DukeASUGirl

Is it easy enough to just hop a glass-bottom boat at the pier, or do you need to book something like this in advance?

The 10-yr-old has a varied and adventurous palate. The soon-to-be teenager, not so much.

Seriously though, she eats just like a 4-yr-old. This is the girl who will be ordering grilled cheese for dinner every single night. Sigh.

Never mind! Answered my own question by doing a mock booking. She'll be considered an adult because it's age as of time of sailing. 😞 I had assumed so, but had hoped not.

I personally love them. I use the stick sunscreen for my face, and spray for my body unless I don't happen to have any spray available in which case I use the stick for both.

Worth mentioning that it's midnight Eastern time, so that means 9 pm on the West Coast. Seriously, stay up and get your pick of check-in times!

Long story short, but due to Hurricane Ian we had to cancel our cruise that was happening this week (we should be in St Thomas today). Royal is giving us Future Cruise Credit, but we won't have that for 30-45 days from this past weekend. My kids are currently 10 and 12, but my daughter will be 13 by the time we can take time off for this rebooked cruise. Which controls for Kids Sail Free, the age as of sailing or the age as of booking? We had originally booked on KSF and both kids were "kids" per Royal's rules. She'll be an "adult" by the time we cruise, but we'll definitely be booking the replacement cruise before she turns 13.

MyTime Dining on Harmony opens at 6:30. The earliest reservations available are 6:30. If you're not seeing anything before 7:15, it means that all the earlier reservations have already been booked by other people.

Because it's my vacation. When I go to dinner in a land-based restaurant, they don't randomly seat me with strangers. Sure, I get it. Some people like that. I don't. I don't mind eating with others, but I'd rather pick them. I'd rather make the acquaintance of someone on-board and then decide for ourselves that we want to go to dinner sometime, not just randomly get paired. Also, if I have show plans for immediately after dinner, I want to ensure I'll be able to get there. I've found that when you have random tablemates, things run slower. I don't want the waitstaff to hold off on serving the main course because someone is lingering over their appetizer. Bring it all out so we can eat and get on with our night.

Here you go! You have now heard a direct report from the person getting the exception. We called on Friday to cancel our cruise that should have left on Sunday. Future Cruise Credit in the full amount paid. The group on a social media company beginning with an F that is specifically for cruisers sailing on my date is full of other people who called and also got Future Cruise Credit. My daughter's skating coach is in the show on that ship, and she tells me that the ship is noticeably empty this week. Seems like lots of people took FCC.

We didn't. We got Future Cruise Credit in the amount we paid, and will rebook sometime this spring. No penalties.

We were supposed to be on a cruise ship right now, but Ian made it so we couldn't reliably get to Orlando in time to board a ship at Port Canaveral on Sunday. When we called Royal to explain the situation, they said they were offering Future Cruise Credit in our case. I don't know if that's because our sail date was just a couple of days after the airports reopened and there was still flooding on lots of the roads out of the airport, or if they're being lenient in general. I'd call and ask.

Is this just for Cruise Planner purchases, or do they ever do a Black Friday cruise-fare sale? We had to cancel our Harmony cruise that should have begun today - thanks Hurricane Ian! We won't have time to schedule this now until after the kids get out of school in May, but my now-12-yr-old will be 13 by then so bye-bye Kids Sail Free for her. 😞 Now that it will end up being 1 kid and 3 adults, I'd really like to find a better sale than the $550 + 30% off that they're offering right now, but maybe that isn't a thing.

This! The performers have preferences about when shows should be, based on their own endurance and needs to recover. And this can vary based on new cast members coming on board when previous cast members go off contract.

It's because of the hurricane. We were supposed to board Harmony today, but instead we're still in Phoenix. It's not listed on their website as an option, but they're offering FCC so you can rebook either for the same ship or any other sometime in next 365. It's specifically because many people couldn't make their sailing due to travel issues.

It was just too soon a turnaround to get something together to leave tomorrow, so we're scrapping it all until May right after the kids get out of school. I tried calling Royal, but they insisted it couldn't be done because FCC's are being processed, or something like that. I'm sure if I kept calling back I would eventually get an agent with a different story who would be able to do it, but I've spent hours and hours on hold and customer service in the last few days and I just don't have the patience anymore at this point. So we're going to do Navigator in May. Sigh. Sucks not to be on a ship, but we ended up driving to my parents up north and will day trip around AZ instead. Sedona, Grand Canyon, Prescott...not what we'd planned but it'll do.

Oh interesting! The email confirmation I have says it's cancelled and that FCC will come in 30-45 days. Hmmm. Maybe I'll try this! Thanks!

