chip1969

Hey Richie! That is what my sister and her kids call me. We have been in Wilton Manors since Thursday visiting friends from when we lived down here in Hollywood. We should literally be able to see your your balcony from ours. :-). See you on board!

2 hours ago, twoontheisle said:

Hey guys! We changed staterooms to 1746...so just in case we don’t get the notice, please let us know. Our dining time is 7:45, so we may have to alter it a few nights to check out the champagne bar scene. 

Awesome room change!! We looked at upgrading but with a 42 day trip and so many other things we pulled back for this cruise.  See you on board!

On 2/26/2020 at 8:21 AM, twoontheisle said:

Hi Richard and Danny. Safe travels. We will notify you in your stateroom “just in case” you don’t receive the card. It has happened to us as well. Would be great to meet up for a cocktail with you guys, okay? We’ll check the “notice board” near guest services for the LGBT happy hour location. Cheers!

Steven & Gary

Definitely would like to meet you guys!  We found on the app that the LGBT meeting is at 7:45 every evening in the Champagne bar.  We set up my time dining for 6:30 every evening so not sure is we can make through dinner in one hour to make the meeting. We are going to try tomorrow evening and see what happens . Glad you have a way to contact if we miss each other. See you tomorrow!  We are super excited!!

Richard & Danny

Hi guys!

Not sure if anyone will see this before we leave, but we will be in cabin 9329 once on board.  We have had occasions where there were conflicts with the "Note Card" times and missed meeting people early on in the cruise.  We leave tomorrow for Atlanta and are flying down to Ft Lauderdale Thursday.

See you all soon!

Richard & Danny

On 12/9/2019 at 3:32 PM, twoontheisle said:

Sorry, we don’t support FB

We are not FB people either.  Thanks for the info as well about specialty dining.  We decided to just wait and play it by ear since this is our first Royal cruise.  This is our first cruise in a long time taking just a balcony room.  We had to make a few sacrifices with this 42 day trip.  🙂

Hi all,

Quick question for anyone out there who has been on Royal previously.  Are there specialty dining options that you think are must dos?  We are debating the packages but after seeing all the options ship-wide it seems like it may be a waste.  Our first couple of cruises years ago we only ate in main dining.  We have since done many different specialties on different ships.  Just a little confused since this line is all new for us!

Thanks for any input!

Richard & Danny

Hey everyone! I am thrilled to be going on this cruise again. I booked it while on board last February. Little did I know that I would also be celebrating my one year Anniversary with my BF on this cruise too! He and I met on the Regal Princess last February and have been going strong since. We laugh that we met on the "LOVE BOAT" on Valentine's day, but it is true! We are both excited to be sailing together on this cruise. Here we are on the RSVP Alaska Cruise in August - we had the time of our life!

Congratulations on the 1 year mark. Our anniversary is Valentine's Day also and we will be hitting 28 years at the end of this cruise. We met at Mardi Gras in 1988 which was the first year there were a million people there. So we consider it one in a million and you can take great pride in meeting on the love boat! :D We got married in July of this year (still can't believe it) and look forward to our 3rd RSVP cruise in February. Enjoy your anniversary trip!! :)

We will be going on our Celebrity honeymoon cruise after a few years together (36 to be exact) next March. We are a little south of you in Lee County.

 

Max

Congratulations! Hope you have a great cruise :)

Hi to All,

Thanks for posting this thread. We are currently in Tampa, FL and as you can see from our signature, have been on a few cruises. We are leaving the end of this month to finally try Celebrity for our honeymoon. Got married in July after 27+ years together. :D We have been on a couple of the RSVP cruises and really enjoyed them. We are in our mid-forties and seem to fit perfectly with the crowd (are also by no means gym bodies and have never been in a pool on a cruise). We have booked another for February since it has been a while. The charters can really be anything you want. If you want to stay up half the night you can, but you don't have to. Just make sure you book a room further down or above wherever the parties are happening.

Glad to see so many of you enjoying the cruising world. We cannot believe it has already been 10 years since our first cruise. We plan to do some longer ones once we leave the working world. My (Richard) current itinerary to salivate over is San Diego to Sydney (30 days).

First off, congratulations! :D We leave the end of September to try Celebrity for our honeymoon (after 27 years together, finally legal...woohoo!). Reflection is their newest ship so it may be on par with the other new ships you are considering. We are in our mid to later 40s and really love Holland America but it does tend to go to older crowds and there is less to do at night. Sounds like you have some good choices and should have a great honeymoon.

