orville99

On 10/16/2023 at 11:21 AM, Jim_Iain said:

 

Smoking areas -  There is a smoking area on Port on a mezzanine between decks 15 and 16 over the hamburger grill.   They also have one on Deck 5 Port full aft outside of Eden.   The other I believe is Aft at the Sunset Bar Port side.   This one they also allow Cigars.

Are these locations consistent on all edge class ships?

59 minutes ago, island lady said:

 

Oh my....I humbly bow to you.  Wish I could do that (the weight loss that is)!  😉  Good for you!   GF?  Gluten Free?   

 

My sister is on that...since she has Celiac disease.  Not much choice for her there.  Actually a lot of the gluten free choices are pretty good on the ship.  She loves the gluten free pizza at Sorrentos!   

GF - Gluten free. She takes meds that gluten interferes with, so she started avoiding it as much as possible. Once we started converting our favorite recipes to GF, I really got into playing with ingredients and found that we could make almost anything GF with a little bit of tweaking. Pounds melted off of me, and once the meds worked as they should, she actually gained back the 10 that she lost before they got her meds correct.

Love the Indian food on RCL, and they now even have GF focaccia in promenade cafe - almost as good as hers.😇

9 minutes ago, island lady said:

 

Oh no....I don't even own a scale.  It would be the demon that lives with us.....we tossed it back into the fires of hell.   😄 😄 

DW hooked me on a GF diet, and I shed 35 pounds. Scale helps me make sure it stays off.😇

22 hours ago, Sizzlechest said:

A good metric for food quality is to compare the MDR/Windjammer to the specialty options. I would expect a gap, but not very wide. The gap has widened.

Absolutely! However, I would need to adjust the order a bit. We just got off of our fourth cruise on Adventure since February, and other than Izumi, the biggest gap is between the WJ (best by a mile), Specialty dining (more like fast casual land based restaurants than "upscale dining) in a distant second place, and WAAAAAAAY behind that, the "rubber chicken circuit" MDR offerings.

YMMV

2 hours ago, island lady said:

AA and Weight Watchers will probably get a lot of new members.

DW and I just got off of a 2 week B2B on Adventure, and only gained about two pounds each. We just can't seem to gain weight on cruises any more. AA on the other hand....😉

7 minutes ago, island lady said:

 

Doing that first quarter (63 nights) on the World Cruise...ummm...yeah.  🤪  Oh no...I have another 62 nights coming up for 4th quarter in July.   OMG....where is the local AA chapter.  😄 

Serenade would have to convert the entire ship to hold the meeting😱😇

2 hours ago, LadyZolt said:

We have very slow Internet in India.  This will be my final post as we have to get ready to leave in Dubai.  Royal Caribbean did say that they wouldn't refund us the rest of the cruise, which is what I expected, so we will file with our insurance once we're home.  I see John's photos from the Taj Mahal, so I'll just post a couple I took.  😀

 

Thanks for taking us along on your journey. Safe travels home and wishing you all the best.

13 minutes ago, Jack E Dawson said:

We have sailed in sheltered and glass fronted balcony cabins on the QM2 and enjoy both

Thanks for the pix and the description. Showed them to DW and she told me to book a midship balcony on deck 11. At 5ft she didn’t think she would be able to enjoy the view in a sheltered balcony.

This is our first time on Cunard, and I can’t make heads or tails out of their booking engine. Lots of questions, but no answers anywhere:

What is a “sheltered” balcony? What is it sheltered from?

Does Cunard offer travel insurance or do I have to purchase it separately?

Is final payment really due a week after the deposit?

Can I book my flights and pre cruise hotel through Cunard (won’t fly in day of for any cruise, especially one out of NYC)?

where do I find drink and internet packages/rates?

I probably have more questions, but now I have a headache just getting this far.😇

We always sail in GS, and DW has a gluten intolerance. MDR room service has yet to get her orders correct, spanning several cruises. We only risk the MDR room service perk when we know what she orders is always gluten free (Indian).

Not sure this will help since the OP is currently on board, but we bought an inexpensive GE universal remote from Amazon that works with the on board tvs. Have used it on dozens of cruises with no hiccups to override the tvs default settings and access the hdmi ports.

I have Equinox booked for next January to celebrate our 30th anniversary, and have not sailed on X in ages. DW wants to know how fancy she should pack. I’m easy, have tux will travel, but she wants to really splash it up. Any suggestions?

9 minutes ago, Engineroom Snipe said:

We were one of two ships there and we were off-boarded

Happy that you found it worth $20. What ships were in port? Agree that the food choices were seriously lacking for a paid venue. Had we been able to find seating by the pool we might have stayed, but the chair hogs beat us to them all. If they took out half of the beach chairs and umbrellas so you could actually enjoy a view, we might have stayed. Unfortunately they don’t seem to think that way. For them it’s all about the Benjamin’s $$, not about their paying guests.

