved $330. We had even made our final payment already.

Tip for those in an x/guarantee type cabin, you may have to roll the dice on your cabin assignment again to take advantage of the savings, if you've already been assigned. For us it was worth it for the savings.

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Excuse my ignorance as a 1st time cruiser:

 

 

 

I see it odd... so many people replied here saying that they experienced sea sickness (to different degrees), and still continue to book cruising...

 

 

 

Why? What is so great about it that it's worth the risk? And taking medicines during a vacation? what is so exciting about it?

It's a lot of fun. Seasickness if it happens is usually only for a short time. Most of the time it doesn't really affect me, I may feel a little off for a few hours but then it passes, only once in the three cruises that I've taken has it affected me badly enough that I was unable to do anything, and that was only for a few hours.

I have cruises booked on Carnival Vista and MSC Seaside and they are really not much cheaper than I paid on Harmony. I expected the Carnival cruise to be cheaper but in the end, not so much. These are all new ships so there is a premium but none are cheap. Also the MSC bogo sale is just as bad as RCI.

I will say that with a kid MSC pricing blows RCCL out of the water. I was seriously considering swapping for a week long cruise on the Davina for about 1/2 of what I paid for our upcoming cruise, other folks in our party had non refundable Air or I would have pushed hard to change ships. Our next trip will likely be on an MSC vessel.

...on a slight side note;

The Explorer ran out of Chocolate on Day 3 of a 10 day voyage. No milkshakes, no Moccachinos.... we had spent about $30 extra per day on the kids package to get cocktails and milkshakes. We should have just got the $10-$11 Soda package!

Whoo...I'd be pretty annoyed at that personally. Milkshakes are included in the N/A package?

Also...texting only works if you're texting via the internet and not SMS. Flip phones, most android text apps use SMS. imessage will send via the internet, but only to other imessage users. WhatsApp, telegram, slack are all internet based "texting" apps. If you're just opening up your SMS/Text app on an android device odds are you're using SMS and that will require cell connection and high rates. Just something to be aware of before you get on board.

Airlines can fly a bag to the correct location for "free" they just put it on the next flight. Cruise lines don't have that option.

 

 

 

Never would have thought $249 to ship a bag wonder how much it costs to ship a bag in the US.

 

 

 

I agree the royal should have told you ahead of time how much it costs to ship a bag.

Cost us something like $75 to have one shipped to us from SC to NC.

The wine packages are gone now. You can bring two bottles per stateroom onboard with you.

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I don't know for certain, but I don't think any of the cabins got added in dry dock.

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and I would usually say yes, ok I understand, but two shots of grey goose with mixers included is what pissed me off and when you don't even get told you are being charged extra or get a receipt to sign for the extra charge. Oh well, you can def get Belvedere tho, which i find comparable to greygoose.

Oh yeah. Their logic is flawed, at least to my way of thinking, but hey I don't run food and beverage for floating hotel so what do I know. [emoji2]

Thanks again for the menus, it's great info to have!

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It's stupid rating system. Essentially anything less than 10 is a failure. There was a thread on it not long ago, the ratings aren't really to find out what works and what doesn't but are designed to make the company look good in trade journals.

It's a little more complex but it doesn't appear to be a effective information gathering tool, rather more of a measuring contest between the lines.

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There are some family rooms that don't show up online also, not sure on price, but it may be worth calling direct to see what your options are.

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Great photos! Looking forward to following along.

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So a traditional cosmo is like a shot of vodka, some triple sec liqueur, cranberry juice, a splash of lime, right? I wonder if the triple sec throws it over, but still doesn't make sense since liqueurs are super cheap

 

 

 

Also, unrelated but most bars had several types of Redbull...blueberry, cranberry, yellow, a couple others. I'm really not a red bull fan but I did have a couple flavors.

 

 

 

Not saying you have to tip extra, but I gave a dollar for great service on the first day to a Solarium bartender and was amazed at the drinks and service I got after that, not that it was BAD before the 1.00 tip!!! I didn't tip him on the drinks after and the service was still remarkable. I bet because of the no receipts, they get no additional tips for great service and I wonder if their pay went up because of this. I know if I were a bartender and they took away receipts and my additional tips went down for great service, I wouldn't be pleased.

Depends on the brand of triple sec, but it's more than a mixer. To put it in perspective bar cost on a bottle of mix is usually under $2, triple sec is somewhere in the $6-10 range, absolut is around $15-20, Goose is $20-$25, taxes where they buy the liquor is another issue and that will jack the prices up of course, it's also going to depend on who their supplier is, some bars I've worked at bought liquor from the same guy that delivers the soda, some states you have to buy from the government so that will affect pricing as well, especially if the supplier doesn't carry a particular brand, not common with liquor but it does happen. For a company like RCI they're buying bottles at a rate that would make me an alcoholic if I could pay that price, unless they have to buy from the state ( I don't know what Florida law is, assuming they're restocking booze in FL)... so long answer, yes it's probably the triple sec.

And that is long enough to bore anyone.

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the whole thing doesn't make sense. I asked a bartender to explain stuff to me one day and left more confused than before I asked him. He basically said it's all very organized but it's SO not. You can order a 2 shots of greygoose with a mixer, but you can't get a single shot of greygoose in a cosmo included, because apparently, the second shot of greygoose is "half price" and the cosmo has one too many mixers? MAKES NO SENSE, that cosmo with 1 shot costs the cruise line LESS than the 2 shots of greygoose with 1 mixer and no bartender can convince me otherwise!

 

 

 

Anyhow, first world problems...lol :D

As a reformed bartender..... you never charge for mixes. It's a PITA and and at a rough cost of $0.025 per drink it's not worth the hassle. You make your money on the booze, always. If you have a complex drink that requires a specialized mixer (fresh muddled mint leaves for instance) you add a buck to that drink, but no bar I've ever seen adds cost in for a mixer. So yeah... that makes no sense.

Thanks for posting these menus! Did you see any other virgin drinks floating around? My kid is very excited about having cool drinks, but I'm not all for her being hyped up on Red Bull for a week. One addict in the house is enough.

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