happy cruiser1234

Awesome! Looking forward to your review. My mother is from New Brunswick, and I went there every summer as a child. In August we went out to see my 92 year old grandmother in Miamichi. Such a beautiful and friendly province!

Hope Royal listens to their guests comments and improves the food quality for your cruise. Please let us know your thoughts on the food.

I'm not sure if it can be opened. If I remember correctly, the dividers were different on the left and right. I'll see if I can find any photos.

 

It's a great cabin. You will have fabulous time!

 

eta if you look at the first photo I took, there is a different between the left and right dividers. This photo shows the balcony below us. The dividers were the same as ours. Not sure if this helps.

Yes my guess is that the left side doesn't open because it looks like part of the main structure of the ship. Glad you had a great cruise!

And to the OP, having not yet sailed on Vista and looking only from photos I personally think the Ext. Aft Balcony is the best. They have a bit more privacy and the view is amazing!

We were in 7467. It is a Havana Aft balcony. Here are a few photos:

Thank you so much for posting these pic's! We are also booked in 7467 for March 2018, my sister is booked in 7465 beside us (on the left when looking at the ocean)Do you remember if there was a divider between these balcony's which we could open?

So excited to be following along! Have a great cruise :)

Hi Ken

I have noticed this as well, and I am pretty disappointed with the menus on Freedom. We were looking forward to the shrimp cocktail & prime rib on night one, and the beef tenderloin on night two. Now all of that has been removed from the menu and replaced with cheaper options. The new menus on Harmony look amazing, so hopefully they are planning to roll those out on all ships.

Loving your review already! We stayed at the Courtyard Fort Lauderdale Beach and really enjoyed it as well. The Marriott BeachPlace Towers is also a fantastic hotel. It's so much fun going to The Rock Bar for those Giant Margarita"s .:D We sail Freedom in December and can't wait!....Have a great time!

Looking forward to your review! I'll be following along on periscope as well. So many fantasic reviews starting this weekend, I'll be glued to Cruise Critic all week! Have a great time!:)

We have both booked! March 2017, Harmony! March 2018, Vista! From my research I think Harmony will be a much better ship in terms of entertainment, pools, and things to do. We chose Vista for the southern itinerary which Royal Caribbean's Oasis class does not sail to.

I think both ships will be amazing! :)

We considered it for our upcoming Freedom cruise, but decided against it. Although it is a great price, we didn't want to miss the first formal night in the dining room. The beef tenderloin on the first formal night is fantastic! (also the chocolate soufflé)

We don't care for the menu in the dining room on the third night so we prefer to eat in specialty restaurants on nights when we know we're not missing to much in the dining room.

RCI uses large island based tenders that can carry several hundreds per trip when in Grand Cayman so the tendering is fast as it is only about a 10 minutes ride to shore and typically there isn't lots of folks doing ship shore excursions here as many, like ourselves, have been here many times in the past. Typically the ship arrives early and clears customs very quickly.

IMO, if you are first in the general tender lineup you should make it to shore by 8:30 and by 9 shouldn't be a problem.

 

Thank you! That makes me feel so much better! :)

Hi Serena, glad to see that you are still able to take advantage of the great prices that were on that Freedom sailing. Have a great trip and we will see you in March.:)

Thanks ken! We lucked out and my daughter has a very easy 1st semester! So pulling her out of school for 1 week shouldn't be a problem. You have a great cruise too! See you in March!:)

Hello, we have booked a private excursion in Grand Cayman and our meeting time is 9am. The ship arrives in Grand Cayman at 8am. I understand that the people who book Royal's Shore Excursions get priority tendering. Does anyone know approximately how long it will take me to Tender? TIA

Mamma Mia on Allure! The cast was fantastic!:)

Love the new design! Much easier! Finally Royals IT department got in right! :)

I've been eyeballing our cruise planner for our Anthem cruise Next March for this elusive 20% I kept reading about. Yesterday, No Discount, Today... 20% off. So I got ourselves each the Ultimate pkg for the 7 Day cruise. There was no discount on the non-alcoholic packages, and also the Select package was not available/listed.

 

In CAD pricing, the Premium is $57.20 + 18% and the Ultimate is $59.80 + 18% ($70.56). Yesterday, the ultimate was $90 CAD including the 18%. Seems to me the price difference between the 2 packages doesn't make sense, but I checked 4 or 5 times. Might be an error, but anyhow, my UP are bought and paid for :D.

 

dp

Thanks for the heads up! You just saved me $95 for our cruise on Harmony in March. I wasn't planning on purchasing the package, but since it was a pretty good savings I went for it. For some reason the Premium Package only went down $25 but the Ultimate went down $95.

Aft balcony pictures on page 5 of this review:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2360126&page=5

Thanks. :) Lou's pictures are great! That is the only picture I can find of the Aft Balcony on Vista, only shows a small portion of the balcony. Would love to see some pic's or youtube video of the entire balcony and cabin. Hopefully someone who will be staying in one of these cabins will post something soon.