Since you are close to deciding already we wish you good luck choosing and bon voyage!

We recently upgraded to GTY after final payment and we were assigned a cabin within 24 hours. Just happened to log into our My Celebrity account and it was there. Booked with outside TA so never got an email saying when it was done.

Good luck!

My husband and I will be on Celebrity Reflection for an Italy and Greece cruise in 54 days for our honeymoon. After a 27+ year engagement it seems a little weird to think of a honeymoon, but it is what it is :D

Happy cruising to all!

Thanks for the quick replies...more things to consider and do. :)

Apologies if redundant but I cannot seem to find answer to my question. New to Celebrity and will be on Reflection Eastern Med trip in October. My question is about tendering in Santorini. Dock time shows 7a-6p and we are there at same arrival time as RCL Rhapsody so ~5500 passengers at 7am.

If we are doing independent tour with no priority tendering, is it realistic to be on the dock at the cable cars/steps by 8:45am? I understand there can be variation with ship clearance. After reading about ship excursions off first, then priority tenders, I'm just not sure when I can expect to be at least to the dock to attempt going up. We are supposed to meet our pick up person at the top of the cable cars 9:15am-9:20am and we have no problem hiking up the poop trail if we need to due to long lines :). I figure getting to the steps by 8:40-8:45am will gives us the hike time to meet up with our ride.

Thanks for the help in advance. The more I read, the more I get a little concerned about the timing.

Richard & Danny,

 

Thanks so much for your wishes. And congratulations on your upcoming wedding. It's clear you've had many happy years together already, but I wish you many more. What an exciting time to get married!

 

How bad has it been for your experiencing the motion of the ship? Most people I've spoken to say they are so worried about motion sickness and never have a problem, though a few have said it was an issue of them? Is it like turbulence on a plan that lasts a few minutes and then the flight is smooth? Or more serious and constant? Either way, we'll plan to have the drugs with us just in case.

 

We're both history people, so I certainly see Pompei on the short list for our excursions. But I also want to visit Capri. So we will have to make some hard choices?

 

Any recommendations for Rome? Place to stay? Restaurants? Worth booking the Celebrity pre-cruise? Or should we just do it on our own?

 

Thanks,

 

Barry

Hi Barry,

Thanks for the congrats as well. We are married now!! :D

After reading some other threads I remembered that I did get seasick once in Hawaii on a Norwegian ship (RSVP cruise). We were in an outside area with an overhang around a pool and someone was smoking a cigar somewhere and I just happened to start feeling really strange and didn't even know I was getting seasick. It is not like turbulence for me. It just slowly escalates to really strong nausea. We left the area and found a crew member in the Lido area (they are all experts in treating). She got me a ginger ale and added some bitters to it from the bar. I slowly sipped on that and within an hour i was totally fine. It is a very strange feeling which I hope you never have to deal with. Just have things on hand just in case.

We have always done Rome on our own. There are soooo many hotels and places to eat you will have no problem getting either. Italy is my favorite food country so have pasta and gelato for sure. Small out of the way places seem to be better than the tourist traps. Always check with your hotel staff for recommendations. The last hotel we stayed in was Hotel Navona about 2 blocks from the Pantheon. It was really nice for Europe. It was easy to a lot of things from there and cab rides to major attractions were not bad either from that point.

You guys will have a fantastic time!!

Congratulations on your engagement and your first cruise!

We are doing the same itinerary and ship this October as our "honeymoon". We are getting married Monday :D after 27+ years together. We wish you all the best!

As far as advice, it seems like you have been given some great info already. This will be our first Celebrity cruise so cannot advise on that. Some of my best cruise memories are down time. Make sure to fit that in somehow.

My future MIL had a horrible time with scopolamine (memory loss and disorientation) so IF you are prone to motion sickness, I would try to do a trial run with one patch a few days before departure. I personally carry Bonine for motion sickness just in case but have never used it on a cruise ship. Have only had to use it for scuba trips once or twice (smaller boats are much worse). Dramamine can cause a lot of drowsiness. Just do your homework and maybe a trial run before hand if you think you may need one of these products.

