Rogueperson's **Live** Brilliance of the Seas 12/16/2021

[Rogueperson]

I usually don't start a thread until only a couple days before.  But i'm beyond excited and someone out there was wondering, so I'm going to officially start it off.  Until this year, I rarely do anything shorter than a 7 night.  This is an oddity for me as I've done Mariner for 3 nights in September and now Brilliance for 4.  Actually, no, i'm not ashamed of it.  Its for the double points.  I sailed solo for both those, which garnered me tier jumping 28 points!!!  (or should after this is done).  If all goes well with all my planned cruises, I will be diamond plus by the end of the year.  I am tagging @FionaMG as if i don't, she will be very upset with me because I said I would.

 

A little about myself.  I"ve done a couple live threads.  Here are my links to them if anyone is interest.  This is also an easy way for me to find them and relive my adventures as after a certain time, the search engine will not find them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the covid protocols, this last week is usually the most stressful because of the big giant unknown.  The covid test.  Yeah, I'm vaccinated, but it doesn't alleviate the possibility that i *might* get a breakthrough infection and that would put a bowling ball through this quite easily.  But THIS time, I'm totally chill.  Well, I got my booster yesterday.  To get my booster, I had to get a PCR test!!  I was supposed to get it on Friday, but I said i moved it because I wasn't feeling well.  I go in on Monday and they said you need a PCR test before we will see you.  So i took one, and yesterday, I'm officially negative with a PCR and boosted.  Yes, I know that this PCR doesn't count, but it does mean that i'm highly unlikely to be positive between now and Tuesday when I take my at home proctored one.  

 

So hop on aboard as we experience the FIRST revenue cruise of the Brilliance of the Seas.  It will be a once in a lifetime experience for me because when will I ever have the chance to ever cruise on a ship that is effectively starting service on my sailing.

[Rogueperson]

Okay, the Princess 5 night cruise was a one off (less than 7 nights).  I didn't book it, my mother actually booked it, paid for it and cruised with us, so that would not have been my first.  Its a good comparison between Royal and Princess.

[FionaMG]

Yay! Another @Rogueperson review. 

 

How are you doing Rogue?

 

I'm glad you remembered to tag me, so thanks for that. I will be delighted to tag along (see what I did there? )

 

I sailed on Brilliance once but it was a long time ago. I had to look back through my cruise archives to pinpoint the date: Easter 2009, 10 days to the Eastern Med and Egypt. I was hoping I had a nice pic of the ship to post here but I don't have a single one, nice or otherwise! 

 

Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic cruise. Can't wait to read all about it.

[Rogueperson]

Just now, FionaMG said:

Yay! Another @Rogueperson review. 

 

How are you doing Rogue?

 

I'm glad you remembered to tag me, so thanks for that. I will be delighted to tag along (see what I did there? )

 

I sailed on Brilliance once but it was a long time ago. I had to look back through my cruise archives to pinpoint the date: Easter 2009, 10 days to the Eastern Med and Egypt. I was hoping I had a nice pic of the ship to post here but I don't have a single one, nice or otherwise! 

 

Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic cruise. Can't wait to read all about it.

Our Navigator cruise may not be considered the *best* cruise for me, but that cruise will ALWAYS be the most memorable.  Long Story short if you don't want to read our dual live thread, they quarantined me.

[FionaMG]

5 minutes ago, Rogueperson said:

Our Navigator cruise may not be considered the *best* cruise for me, but that cruise will ALWAYS be the most memorable.

 

For sure. I'm going to re-read it again now. It would be a shame to let a handy link go to waste. Especially since I have five whole months to wait for my next cruise. 

[Rogueperson]

1 minute ago, FionaMG said:

 

For sure. I'm going to re-read it again now. It would be a shame to let a handy link go to waste. Especially since I have five whole months to wait for my next cruise. 

 

Well, you get to read another one of mine before your next cruise.  I'm on Enchantment in March.  12 nights.

