BND

Ships can easily handle a tropical low. They can easily handle a lot of hurricanes. The issue is really passenger comfort. Royal doesn't want a lot of seasick passengers or people to fall due to rough seas. My DH has ridden a couple of hurricanes in a much smaller Navy cruiser.

Yes, there's several restaurants but not really any shopping. I know there's a dive and surf shop and some fishing charters and a parasail business. . Grills, Fishlips, Gators and a couple of other seafood restaurants.

We're in PC waiting for you so we can board tomorrow. We've been in FL since Tuesday. Weather was great until today when we had scattered showers off and on. Expect the same tomorrow. Enjoy the last evening onboard.

We board tomorrow so no idea yet.

They've always dropped off the drinks and either dropped the receipt then with a pen to return later to get the signed copy or dropped off drinks and returned with the receipt to be signed. It really shouldn't be that big an issue. A lot less people in shows have "free drinks" than drink packages which don't require signatures. I think people are just trying too hard to find problems.

$400,000 seems very,very high unless he stays only in full suites and even that seems high. We only stay in JS and we currently have 491 points. I don't think it's cost us $150,000 and we started in GS and now only stay in JS. We've only been in a regular balcony cabin one time.

We have done many western Caribbean cruises and the only time we went to Roatan was on Carnival, years ago. It's not as common as others. As far as Labadee goes, never say never.

Well, since the only port in Haiti that cruise ships go to is Labadee, the email clearly says Haiti is excluded from the change, so yes. But, prob not by March.

We arrived in FL yesterday morning and visited family near Lakeland yesterday, spent the night and drove to PC this am. We're boarding Jewel on Sunday. I got the email this am. Doesn't impact us at all as we were already included in the 9 days or less. Roatan isn't visited very often. Labadee may not be as Haiti is getting worse, not better. Colombia (yes with an O, not a U) is also one port that is rarely visited. The wording on all of these updates have been done poorly all along.

@island ladySomeone just got confirmation that we're going out of T5 which I suspected.

Towels belong to Royal, not the cruiser, so, nope. Their rules clearly state 30 min.

Not to be nit picky, okay, I'll pick a tiny bit. It's actually less than 10 days (9 days or less) so a 9 day cruise does not require testing but 10 days does.

We've cruised out of T1 a couple of times and also have had a couple of port stops there. We've eaten at Grills a couple of times too. Too bad I don't like Bloody Mary's lol. We'll just head over at checkout at 11. Since we're the first boarding group at 12, worst case is we sit in our car in the garage for a little bit whether it's T1 or T5.

LOL. Well, documents say T1, but Port Canaveral schedule says T5. I'm inclined to believe it's T5 as once Wonder arrives, she's at T1 Harmony returns on 6 Nov to T1 to drop off guests and then leaves around 11 for FLL. CG inspection is that morning for Jewel and boarding starts at 12. Oh, and the fact our docs for the second leg of our b2b on Jewel (13 Nov) also states T1, but that's the date Wonder arrives in PC and is scheduled at T1 and we know Oasis class is always at T1. I just think our docs are incorrect. The PC port schedule has IN and HOTS until 6 Nov Wonder starting 13 Nov at T1 and Mariner and Jewel at T5 which makes sense for parking. So, I'm going with T5, but we'll know for sure on the 6th.

This will be our first cruise on Radiance class. Of course since we're doing the first cruise back in the US, earliest boarding is 12 due to CG inspections. We're out of our hotel at 11, so we'll prob just sit in the parking garage if they're not letting people in yet.

And, that's why the whole thing is ridiculous lol. I've said all along it's about liability. RCI has no liability if someone lies/uses someone else's test. While I don't think testing is the answer, I do find it funny that anyone thinks Royal doesn't know what everyone is doing.

Um, we know that. Not like we're new. DH told them when he talked to them, but that didn't seem to be an issue. Everything is working fine now. My point was about the algorithm. It's not like we haven't traveled many times and know the process.

Well, they do have them for a reason.

I've been expecting an announcement any day. Especially now after Carnival has extended it to 15 nights. We're doing a b2b (7 night and 6 night) and no testing since neither is longer than 9 days. Kind of ridiculous to treat 10 nights differently than a b2b, but whatever.

This happens every once in a while.

For all of our b2b's (3 so far) we have been given our cards turnaround morning (twice before we left the ship and once in the terminal before reboarding). We have then been walked off and back on as a group. We were also given "in transit" cards which we have never used. Supposedly (from other's reports) you can get off the ship and return later, go through security and bypass check in using in transit card and then reboard with your new card. Also, we didn't get our card back on EN this past Apr. They told me I'd get it back, I knew better. It's the only card out of all our cruises that I don't have.

Our TA doesn't do that. She literally pays the cruise line directly using our cc info. It's one reason I prefer a friend/small TA over the big ones.

We have a couple of back up cards. Our primary one is our Amtrak Rewards MC. Just on Sunday, Amtrak moved banks for their cards. Our new one was declined yesterday when I got my hair done. DH called and was sent to the fraud dept. The explanation: algorithms haven't figured out spending patterns so it was seeing small purchases as evidence of fraud. DH decided Sun/Mon would be a good time to buy about 15 $.99 books for his Kindle so they shut the card off. I was pissed as we lost out on over 250 Amtrak reward points from my hair appt. I had to use another card. They turned it back on and it worked for the $75 groceries I bought today. I just hope it doesn't give us problems on our upcoming trip. We leave on Halloween for 5 days in FL and then a b2b on Jewel. No way the algorithm can know spending patterns it's never seen, sigh... Anyway, in my experience most people pay off their cruise at least a couple of days before like we do, just in case something happens.

We never carry a balance on our cc so it doesn't matter when we pay it off as we pay off the card every month. Our TA is a good friend and we try to work around her schedule too as she also works full time. Being a TA is something she now does for friends and family so she sometimes needs to work around her schedule which is fine with us.

We're boarding for a b2b when she gets back to PC on Nov 6 🙂