Desertbelle

They are at the bottom of the summary page for me (right when I log in), just make he scrolls through them all using the show more button.

 

Most will probably be worthless, but you'd be surprised.

Thank you. :)

When do I feel my vacation has started? The moment I switch my phones over to my back up midwife, and I am totally "off call". It's my AHHHHHHH moment.

When does the stress melt completely away? When we reach the pier with all our suitcases in hand. :D My husband knows it's complete when he hands me my first drink!!

This is great to know. Hubby has an AMEX card and when I called him to tell him of this he didn't even know there were offers like that available. Hopefully his card offers this reward, but even if it doesn't it good to know to watch for these offers in the future! Thanks.

Once again, people will do what they want, no matter the rules, or whether anyone else thinks its tacky or not.

 

Its total disregard for rules and other people. Its all about ME. It's MY vacation and "I" will do what "I" want.

 

It's part of cruising. You get used to it.

Who says you get to be in charge of what is considered tacky? MYOB is the best rule to follow.

It usually opens at 4pm

That's no fun. Even on sea days? :(

The Oceanview Bar is at the rear of the buffet and the Sunset Bar is directly above it on the next deck.

The Sunset Bar is on Deck 15 aft on the S-class ship.

Thanks!

I can't find the Sunset Bar on any of the deck plans....am I blind or is it inside some other area not noted?

We did a Poker crawl on Reflection last week, we began at Ensemble Lounge, then Passport Bar, Casino Bar, Pool Bar, and ended at Sunset Bar. All of them with enough space for about 14 of us during a sea day afternoon.

Fun! I'm getting excited. Being a martini drinker I was thinking the Martini bar would have to be included. :D

There are I think 11 bars on board. Start at the Sunset bar, oceanview bar, inside the café to the bar there, out to the pool bar and the mast bar, sky lounge down to deck 5 grab a beer at Café Bacio and Bistro on five down to four for Martini and Crush and Molecular Bar then to the bar in the Casino reserving a machine for a slot pull for your"poker run" ending up at Passport baron Deck 3. I think I have covered everything. If you start around lunchtime you should arrive at the Passport for happy hour

Thanks. Because it's a poker run we are only going to do 5 pubs (5 cards for a poker hand) and it will be in the afternoon, and I am not sure we should go outside incase it's raining, cold or both. Could you suggest 5 indoor pubs? Plus, we will have 20 or more people, so it would need to be a bar that can handle at least that many people coming in about the same time.

Good luck and I am sure you will have fun! Not sure I could handle a drink at each pub/bar though. :)

I won't be drinking at every pub, for sure. 5 drinks in 2 1/2 hours would have me way on the other side of drunk! :D

I have never been on a Solstice class ship. This coming April I have agreed to organize a Pub Crawl/Poker Run for our Roll Call members, but I have no idea which pubs/bars/lounges would be good for a Pub Crawl on a sea day afternoon on the Reflection (it's a transatlantic, so it might be chilly outside during the crossing).

I know this is exactly what the Cruise Critic members do best!! Suggestions??

We had this issue a couple of weeks ago on Allure. We called our travel agent and they called RCI. We were told MTD was full but to call travel agent (so they can call RCI) one week before we cruised. We called and they changed it to MTD. When we boarded our sea pass cards said early seating so we went to dining room and they confirmed we had MTD.

Thanks, I will have my TA recheck availability a week or so before cruise.

As someone who has to fly to every cruise we take, I've yet to go through an embarkation process that was as irritating and as time wasting as what we are subjected to at airports.

Absolutely! Now if someone could fix that, I'd be very grateful!

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Not good news, I already have a slight cough. I will bring my usual anti-bacterial spray for the entire cabin!!

So, you are one of those folks who bring the virus onboard with you, spread it around and then worry about getting something from a "sick ship".

Fortunately I have only gotten sick on one cruise and it was a couple of days after spending two days in Egypt....most likely I ate something bad...or touched something in one of those lovely public restrooms. :( Spent a couple of days confined to my cabin and recovered well.

We are only 16 points from Diamond Plus and we have never received any pins at any level. Not sure what we would have done with them if we had received them. :confused: They would probably be sitting in some drawer somewhere. :)

To me, check in is such a small, insignificant part of the cruise that I would not want to see the cruise lines put any money into a new system. On 20+ cruises I don't think we have ever had a check in last more than 20-30 minutes, with the 2 or 3 exceptions where a "sick" ship needed extra cleaning... and no new system could help that situation.

