JeffT237

We board the Wonder in a week, and despite all of the negative reviews on most things Royal Caribbean lately we intend to have an enjoyable week. Glad you had a positive experience! We dealt with the same thing before our Discovery Princess cruise in October, a lot of negative reviews and we some how had a great week.

Why is it such a waste? It may be for you but to others it may have value. I've never had it, but I always watch the price and since we buy 2 internet packages ( I know we can share but we choose not to) if it drops to a certain point I'd buy it. As far as boarding early, that's a nice perk. I have a 10:30 time for our Wonder cruise and although in theory we should get on 5 minutes after the Key passengers there's a good chance we'll be competing with a lot of passengers who have later boarding times to get on early. A lot of passengers have decided honoring Royal's boarding times do not apply to them. We like getting on early like everyone else, to get our dining package reservations and start our vacation. Lunch at Chops to avoid the crowds on embarkation day and the breakfast on debarkation day since we almost always have a late flight home is also desirable for us. Was hoping to buy it for this cruise but it never dropped to a price where we found value in it, and then it sold out.

Tipping posts and questions are always lively and passionate. I read them and just don't understand why so many passengers care what others do. Royal is clear with their own policy what is recommended and give passengers the option to pre-pay, as well as remove them if they feel they don't receive good service. Both of those things can be true at the same time. That's really the end of it. Worst case some passengers don't tip, I think that number is really small, but it doesn't impact my cruise at all. As far as who and where the tip goes, how much someone else tips "above and beyond" or whatever else other passengers do again has zero impact on me. We cruise for the enjoyment of the experience, we like the ease pf pre-paying everything we can pre-cruise and simply having a good time and not let what others are doing negatively impact our experience. I agree, in the grand scheme of what we spend for our cruises it is such a small amount of the vacation budget.

For my personal opinion and tastes I'd rank the speciality restaurants on the Harmony in order as: 150 CP, Chops, Jamies, Izumi and Sabor. Have not dined at Wonderland, but it does look fun. So subjective, for us in SoCal we eat Mexican food and fresh Sushi quite often. They were both good, not great on our cruises. Sabor does seem to be more of a lunch spot. I also like the location of 150 CP and Chops on Oasis class ships, both being in the Central Park area. Get the dining package and try them all.

On our cruise planner this morning for our upcoming Wonder cruise the drink package dropped to $75.99pp, it was $85.99 last night.

What are you and your son's interests? To me St. Thomas offers more beach day activities and San Juan more sightseeing and historical sites to view. They are both enjoyable, and you will certainly get plenty of beach related activities at the other stops like St. Maarten and CoCo Cay. Old San Juan is cool with it's architecture and exploring the forts, but I think the 15 y/o version of me would pick St Thomas and want to go to Megans Bay or explore St. Johns. We've been on both the Oasis and Harmony and enjoyed both those ships, we like the Oasis class and will be boarding the Wonder in a couple of weeks. Plenty to keep both of you entertained and happy. Check out the entertainment offerings as well if that's important to the two of you, they all offer an aqua show which we really enjoy. Best of luck planning, sounds like a great trip!

We've never purchased it for our Royal cruises, simply we do not consume enough to justify the cost. $1400 for the 2 of us for our upcoming Wonder cruise is just too much, we'd never break even. We have purchased it for our past 2 Princess cruises, the Princess Plus which includes most drinks, Wi-Fi and gratuities for $60 pp per day and amazingly people on the Princess board complain about the programs high cost!

We'll see for ourselves in a couple of weeks but my feeling is although the Royal Caribbean experience may be different than pre pandemic, we will still receive excellent service and find good value in cruising and we will continue to take cruise vacations. We have sailed twice in the last year with Princess and despite all of the doom and gloom from experienced Princess cruisers we enjoyed the cruise and received great service from the crew. The threat from loyal passengers to leave Royal, stop cruising or take off the auto gratuities or not tip at all will not correct the issue of a perceived drop in service or quality. These ships are sailing at capacity, on board spending is up despite the very high prices and almost everything is sold out pre cruise. Once a day cabin service is not a deal breaker for us, I'm confident if I need something I can get it. But if for others it is then you have choices. I suspect the number of people who actually protest by leaving Royal or who stop cruising will be minimal and won't impact the industries bottom line. As others have said change is difficult for many people.

Thanks for the review, we are looking forward to our upcoming Wonder cruise in a couple of weeks. How was embarkation day at PC? I've heard some stories of really long lines, even though we have a 10:30 boarding time we're expecting that most passengers get there early.

We recently took our first Alaska cruise last May with Princess. We were primarily cruising the Caribbean cruises and almost all of them were with Royal and most of those on Oasis class ships. We like the entertainment they offered, I do tend to get bored easily, and we almost always try and cruise on newer ships for all they offer. We will continue to cruise the Caribbean on Royal ships, we sail next month on the Wonder. The exception was Alaska. We chose Princess round trip out of Seattle for Glacier Bay which Royal does not offer. The day of our visit was spectacular. I do agree with the comments that it is more about the itinerary than the ship for Alaska. Our next cruise to Alaska will not be a round trip out of Seattle, it felt like too much open ocean and not enough scenery and shorter times in port. Whatever line we chose it will be a northbound out of Vancouver through the true inside passage. We want more scenery. So you'll have to ask yourself what is most important to you, as only you know your own likes. Is it the newest ship? Entertainment? Scenery? With a Caribbean cruise you can often hit all of those on one class of ship, with Alaska there's some give and take. For instance if your'e set on the newest ship with more on board entertainment then you'll probably end up with a Seattle roundtrip cruise. If it's scenery you want you'll probably end up with a one way cruise that starts or ends in Vancouver. This was at least our experience in planning Alaska and we look forward to our next one. Best of luck!

