rudeney

Yep: https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/ It's just over 2 hours from where I live, but I've never bothered to go look. I have heard people getting some amazing deals and also some "interesting" finds.

I pay to eat in specialty restaurants because I want a better experience and food than the MDR. I really don't expect it to be equivalent to a high-end steakhouse. Yeah, the price is probably "too high", but pretty much everything about cruising is.

It makes no sense that they swipe your SeaPass card in the Suite Lounge. If only full-suite guests can enter then why bother? They used to not swipe cards in the old Concierge Lounges.

When you buy it, you will be prompted to schedule the first dinner on night one or two of the cruise. It doesn't ask you which restaurant, so it's really not a true reservation - it's just a placeholder in the system. When you board, you will need to visit any specialty venue and schedule all of your meals. If you are in a suite (GS or above), you can pre-book meals. The concierge will email you sometime the week before the cruise and you can reply with the reservations you want. I have also heard that some people will purchase the UDP, then also purchased individual meals for each night which are actual reservations. Then once aboard, they go to Guest Services and get the individual meal purchases refunded as OBC. This does not sound like a great option to me, though.

My point was that even a run-of-the-mill family-dining chain restaurant is expensive now. Oh, and that $100 wasn't three steaks - my wife had chicken and the daughter had pasta, I had the only steak. I guess I'd put Chops on par with Outback. Actually, I'm not a big Outback fan, so I'd probably ranks Chops above it, but Chops is definitely no Ruth's Chris.

So it seems I did not explain my logic as to how I arrived at the estimated price for included food. What I did was take the cheapest cruise fare I had seen, which was a solo, interior cabin on our upcoming Voyager 7-night cruise. I had actually priced that out because our youngest (adult child still living at home) kept whining about being left behind and my wife felt sorry for her. So, I priced it out just to see what it would cost and it was $409 and some change. About $160 of that was taxes and port fees, so the fare was $35 per day (sorry, not $30 as I used). Regardless, my thought process was to guess that for the cheapest cabin, half the fare would be allocated to food and half to the room. Of course I would not say that half of every fare is for food. It would be crazy the think that half the price of a $5,000 suite is for food. I was just trying to get to some idea of what a dinner in the MDR might cost so that I could add that to the price of dining in a specialty restaurant to get it's true cost. So if that's the case, the cost for Chops on my next cruise is listed at $59 in CP, add $6 for the "price" of dinner in the MDR and the real cost is $65. Yes, it's probably too expensive for what it is, just like everything on a cruise ship or most any vacation.

My biggest problem with Voyager is the lack of dinning options. It only has 3 specialty venues - Chops, Giovanni's and Izumi. There's no Johnny Rocket's (deleted for the "Amping") and no Sorrento's. It doesn't stop me from sailing on her, though.

So what is the cost of a full dinner in the MDR? By my calculations, it's about $6. How did I arrive at that? Well, the least expensive cruise fare I could find is $30 per night per person. Let's say that half of that is the room, the other half is food. So $15 among 3 meals: , $4 for breakfast, $5 for lunch, $6 for dinner.

You might want to check prices at your local Ruth's Chris. Everything has gone crazy expensive. We ate at Outback a few weeks ago - no drinks, and it was well over $100 for three of us before the tip.

Ignore the discounts - they are marketing hype. They can claim it's discounted but not be. As an example, on our next cruise, they claim that $65 for the DBP is a 35% Labor Day sale discount, but the week before it was $70 with no discount. It's also been listed as 20% off at $75. There is no "real" price until you get on the ship.

Talking about fake watches, years ago when departing DCL Wonder in PC, a customs officer gave me the 3rd degree about the classic Rolex GMT Master I was wearing. He seemed to think it was a fake, probably because it didn't look like all the typical Submariners. I really thought I was going to get pulled aside, but he finally let me go. I sold that watch a few years back for more than I paid for it.

All of my docs (two different orthopedic practices, dentist, primary care, and podiatrist plus blood donation centers) have stopped all COVID protocols - no masking, no distancing, no temporary plexiglass panels. Other than occasionally seeing a random person wearing a mask, all vestiges of COVID are gone around here. BTW, my kid came down with a cold last week (sore throat, sniffles, headache). I caught it and today I have a really bad sore throat. We've both taken several COVID tests - all negative. Not all respiratory illnesses are COVID. Sometimes a cold is really a cold.

I bought it for our upcoming Voyager cruise for $98pp when it appeared in CP last week. I checked today since the Labor Day sale is going on, and it shows $119pp, but it states "Check Onboard" now. I'm not sure if that is because I already bought it, or if they are no longer selling it.