Love the idea, but our FCC won't be available to be used for 30-45 days from now, and I don't see my husband willingly shelling out of pocket for another cruise right now when we'll have one already paid for in the next year. Sigh. But thank you! I really do appreciate your suggestions!

Exactly! Everyone is exposed daily, unless you have literally been holed up in your house since March 2020, and I seriously doubt that's the case if you have booked a cruise. My kids had been exposed SOOOOOOOOOO many times at school last year. I got the "exposure in your class" and the "direct exposure from someone sitting next to you" emails from the school almost daily, and they never got it during the March 2021-May 2022 stretches of school that they were actually in person. They and my husband did happen to get it this summer (we think at the ice rink, but not certain), and obviously I live with them, but I never got it. So just being exposed is not a guarantee you have it. If it's been 5 days since exposure and you haven't tested positive and have no symptoms, then you likely don't have it.

We were SUPPOSED to be checking in for our cruise in about 30 minutes from now - thanks, Hurricane Ian! Due to an airline fiasco, we canceled our cruise and are taking Future Cruise Credit from Royal. Have 365 days to rebook, but due to my and the kids' school schedules, we're limited on when we can go. Our Spring Breaks don't line up with each other (mine is the week before theirs), and Fall Break is later next year. So we're looking at the day they get out of school in May, and we don't want to fly across the country to Florida this time around - sick of airlines' BS. So we're just going to drive to LA so we can control the travel. And there aren't any Oasis class ships in LA. So that's that.

Sounds great, but the kids' (5th and 7th grades) and my (university professor) Fall Breaks off from school are this coming week, not the next. And we all have to be back in class on Tues, Oct 11. Wish we could!

Oh, believe me. I cried for HOURS and hours. My good attitude is definitely a work in progress. And I won't use third-party sites anymore after this. I've learned my lesson. But the Delta ticket counter supervisor at the airport really was a good guy. He did try really hard to get it to work out for us. He made multiple calls to the special internal customer service on my behalf, and while he was waiting for them to look into the matter, he even started searching for the cheapest option for us on other airlines. The best he and I (searching on each of our phones) could find was about $800/ticket on American out of Las Vegas - but of course it would entail driving 5 hours to Vegas first. And it would still be an extra $3200 out of pocket for airline tickets on top of the $1800 we'd already paid. $5000 total for 4 people to fly to a cruise that cost under $2500! Nope! I guess this just wasn't meant to be this week.

Is it just Cruise Planner packages, or do they do amazing deals for booking new cruises as well during that time?

I live in Phoenix. We have lots of waterparks, and I can usually go either for free with my Pogo Pass, or for like $30. Heck, I even bought a $60 annual pass for Hurricane Harbor because it's double the cost of a single day, plus includes Six Flags Magic Mountain in LA. Where I live, we're landlocked. We have plenty of waterparks, but no beach. So no way would I even pay $30 to go to the waterpark at Coco Cay, let alone $161! That's absolutely insane. Are people actually paying that?!

After a giant fiasco with our flights (we inquired into the possibility of rebooking our Friday flight to Orlando instead to Saturday with the fare waiver Delta was offering due to the hurricane, but our third-party discount site seems to have cancelled our ticket instead and then when they tried to rebook us, Delta wanted $1400 more per person on top of what we'd already paid), we ended up just cancelling. Royal offered us Future Cruise Credit to use within 365 days, and we are being refunded by the third-party discount site (at first the discounter tried to blame Delta, but after I spent 3.5 hours in person with the ticket counter at my local airport, I'm assured that it was in fact the discounter's fault, but once the ticket was canceled, Delta can't recreate it), and we have 24 months to roll over the insurance package to the new cruise. All in all, we're only out a very minimal amount of money (I think GoPort charges a 30% cancellation penalty on the shuttle reservation, but we're still looking into whether that can be waived, but really, we're talking like $40 or something), so in the great scheme of things, it's really not a bad outcome. And while I'm sad that Fall Break was "ruined," at least I don't have to deal with the nightmare that many Floridians who lost everything are dealing with right now. My heart goes out to them. But man...I was supposed to have toured Kennedy Space Center today, and boarding a cruise ship tomorrow. And the entire reason we'd picked this ship is because my daughter's coach is a soloist in the skating show, but she'll be off contract and back to our rink by the time we'll be able to reschedule something. So that's the biggest bummer. I think we'll pick something much closer to home next time so we don't need to deal with the airline nightmare. Probably LA, so we can just drive there. Bon voyage to anyone here who will be on that sailing tomorrow. Wish I could join you! Have a margarita for me!