[rajacks]

@Rogueperson - Thanks for doing this!  I will be following.  I'm scheduled to sail with my BFF 1/31 on the Brilliance, which will be my first time on her and out of Tampa!  I have been on Serenade and Radiance and do love this class of ship.

 

Looking forward to your review!
 

Ruth

[Rogueperson]

3 minutes ago, rajacks said:

@Rogueperson - Thanks for doing this!  I will be following.  I'm scheduled to sail with my BFF 1/31 on the Brilliance, which will be my first time on her and out of Tampa!  I have been on Serenade and Radiance and do love this class of ship.

 

Looking forward to your review!
 

Ruth

I have not been on a Radiance Class since my first Royal Caribbean cruise in 2009 on the Jewel of the Seas.  Although I loved the ship, it unfortunately ranked as worst cruise ever for me.  I'm still a little gun shy on booking a Jewel cruise because of it, even though I knew it was all crew and passengers, which has since been shuffled in the 12 years since.

[deliver42]

The Jewel was the last cruise with my late wife, and we didn't like it at all The food wasn't up to Royal' standard in our opinion, and the shows left a lot to be desired. Of course that was in 2006, so I'm sure things have changed since then.

[Rogueperson]

14 hours ago, deliver42 said:

The Jewel was the last cruise with my late wife, and we didn't like it at all The food wasn't up to Royal' standard in our opinion, and the shows left a lot to be desired. Of course that was in 2006, so I'm sure things have changed since then.

I thought i responded to this on my phone, but i guess it didn't take.  This does not bode well for cruise critic and my mobile connection here.

 

When I was on Jewel, it was my first Royal Caribbean Cruise.  The ship itself was lovely and I loved the way it was laid out.  However, what made it plummet in my esteem was that everything else was more or less a shell of what it should have been.  If i had not been on a cruise before, it could have been missed, but at the time, it was my 6th cruise, I've had something to compare it to and it did not compare well.

 

The food was just off.  It didn't help that they seated us at a table next to the kitchen, which really detracted from the experience.  The specialty restaurants didn't do any better.  It presented well, but then when we ate it, we were like "what is this"  It was relatively unseasoned, and pretty pathetic.  The shows were fine, but the crew just didn't feel like they cared to be there.  I found out a little later than a good portion of the cruise staff had their contracts ending on this cruise, so the next one would have a very different work up, so that could have been it.  And the passengers (we embarked from Miami) were down right rude and racists.

 

I could have been the type of person who said "Royal Caribbean sucks, I'll never sail on her again" with this kind of first experience, but I'm a pretty open guy and understand that things happen.  When I sailed Royal Caribbean again in 2013 on Independence, it was a night and day experience and I'm happy to report it was a fluke.

[Rogueperson]

I should give a little background on this cruise.  As I stated before, I do not generally do short cruises of less than 5 nights without a good reason.

 

Mariner of the Seas, the 3 night I did in September was booked as a last minute deal because of the double points, and the lack of solo supplement.

 

This cruise, was booked months before.  This history of this one is better.  @death_star and I have been bantering about cruises like crazy.  He's seriously jonesing for a cruise like an addict.  He hasn't been on one since 2019 when we went on the Allure (see above).  Also, he's been spouting out about the double points and that it would be a perfect time to go and get the points.   Keep in mind, that even before the double points promotion, he's been saying he wants to do a solo cruise (without the wife) because of the normal double points for solo in a double occupancy.  He only needs 4 to hit Platinum.  I've done 2 of them, both 9 nights, which garnered me the 36 points total to jump me to Diamond status and he's been enamored by that for quite some time.  So when this double point promotion came, and cruises started resuming, i pretty much said "if you say go, I will go with you solo".  He does have 2 kids now, so I get its a little hard to get away.  So in May, we found this one and he said go.  And we booked, for the double points, expecting a solo supplement, at $650.00 for an interior.  To me, solo, it wasn't bad.  I kept wanting to do one out of Baltimore, because a solo cruise with the solo supplement gets expensive when you roll in airfare, but Baltimore's shortest cruise, timewise, was 5 nights and not available this year as I could not book another cruise next year (I have 26 days on ship booked next in 2022, I"m tapped). Also, he could not cruise as long as I could solo because of his kids, so that was out.

