Tatka

I do not think it works this way. For example you cannot get 3 bottles of water and count them as 1 drink under $14.

You don’t need majority … you need certain number which will demand huge amounts

I thought that’s what they meant when they extended hours to be not up until 12 am, but till 5 am, meaning that yes, you can get your last drink even after midnight last day, but … only before 5 am. I guess they didn’t word it properly

It’s n + 1 day.. We are fed as there is no breakfast on day #1, but I don’t think drinks should be or are included.

You'd think D+ should know this after being Diamond. 🙂

Well.. not same number of kids. For example we sail every Thanksgiving on Anthem and it is 1300+ kids... yet in January for Southern Caribbean cruise on Anthem there are usually < 200 pax under 18. Btw parents are not necessarily pulling kids out of schools. There are many various schools with different schedules which do not match standard public school schedule (which also vary by state). 7 days cruises and shorter during holidays always attract many kids. Unless it is some sort of exotic itinerary.

LOL. Independence is not sailing to Boston. We only saw Queen Mary 2 in Boston on 4th We sailed on Queen Mary 2 in 2017 and for July 4th we were in Boston ... answering my question about "How come British ship was in Boston for July 4th?!" captain suggested to do exactly this. 🙂 We had about 100 kids on 5 day's cruise to Halifax, NS and Boston. They were all so well behaved ..

We cruised for 20 years with them + RCI, NCL, MSC, Carnival (with them we split our ways almost right away). RCI is our line of choice now. It has cons, but pros + logistics (we cruise from Northeast of US) + us reaching Diamonds and then Diamond+ made us very loyal. 🙂 Celebrity is a sister line with some luxury touches and a bit more sophisticated crowd on average. They created amazing Edge class ships which encompass many features of Royal too.

As for service in hotel... If we stay in a hotel, which due to us cruising now 5 times a year rarely happens we stay at Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, Westin and such. I do not remember ever more than 1 service a day. Maybe at Ritz or such there is a full service, but RCI or even Celebrity are not luxury brands. I think suites on RCI are still serviced twice (or more) a day though. If one wants luxury service they need to book suites.

I believe premium massmarket line do Celebrity Holland America Princess Cunard

I thought I'd miss, but I do not. We actually have more freedom. We now use only one service in the morning and this is completely enough. We are rarely in our room, but if we are it is for a short nap. Then we always tried to leave our room tidy, Now we do not need to think about our bed being unmade or our clothes being in wrong places. I definitely do not need interactions with room stewards. Polite "Hi! How are you?" in halls is plenty enough for us. They are not our friends or anyone we are interesting in interactions. They clean our room. I love cruising WAY more than A/I or any other hotel vacation, but only 1 cleaning per day was never a problem in hotels. Frankly, we never needed it every day too. Our garbage bins usually hardly have anything to remove, so this is also not a problem We need ice, but apparently getting it once a day in the morning is enough too If we do not have enough towel, or ice, or shower gel we have no issue finding our steward and asking to get it for us.

We live in the best place in US (unless you absolutely hate snow) 🙂 And we have so many cruises from many ports, we do not even fly/drive to Florida for cruises anymore. As for other lines... We did sail with 8 lines up to pandemic, but we hit D in 2018 (before 2016 we only had 5 cruises with Royal) ... and started cruising more and more with Royal out of Northeast. Our first cruise after restart was on Celebrity Edge as it was the very first ship sailing from US (Florida).... and it was a great cruise. Then 12 (I think) now are all with RCI from NJ or Baltimore.

Nice! That's truly a lot. After pandemic we sail almost exclusively with RCI, but we are "insiders" . 🙂 So single points for us.

Interesting. Block is sent every 70 points (if requested on the ship of course in case they do not have it). They do not send blocks for prepandemic achievements and they did have blocks on ships in 2021. This means you accumulated 420 points through 2022-2023. You either cruised 420 nights, or 210 nights in suite or 140 nights in suite alone.

Do you cruise so much you receive multiple blocks with new design? My last block was from June 2022 cruise and I will be only getting my first colored ones this fall.

No stranger can get on grounds of decent AI hotels in Mexico, DR etc. They are well protected.

We had somewhat nice shows in Iberostars. Again aerials , dancing was not on the same level as even weaker RCI examples. But RCI also has various musical bands in Schooner, Bolero's, Pub.

Very rarely even the best A/I reach the level of entertainment of RCI. Even when it is not the best RCI entertainment.

For us advantage of cruising (at least from US) includes possibility to drive to several ports (4 are relatively close, and several are far away,but still reachable) rather than flying to A/I. Makes it cheaper.

We just got bored in A/I after several times and switched to cruising. It was a wonderful chain Iberostar... and we used it twice during Covid again, but for us cruising is more. Visiting various places Way better entertainment. We LOVE sailaways and many other things about cruising. We LOVE being in a middle of the ocean. Just all around more interesting vacation for us. As D and now D+ we get enough included drinks now.

Thank you. We once were on Queen Mary 2 in 2017 for 4th and docked in Boston. I asked captain Christopher Wells how come we are on (almost) British vessel celebrating Independence from Britain. He proposed gathering tea all over the ship and throwing it overboard.

This is just like everything else.. about avoiding confrontations. It has literally NOTHING to do with languages, People who cruise internationally know one of 6(?) languages used for warnings at least on basic level. And if not ... will they allow bringing alcohol and such? 🙂

We don’t book inside guarantee with RCI as upgrade to ocean under promenade deck would be a downgrade to us. We don’t need a window, but need location. Also with betting system chance of placement to higher category is slim.

I was thinking the same… Infants or even toddlers should not be in whirlpools due to health hazards. Parents just want to enjoy their vacation without thinking about their poor babies. Unacceptable

🙂 Maybe. JFI I’m a backpacker and a camper… heck I’m even a climber and ice climber on occasion. I own jeans and shorts with holes… I just see MDRs on ships as a place where such cloth doesn’t belong.