binro01

Hey. A sea day lunch to me works. I will keep an eye out for those too.

That would be an amazing "bug"/"feature"!

Great minds think and cruise alike! Hope to meet you on the cruise!

Thanks so much for the response. Unfortunately the cruise planner price is just not reasonable for Samba or Giovanni's. We have a very good Brazilian Steakhouse near our home that is cheaper than Samba's up charge, and their food is even better than what's offered at Samba. As for the Giovanni's same there.. I would be ok paying around $25.00 ish per person for that venue, but 40.00+ is a bit outlandish for the food quality.

If you get a good server they will just open up a new tab to never cause you to have to pay the difference. It's these servers that I tip well.

The wife and I will be on Allure of the Seas for a Halloween Cruise leaving Fort Lauderdale on October 29th. Last time we cruised on Allure we had the unlimited dining package (UDP), but for this cruise we decided to go with deluxe beverage packages in lieu of the UDP since we will be visiting both Labadee and CoCoCay. We enjoyed the specialty dining, but didn't feel it was worth the upcharge based on our prior experience. We did really enjoy a couple of venues, (not Chops or 150 CP) and was thinking about the 3 night package, but since we would not go with some of the higher priced venues, the saving on the 3 night package did not make sense for us, so we decided to just forgo any dining package in the hopes we might be enticed to go to Giovanni's or Samba with some sort of on board discount opportunity. I just don't know what the chance of that will be now that we are cruising at near capacity. Though we did enjoy these 2 locations, we still believe the extra cost for the venues is not in line with the quality upgrade of the food. We might be enticed with a BOGO (50% off offer) but barring that, we will just be very happy and content with the included food. Has anyone been on Allure or other Oasis class ships recently and seen any such specialty dining discounts on board? If they have not please also respond with the lack thereof. I will wait with anticipation for the responses! Thanks in Advance!

When oh when will they just add the freaking daily service charge into the cruise rate? Will it really be harder to sell a cabin at 562.00 per person for a 7N cruise vs 450.00, the number gets even more diluted in higher priced cabins. Just add it to the base fare already and stop with this silliness. Then we as consumers can make a decision if we want to give any extra appreciation if service deems it.

Well, this is quite exciting news, even though it is kinda expected. When the other major cruise lines have more lax protocols, Royal could lose money quite quickly for cruises not paid in full, last minute bookings, etc. With all the financial hardships they had to endure due to no fault of their own during the pandemic, it's hard to take any self inflicted wounds.

I have 2 teens that did not wish to get their license right away. Both decided to get their license at 18. To the original poster, we just got our boys when they were 16 state IDs and passports.

I’m on Allure on the 29th too. We are going with the assumption that testing will not be required by then. I will adjust if come 30 days out and no change from Royal occurs. I have some free gub’ment tests coming via the postal service. If needed I’ll get that proctored with one of the proctored test providers to keep the cost down.

And royal does not care about edge cases and what people can do. They made a decision based on stats and most likely to happen from data. They fully know the edge cases. They just simply chose to ignore them as inconsequential.

The thing is, most people do not do B2B. It's a very small minority. The policy is not rooted in "science" or fairness. It's just less exposure for Royal (Marketing/PR/Need for Quarantine areas on board). Shorter cruises will have less people test positive if exposed while traveling to port or onboard (The majority not doing B2B) when they are on the ship, because symptoms can take up to 5 days to present.

I understand that it's aggravating. I have a 7N cruise coming up at the end of October and I still hold out hope that testing will not be required. I have done 3 cruises with required testing and it is stressful. But this is not based on weather it's safer. Its purely based on the fact that once exposed to the virus, it can take up to 5 days for symptoms to show. They probably have tons of evidence from their sailings that number of cases on board is significantly higher on the 5th night vs nights 1-4. They probably simply do not want to deal with that number becoming higher right now, especially since they want to get at 100% capacity and not have to worry too much about blocking out more rooms on a 6N+ cruise if they drop testing. It's a money/logistics choice and once they get a better feel from their new protocol we will see things change again. They want to make sure they don't have a marketing fiasco if something goes south. They are very vulnerable financially right now.

This is very true. NCL pushes you heavily to the Free at Sea package. Their Sail Away price is usually only around $20.00/day per person cheaper than the Free at Sea package, so it really makes no sense to not get the Free at Sea package on NCL. Even if you do not drink alcohol, but do drink soda. Between that and the specialty dining, you are able to cover the cost. If you are comparing to other lines, you have to look for similar itineraries, and similar ship size and age, and you will still find NCL's overall value pretty darn good for what they give you with the Free at Sea package. If you are looking for a pure cheapest fair with no perks, NCL's value proposition starts to fall off since their Sail Away prices are usually significantly more expensive than other lines for similar itineraries on similar size and age ships with no perk package, since they are trying to push people to the Free at Sea package.

Hi Jimbo. Seen you a lot over on the Royal board. I have a pretty popular video on my new YouTube channel breaking down the Free at Sea Promo. Give it a watch.

Here is a quick YouTube Short video I made using the tender boat getting back from Catalina Island

Hi Terri, I sailed the Pacific many times. I have not had any issues at all. I have had worse seas in the Atlantic many times. It might just be luck, but even my 2 Alaska cruises were very calm seas.

Good morning folks, I'm currently preparing for our Navigator of the Seas cruise leaving Los Angeles on April 4th 2022 and decided to do another Live thread! This should be an interesting one because I'm going to assume the ship will be pretty packed since this is in the middle of Spring Break for schools. My wife and I will be cruising with our twin High School seniors as well as my wife's aunt (this will be her first cruise), so I look forward to reporting what a 70+ year old's first time experience will be (She is very excited!) This will be our 3rd cruise since the restart of cruising and our second one on Royal during that time. We just got off the Allure at the beginning of this month and are looking forward to see how one of Royal's smaller ships compare to the Oasis class Allure. The UDP has been purchased on this cruise so expect to see some good food porn pics, but please be advised, since I have not heard great things about the Navigator's Internet access, I decided not to purchase the internet plan, but since it's only a 4 night cruise with 4 of the 5 days where I will have 5G cell reception and free data, I figured we can get by with a small dark period on our sea day on Tuesday. I will be sure to capture all the things and get right back to you once we are in Catalina Island the following day. (Maybe I just might purchase internet for just that one day...) I also decided to do something new for this live thread that I thought would be interesting as well as the normal posting. I will be making a bunch of YouTube Shorts of this trip on my new YouTube Channel, so if you want to see some pretty cool short videos when they are posted. (less than 1 min teasers and fun stuff) feel free to subscribe to my channel. I will also post a link to the shorts here as well. If you want to request a YouTube Short feel free to do so here! I will do my best to make one for you when I'm on the ship and give you a shout out. Any YT Short request made before we depart has a much better shot of getting my attention and on my to do list. 😛 So without further adieu, here is an Itinerary Hype video of the coming Live Cruise to get everyone all excited about your virtual and my RL Spring Break vacation! Let's get this party started.