Keasel

Here's a cleaner version on vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/109301527

Am wondering what to wear that day taking into account it is the end of Summer. Any advice? Does anyone wear jeans?

 

Thanks!!

It might rain. I'd go with a two-piece yellow rain suit.

http://www.harborfreight.com/2-piece-yellow-rain-suit-large-94874.html

First RCI cruise, booked online for a inside cabin with a double double upgrade to balcony stateroom. Assigned deck 8 on Radiance and I have VIP printed on my Luggage Tags.

 

I've searched high and low and cannot find what this 'VIP' means. Thoughts?

Since this is your first RCI cruise, you are not at the gold level yet. Since there is no C&A level to put there, they put VIP.

Count me among the frustrated.

I’m going on the 7-night Grandeur cruise on July 17th this year. But looking elsewhere for next year because the alternating 5 and 9-night itineraries are pretty bad.

The 5-night arrives in Bermuda at 1pm one day and leaves 230pm the next day. It’s tough to enjoy Bermuda with two partial days like that.

The 9-night arrives in Bermuda at 2pm one day and leaves 3pm the next day. So, you would think you’d make it down to the caribbean after the short Bermuda stay (like they do out of New Jersey with stops in St. Maarten, San Juan, and Labadee after Bermuda on a 9 night). But the Grandeur only makes it down to the Bahamas on a 9-night cruise. :mad:

I’m with iheartbda on looking at Celebrity Summit.

BTW, the Pride has 5-night Bermuda cruises scheduled for Oct 26, 2015 and April 10, 2016 that arrive at 130pm one day and leave 130pm the next day. Even less time than the Grandeur and only at the beginning and end of the season.

Where did you find the stops? I keep searching all over the Amtrak site.

http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/975/211/Silver-Service-Palmetto-Schedule-040615.pdf

http://www.amtrak.com/silver-service-palmetto-train&mode=perf&overrideDefaultTemplate=OTPPageVerticalRouteOverview

FWIW, Norwegian Dawn is currently in the north channel on the way to the Royal Navy Dockyard

http://www.portbermudawebcam.com

 

With our relatively short window we are looking at either the Anthem 5-day to Bermuda, or Oasis 7-day (Nassau, St. Thomas, St. Kitts). Prices are fairly close to each other (which makes DH vote Oasis for the extra 2 days, hands down!)

If you want to go to Bermuda, go on Celebrity for the 7 night. The extra two days are worth it. Also, Quantum class is just a big Celebrity ship anyway.

But you can't go wrong with Oasis either.

How many people do you share the room with? And is $22 for the top bunk?

What's everyone's opinion of the 9 night Grandeur Bermuda and Bahamas?

 

Itinerary:

Baltimore

Sea

Bermuda - Arrive 2pm

Bermuda - Depart 3pm

Sea

Nassau - 1pm-11:59pm

CocoCay - 8-5pm

Sea

Sea

Baltimore

 

Opinions?

I'm not a big fan of the arrival and departure times. I'd almost prefer one day only in Bermuda from 7am to 7pm to the above. Also, the 1pm to midnight in Nassau isn't the best schedule.

Does anyone know what the name candidates are for the new ships?

There are trademark applications for

Joy of the Seas

Spectrum of the Seas

Harmony of the Seas

Apex of the Seas

Pulse of the Seas

Passion of the Seas

Emblem of the Seas

They could go with another name; but these are the most likely for Oasis III

Actually, if you read about the January 23 cruise, you will see that Quantum did sail passed the Statue of Liberty. Instead of tuning down the river and departing, she turned up river all the way passed the statue and then did a 360 turn before departing down river. My guess is that there may have been a traffic issue going through the narrows and so needed more time before arriving at the bridge.

I think that was because they were going to miss a port later in the cruise and had additional time to make their first port of call. Quantum sailed past the Statue of Liberty on the cruises to nowhere and some VIP cruises also. If they have extra time and can justify the extra fuel cost, they'll make the extra trip north before heading out to sea. I wish they'd do it more often.

I heard the Diamond Lounge is going to be turned into a noodle bar.

For anyone that has been on the QotS and booked the "dining package" would like to know.....

 

1) It states you receive 20% OBC for booking a restaurant on the 1st Day (Chops, Wonderland, Jamie's etc)

 

2) It states if you book 3 restaurants pre-cruise you get up to 30% OBC.

 

Do you get both of these if you book 3 and one is on the 1st day?

 

Did you have the OBC you expected in your account when you boarded?

We booked Wonderland twice (including the first day) and Jamie's once. They're both very good.

The "up to 30%" is 30% if you book 5 or more. We got the 20% OBC for 3 bookings on the account.

The flyer states it's not combinable. So you don't get 40% for the first day booking and 20% for the other two.

http://media.royalcaribbean.com/content/en_US/pdf/dining_discount_packages.pdf

Allure over Quantum by a country mile. But Mama Mia is better than Chicago. I think Mama Mia may be going to Allure later this year. When's you birthday?

Happy early Birthday!!

Wow. There's a word for that.

My wife insists she is a vegetarian because Catholics allow you to eat fish on meatless Fridays.

