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flhartley

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Posts posted by flhartley

    My Time Dining on the Serenade of the Seas

    in Royal Caribbean International

    Posted

    My Serenade experiences are somewhat different. On two separate cruises on Serenade, they turned people away on the first night if they didn’t have reservations. They didn’t ever care if you showed up at time of reservation, but they did care if you had one. We found that as long as we had a time booked, we could go any time and were always welcomed. As other poster said, table for two not always available.

     

     

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    Beaches on St. Maarten

    in St. Martin/St. Maarten

    Posted

    Going to be on the Oasis of the Seas in November and one stop will be St. Maarten. Wanted to know opinions of the beaches there, specifically Orient Beach and the beach near the cruise dock. Also how long of a cab ride is it to Orient Beach? And where is the best point or points on Orient Beach to find a taxi back to the cruise dock? Any other beach recommendations and/or advice? I'd like to be able to swim in some really nice clear waters that are relatively calm. Have a nice underwater camera that I'd want to use there.

     

     

     

    We pay a hair more to reserve a chair at Holland House Hotel on main beach at port. . Great service, chair, drinks, best bathrooms, internet on beach, great folks who followed through hurricane recovery and did wonderful job restoring.....we have loved them for years. Can make reservation on line. Lots of places cheaper but not as good chairs and often really loud music.

     

     

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    Just back from Serenade 11-day Southern Caribbean

    in Royal Caribbean International

    Posted

    My wife and I are going on the Serenade in February. Just wondering if you had my time dining. This is the first time we tried my time dining. I prefer a set time but only 8pm was available. Looking forThanks!

     

     

     

    My experience on Serenade (two cruises) is that as long as you have a MTD reservation for that evening, they will seat you virtually any time. We were only two so larger group may be a problem. First couple of nights, they were turning away anyone without a reservation, regardless of time.

     

     

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    Unusual & intrusive questions by AA agent at Barelona Airport

    in Royal Caribbean International

    Posted

    This happened on Sept. 10 when we checked in for our 1:05 pm flight on American to Philadelphia. The agent was pleasant and when she saw the RCL luggage tag asked us about the trip. We saw nothing in the question as our impression was that she was being friendly. The subsequent questions were unusual.

     

     

     

    Q: How was your trip--no problem.

     

    Q: Which countries we visited--no problem.

     

     

     

    Problematic questions.

     

     

     

    Q: Turned to my wife and asked her what was the cabin #, as though my wife was hiding something.

     

    Q: How did we book our cruise.

     

    Q: When I answered that I booked it on line, she proceeded to ask me the web-site address. Rather than prolong the discussion I told her that it was via RCL at RCCL.com.

     

     

     

    I was tempted to tell her that it was none of her business, but since we were close to the weight limit, I played along.

     

     

     

    As we completed our check-in, we wondered if we were selected for this process as we could not check-in on line on Brilliance and instead were advised to check-in at airport.

     

     

     

    At our gate, there was an irate member of the UC Irvine, California water polo team that was incensed by some inane questions posed by a AA agent to her.

     

     

     

    Wonder if this is new as part of the overall security package.

     

     

     

    We've been thru Barcelona Airport and never experienced this process.

     

     

     

    We just returned from Colombia and these are exactly the kinds of questions we got both from the counter agent, immigration and gate agent. And, they were excellent at bouncing questions between both my wife and me. Seemed to just be enhanced security.

     

     

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    5 night Dining Package-Scheduling Reservations in Advance?

    in Royal Caribbean International

    Posted

    Need to make it on board , did same package last 2 cruises had no problem getting restaurant and times we wanted

     

     

     

    We had a different experience on navigator. The reservation was not made for our first two nights and they made us accept a really challenging time although we went to the specialty restaurant reservation desk as soon as we boarded. We were unable to get to two of the specialty restaurants at all at any time during the cruise and other reservation times were not conducive to getting to the shows etc. since this was our only experience of using dining packages, we were quite disappointed and wondered if it was an exception. Looking forward to seeing other people's points of view as we have chosen not to make such reservations on upcoming cruises. We have just booked what we wanted at full price but would love to use the packages once more.

     

     

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    All Things Freedom of the Seas!

    in Royal Caribbean International

    Posted

    We were on Freedom Dec. 4th,and my husband went to use the ones on RP. The regular diet coke was out! We were still in port! Really? Saw alot of people frustrated by this- they did not get any till 2-3 days later. He had the premium drink package-or would have cancelled. Did they pick some up at our first port-GC?

