kiska

 

1) Does the 7-night cruise have a formal night? I saw articles that said no formal nights, but was that for all cruises, or just the shorter ones? No formal nights on the ship at all

 

2) What about theme nights? I've seen people say that theme nights are pretty hit-or-miss on Royal Caribbean, but any experience with this on Empress/ Never really experienced a theme night on Empress. Doesn't mean they don't have them, but I don't recall anyone following the "white" or "caribbean" theme

 

3) Brunch bloody mary's and mimosas, are these every day? Are they only in the MDR or can you get them at Windjammer as well? This is only for the MDR brunch, where they will bring one small weak mimosa OR bloody mary when they seat you. The brunch has a varied menu, so I do suggest you try it at least once, but don't expect too much, it was a little underwhelming

 

4) Since the ship only has the MDR, Windjammer, and Chops, is the pizza part of Windjammer?

 

5) If Windjammer closes at 9, does that mean that there would be no food available after 9 unless we did room service? That's sad but true. Also the room service menu is very limited (in general, not just late night). I cannot speak to the quality of food since I never ordered room service since they added a charge.

 

6) What about drinks--I've heard some ships don't have the lemonade and tea available, does Empress? And is that also in Windjammer, so after 9 pm, you don't have access to drinks? When I was on Empress in 2016 they had lemonade, and tea is also available right next to coffee. I wish I could remember if they had any beverages available after windjammer closed, but we always finished MDR dinner with coffee, and had brought water onto the ship.

 

All in all you will find Empress to be a quaint and cute ship. The ceilings are pretty low and the cabins are tiny (unless you have a suite). Inside and oceanview you could literally spread your arms out and touch each of the side walls. Also her layout is entirely different from any other ship in the fleet, which I found refreshing and interesting. Lmk if you think of other questions, i'll try to wrack my brain to come up with other answers.

When do you sale!? I’m waiting for my guarantee to be assigned. I’m not good at it at all [emoji51]

We're sailing in April! Actually we've done guarantees many times, and most of the times got higher than the lowest category in (unfortunately) the same guarantee that we booked. Only once did we get upgraded from an oceanview to a balcony. And the last 3 or 4 times we've done guarantees with Royal we got a cabin assigned within a day or two of booking. With Princess we've had to wait for weeks sometimes, and usually got the lowest category within the guarantee. I don't know if being Diamond with Royal has anything to do with it.

Good luck on your assignment!

The "obstruction" isn't anything that blocks your view...it's just that you are set back from the edge of the ship, and there is superstructure to look past to see the wake. You can't stand on your balcony and look directly down to the water. There are visible decks below you.

Ahh, that makes sense then, since there's that porthole on the side 6388 wouldn't be considered obstructed. Learn something new, thanks for the explanation!

Long story short, originally booked an inside on Adventure because it was cheap(er). 3 days later saw the prices for balconies dropped - called to book, no go due to going going gone sale I'm not eligible for the cheap price :loudcry:. Called again few days later after noticing a different sale, guarantee balcony available for ... 12 dollars more than I originally booked the inside!! Whooping glee, tell the agent yes, please charge my CC $12 more for a BALCONY!!

Balcony assigned a few days later - 6388. It's a huge win due to the larger balcony in the shade, I'm cruising with an elderly grandmother who cannot handle the sun whatsoever. She'll be able to enjoy the fresh Caribbean air without concern. And if you're curious why she's going to the Caribbean not being able to handle the sun - special celebration for other family members.

Oddly enough 6388 is the only aft balcony cabin not listed as having an obstruction. Wondering if that's an oversight, and also what is the obstruction for the all the other aft cabins that doesn't seem to touch 6388.

Either way, guarantee to an E1 is great for us, no complaints, thank you RCCL!

Friends are on Allure while we're getting onto Freedom. We wanted to drop off our bags at Freedom then walk over to Allure, looks to be about 15 minutes. But my question is are there sidewalks, and is this as feasible in reality as it looks on google maps. Then we'd head over to another bar to hang out

Thanks in advance!

You may be interested in the information on this thread:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2299753

Just think about the poor casino workers who have no choice and put up with it every night.

They do have a choice. All of us have a choice. They chose to work in a casino (most casinos allow smoking and very generously so, especially outside of the US) and on a cruise ship. If they don't like it, they also have a choice to break their contract and leave. There are consequences to each choice, but they still have the choice.

I keep reading complaints on the board about how too many people are trying to sneak in others into the diamond lounge. All the times I've been in the lounge across several ships, while it was always crowded, nothing was ever checked. How do they check, do they just look at your card to see if it says diamond on it?

