PhillyFan33579

Just an FYI, we have never had to wait more than 5 minutes to be seated in one of the main restaurants on any Edge class ship. We simply show up when we want and never wait very long. We try to avoid showing up between 6:15 PM and 6:45 PM since that seems to be the busiest times based on my experience. We just got off Beyond yesterday and literally were seated within two minutes of showing up at every restaurant the entire cruise. Going back to old fashioned early dining on Reflection tomorrow.

There is no comparison between Hideaway Beach and the Beach Club. Beach Club is significantly nicer, much quieter and the food and service there is outstanding.

For the last two years, the Black Friday sales have not been that good. Hopefully that will change this year, but I am not counting on it.

Why would RCI cancel the cruise? None of the ports in Florida will be impacted by Milton Monday and most likely Tuesday. I agree it could be dangerous around where I live (Lakewood Ranch south of Tampa), which is why I am glad I am going on a cruise tomorrow and will be on a very safe ship. I completed all prep work on my house this morning. There is nothing else I can do, so leaving this area this week sounds great to me.

Lots of good suggestions in previous posts. One thing I would mention to them is most RCI ships will not be packed with kids like Icon.

As others have stated, RCI suspending cruises to Labadee was clearly a PR move. There is no other way to explain it because the situation in Haiti is significantly worse than when RCI stopped going to Labadee. RCI would not be resuming going to Labadee if the decision to stop going was made out of concern for passenger safety.

My concern, and this is likely due to my twenty plus years in the military studying third world countries, is actions Gran Grif (or other gangs) might take. Like you mentioned the news related to Haiti has died down, even though things continue to escalate there. If I am Gran Grif and I want to get the world’s attention, hijacking a cruise ship or capturing a lot of passengers as hostages would certainly do the trick.

You mean I won’t get one more free drink per day on the cruise I am recognized as reaching Pinnacle? 😊 I still get the deluxe drink package fairly often, but 6 free drinks per day might be the tipping point.

I find it interesting that within the last few days media reports have said things continue to deteriorate in Haiti, yet RCI has decided to resume going to Labadee now. Based on this RCI undoubtedly has or is making a mistake. Going to Labadee when things are getting worse in Haiti is either foolish or based on the location of Labadee, RCI should have never stopped going to Labadee. Either way, and I hope it is the latter, RCI leadership made a mistake with one of these decisions.

Personally I won’t do a B2B without staying in the same cabin (made that mistake once), but as others have stated it isn’t too big of a deal changing cabins, just something I wouldn’t do again. It’s so much easier and relaxing doing a B2B in the same cabin.

If you like your kids, take them on RCI. If not, take them on Celebrity and let them suffer. 🙂 In all seriousness, on every Celebrity cruise (just got off Beyond today, or I guess yesterday now) I have been on I don’t see too many kids and half the kids I see look miserable. I am sure some kids enjoy Celebrity, but no doubt the vast majority of kids have a much better time cruising on RCI.

We just got off Beyond this morning. We were in an infinite veranda and are elite plus, so no special priority. We had no problems every night of the cruise finding good seats in the center section of the theater. There were reserved seats in the theater, but they were not in a location we would be interested in sitting.

We had the UDP on Wonder last month and were told there was an upcharge for Izumi and Wonderland. We are not really fans of Wonderland and had no intention of going there, so we didn’t ask my questions about the surcharge.

Disregarding price, if you have kids I would go on Star. If you don’t have kids I would go on Oasis.

Bartenders will just ask for your cabin number when you first board the ship. The ship’s computer system lets them know if/what drink package you purchased. I have been on over 50 RCI cruises and have never received a receipt when I had the deluxe drink package.

What does being D+ have to do with cancelling a cruise?

Historically on Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving), although there are exceptions like the previous poster mentioned.

Personally I think Utopia is the best ship in the current fleet, way nicer than Icon in my book. The only downfall I see is the 3/4 day cruises. I live in Florida and am retired, so driving a few hours for a short cruise is no big deal. But if I had to fly to Florida for a cruise, it would not be for a short cruise. Based on current ship ports, I would do a 7 day cruise on Wonder instead of a B2B on Utopia every time if I had to fly.

If you don’t like the cabins on Utopia, you won’t like the cabins on Wonder, Symphony and Harmony. The cabins on all these ships are very similar. You might like the cabins on Oasis and Allure, which are a little different.

When I drove to Port Everglades on Sunday, I drove close to 80 MPH on Alligator Alley and didn’t get pulled over. So apparently the speed limit is 80 MPH, not the posted 70 MPH.

We cruised on Utopia a few weeks ago with 9 friends and had a great time. We didn’t experience any of the issues the OP mentioned. We have 4 more cruises booked on Utopia with the next one two weeks from today. I like Utopia more than Icon, although I am not in RCI’s target demographic for Icon.

I couldn’t agree more! Anyone who would go into debt for any vacation is just being foolish financially.

Hideaway Beach on Coco Cay definitely has a party atmosphere, so at least RCI is consistent with how they use the name “Hideaway”.

I don’t agree with your comment about it being harder for servers in the MDR to provide excellent service if different people show up every night. When we have used my time dining, we always get excellent service even if we have a different wait staff every evening. Along the same lines, we frequently purchase the UDP and have a different wait staff most nights (occasionally we will do the same speciality restaurant more than once on a cruise). Once again we get excellent service from every wait staff every evening. I don’t think there is anything wrong with your approach, but I don’t go on cruises looking to become friends with wait staff in any speciality restaurant or the MDR.

Keeping in mind food is very subjective, I think most people would agree with speciality restaurants > MDR > WJ.