Rogueperson

You are correct. That is me. And yes, I am bringing coffee. My wife convinced me to actually buy *shudder* pre-grounded coffee. So I'm going to compromise. I will go to Starbucks on Thursday, which will be in the mall across from the hotel, and buy two pounds of coffee and have them grind it for me!!! Win!!! Experience has shown me with my last cruise that a pound of coffee is NOT enough for both my wife and I for 14 nights.

I'm not afraid of not boarding. Royal would not do that because that's just lost revenue when the weather is 75 degrees and clear on Thursday. They want us on that ship spending money. After that?

I chose midship on deck 9. I didn't even attempt a Royal Up because I know the North Atlantic can be rough even without hurricanes. Last time I did a royal Up, I went from a midship interior on deck 7 on my 12 night Enchantment cruise to a Unobstructed Balcony on Deck 7. I got a real deal on it, because with the royal up bid, I paid a total of 2K for that room. Royal was offering it for sale for 4K (for 2). (I did a live thread on that one too if you're curious). The problem was that i got the 2nd cabin from the very front. It was a rough ride through most of the cruise. For this reason, i doubt I will ever do a royal up again. The only reason I would do it, is to get a suite, but i found that the bid isn't really conducive to any real savings to get that upgrade.

Its 9am EST, and still no word from Royal. I won't repost as someone else posted it, but I did get an email that pretty much said "yeah, we'll let you know, we got our eye on it". The weather is clear for boarding, but that's probably the only thing that's a sure thing at the moment. As for me. I'm mostly packed. The only thing left are the things we will need to use on Wednesday morning. My plan is to drive up tomorrow evening. I actually have plans to have dinner with my travel agent. Yeah, my agent who got me this wonderful deal on this cruise, who ironically, I met on Grandeur in 2015 and she's been my travel agent since. The best part of it was she didn't hold herself out as one. We met onboard and became friends. It was actually after when I remembered she mentioned she was a travel agent and that was it. No solicitation for business. It was actually me that reached out to her. And she's been great ever since. She chose the place as I don't know Philly well. We're taking a slight detour to allow this dinner engagement. I haven't seen them since before Covid.

Ask away. I’m here all week and then some.

My excursions in Nuuk and Qaqoroq are still intact.

I read this as “we see the Hurricane just as you do. We got nothing for you” This is me being an amateur navigator and thinking that if we skip Halifax, we can make it to the furthest dot to the east by Saturday at 8am at an average of 23 knots. At an average of 19 knots, we can make the second dot to the west. The third dot is the approximate longitude of where Lee’s eye will be. Its forecast to be slightly south of that dot west of nova scotia on Saturday at 8am. I did not know that Jewel’s max speed is 25 knots. I’m still optimistic here.

I just saw you on the other live thread and was thinking "man, too man Jimbos here"

Excellent. I was a little worried about the lack of satellite coverage that far north as its not a very populated area. But then again, I've had issues on a b2b where it was fine one leg, and the next I had issues. Same room.

I'm thinking we can. two full sea days will get us to St. John, as we have 2 full sea days coming back. I'm fairly sure Halifax is a lost cause at this point. Even if we do make it, it will be a rainy mess...like last time, probably worse.

I should also add, that my plan that was concocted in September of 2021 to hop skip from Diamond to Diamond Plus through the double points system was a success. Because of the 5 cruises I took under that promotion, I was able to earn 80 points in that span to jump from Diamond to Diamond Plus and THIS cruise is the first Diamond plus cruise. Woot. 5 drinks a day. Except, I don't drink. I was hard pressed to use up the 4 drinks as Diamond.

