DaKahuna

Things are off to a good start. Our daughter picked us up and picked us up as scheduled. She brought us to our hotel for the night and we had a nice dinner before she left to go home. I am a big fan of the Marriott Burger -- my wife had the same. We have two suitcases, one weighs 40 lbs and the other 60 lbs. Already informed United that I have one bag over 50 lbs so do not expect any issues at the airport. As is the case when we have early morning flights, we are staying at a Marriott property close to the airport tonight and will take the hotel shuttle bus over to the airport at 0600 tomorrow.

That's an interesting recipie for the Boston Iced Tea Party -- all the menu''s I have seen include bourbon/whiskey and vermouth. This looks more like the ingredients for a normal LIT

This is our plan for Quantum. We'll use our Diamond Plus drinks credits, have one or two during Happy Hour in the Suite Lounge, and then pay ala carte for anything above and beyond that. Usually, I have a glass of wine while the wife is getting ready for dinner and then take a glass to go to accompany dinner at the Coastal Kitchen.

We did a Grand Loft suite on Allure and my wife was not a fan of having to go up and down the stairs all the time. She's told me never to book at two story room again. i will see what I can find out and let you know.

Go commando and not have to worry about underwear at all.

Great - I'll have to see if they have them on Quantum on Monday.

Thank you. We are really looking forward to this vacation. It was originally scheduled for August / September 2020 but COVID, then we re-scheduled for 2021 and Alaska sailings did not happen so after a two year delay and a very hot summer, we are looking forward to cooler weather and some beautiful scenery and wild life.

It is official. We also checked in for tomorrow's flight to Seattle. My plan is to provide a lot of pictures, similar to what I did for our December 2021 and March/April 2022 Celebrity cruises, as I can and share our experiences with those of you who are along with us on these cruises, are cruising on Quantum at a later day, or are simply looking at possibly booking a cruise later. We will be sailing in a Grand Suite so the meals will be almost predominately in Coastal Kitchen, which I have seen few reviews of for this Alaska season.

Take clothes that are loose fitting and comfortable.

I am really enjoying your post. I am a fan of Long Island Ice Tea's so am curious how a Boston Ice Tea Party compares?

i can verify this. My wife, our son, DIL, SIL, and I all have iPhones. Our daughter has an Android. When we are on the shipboard WiFi, all the iPhones use iMessage and we can all exchange messages except our daughter. So we have used WhatsApp for the last four years when on WiFi only and it works well. As @MandyMooToo said, put your phone in airplane mode and then turn on WiFi and connect to the ship's WiFi network. You will be able to SMS with anyone using the WhatsApp regardless of what type of phone they are using and make phone calls, provided your carrier/phone supports Wifi calling.

Color me jealours -- mine shows this : I''ll get more excited tomorrow around noon Eastern once we have our negative COVID antigen test results in hand. Then we will also have this to look forward to --

Ours has been left in our room a couple of days before departure with the regular nightly advertisements and Daily Planner. There is usually a deadline to turn it back in to Customer Services about two days before the end of the cruise. We have gotten into the habit of making our flights later in the day and try to be some of the last people to leave the ship. I learned that the hard way when we had to 'baby sit our luggage' at Fort Lauderdale International for two hours before United would allow us to check our bags in. We did not know there was a limit to how early because we had always used Luggage Valet in the past.

While we have had many of the wait staff remind us of the survey and how important it is, we have never had anyone come out and say to give them a 10. They have explained how messed up the grading system is and that anything other than a 10 adversely affects them but I cannot recall any of them specifically stating to rate them as a 10. So, I have always answered the question with a 'No.'

My wife and I have a few specific extra things that we ask for on day one, e.g. place sheets over the sofa and chairs, extra ice, a hot water kettle for the room, etc. For this I normally give the room steward $20 at the time we make the request. Also, if the room steward does more than just normal cleaning and servicing of the room during the course of the cruise, we trip again on the last night or the morning of the last day of the cruise. We consider ourselves to be very low maintenance but if we see that any wait staff, bartenders, room stewards, that we encounter daily put forth a little extra effort, we feel like they should be rewarded.

Thank you both for your responses. We are in the same cabin for both sailings but never considered the Room Attendant or dining room wait staff could be different.

Actually, we have watched a few reviews of Wonderland and looked at the menu and find it is not really our cup of tea.

So when doing consecutive cruises and you want to tip extra do you do it at the end of each cruise or at the end of the last cruise?

Thank you so much for a wonderfully comprehensive review. We are looking forward to boarding this coming Monday.

If I understand it correctly, if you have already pre-paid gratuities, then the increase does not affect you, or at least that is what my TA told me.

We have always left automatic gratuities in place and tipped as warranted at the end.

To be accepted by Royal Caribbean the test must be proctored/monitored by a qualified medical technician.

CVS in my area appears to no longer be doing rapid test. I have received "no appointments available" for the last two week.

We thought about cancelling but decided that we would just go ahead and make the trip. We already have waited two years for this cruise, cancelled in 2020 and 2021, and did not want to wait any longer. Our main attractions for Alaska has always been the snow capped mountains and the wildlife but we are sad that we will be missing the glaciers.

The 8/29 was originally scheduled for Sitka. The Quantum sailings alternated with Sitka one week and Skagway *the next when we book the 8/29 and 9/5 sailing over a year ago.