LeeW

Usually they give you the option of picking up your new cruise cards before the turnaround meeting. This lets you get off in Miami whenever you want. The escort process can take a couple of hours to wait for people to get off, be escorted off, get new cards and be escorted back on. If you pick up your new cards before this you get an "In Transit" card that lets you bypass the checkin lines. Only downside of this is that you can't get back on until boarding starts but if you are touring town this doesn't matter. There is a free trolley that picks up near the piers and runs around the downtown area (actually more than one route). Download the app and you get real-time locations of the trolley.

For steak Daniels Steak House is excellent. Near the Barcelo Hotel in the tourist area on Palm Beach. City bus or cab from pier area.

Bus 10, although there are a couple of variants A/B. I think the A goes beyond the Marriott to Arashi. Look up Oranjestad-Arashi on this page: https://arubus.com/routes-schedules-new/l10a/

Been a few years. It is possible to book directly but then you need to meet their transportation somewhere. Basically the other end of the runway to a pier that has a tiny ferry to the barrier island. Chairs, food, drinks, small water park, snorkeling and some extra cost items like snuba and helmet dive. Snorkeling area is sea side of the island. They do have some wave protection but can be a bit rough. Lots of fairly large fish. Never tried going in water at "beach" since really was just sand on top of the coral island. Can be very crowded since they do a lot of cruise ship bookings. Beach and snorkeling are kind of mutually exclusive in Aruba. Good beaches like hotel area on Palm Beach have terrible snorkeling. Good snorkeling is mostly offshore and around some wrecks. We usually just take city bus 10 north to somewhere on Palm Beach, get off, walk the beach or swim and then take the bus back. Some places do rent chairs although many of those in the closer non-hotel Eagle Beach.

And you still might need to contact Captains Club to make sure the update was applied. And ship also might not get the data in time so you might need to bring evidence of status to ship LA (screen shot of C&A points should work. Best possibility is everything works fine! Our C&A usually takes a couple of days after cruise but no idea how Captains Club updates to a new status.

Higher C&A = more personal cash = higher bid = more likely to win

Unless you get RCCL to approve it, no chance of just showing up in San Juan and being allowed onboard. You are correct that the cruise lines are not allowing boarding after initial embarkation except in very rare circumstances. I suppose if they thought that you all missed embarkation they might, but pretty hard to prove that a large group accidently didn't make it. If you had flights through Air2Sea they would even arrange the flight for you. Any chance that family could postpone the funeral?

Remember that ships don't guarantee hitting any specific port (or even any port at all). Have a backup plan. At least with Coco Cay all the guests are on the ship and not trying to meet you on the island.

Yup - Radiance is NO and Galveston. Was thinking of Voyager since our last cruise was on Radiance and next Voyager. We've had reservations as early as 6:15 but last year most MTD has been opening at 6:45 as early dining leaves.

Colon means partial canal transit. You will enter around sunrise and lock up to the lake. Tours will depart from there. Then lock back down and go to Colon dock. Highly recommend the small boat through the rest of the canal if you haven't done this before. Goes by various names so read descriptions. All day tour but they usually serve a lunch onboard. Ask the pilot about the dent in the Miraflores lock.

Based on appearance of the cylinder it could be an armed response. Especially if they have any cables in the bag near the cylinder. We almost always have to pull the liquid silver necklace out already.

Ameritrade puts your personal data on a different page of the monthly statement so you either need to send both pages or combine the pages. A real pain. Have had it rejected when I sent two pages and had to resubmit.

Logically he would take a carry-on or two with him to make it easier for you or even one of your bags. Nobody on shore is going to care when he gets off and they don't check tags of people doing self-disembark. Request tags for a time for both rooms to allow him time to get the car.

For a while when cruises were being cancelled they were giving both the TA from the cancelled cruise and the new TA their commissions. Then I think they dropped giving a TA a commission if the FCC was from a cancelled cruise that replaced a cancelled cruise. It was pretty confusing!

Radiance is currently sailing out of San Juan, so expect larger groups of passengers at dinner and them doing later dining. We have been on over 15 cruises in last year and never had a problem getting a table for 2 for the entire cruise by going early. Have had to wait 20 minutes if our table was already in use by fixed seating. Three different Royal ships, not Radiance specifically. You can always ask to sit by yourselves and this is kind of the default these days.

You can select others to go with you on excursions but in our experience you had to pay for them. Don't think it is possible to use another cabin's OBC or credit card to pay for their excursion. We had mixed experience seeing other folks reservations (spa and excursions). I could see some of son's excursions and some of DILs excursions but not all. Could not see DW and DIL excursion even though DW in my cabin.

If you had Mytime reservations it likely didn't automatically remove them and since you are now fixed seating you can't alter/make a Mytime reservation.

Yup. I don't see anything in FAQs about gas bottles except scuba, and the cruise contract also doesn't mention it. I only commented because other folks might want to fly with it. I looked into Sodastream for home but decided that cost plus syrup cost plus gas cost is more than buying soda in grocery. Now if you factor in $8.99/day for two people it might make sense to buy one just for onboard use. Catch for us is that we couldn't fly with a gas bottle and only stores I have seen the refills at are Target.

Had it on one half of Radiance B2B in September but was during port stop and not sure of which port. Thinking Juneau but Skagway would make more sense. Would have to dig out the Compasses to see which day. Princess cruises seemed to do this several times during a cruise but last we did theirs was 2016.

No - the web site displays all the photos from that cruise and in theory the ones that don't have watermarks are the ones you selected onboard. You should be able to select the ones you want to download even if they still have the watermark, up to 50 total if you have unlock credits and didn't pick 50 onboard. I goofed when I "bought" two free Diamond photos and used the same email. Only got one email for downloading but had one "unlock" and one photo already unlocked when displaying the cruise. Was able to unlock the second photo and download two. You can download as many times as you want for about 30 days, but only up to the number you have purchased. I never got a response when I sent a message to their help page but finally figured it out myself.

Normally takes about a week for points to get recorded. You will want to take cruise docs/card from first cruise to second cruise Loyalty Ambassador who may get them applied quickly and give you updated status on second cruise. Doesn't always work, though.

The question is whether the $400 for key is better than paying for lesson time on flowrider. BIL takes lessons on every cruise to get more time.

Radiance had a couple of speakers giving presentations up and back last fall. Nothing like the naturalist that narrated a lot of the days on Princess. Think they did bring sled dog onboard at one port.

Old post but FAA frowns on pressurized bottles on aircraft. These normally need to be shipped via ground. So anyone flying to a port would have a problem.

Since you are cruising for the ports, you win. You will notice less gaudy environment.