WisconsinFan

2 hours ago, Another_Critic said:

 

She's not coming back for 9 days.  Are you planning to board in St. John, NB?  😄

No, just overly excited! October 10th we sailing. 

1 hour ago, shof515 said:

are you on the Bermuda sailing on oct 5? i am on that sailing too

No, we are just doing New England/Canada 

We will be getting on her in one week! Looking forward to your thoughts.

2 minutes ago, blue is the best said:

I will be sailing to Boston, Maine and Canada Oct 10-19th 2024. Since the weather will be cool does anyone know if the solarium is totally enclosed or should we leave our bathing suits home.

It is not fully enclosed. The pool is open to above. There are hot tubs undercover, but again not enclosed. We are also on that sailing, so see you on board 🙂

On 8/23/2024 at 3:39 PM, cruisegirl1 said:

OP-you are not wrong. I am finding Royal Caribbean passenger behavior becoming increasingly rude, and often confrontational. I don’t sail many other cruise lines so I don’t know if it is specific to Royal Caribbean or across-the-board.  I don’t know if this is a trait of everyone these days (on a cruise or otherwise.), or just a decline in behavior of the Royal Caribbean passenger.   I can’t understand the selfishness of someone who would think everyone around the pool wants to listen to their particular music.  
 

Sorry you had to experience this on your vacation. 
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Not just Royal passengers. We have a little bay on the lake where we live- aptly named "3 foot bay" we have a boat. We live in a college town (see my avatar). Kids have taken to renting large pontoon boats with captains and coming out to the bay, they bring large blue tooth speakers. Now the wake boats have turned up with even larger speakers, and now there is a private pontoon boat with club style speakers (size of yeti coolers) with a stripper pole (and girls) that's now turning up. We just turn off our music as we can't hear our "yacht rock" anyhow.....

We are booked on the 7 night in September of 2025. As much as we wanted to try for something longer, the timing wasn't right and with the UNESCO fjords being off limits to most ships in 2026 we took the 7 night one. We are happy with our choice and will spend a few days in London pre (and maybe post) cruise.

We are doing an excursion via our ship that will take us into New York City and drop us at the airport for our evening flight. You will be off the ship most likely no later than 8:30 or 9:00 am.

As someone with strong Norwegian heritage (still in contact with a cousin in Norway) I love pickled Herring (not the stuff in the cream sauce) but I had never considered it for breakfast 🙂Just down the road from where I live (30 or 40 minutes) was an attraction- Little Norway. It was home to a Stave church built in Norway for the Chicago World's Fair. In 2012 it was taken down log, by log and shipped home to Orkdal, Norway where it was originally built in 1893. They are amazing works of engineering and architecture. Thanks for the wonderful photos and sharing your trip.

1 hour ago, Martha1974 said:

My husband and I are taking our first cruise with Celebrity in October 2024 (Barcelona to Rome on Equinox). We've booked with All Included (I think that's the name of the package) which includes the Classic drinks package but have already decided that we will upgrade to Premium..  Do any of you knowledgeable Celebrity regulars know if there are likely to be any flash sales coming up? Black Friday will obviously be too late, and I know we've just missed one - I did well with some savings on dining etc but we hadn't decided to upgrade at that point. I don't want to go ahead and do it now if there's a chance of a better deal in a month or two's time. TIA 

Although it is a pain, you should book at the price you would be OK with. Watch for any sales. If you get an offer you can cancel and rebook at the new price. The refund may take some time, but you will get it. Also we have started at the Classic and then waited and have gotten email offers to upgrade along the way. It is up to you if you want "call" or if "well" is fine. We lately have started the upgrade just because I am too old to drink cheap vodka 😉 

12 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

 

 When we sailed out of Southampton we went over a few days early and stayted at a Marriott Ressidence Inn London Tower Bridge.  We did sightseeing in  London and then on embarkation day arranged a shared van service from the hotel directly to the cruise ship through the same company we arranged our tours in London through. 

 

Thanks! Our plan was a few days in London and then off to Southampton. We have a bit of time to plan, so gathering suggestions.

Following! This is our trip in September of 2025. London is our biggest question right now- where to stay and how to get to Southampton 🙂 Looking forward to following along.

We decided we wanted to do reservations, just because we knew what general time we wanted to eat. The first night we really clicked with our servers (and I really like having the same staff each evening) and so we kept our reservations but would ask to be seated in their area. They would give us a pager and we usually didn't have to wait very long. If you don't mind getting a pager like a land based restaurant I doubt you will have many issues. We did see some longer lines at the more popular times for anytime, but liked the idea of the pager. We would do anytime again.

12 hours ago, Toddcan said:

We did a group of 14 last summer, and our only "rule" was that we would eat together in the MDR.  We had 2 tables right beside each other.  What ppl did was totally up to them, yet we all met up for dinner to catch up on our days.  No one likes to have their day planned for them by someone else. 

^^^^ This! We have cruised with 10- so we were able to have one table together. Dinner so we could hear what everyone did during the day (our trip was an Alaska cruise, 50th wedding anniversary). We did only one excursion together, one that Grandma/Grandpa, the adult kids and the grandchildren could all enjoy- the Deadliest Catch tour). We would let each other know where we were, what we were doing with open invites if anyone wanted to hang out with us. We had the best time.