Good Morning everyone. I'm back after almost a year hiatus on cruising. Well, it wasn't exactly a hiatus, a spring cruise did not present itself, so I ended up not doing anything until this one. But this one is special. As usual, I'm tagging @FionaMG as is my habit. As of today, Our itinerary is Halifax, NS, Nuuk, Greenland, Qaqortoq, Greenland, Nanotorik, Greenland St. John, NL 14 nights in all. Also at this time, we have this monster of a hurricane, Lee coming up our way. As some of you may know, Carnival Legend left last Saturday on a similar itinerary to Greenland from Baltimore. They were forced to abandon that trek and they ended up with a 14 night Canada cruise. To say people on that cruise was upset, is an understatement from what i hear, but it is what it is. We are hoping that this will not happen to us as well. Looking at the track, I'm suspecting at the minimum, Halifax is going to be cancelled. I was looking forward to Halifax and getting a Beaver Tail because I failed last year and getting it. For those of you joining me for the first time. I like food. You'll see a lot of food photos and I'll try to be as responsive as the internet allows. This will be the first trip I've ever had to experience Starlink, but I worry a little because i'm going so far north and coverage maybe spotty up there. So here we go...

I will go the opposite direction and say avoid the duck! That thing was tougher than leather and had no flavor. But granted, I haven't been there since 2019.

No DHD!!!!!!

They are technically called Moongates, but @HBCcruiser knows why i call them stargates.

I am unsure of the schedule of the top of my head, but when i went there last September, there was a free (yes free) tour that met at the Stargate (yeah, i call it a stargate, if you know, you know). The cool thing was that they had a couple actors spread out over the Dockyard where we would "encounter" them and they would tell their story. It lasted maybe 2 hours at most. I thought it was fun.

Nice! I was only going on personal experience. No one in our group had any restrictions that i noticed (there was only like 5 of us). So I did not see anything that was gluten free and meat free...because none of us asked for it. When i booked it, i didn't look at that, because I didn't need it. Even more reason to use these guys again.

I primarily looked at Gluten free and red meat free options as my wife has both those. In our tour, she would have been stuck at the rice and beans as she wouldn't have been able to eat the chicken or the tamale (I think that was what it was). I think that had meat in it if i remember correctly. Fortunately, she wasn't with me for that 😁

Yeah, I was terrible at that. The food was great, but I did notice that if you had an allergy or sensitivity, I doubt they could have accommodated very well.

Another vote for this company. I did the Mayan Experience which included both the Choccoben ruins and the visit to their village. In all honesty, I think the Mayan community of Choccoben was the better part of the tour as Choccoben, the archeological site (they are both named the same) is a bit tame if you've been to Tulum and Coba or even the ones Dzibanche & Kohunlich ruins that are a little farther out from Costa Maya.

This happened to me too. I didn't have my TA take care of it because it was an IT issue on their end, and I suspect my TA is not as technically savvy as I. This is also my first Virgin Cruise. Nonetheless, it took probably 3 weeks for them to fix it with multiple calls to them. They were a little slow because they would take a couple days, then say create the account again. When i told them I couldn't, they said they'll get back to me and back and forth until it was finally fixed. They did send me multiple "how did we do" where i gave them a 1 saying issue is still not resolved. Unfortunately, cruise lines having horrid IT is not new to me, so this wasn't very annoying as my cruise isn't until next year.

Smaller ships won't go out of style, but Royal and other Main line cruise companies prefer the larger ships as they cost less per passenger to operate. What I can see happening is that small scale ships may get shifted to another company under Royal's umbrella so the company can monetize smaller cruise ships without losing out. If you look at anything that is considered "luxury", (Silverseas, Seabourne, Viking), you're not going to see anything bigger than 50K. Viking's new ocean cruise ships are only 47K gross tons that cater to less than 1000 passengers. Silversea is Royal's luxury brand. Their brand new ships, hit 40K and cater to less than 600 passengers.

Last March, when i booked up my upcoming cruise in September, I booked the first day and they gave me a bottle of champagne for booking the first day.

There really is no rhyme or reason. Last year, I was on Adventure. We had to tender into bar harbor. I had a fairly early excursion (10am for an 8am arrival). Stupid me, missed the first tender ticket session the day before and I had to go to the one that was offered morning of. 7am. I was there at 6:30am and waited because I was hoping for some semblance of an early tender ticket, and hoped this was my best chance, but not really expecting anything because of the fact that I'm at the second session. I got priority #1 somehow.

Here's my live thread on Adventure back in late September of last year. Lots of pictures and impressions.