     

     

    My experience has been that every department has a schedule of when they are allowed to go to "supply" and replenish. Sometimes,it is two or three days away from when they run out. We have seen this multiple times in bars when bar tenders could confirm a wine or liquor they were out of at that specific bar is actually in the supply area but they weren't slotted to pick up for a couple of days. The better managers will find a way to transfer between bars, windjammer, pool but others won't take the initiative.

     

     

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    All Things Freedom of the Seas!

    in Royal Caribbean International

    Posted

    Going to be on Freedom for the first time in a week :D

     

     

     

    I have gotten addicted to a drink called a cucumber sunrise at the Alchemy bar on Carnival. It became my pre-dinner cocktail. Does anyone know if there would be a bar on Freedom that could make it? Most of the ingredients can be easily found, just not sure if the watermelon syrup and cucumber can be found at any of the bars on Freedom. I listed the recipe below:

     

     

     

    Cucumber Sunrise

     

    2 0z ABSOLUTE VODKA

     

    1 0z FRESH LIME JUICE

     

    1 0z MONIN WATERMELON SYRUP

     

    2 CUCUMBER WHEELS

     

    0.75 0z ORANGE JUICE

     

    Muddle cucumber wheels in a shaker, add all ingredients with ice then shake and strain into a glass with ice.

     

     

    Many of this class ship have a "mixologist" on board in one of the bars. And, most of the bartenders would enjoy giving it a try.

     

     

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    Have you done a day pass at Sonesta at Maho?

    in St. Martin/St. Maarten

    Posted

    we did the day pass at the Sonesta Maho last September. It was a pretty good deal. I t was all inclusive (drinks and buffet lunch). We had several frozen drinks and beers. The pool at the time was being worked on but we did not care. We were there for the beach and airplanes. The resort is literally right next to the famous Maho beach where the planes land right overhead. We got the passes through resort for a Jaital dot com. This included round trip transportation. We told the driver what time we wanted to get back close to the ship for some shopping and he was there on time to pick us up.

     

     

    FYI, we have used Jaital with great success website now says day passes at Sonestas now only available off season. I wonder if hotel enforces that.

     

     

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    Website Down

    in Royal Caribbean International

    Posted

    I found an issue late this week where if I go to their new promotion site where you "explore" the different parts of the ship to play in their online "game", and then try to go back to the main web site, you can't and the page appears blank. When I deleted the Royal site's cookies the RCL page worked again. I tried to explain this to C&A, but they couldn't understand and I gave up trying to help.

     

     

    Removing cookies just worked for me. Thanks.

     

     

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    "Almost" Live From The Viking Sea - Sept 4, 2016

    in Viking Ocean

    Posted

    Arrived in Split, Croatia at about 8 AM this morning and after a quick breakfast headed over to the Star Theater for the Krka Waterfalls and the Town of Skradin excursion. A bit pricey at $149 pp, but maybe the best tour of the cruise. An hour and a half bus ride out of Split brought us to this lovely National Park. The basics are that a large tributary river

    confluences with the Krka River and forms a series of 17 cascades over 1300 ft of river. The descending walk on elevated Boardwalk for most of it's length traverses beautiful parkland surrender by gentle falls. It's incredibly beautiful and restful. You can swim (wade really) at the base of the walkway, but you'll obviously need your suit and not slip water shoes to go in. No one in our group chose to. There's nice restaurants, snack shops and the ever-present souvenir shops at the bottom as well.

    After a 45 minute free time break (for a much-needed beer!) we rejoined our lovely guide (Eileen; funny, informative and a real treat!) to make our way down to the little boat (60 passengers or so), boarded and made the 30 min. motor to Skaden (very pretty!) for a very nice lunch of an appetizer of ham, cheese, a slaw salad, a dinner plate of scalloped potatoes. A nice meal at the Zlatne Skoljke (golden she'll I'm told!) on top of a great tour!

    One of my top two excursions on the tour: I'd highly recommend.

    On the bus now back to the ship and getting hit with a quick developing storm. It was absolutely beautiful at the park so we lucked out all around!

    Once again we're going to miss the main port city, but well worth it!

    Dinner at Manfredi's again tonight! Wahoo!

     

    Nazdravlje! (Croatian!),

    Bill

     

    13c9f3ab0bce546eda570fcfb0d15cf0.jpg

     

     

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    Thanks for all of your posts. We have been traveling with you but doing different excursions, so fun to read yours.

     

     

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