 

Plus, Enchantment cruises were actually pretty expensive and a good thing we didn't, because it would have been cancelled if we had booked.

Fast Forward to August and we got sales galore.  We price matched several times, and that's when the solo supplement fell off, and we are down to $320.00 for our interior...with $25 OBC.  Unheard of.  we could have gotten a price match down to 290, but we would probably lose our OBC with only a scant $5.00 net gain, I felt bad about asking our TA to hold on the phone for an hour to grab it, so i let it go.

 

And now here we are, present day.  6 days before sailing, 5 before we fly out.  And its the FIRST REVENUE CRUISE since the pandemic.

Edited December 10, 2021 by Rogueperson

[Rogueperson]

I’m start to run into the same bug i had on allure with my chrome on my iphone.  The posting on here keeps bugging and will not post.  I switched ti Safari and i think it works now.  Glad I caught it before i got onboard.

 

This cruise was supposed to go to Cozumel.  However, we got news that we going to Costa Maya instead.  To tell you the truth, I was a little disappointed ONLY because i wanted to go to Chitchen Itza.  I’ve been wanting to go for years.  Its a long excursion but i was waffling on doing the serious premium one.  The one where you fly there.  I was waffling because the original price i expected was about 550 but on sale, it could go down to 475. But because of covid, the price jumped to 720.  Also, i was hesitant to book online because if this excursion didn’t go, I’m sitting on 500+ OBC on a 4 night cruise (which is actually more than the cruise itself) So fortunately i waited.  

 

I’ve only been to Costa Maya once and that was on Allure in 2019.  So i am not upset at exploring it more as i didn’t get a real chance to last time.

[TPCRUISER2]

Following! Have several future cruises on the Brilliance!

 

[Rogueperson]

Good morning everyone.

 

The count is 3 days before sailing.  I can tell i will be sooo productive here at work.  I haven't even started packing yet.  I had planned to pack this weekend, but that didn't happen.

 

So, I *may* have a little problem with my emed home test.  It shows an expiration date of 9/27/21.  I read that they extended all the expiration dates...somewhat.  So, we will see how tomorrow's home test goes.  I got this test back at the end of September.  In fact, I *received* it on 9/27/21.  This was my replacement test when the one I took for Mariner came back inconclusive.  I should have opened the package earlier to inspect it and griped at them then, but oh well.  If it goes off, then i'm good, if not, I have my backup at CVS on Wednesday.

 

Even though I know I'm going to be negative because I was recently tested negative on a PCR test last week, its this lingering fear that something is going to go wrong.  If both the home test fail and the CVS test falls through, I'm going to have to find an immediate solution.  I suspect the odds are against all of that happening and me stranded without a test is small, but it still drives my anxiety nuts.

 

On this trip, I will be conducting a little experiment to see if this works.  The one thing that cruises across the brands i've cruised on have, is awful coffee.  The two solo cruises, as well as some with my wife, I've packed a french press with me.  That experiment is a partial success.  Yes, i can get good coffee with the french press, but cleaning it is a little difficult as well as disposing of the used grounds.  This time, I will bring my aero press.  Its a smaller plastic contraption so no fear of it being broken.  It is easier to clean and the grounds are easier to dispose of.  I need to bring filters with it (but I have an idea of how to pack) and there may beother logistics i may not have foreseen.  Since I'm only going to be way for 5 nights total, I do not need a full bag of coffee, so i will pre-grind (*shudder*) my coffee to take with me.  I'm not willing to risk bringing a coffee grinder with me and I don't have a manual one.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Rogueperson

[JennKach]

I'm on Brilliance in a couple weeks, and my first time on RCI, so I'm really looking forward to your review.  Hoping to see the daily schedules and drink menus if you can post them.   I'm having trouble concentrating at work too🙂 

[Rogueperson]

5 minutes ago, JennKach said:

I'm on Brilliance in a couple weeks, and my first time on RCI, so I'm really looking forward to your review.  Hoping to see the daily schedules and drink menus if you can post them.   I'm having trouble concentrating at work too🙂 

 

I will post the cruise compass every day.  I don't drink, but I will find the drink menus and post them when i can.  I'm going to try something a little different.  I'm going to see if i can post them as pdfs, as I can actually scan them with my phone as oppose to previous ones have been pictures i've taken with my camera.  Apparently, the scans work better.

