With some of the more popular tour providers, there's a good chance there will be people on the bus with you that are going on the RC-sponsored version of that tour.
Early 2025 would be about the 5 year window for her next drydock. Maybe dock slots were limited and this was the best window available to get it done before the summer season
The RC website can do weird things with time zones (like how the app and the website show different dates for your cruise check in date). That's what I assume it is.
Post-restart, I love the lounges having a permanent bar in Radiance class ships. Must faster bar service compared to ships where you have to wait for the server to go next door to get your drinks.
If you are basing things just off ship, I'd pick Mariner since it has been amped. But if you don't care about restaurants or water slides, then I'd go for price/cruise length as the tiebreaker.
Or even better, Celebrity guests pay 2x as much as RC guests for various things.
As always, anything you hear on a ship should be taken with a grain of salt, but on a recent cruise one of the officers told me RC wanted to build another pier to have more than 2 ships at a time.
There are enough days where there's only one ship in port. But wouldn't that be a bit of a logistics nightmare, especially for the bars and drink packages?