On 3/28/2024 at 11:21 AM, orville99 said:

Wildly inconsistent:

 

We have Hideaway booked three times this year (all on Adventure of the Seas):

4/20 sailing - $22/pp (Allure is also there with us)

7/5 sailing - $55/pp (Icon is there with us)

9/27 sailing - $35/pp (Icon is there with us)

 

We will decide whether the last two cruise reservations will get cancelled or kept based on what we experience next month.😇

Just a quick follow up.

we were at hideaway bay yesterday. Got there at 9 AM and stayed all of an hour before we gave up and went to the main pool. No loungers anywhere around the pool, but the number of loungers with towels on them more than twice the total number of people in or around the pool. Then went over to the beach area by the food outlet. So many chairs and umbrellas that you couldn’t even see the lagoon. Complete waste of time, but only wasted $26. Cancelled all our other reservations as soon as we got back on board. YMMV.

Meanwhile, back to the WC, it’s good that John is getting back on board soon.

On 4/17/2024 at 3:39 PM, lovesthebeach2 said:

Of the 4 Celebrity cruises we have booked, 3 are in sky suites that include the Retreat, and 1 is in a prime concierge that’s going to Norway and I don’t really care where we are on the ship, just want to do Norway while they are still offering it

We have a Sky Suite booked on Equinox for next January. Looking forward to trying that cat.

7 hours ago, Carol28 said:

Is bottled water and an amenity? Can our room steward bring us bottles as we ask for them?

Depends on which class of ship you are on. On Oasis and Quantum class ships, you can pick up bottled water any time the CK Bar is open. On smaller classes of ship, you will receive a bottle of Evian on boarding day, but can also get bottled water in the evening during happy hour.

2 hours ago, leaveitallbehind said:

Given the tier level benefits by comparison IMO it would be far more advantageous for Celebrity loyalists to switch to RCCL.  C&A benefits are measurably better than CC.

I believe it comes down to a toss up between the quality of the cruise vs the incremental value of the perks. If you desire sailing on ships with a more upscale vibe, and have no desire to sail on an amusement park, the price differential may very well outweigh the perk differential.

We have a 7-night Retreat Suite booked for January 2025 (AI) for ~$7500, and a February 8-night booked on Adventure in a GS for~$6800. Even with all of our Pinnacle perks thrown in to the mix, there is only about a $700 differential between the two cruises.

31 minutes ago, Cruising89143 said:

There is but they only match up to Diamond/Elite between both lines. In order to move up to Elite Plus, you have to earn points for each cruise taken. 

We have received several surveys from X recently that intimated they are looking at whether more RCL loyalists would switch to X if they did a true status match.😇

1 minute ago, Cruising89143 said:

You will be Diamond on RCI.

With zero points😇

1 minute ago, adequall said:

Quick Question 

 

Looking to book my first cruise as an adult on Royal Caribbean, I'm an Elite Member on Celebrity, and I know that Royal Caribbean honors that on their ships. 

 

I don't mean for this to be drawn out, but when I did a mock booking on celebrity, I got a couple hundred bucks off my cruise because of my Elite membership, how do I link my Captains Club and my Crown and Anchor accounts? Only real reason I want to do it now is so I can save a couple hundred bucks when I go to book. 

 

Thanks for the help!

We went the other way - RCL to X - and all it took was a quick call to X to set up our account and give them our RCL C&A numbers. Should work in the reverse as well. You may even be able to do it on line by now.

We prefer the OS. We found the Aqua Theatre suite balconies to be too noisy with everything going on on the Boardwalk. We also loved the side facing CLS on that class of ship, but would never book one of the aft facing CLS.

2 hours ago, Raddo said:

I have done 19 cruises so far but never done a back to back.  Would I have to book the two cruises separately or would I get a discounted price overall if I ring RC to make it a single booking but both cruises?  Any advice on this by those who have done them would be much appreciated!! It just that I got my eye on 2 different cruises from same port but together makes a back to back.

We only do B2B or longer cruises, and always book on board as soon as the itineraries are released (we currently have cruises booked through April 2026). There are three positives to this approach (one of which has already been mentioned):

1) We can always get the same cabin regardless of how many legs we book (it helps if you do a search of available cabins on all the legs and have that list in hand when you decide to book);

2) Prices are generally at their lowest point when cruises are first released;

3) We get OBC by booking on board.

19 hours ago, colesc15 said:

I know two weeks ago it was stifling the entire week and we just had to spend most of the time in the pool inside. 

The windows can be opened, but you need to make the request to an officer who is in charge of the solarium. Also, there are tower structures between the left side and right side hot tubs and the windows of the solarium hot tubs that are the AC distribution points. If you can grab loungers on either side between the towers and the windows, you will feel the AC.

8 minutes ago, Ourusualbeach said:

I've never seen that enforced for North American bookings before final payment

We have never seen this either. Also, we occasionally have seen a good price differential between what we had originally booked and a grand suite, and when we upgraded we also received an increase in the original OBC from $100 to $300.😇