The Key should be available in your cruise planner under the name "VIP passes", if you enjoyed it on your previous cruise and it's the right price for you go for it, it's your cruise! enjoy, we love the planning and anticipation that comes with cruising.

our upcoming cruise was 45 days before, I believe that is the standard. Your reservation in the app should show the date that check in will be open and you can secure your boarding time as well.

Having done our first Alaska cruise last May roundtrip out of Seattle, I'd look for a cruise that sails the true inside passage that departs Vancouver. Our Seattle roundtrip seemed like a lot of open ocean and not scenic sailing. It was on Princess not Royal, we did get Glacier bay and that was the highlight but our next one for sure will depart Vancouver, and possibly even a back to back and end in Vancouver.

Our first Princess cruise was on the Crown Princess in May and dined at the Crown Grill twice, we really enjoyed both meals. We did Sabatini's once and it was average in our opinion. Both had great service though. We sailed the Discovery Princess in October and again had a great meal at the Crown Grill, we did not try Sabatini's again. So obviously our vote would be for the Crown Grill.

This has been a frequently discussed topic lately, I think the consensus answer is it varies port to port and sailing to sailing. Some times it is enforced and others it’s not. We have not sailed Royal since the start up, we have sailed Princess for comparison it was enforced in San Pedro and not enforced in Seattle. We sail next month on the Wonder out of PC so we’ll see for ourselves.

I'll find out in March, we'll be on the Wonder with the Odyssey being at CoCo Cay as well. It will be our first trip to the island. With Hideaway Beach being adult only I'd imagine most of those guests would stay in that area and not use the other activities on the island like the water park or other attractions that are geared towards families with kids, pure speculation on my part.

Here is some info from a previous post that you may find helpful.

It's at the 7:00 minute mark

I saw a recent YouTube video review of the Beach Club and the reviewer said she was able to make a reservation with a maitre d on board. It was a recent video, since we have the 3 night dining package on our upcoming Wonder cruise I will inquire about reserving a lunch time for the Beach Club restaurant when making our dining reservations for the week, if they don't take them on board we'll make it as soon as we arrive as it's my understanding that they do take reservations. First time to Coco Cay for us.

For our upcoming March Wonder cruise the current prices for the Beach Club is at $283.99, over water cabana's are $2999 and Thrill Island Cabana's are $999. All are sold out, who knows what "sale" price they were purchased at but to answer your question many people will pay these amounts.

I just checked in for our March cruise on the Wonder out of PC. I got on right when the times became available and got the 10:30 arrival time and in a couple of places it says to honor your arrival time or arrival outside your time slot will delay your boarding. I'm sure a lot of this is asked of arriving passengers because it makes it easier for shore staff to manage the 6000+ arriving passengers shortly after disembarking the previous cruise. I would also guess if it's not as big of a crowd at any given time they allow later times to board to make the process as efficient as possible. Should we consider their operation or is it all about us? By that logic should we "chair hog"? Maybe you do. The pool staff often doesn't enforce that rule so it must be OK and really only the busy bodies on CC care. How many times when boarding a plane does a passenger come on with an extra carry-on or personal item that is supposed to be under their seat but they take extra space in the overheads and your stuck checking your bag. Rules for that that often go unenforced. I think Royal makes the mistake in thinking passengers will do what is asked of them.

The is it "worth it" part of your question is going to garner a lot of opinion, everyone's value in any vacation related purchase is going to be different. For our upcoming March cruise on the Wonder it was routinely priced at $269pp I was shocked and just kept an eye on it. It did lower to $149pp on Black Friday and we did purchase it even though I felt it was overpriced, was hoping for $99pp but it never got that low. The main reason we wanted it was that the Odyssey will be in port that day as well. Not everyone on the 2 ships will visit the island but we felt the beach club would be less crowded, it has been sold out for our cruise since Black Friday. We also have some friends who are taking this cruise now and they wanted to do it so we made the purchase. It is also our anniversary that day. So it is worth it? To us for those reasons it is, but we did probably overpay which really in the grand scheme of our vacation is not that big of a deal, we tend to overspend on a lot of our vacation purchases. I will say just about every option to purchase for this cruise has really been more expensive than the past but so is everything.

Royal no longer offers the luggage valet program for FLL cruises, I agree it was a nice feature and we used it when it was available. I believe the only US port that has the service now is Seattle, we used it in May and it was great.

For traditional dining the early seating is at 5:30 and the late seating is at 8:00 on the Wonder of the Seas.

Same with ours for our upcoming March cruise on the Wonder, last night we had that screen you described and we could not book either on the app or the planner, this morning they had the shows and times available to reserve, I was able to book everything I wanted to.