Just came across this thread.

Splendour had "Ballroom Fever" and "Dancin' Through The Movies" in the theater. "Frozen" was in the Centrum. This is from a September cruise.

Actually I was thinking of keeping all the different menus but forcing people to choose one of two times, say 6:30 or 8:30. Not so dynamic, but you'd still have a choice of restaurants and menus, just not much a choice of times. Wonder what the capacities of the paid restaurants are? Would that help the numbers?

The 6 paid restaurants (including Chef's Table but not the pub) have a capacity of 468.

You still need to have some tables used a third time per night to accommodate everyone. And if one or more of the restaurants are less desirable so that they're not even averaging twice their capacity per night, you need to have a lot of tables used a third time in the popular ones.

This is tough to do if the restaurant opens at 530 and accepts 630 and 645 reservations, leaving tables empty for an hour plus.

Maybe they should open the restaurants at 500 and give an early bird free specialty cocktail to anyone who comes in before 530.

We've done MTD for ten cruises including the two largest (Oasis and Allure) and two smallest (Legend and Splendour) and love the flexibility.

We never made reservations before the cruise. Usually, we'd stop by and make reservations for that later that day. Even on days where we didn't make reservations, we only had to wait more than a couple of minutes once.

None of my reservations showed the night before sailing and as I mentioned in my review the Royal IQ App did not show any either. I waited on the dining line for over an hour and a half before confirming that everything was OK. To add injury to insult when I returned to my room there was a print out listing all of my reservations as booked prior to boarding. I hope you will have the same positive experience with dining. I suggest you check your TV before waiting on that long long to see if your reservations exist. Good luck!

The listing of reservations we had in our room had our stateroom number but was a completely different set of reservations. So that actually caused our concern.

We went to Wonderland to check if our reservation was still good for that evening. The guy at Wonderland was nice enough to check the rest of our reservations. The reservations in the computer were as they were booked prior to the cruise.

I'm not sure how accurate the TV listing is. We had an extra reservation show up for one night. The real reservation was still there, but there was an extra one also.

We are a group of 10 sailing on 1/23. I have been informed numerous times that the RCL group coordinator has reserved us for traditional dining at 6 p.m., rotating through the 4 complimentary restaurants then repeating the rotation. My question is, what is the earliest time the restaurants open? Is it 5:30 or 6?

On the 12/12 sailing, all the restaurants (complimentary and specialty) opened at 530.

Hi

 

This restaurant seems to be the closest option to the MDR- am I right?

 

For those who have been to this restaurant, how formal is everyone dressing?

 

Thanks

 

 

 

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From a menu standpoint, both Chic and Grande are close to the MDR.

From an aesthetic and dress code standpoint, Chic is closer to the MDR experience.

We ate at Grande once and passed by the Grande line on the way to Chic twice. I'd say 80% formal with the rest reasonably close to formal in Grande.

Chic runs from smart casual to jeans and t shirts.

Increase capacity. A traditional main dining room seats half the passengers and the Dynamic Rooms only seat 1/3rd. This isn't enouh for RCI at present.

Exactly. This is the problem on Quantum.

The roles of the waiters and assistant waiters and better reservation software are details that can be worked out.

But without more capacity, any dining system is going to have problems.

Remove all the cabins on deck 6 between the aft staircase and 270 and create a new restaurant. It can be called MDR classic.

When we tried booking complimentary restaurants it proved challenging to say the least.

We don't go on vacation to stand in lines trying to book for the evening meals.

We heard from others guests that some crew member had told them to book more complimentary restaurants and decide on the night which one they wanted to use, meaning tables were left emptied by no shows!

Out of 32 RCI cruises this is one to forget.

One would hope the smart ship wouldn't have double bookings :rolleyes:

There was one night where we had a second reservation in a different restaurant when we checked the schedule on the TV. But when we checked the computer, we only had the single reservation that we had made. I have no idea where that came from or how the TV was pulling up a different schedule than what was in the computer (it matched other than that one additional reservation on the TV).

I didn't want to risk trying to correct it. I hope I didn't contribute to a no-show.

Oh. In the earlier post, I meant Dec 12th cruise which was 8 nights.

We were on the December 1st cruise and never was any free dinning venue full when we ate. Our dinning times ranged from 5:45 to 8:30, half the nights we didn't honor our reservation time, went early and always got a seat and never had to wait. Gee guess we were the only ones without a problem.

We were on the December 8th Quantum cruise and had no problems either. Everything was booked far in advance. Two shows changed times, but that didn't interfere with dinner reservations.

But there were a lot of problems. Halfway through the cruise, we stopped to taking to other passengers about dinner because so many people were disappointed and/or upset.

I'm asking because I don't know...

Are these Opus numbers after the drydock (and the loss of seats to Diamond Lounge and Izumi), or are the numbers from before the drydock?

I'm sure this info is somewhere on the internet, but so far I have not been able to find it.

 

thanks

Thom

It's from the current fact sheet. I don't know if they've updated it. I was going more for the wide disparity between Oasis going to DD and Quantum that currently has it.

http://www.royalcaribbeanpresscenter.com/fact-sheets/