We have been to Rome a few times and there is so much to see you will just have to pick and choose the best for your schedule. Pompeii is very interesting if you can swing that as part of an excursion. Since we have already been, we booked a private excursion from Naples down the Amalfi coast for the day we are there.

So happy for your both! Have a great trip!!! :)

What a nice thread to read. Congrats to all the couples...amazing! We had our 25th anniversary in 2013 as well and did 10 day HAL cruise from Rome To Copenhagen then stayed 4 days in Copenhagen in an apartment. Amazing trip since we splurged and had the penthouse!

We are currently booked for Eastern Mediterranean 10 day on Celebrity Reflection this October. This will be our "honeymoon" since we plan to get married between now and then. We are just waiting for SCOTUS to make it nationwide before going through with it even though it is available in our state now.

Happy cruising and anniversaries to all! :)

Thanks for the info. We will have to re-evaluate whether we keep the Santorini trip we already booked or not. We are supposed to meet our pick up person at the top of cable cars between 9:15-9:20am. It shows we arrive at 7am but I know sometimes they don't immediately begin disembarking. Seems like 2 hours would be enough to get tendered over and up the hill (potentially walking if cable cars are backed up).

Well, the penthouse is nice! Have only seen it when invited to cocktail parties thrown by very good friends. :D

We had never even seen it until we stayed in it. We did throw a cocktail party for a bunch of people we met on board and it was great to share with other people. We were also traveling with partner's good friend from high school and his wife (we travel together a lot, especially to Bonaire for diving). So we decided to splurge since we could all benefit from the large space. It was an amazing 10 day trip from Rome to Copenhagen and I would do it again if it falls within budget! :)

The only issue I had was that when you have so much more space, the potential for creaks and sounds is much higher. We spent a couple of nights with creaking and popping a lot with less than smooth seas. Then there was the day we left Lisbon and the entire side of the ship was being pushed by hurricane force winds for several hours. We were at about a 30 degree tilt for our wine tasting which made us feel extra drunk trying to walk around the ship afterwards. :p

We will be in a forward balcony cabin (VE) for this trip and are looking forward to it. Like you said, you don't spend that much time in the room anyway so it is better to save the cash for the liquor bill.

High end and low end cabins are always the first to sell on any cruise. Gay charter or mainstream.

True. We've stayed in our fair share of suites, but the best was the penthouse on Eurodam for our 25th. Totally worth it at least once in life! Much more price friendly when NOT a charter.

I signed up on board and had to take my 4th choice. The suites must sell out the second the cruise is offered up! Maybe one day I can luck out and get a suite on a RSVP HAL cruise.

The last one we went on in 2011, they had a form you could fill out to book your exact same room for the next years cruise. We had a suite (SS) on that one but have seen them all completely booked up on most cruises since before we were even allowed to book.

We considered trying to waitlist for this one, but ended up not even asking.

At least we are going! :-)

What number were you calling? I might be able to provide an optional contact.

 

Paul

Thanks Paul, but no need. Just as a fluke we tried calling again after waiting another 45 minutes for a call back and got right to an agent. We were told it was not that the phones were busy, but that it was just that their phones were messed up.

We got booked....our 25th choice for what it's worth. :)

Typo! Feb 13 not 14.

 

Better be quick - it is selling fast.

Kinda hard to be quick when you are on hold for an hour and then you get through to a recording to leave your name and number for call back. Will see if we are called back to book or not.

RSVP does it again... two party themes are already announced!

 

 

The color tea-dance on February 14th is Violet and February 9th is a Mardi Gras theme party.

How is this possible? Feb 14th is the day the cruise ends in Ft. Lauderdale at 7am.

:)

We are considering jumping back on to RSVP for this cruise and will be officially deciding this weekend.

We look forward to meeting you at the Martini bar. :) We just finalized an excursion for Kusadasi (Ephesus private tour) this morning and are waiting for confirmation for Naples (Amalfi coast). We would appreciate any recommendations you may have for any of the ports since you have seen them. We are not planning to book any excursions for Messina or Mykonos because we are just going to go out on our own. We still have to decide on the remaining 3 ports, but we have almost decided to do Rhodes on our own as well. We have booked private tours just for the two of us through toursbylocals.com which can accommodate more people. If you are interested, we can send you more detailed information.

We have only been to Naples and Rome for this itinerary so everything else is new for us. The ship looks amazing and we are excited to try something different.