My best friend will never cruise again because about the same time we went (13 years ago now) her mother-in-law planned an Alaska cruise for extended family. MIL expected everyone to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together. Expected them to be together all the time. This meant my friend felt "trapped" on the ship (her words) and she booked a zip line excursion because she knew this would be the only thing she could do without everyone!!!! We would love her and her husband to travel with us sometime, but it will not happen now.

1 minute ago, Tree_skier said:

The last time I checked Royal Caribbean doesn't have a port of call in Wisconsin. Also, any jurisdictions liquor laws are irrelevant when the vendor chooses to implement stricter protocols, which they can do at their discretion.

My point was more about the pearl clutching of seeing kids in the bar. In Seattle you can take your dog in the bar if you want. Now, if you aren't a fan of dogs in bars you might clutch your pearls about that as well.

1 minute ago, WorkingForOBC said:

Yes! I was waiting for an excuse to post this

https://www.revenue.wi.gov/Pages/FAQS/ise-atundrg.aspx

In regards to #3, if you are under 21 but over 18 you are now an adult and as far as I understand it forget getting a drink because your parents are there! Most bars consider you now an adult and they don't serve 18-20 year olds. In general I don't know anyone personally who has bought their kid a drink who is under legal age at a bar.

On 6/9/2024 at 9:17 AM, Sizzlechest said:

 

What do all bar areas have in common? Kids are not allowed at the high-top chairs. The other seats are a common area. The Rising Tide bar has all hightops. It was never intended for children.

Please don't come to Wisconsin. Our kids all sit at high top chairs at the bar while we wait for our fish fry, pizza or burgers- or a table in the bar where we can eat. It isn't a novelty to see kids in the bar at and gasp, sitting at the bar. My kids (now grown) took a ride on the rising tide bar enjoying a soft drink. Got to the top, with drink finished we got off.

Thank you so much! You did an amazing job and even though our ports aren't exactly the same in September 2025 you have us very excited for our trip.

I found an app called "GPSmyCity"-yes, all one word. It has many city walks that are free, including one for St. John, New Brunswick. It is a self guided walk. Ap says plan for two hours. It has 10 sights, including 3 "must see" It goes to the City Market, King's Square, and Trinity Anglican Church as well as the Jewish Historical Museum, the Loyalis Burial Ground, the Loyist House (a museum) and a few other places. There is a 3-day free trial that can give you more features beside the map.The paid version has voice -guided turn by turn directions. Maybe we will do the free trial and sign up when we get there, maybe we will just use the free version but thought this would be a great way to hit the major highlights and not get lost 🙂

1 hour ago, tscoffey said:

Even Norwegians have little regard for their own cuisine, so I'm not sure what Celebrity could do to make it more palatable in the buffet.

I still love Lefse- but I can't imagine a ship making that 🙂 as it is pretty labor intensive. Now if they made Krumkaker (ok, labor intensive again) or Spritz cookies.....If you get a chance try Aquavit (it is a strong drink- close to vodka maybe). My grandma and my mom also were known to make Lutefisk-not a favorite at all (but my DH was a good sport and ate it at Christmas anyway when we were dating, I think it might have been a test!).

Thank you for sharing. We are going in September of 2025, a bit of a different itinerary but Flam and Geiranger are on the itinerary. Love the photos and can't wait to read more.

We did this, but only my DH went. Sailing solo, booked as a solo he earned double points. Booked a GTY interior, won a bid up to a balcony for hardly anything. Got a really cheap plane ticket. Diamond for our big spring break trip. This was during return to service, so fall of 2021? Sort of crazy but it allows for the four drinks on Royal and the free bag of laundry on Celebrity.

On 5/17/2024 at 10:45 AM, latebuyer said:

Thanks, so now i’m debating a cruise between late september and july. Do you really see the fall colors in the fall or does this not happen all the time?

Additionally to the wind/rain wrecking the leaves quickly the color can be affected by the weather in the summer. If there is a drought in the late spring or in the summer fall colors can be delayed. If it is too warm coming into fall, the colors won't be as intense. What makes a perfect storm for good fall color? A warm, wet spring followed by a not too hot and dry summer and then nice cool evenings coming into fall. We have a 3rd week of October cruise booked hoping that this summer will cooperate and give us some nice color. We are realistic however that the color may not work out- living where we can get beautiful fall color.

We are going on Apex in September of 2025 and will be on the one that goes to Flåm and Geiranger- these two UNESCO fjords are slatted to be closed to cruise ships in 2026.

We were on Silhouette in April, the Next Cruise Desk stated sometime in November of 2024.

We are doing this one in October. We have been on Liberty many times, but not since 2017. We aren't worried about some "rust" as they do work hard to maintain all the ships and sea air is extremely hard on all vessels. If you are now just thinking of booking this for the fall, good luck on "value" as we booked over a year ago and have only watched everything go up as the ship has filled up. If you go in expecting to be disappointed, I am sure you will be.