No matter how much of a hassle check in seems to be, we are on vacation and we will be spending the next 7-30 days on that ship. So we just enjoy the excitement of being on vacation, and about to start a wonderful cruise. It would take a major issue, like them refusing to let us board, to make us unhappy! :)

Thank you for all the advice and suggestions.

My TA says that we have our Early Dining secured and we are on the wait list for MTD...so, at least we have that to fall back on. 8:30 pm is just too late for kids to eat!

Hopefully we will get put into MTD before we leave, but if not I will head to the dining room and ask pretty please...maybe flash my Diamond status. :)

Worse case scenario, we do specialty restaurants and Windjammer. We will be on a cruise, how bad can it be??? :D

Six of us are cruising at Thanksgiving on the Liberty OTS. We decided a few days ago to switch from Early Dining to MTD. Our travel agent switched us over and the new invoice says we are wait-listed for MTD. I'm not sure what this means exactly as I thought anyone could have MTD.

Does this mean we might not get MTD? If we don't get MTD does that mean we will be put back to Early Dining, or has our Early Dining spot been given to someone else already? Is it possibly with all of this that we might be thrown into Late Dining in the end? Does being a Diamond member really help when wait-listed? Should I call someone at Royal's C&A and make demands (which for me means ask nicely)? Or, should we wait for boarding day and get it resolved then? I hate having dining issues that first day, been there, hated that...not the best way to start a cruise.

Thanks for your help.

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Don't discount Ephesus, it was spectacular!! I enjoyed it way more than Santorini.

Great video!

I agree, great video. It is surprising how much they move. Watching them in person actually makes me a little sea sick, so I stay clear of them.

If I had to choose, loving both Royal and Celebrity, I would go with the Royal Vision of the Seas. Round-trip Venice -> Dubrovnik, Ephesus, Santorini, Katakolon sounds like a winner! These are amazing ports!!

You won't have enough time or energy to be too concerned about the differences in ships.

All the doors and walls are metal on the ship....I use several clip type magnets on the inside walls to hold our shore excursion info, invitations, etc. keeps them organized and easy to find.

 

 

 

I always decorate our door with cruise itinerary items or with holiday decorations if applicable. I use magnets and/or blue painters tape folded over. Comes off easily and leaves no residue. I love seeing peoples doors..cheerful, original ideas and always get comments as people walk by, that they like it and wish they had thought of it, and it does make you cabin easy to spot. I have "lost" a few things off the door..especially with lots of kids on the ship...so don't put anything you can't afford to lose on the outside.

 

 

 

Enjoy...you are on vacation.

Once I saw a group of three adult women, clearly drunk, taking decorations off doors as they walked down the hall in front of me. I told them that it was rude and they laughed at me. It's not just kids doing destructive things, but they do get the blame.

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LOL! I mentioned this thread to my 93 year old aunt, and she indignantly replied that she would find it insulting if anyone were to suggest that she needs some kind of childish door decoration to help find her cabin....

 

I'm happy that your Aunt is in good health and able to find her way around a large ship without any help. Our situation with my parents was quite different. On our last cruise with my parents (both deceased now 3 and 2 years) several years ago my father had Alzheimer's and my mother had macular degeneration. Even with a pretty decorated door and a cabin that was right next to the elevators they had some minor issues finding their way to their cabin. One day I found them strolling down a hallway on the wrong deck. They weren't panicked and when I approached them they said they knew someone would come and find them or they would figure it out themselves eventually. They were having a lovely walk. :)

As with any accessibility help, whether it's large print books or a cane/walker, some people will need it and some won't. The first time we put a decoration on a cabin door for my parents my father said, "I should be able to that!" He was grateful for the help.

Decorating the door is an excellent idea. It really helped when we took our elderly parents on cruises. I would suggest something big and festive.

I bring Command Hooks on all of our cruises and we use them for many different reasons. Decorations are one of the reasons. I also put a Command Hook inside the door and that is where we hang our lanyards with our seapass cards on them. That way every time we leave the room we see our seapass cards hanging right there and we never forget them.

Here's an example of Command Hooks you can check out.

There are always more children on cruises during holidays and Thanksgiving is no exception. Our experience on Celebrity at Thanksgiving is that it's not over run with children, but certainly quite a few of all ages onboard.