The DBP covers drinks up to $13, so a $16 drink will cost $3, and an 18% gratuity will be added making it $3.54.

Ah, my next cruise will be the first since the restart, so I am basing my experience on the MDR from before COVID. I can see that with crew shortages and less experienced crew members, combined with supply chain problems, that the food quality in the MDR (and really anywhere) could be suffering. I'll be on Voyager in 4 weeks, and it was one of the last ships to restart, so I am sure it's had a lot of challenges with a new crew. I bought the UDP and intend for us to eat all meals in specialty restaurants, but I may need to try one dinner in the MDR just to see how things are.

I don't really think it's so sad. I find the MDR food to be good, just not great. They do a decent job with what they have. I've never had a bad meal, and I've had a few very good experiences. It's just a different experience than a more intimate restaurant like Chops.

When we cruise in a few weeks, we have the UDP and intend to never eat in the MDR. Not that either of us have any gripes with the MDR, it's just that we want something a bit nicer, and since we paid for the UDP, we'll want to use its benefit to the fullest. Part of me considers removing the auto-gratuity charges and then just tipping the stateroom attendant in cash, and maybe tipping the specialty dining room staff extra cash for great service. But then I add up what we will pay for a grand suite, insurance, spa treatments, Voom, DBP, UDP, shorex, flights, hotel, casino losses, etc. and realize an extra ~$250 is really insignificant in this case. These crew members, even if they don't serve me directly, are hard-working and have always made our vacations excellent. I just consider all the gratuities being added as a cost of cruising and go with the flow and enjoy my vacation.

I had considered that, too, but an assembly line where baggage always moves "forward" seems more efficient to me. Bags have to come off the porter's cart one at a time for the x-ray check. It might make the most sense to have carts after the x-ray machine labeled by zone and deck. As that cart is filled, it's taken to the appropriate location, but probably not until staterooms are ready because otherwise, they'd be colliding with the attendants. I guess at that point, while waiting on staterooms to open, the carts could be shoved into a big room to wait and then removed LIFO. Still, it would be more efficient to push them into a line or queue where they are pulled out FIFO. Oh, and of course there has to be a set of carts headed to "the naughty room". BTW, today is 30 days from my next cruise and luggage tags are on page 19 of the eDocs.

Food in the MDR is being mass-produced to serve over 1,000 guests at a time. Chops cooks-to-order for at most 80 guests at a time. Even if they were using the same raw ingredients, Chops is just going to serve a better dish. Not only that, they do use better food in Chops. Most steak cuts are "prime" grade instead of "choice" or even "select" that the MDR uses. They are going to use larger shrimp for a better presentation. Eating at Chops or any of the specialty restaurants will be like eating in a land-based restaurant where the MDR will be like eating a pre-plated meal at a hotel banquet facility. This is true even for lunch.

I do, but most "tipping guides" I've seen mention that it's the pre-tax price. But really, if I'm tipping 20%, and my tax ia 10%, it's just an extra 2%, or $1 on a $50 meal. I figure the server needs that more than I need to worry about whether I'm doing it "right" or not.

So here, we pay 10% sales tax, but in some cases we pay that on the pre-discounted price even thought the actual sales price is less. It depends on how the price is advertised. If it's just a sale price, then sales tax is on the final sale price, but if it's advertised as a coupon deal, even if it's an "instant coupon" and no actual paper coupon is needed, then sales tax is charged at the full retail price.

Yes. Normally you can get extra appetizers, sides and desserts with any specialty restaurant meal, but UDP specifically states that you can order additional entrees, too. Some people have even reported that they weren't charged extra for certain add-ons in Chops like the half Maine lobster, but I have also heard people who were charged, so I wouldn't count on that (but I'm going to try my luck with that on my next cruise!)

It's not about what the proctor see, but the paper/screenshot shown to the terminal representative.

I've checked the DBP prices for my next cruise every day since I booked it. They seem to be using $100 as the onboard price because the holiday sales have all shown a discount of 35% and a price of $65pp. Once (no particular holiday) it was listed as BOGO50% with a price of $75pp for two. I once saw the price at $78 with no discounts/sales, but that was early on. Otherwise, it's been listed at $70, but with no sale/discount banners. Again, just look at the final dollar amount and ignore the flashy sale banners.

Obviously faking a COVID test would constitute fraud, but I think the real issue is that RCCL realizes it's just as easy to fake a vaccination card or a proctored test result, so it really doesn't matter. By telling the passengers they have to take a test and show some results on their own, they are transferring liability from them to the passengers.