chiguypaul

Yes provided that there's availability. So you're taking that risk.

Good question. Should be listed in the terms section of your new reservation. Would think that the $100 charge pp would apply each time you change, but check the section called "DEPOSIT AND FINAL PAYMENT SCHEDULE" in your new reservation and it should tell you there.

It is NOT an escape room. My 17 and 20 year olds were very disappointed by this offering and felt it was oversold in the description for what it was. Just go in to this with proper expectations. The staff told my kids the room was not fully ready so they had put out puzzles in the mean time.

Agree as well. Stupid plot. I appreciate the tech but the show was boring. Singers and performers come second to the overall high end tech production.

I am on the ship now for the New Year’s sailing. My wife and I found the solarium extremely unpleasant during the week. Extremely humid. Nothing was done to adjust the temperature down. Others complained as well. Was very disappointed. We normally look forward to spending a lot of our trip in the solarium, and it was unbearable to us. 😞 that was us. I’m sure others will give you different opinions.

Never tried. Wasn’t interested in hibachi.

Just a follow up to my experience after originally posting the message for this thread. We checked in as early as possible and had zero issues getting everything we wanted. I was beyond stressed about the stories here on CC and not getting the times I wanted. Some of you had to cancel your UDP because you couldn’t get the times you wanted. Now all this being said, I worked myself up pretty good until I knew I had all my reservations in place. I was ready for that though. On busy holiday sailings you just have to go in to UDP with a tremendous amount of flexibility and know that there’s a sense of rolling the dice on getting the locations and times you want. If that sounds unappealing then go with something like a three night package and know you have the times you want ahead of time. We had 13 UDP reservations between early brunch, sea day lunches and dinners. It was a lot to schedule and we had to double check multiple times because sometimes the staff would make some mistakes when booking. Thanks for everyone’s thoughts and comments on this topic and I hope it’s a helpful thread for others thinking about UDP.

Just a follow-up for everyone. Our check-in time was 1130. We were able to check in at 10:45 without any issue and get on the ship within 15 minutes. This is was for a December 31 sailing.

I wanted to provide some closure on this thread that I started. We ended up driving. Our flight was originally scheduled for December 29. We decided to leave on December 28th and make it a 2 1/2 day trip with a stop in Atlanta for some tourist stuff. Our originally planned flight didn’t experience any delays. But I have zero regrets about driving and it alleviated a tremendous amount of stress by doing so. We are flying back. Thanks everyone for their comments.

Have tried on multiple ships - never successful.

That was not true during our Thanksgiving Freedom cruise. Diamond members boarded before everyone "below" that.

Great advice on the breaks for all. We decided to add an extra day of travel to break out the legs and make them a little shorter. Sometimes we pull over just to stretch for 5 minutes when we have long trips. 🙂

I think you're making the right call. It's not worth missing the cruise. The flights from MDW or MCO seem to be moving today, but all you need is your flight to be canceled and that's game over. We already had AA scheduled back. Was just a fluke with how we scheduled this time. Normally we're SW RT. When you get tired of that drive - think about not having the stress of if your flight will go or not!

Yea...right. 🙂 That season ended a few weeks ago.

Thanks. Appreciate everybody’s comments.

I couldn’t find another part of cruise critic, forms to post this in. Recommendations?

I understand what you’re talking about. We are on Southwest going down and American going back. But even if that were not the case, we would split our reservations up with Southwest to avoid the situation you were describing.

The plan is to leave on the flight and if for some reason there’s a cancellation we are ready to drive.

This is fueling my concerns about our New Year’s Eve cruise on the wonder with our UDP. I am very concerned about not having a place to eat and my family furious with me because we re stuck at the windjammer. Our check in is at 1130 and we plan to arrive earlier just to get any chance to get ahead of any other people. I have not seen checkin times earlier than 1130 from others I talked with for this sailing on the wonder.

Flight is already two days before the cruise.

$500 from Chicago to Port Canaveral with National. That includes two day rental with loss damage waiver. Hertz was $580 for the same coverage with a drop off at the Orlando airport.

All good things to consider. Car was recently inspected with oil change. So all good there. One option is to rent a car. Going down and then take our regular flights going back.

Do you know what check in time they had?

I live in Chicago. I leave for the wonder on December 29. My cruise is on December 31. I am flying on Southwest. Given what a mess Southwest Airlines is right now, I have a lot of concerns about the probability of my flight getting out. I know it’s a couple days away but I’m worried about it. So I’m thinking about driving with my family from Chicago to Port Canaveral. We have four people that could drive so it wouldn’t be horrible but definitely not ideal. Obviously I need to wait a day or two to see what the airline landscape looks like. Was also thinking about renting a car instead of using our own but I know I can trust my own car. Just wanted to reach out to my cruise critic folks to see what their thoughts are on this. I might be overthinking it. Thanks.

This will be interesting to monitor in terms of what itineraries end up changing from events like this.