Booked oceanview guarantee on Freedom, and got assigned 2378, which is all the way aft, looks to be underneath the dining room, which is what concerns me. Did a search on the boards, couldn't find any information about this, or any cabins next to it in terms of the noise. Has anyone stayed in these deck 2 aft cabins before, or knows if you can hear any noise when the dining room is being cleaned, set up, etc. Should I be concerned/worried? I still have options to ask to move further forward, all the cabins are on the left (I think that's port) side of the ship, near the conference center or near studio B. Is there an entrance to studio B from deck 2? I could also move up to deck 3, but those cabins are all underneath the jogging track ... Light sleeper, not a morning person, and sometimes take naps after a beach day

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

We always use the wine bottle trick, and it's worked like a charm. Buy a few cheap bottles of wine with screw tops, and consume (or discard) the contents. Pour liquor into the now empty bottles, use shrink wrap and hair dryer or saran wrap to add an extra layer of seal at the top. Screw the top back on and use elmer's glue to attach it back to the bottom ring (super glue may make it challenging to open upon arrival to destination). Put a bottle into each luggage, and carry on a bottle each per person. In the unlikely event you do get called down to the naughty room - well, it's just wine sir! They'll apologize and give it to you. Just make sure that you don't put vodka into a clear wine bottle labeled merlot :D. Use tinted yellow or green bottles for clear liquor, and dark bottles for everything else, and you're golden. Bottles are reusable so it's essentially a one time investment. If you want to go really fancy you can also buy the foil caps on amazon to re-seal the bottle.

P.S. You're welcome

P.P.S Flame away :D

Thanks for the update!

There was a thread here a few days ago about delayed boarding for Freedom due to norovirus on the ship and the crew having to do extra cleaning. Was wondering if anyone could provide some updates - how's the situation on Freedom now? Watching this closely, scheduled on her next month, and yes I do know that a lot of things can change very quickly.

Thanks in advance!

We were on Allure in December, and while I can't speak to the size of the cabins (we had a balcony), I can tell you that I was extremely surprised by how little motion we felt everywhere on the ship! I actually missed falling asleep to feeling the waves, and our cabin was technically mid ship but closer aft. We did spent time all over the ship though, and I didn't feel movement anywhere, not even on sea days.

I wouldn't worry about it being an inside room, that's what we usually have when we cruise, this was just a lucky fluke to have gotten a balcony

Now that my kids are older, I don't think much about leaving them on the ship if we want to do something in port. But when people say that they'd never leave a small child on board in the nursery while they went into town probably never left their baby at daycare while they worked.

Best response to those comments ever!

Huh, you're right, I tried to do bookings on two random cruises - no go. And here I was sitting hoping they were secretly upgrading me to something nice :')

I went to log in to my cruises to check into my reservation for a sailing later this month, but when I clicked on it, I got the error message of "your reservation cannot be accessed at this time, please try again later". Tried a couple times, same issue. 10 or so minutes later when I loaded up the page again - "You currently have no reservations". Hmm, that's interesting, so I try to add the reservation again - same error message, no go. Anyone had that happen to them before? I'm about to call them and find out what happened to it, while there are still some rooms left on the ship - booked as a free cruise through club royale, but am wondering if anyone else ever had that happen. We just had a basic balcony cabin, no frills

Can you post some links to where you're getting this information? I did some google searching, but I must not be asking the right questions, because nothing is coming up along the lines of what you mentioned

Thank you so much for that information! I think there used to be a door and a public area as referenced in the earlier posts (2011), but then the AS was added in that space, so what used to be public area is now the AS wraparound balcony, which also probably means there's no longer a door there either. Which means that our room will be quieter inside and no concern about banging doors. Which makes the room pretty perfect!

Just booked this room on Allure, and am wondering if there's a door out to a public area right next to it. Did a search to see if others had an opinion, but all the posts are from 2011, before there was a suite next door. Anyone know about this room, is it loud? Thanks in advance!

We were on Empress on Nov 11, we bought a 24-packof water but were afraid the plastic wrapper was too flimsy for a luggage tag. So we stuffed the 24 bottles into a zippable beach bag we had (only water was inside, nothing else), put the luggage tag on that, received it a few hours later in the cabin, no issues.

We just got off the Empress, and the crew has been the best in a very long time (quite possibly ever). I know that the best way to provide commendation is to contact corporate, but I was wondering if some of you know the best person in corporate to do that with. I recall reading on some threads the name of a person to email to with complaints (though I can't recall her name or email, otherwise I'd do a search). Is she the person to email commendations to as well?

Thanks in advance for all the help!

Ahh, yeah, it did sound too good to be true, but 1 free drink is better than no free drinks. Thanks for the update!!

Anyone off the Empress of the Seas can provide some feedback about the brunch? I also read that they offer unlimited bloody marys and mimosas, is that true?

If a Guarantee room is cheaper, we ALWAYS book it! Only once we got the lowest inside cabin, and it ended up being in a pretty bad (for us) location, but I called them and we got moved to a different location same cheapest category. Other than that we've had a better inside category than one we paid for, a better balcony than we paid for, and once we got bumped up from an OV to a balcony!

Have you considered renting an ATV. It was not very expensive, only about 32 euro I think a year ago, and in my mind it was the best way to see the island hands down. There's a main road that runs in a circle around the whole island, so navigating is easy, and there are also a lot of signs to Oia or Fira along the road. By the time we made it up the cable car we had about 5 hours on the island, so we drove to Oia, had an amazing lunch in Neptune's, took in the breathtaking sites, stopped by a winery on the way back, and then ended up walking down the stairs to the ship since the line for the cable car was kind of unruly. It was worth it every minute, and I would do it all over again the same way in a heartbeat, except that I would be the first person off the ship to have more time on the island! Santorini is my favorite place in the world!