We have booked one of these cabins on Deck 7 and I've seen quite a few people asking about the noise from the Havana Bar. There is a review for Cabin 7458 on Cruise Critic, however it is under Havana Cabana Balcony.

 

From the review:

"The balcony is a good size with two chairs, a regular chair and ottoman and a lounger. We were excited about having a Havana cabin on the Aft so we could have the view from the back but didn't like the fact we could look right down on the balconies below us and the balconies above us had a great view of our balcony."

 

"I heard some people complaining of noise from the Havana club. It didn't bother me and you could barely hear it. "

Thank you for posting this! I've been looking for reviews on theses particular cabins. I would love to see some pictures of the balconies, hopefully someone will post some soon. :)

We are currently deciding on either a Western Caribbean on Liberty out of Galveston going to Roatan, Belize, and Cozumel vs an Eastern Caribbean on Oasis out of Port Canaveral going to Nassau, St Thomas, and St Maarten.

 

We have never been to Roatan/Belize or Nassau/St Thomas, which do you prefer between these ports and why?

I would choose The Oasis if the price is comparable to Liberty.

Thank you so much for the review. We also have cabin 7448 booked for our two teenage daughters and I was quite concerned about the noise. Glad to hear that the room is very quiet.

Deck plans show this room to be a connecting room, did you hear any noise from your adjoining neighbour? Also just wondering if there are stairs right outside your cabin which lead to the Havana area on Deck 5?

Glad you had a fantastic trip! :)

Thanks everyone! We'll be with our kids, 14 and 16, so I'm afraid walking tours and art museums probably won't cut it. ;)

 

However it's good to know that it's a walkable town- cost of a resort would be $240 for the four of us, so I'm questioning if that's worth it. I have a must-get-back-to-the-ship paranoia (left over from our very first cruise when a couple was left behind in Mexico, screaming on the dock, and it scarred me for life), so for a 2pm sailaway, I'd probably need to leave wherever we were at 12:30, even if it was a 10 minute walk. (Seriously paranoid!)

 

I think the town/shopping might be a good plan!

We went on the "Atlantis Beach Day" with Royal this past March. We also have kids aged 13 and 16. The excursion started at 8am and we needed to be back on ship for 1:15. So you get about 5 hours to spend at Atlantis.

When we arrived at the beach we pretty much had the entire beach to ourselves, and it is beautiful. After a few hours on the beach we toured Atlantis on our own, we got to see the aquariums and the "Digs" and the entire Resort. They have shuttles for people booked on the Royal Caribbean Excursions that go back to the ship every 20-30 minutes and you are free to go back when ever you want to. It was a great day, well worth the money. In fact the kids said it was their favourite stop on the cruise.

We've been to Nassau in the past and just walked around and it was rather boring for us as we are not big shoppers.

YAY!! I'll be following along on CC and on Periscope. I've always enjoyed your fantastic reviews!

Thanks :)

I appreciate your honest opinion good or bad. Too many cheerleaders on this board act as if you have just said something horrible about their family member, and feel the need to defend their their favourite cruise line. Imagine what these boards would be like if everyone here spoke nothing but praise and glory about the ships.

I am very interested to here good and bad reports and then make my own decisions as to if I would like to sail that particular ship.

Sorry some people are picking on you. I hope you continue to have a great cruise and continue to post your honest opinion.

Thanks

Hi friends!

 

We're hopping on a plane in a few days to board the Vista next Saturday (ahh!!!). I'm a big believer in the whole pay it forward thing, and I've used these boards to help me plan for this trip, so the least I can do is contribute some information back!

 

So if there's any questions you have about the Vista, anything you want to see, anything I can investigate, whatever, feel free to post it and I'll try my best to get it answered!

 

We're booked in a Havana Cabana on deck 5, so we'll definitely bring back info and pictures there (and if the internet is decent, I'll try to do a Facebook livestream thing!), and we're definitely planning on exploring every nook and cranny of this gorgeous ship!

Hi Nicole,

We are dying to see an extended aft balcony in the Havana area.. Particularly Deck 7. Some balcony's look larger then others? Wondering if that is the case.

Hope you have a fantastic time.

We will be on Oasis in June, and are looking at the VOOM packages.

Does anyone know if texting is included?

I see streaming, social media, etc.

If DD is texting people back home, and they have an iPhone like her, is the Imessage included?

 

TIA!:D:D

Yes, she can text, but make sure airplane mode is on, otherwise it might send as a regular text and you will get billed for it.

I'm sailing out of Miami in February! I already did my online check in but there was not an option to select a time. I did do the rest of the check in. It is my understanding, based off other threads I've read on here, that there will be an option to select the time once cruise is closer. Also that you may receive an email letting you know to select the time, but everyone does not receive that email. Some say they only knew by logging in and seeing their check in was no longer complete. I have been logging in daily.

 

Does anyone know how far in advance they are posting time selections.

I've read that the time selection isn't available as of yet for Vista. Someone else reported that we should be able to do it in May. I've been checking daily also.