[death_star]

Hi everyone,

 

Figured I would just chime in along with @rogueperson for sort of a double live thread! 

 

Made an appointment at CVS as soon as they were opened to book for my rapid test. Went this morning and walked into a little booth and had my test. Within about an hour or so I had my results both in MyChart and text message. They used a LumiraDX rapid antigen test.

 

Just looked in my Royal app and see that the Cruise Planner for the entire cruise has been loaded already. I can see all of the CD staff activities, fitness, spa offerings, and other things. I also see MDR menus.

 

One of the oddest things we had with this cruise was due to the itinerary change from Cozumel to Costa Maya. We have had only 5 excursion available to book in Costa Maya which seemed like a fairly small number compared to what they had in my previous visit in 2019. With the load of info in the application today there of new excursions that were not there before. Looking at the Cruise Planner on the Website now, they are available for booking. I can only imagine what a nightmare it would be to try to go to the shore excursion desk onboard with this very late release.

Edited December 14, 2021 by death_star

[Rogueperson]

43 minutes ago, death_star said:

Hi everyone,

 

Figured I would just chime in along with @rogueperson for sort of a double live thread! 

 

Made an appointment at CVS as soon as they were opened to book for my rapid test. Went this morning and walked into a little booth and had my test. Within about an hour or so I had my results both in MyChart and text message. They used a LumiraDX rapid antigen test.

 

Just looked in my Royal app and see that the Cruise Planner for the entire cruise has been loaded already. I can see all of the CD staff activities, fitness, spa offerings, and other things. I also see MDR menus.

 

One of the oddest things we had with this cruise was due to the itinerary change from Cozumel to Costa Maya. We have had only 5 excursion available to book in Costa Maya which seemed like a fairly small number compared to what they had in my previous visit in 2019. With the load of info in the application today there of new excursions that were not there before. Looking at the Cruise Planner on the Website now, they are available for booking. I can only imagine what a nightmare it would be to try to go to the shore excursion desk onboard with this very late release.

 

I was wondering when you would chime in here.  I personally think that multiple viewpoints in a live thread works.  I did it with @FionaMG on Navigator and it worked very well,  though @death_star is actually my travel companion more or less here.

 

Life just doesn't want to make things easy for me.  So I come to work this morning, I knew i had some time in the morning, so i tried to do the proctored home test.  This time I was ready for it, because i did it last time and the test failed me.  Note I said tried.

 

So we go through the steps.  Identify the codes, verify the box is unopened.  open the box, set out the card, put 6 drops of the solution into the top hole.......why isn't it going into the hole?  *squeeze harder* no liquid.  Squeeze completely...no liquid.  There is no solution in the bottle.  Defective kit.  Well, that's no problem, do you have another test....NO.

 

I have a CVS test scheduled for tomorrow.  Let me confirm that.  *cannot retrieve reservation, birthdate in correct"  So, is it there, or not?  Its my birthday...

 

So at this point instead of waiting, i'm looking for other places for the quick test.  CVS and Walgreens.  No availabilities at all.  I finally found an urgent care, but it was a little farther than i expected, but since it was available I took it.  This place fortunately, was great.  I had to get in line to get paperwork, and then there was a fair line to get to the front for the testing, but it moved.  All in all, maybe 20 minutes total.  The kicker here, is that even though I don't need one, they do SAME DAY PCR RESULTS if testing is done before noon!!.  So, anyone in Maryland, Quality First Urgent Care does SAME DAY PCR RESULTS on a walk up basis!!!!

 

I just got the quick antigen test, which should give me results in a couple hours.  I should be negative as I got a PCR test last week and I didn't expose myself anywhere between then and now.  Its just waiting now. 

 

Even though I understand the need, I really hate this hoop we have to jump through.  Its actually a lot harder to get these tests than you would think.  Nothing near me (within 10 minutes) would do the antigen test (including my doctor across the hall).  And to have your entire cruise balancing on that, is stressful.

[Rogueperson]

And just like that, test results came back negative.  I was able to cancel my CVS appointment after all, even though I couldn't enter into the reservation.  Oh well, its out of the way, so i'm glad.

 

Also, @death_star as of right now, our flight is on-time!!!  Though that means absolutely nothing at this early date.

[FionaMG]

33 minutes ago, Rogueperson said:

And just like that, test results came back negative.  I was able to cancel my CVS appointment after all, even though I couldn't enter into the reservation.  Oh well, its out of the way, so i'm glad.

 

Also, @death_star as of right now, our flight is on-time!!!  Though that means absolutely nothing at this early date.

Glad it all worked out. What a relief!

[Rogueperson]

Good morning.  Today is travel day.  I don’t actually fly out until 8 this evening.  I’m checked in and the flight as of now is on time. We shall see if this holds true.  @death_star is obsessing more than I am.  He’s tracking the flight history of this flight.  Last night, this flight was delayed slightly.
 

The issue here is whether or not we have a shuttle to our hotel.  We’re booked at the Springhill Suites near the airport.  They have a shuttle running….  until 11:30 supposedly.  Our scheduled arrival is 11:10.  I told him we should call when we touch down as neither of us have checked luggage.  

 

I’m packed already and my stuff is in my car.  My plan is to leave work early, have dinner with my wife before she drops me off.  I found out to my dismay on my Mariner cruise that BWI does not have any sit down restaurants pre-security.  Duclaw used to be there, but its gone.  So is the mexican place, even though the BWI webpage says they’re there.

 

And I say good bye to my little boy, Dobby.

 

[Rogueperson]

Woah.  That was almost bad.  I realized that when I went home to give Dobby his walk, i left my Kindle there.  That would have put a serious damper on my trip.  Yeah, i could have used my phone, but its not the same.

 

Update on air travel.  Delayed by 14 minutes.  Thanks to @death_star, I can follow my flight from the beginning of the day.  It left Albuquerque NM to Austin, TX on time and landed on time, but there, it got delayed somehow, which of course ripples to me.   flightaware.com

 

Still, not bad, but makes it very unlikely we will be able to use our hotel shuttle from the airport.  Who knows, they might make up some time.  Its a 20 minute delay there, but only a 14 minute delay here.  We'll see.  This just means i have more time for dinner with my wife.

[FionaMG]

8 hours ago, Rogueperson said:

I’m packed already and my stuff is in my car.

 

Rogue, I've just finished re-reading all of your previous "lives". I'm ready for you to board Brilliance! 

[Rogueperson]

Made it to the airport.  Security was a breeze, especially with Global Entry/TSA precheck.  

 

Dinner was a place I’ve never been before.  Its a place called Cantina Mamma Lucia.  This is not to be confused with a quasi chain in the area called Mamma Lucia.  They had an amazing Chicken Brunello.  I should probably say the Brunello cream sauce was really good because the chicken was meh.  But all in all, it was a good place.

 

However, my flight is officially delayed until 9:14 (from 8:40).  Not too bad, but unlikely to make the 11:30 cutoff for our hotel shuttle.  The plane IS in the air and enroute to us from Austin so there is that.

 

So here i sit…

[Rogueperson]

9:10.  Still have not boarded yet.  The plane is here.  The crew is not.  They are supposedly somewhere in the airport.  

 

Our plan to catch the shuttle just evaporated.  Will probably just grab a cab.

 

As long as we make it to Tampa, right?