Jcol5786

Well I hope we will not need to move this cruise because we really want to try Empress. We even scored one of the larger OV rooms with 2 windows but with the uncertainty around the resumption of cruising and travel issues  from Canada and all the talk about RC getting rid of Empress it seems like a real possibility that we won't be going on this cruise. I know the L&S rules state same cruise length but if we are giving up a day it would seem reasonable that they would allow us to move to a 7 day cruise but who knows. Rules are rules.

Does anyone know if they will let you Lift and Shift an 8 day cruise to a 7 day with the same itinerary and cabin category? We have an 8 day Eastern Caribbean booked on Empress in Feb. 2021 which we hope goes but if it does not there is only one  8 day EC in Feb. 2022 and the week it goes does not work for us there are however several 7 day cruises that would.

The price for the deluxe bev package our Oasis cruise on Oct 25'th 2020 has gone way down. I think that chances are slim that this cruise will actually happen but I thought that I might purchase just in case. Does anyone know if I purchase this on a Gold type of CC I would be able to get a refund should RC go bankrupt?

Not sure if they are officially Anthem's house band its just that on our last 3 Anthem cruises they have been there so I gave them that title.

For any who is interested the house band from Anthem is doing a live event from Anthem today at 6 pm. Go to their Face Book page if you are interested. We've been on Anthem 3 times and enjoy them. I'll be there virtually. Having a drink from the deluxe package right now.

Our October 2020 on Oasis just dropped $500 cdn for a gtd bal.

We are arriving in February which I suspect is during the high season.

10 hours ago, CruiserBruce said:

There are MANY threads down the board on both your topics. Shuttle is the very commonly recommended transport, followed by Uber/Lyft.

 

Where you stay is up to you and your interests. Either is discussed here frequently....sometimes Ft Lauycan be cheaper, other times there isn't a significant difference. 

I suspect that statement can be made about just about any post on this board but thanks anyway.

Hello - thanks for all of the replies. It's helpful to know that this option is only available when you are on the ship. I guess it makes sense to offer this option if you do not want to visit the Future Cruise desk but want to take advantage of the lower deposit on a future cruise. Lesson learned.

Hello,

We have a cruise booked on Empress out of Miami next year however it looks like the best flight for us would be to Fort Lauderdale the day before. This flight arrives at noon. The cruise leaves on Saturday out of Miami. I'm thinking that we should look for a hotel in Miami which will make it a shorter trip the next day to the cruise port. What would be the best way to get from FL AP to a Miami hotel near the cruise port? Or maybe we would be better off staying in a hotel in Fort Lauderdale and travelling to the cruise port from FL the next day? Any thoughts on the best way to do this would be appreciated. I don't really care which city we stay in the night before but we are hoping to find an economical way of doing this. If not we may as well purchase a more expensive flight that arrives in Miami and we will not need to worry about getting from Fort Lauderdale and back. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

My wife and I were on Anthem 2 weeks ago and had a great cruise. We had been using the Royal App quite a bit on this cruise to check out the activities and MD menus.Toward the end of the cruise she was  playing with the Royal App and accidently purchased a future cruise! She was attempting to do a mock booking to get a price but instead ended up purchasing a future cruise.  We already have 2 cruises booked and we really can't book a third for some time as we don't know our holiday schedule this far out. Since this happened toward the end of the cruise guest services was getting busy so I suggested we wait and call when we get home and explain what happened and see if RC would allow us to cancel this future cruise. Well we have called twice and each time we are told that it cannot be cancelled even though it was a mistake done from within the Royal App. We understand that we have up to a year to book a cruise but our OBC will be gone after 60 days. Looks like RC has our $200 and are hanging on to it. In the end we will probably book something toward the end of the 1 year window but it was a simple mistake and I'm surprised that RC is not being a little flexible since it was done from the app. Just an FYI for those who may not have realized that the app has this feature.

7 minutes ago, LuCruise said:

Did you go to Schooner's Bar at all?  If so, how was the piano player?  Depending on the person, it can make a fun event too.

 

We didn't spend as much time in Schooner as we usually do. There always seemed to be an event on when we were walking by. Lots of Trivia matches. We did see one of the guitar players from We Will Rock You play an acoustic set. Her name was Joyce and she was very good. There was also an adult comedian/ karaoke person most nights in Schooner. He played piano and he seemed to be very popular. Every time we walked by the bar was packed so we only heard him while walking past but judging by the number of people in the bar I think he was very popular.

We did go to We Will Rock and enjoyed it. We saw it on our first Anthem cruise last year as well. This was a new cast who I thought were a little better than the first cast but that's very subjective. We went to an afternoon performance that started at 2:30. This was on day 6 which was a sea day. We had reserved our seats and arrived 20 minutes prior to the show and got seats in the second row to the left of the stage. Very close.

Have a great cruise.

They did not take our temps. The cruise director is a young lady from Argentina. Her first name is Mercedes, I don't recall her last name. She was fine. The first tribute band was a Journey cover band from Toronto. I got the impression they were a late add on. While I like Journey I felt that the lead singer did not have the voice to pull it off. A few others agreed that they were not as good as other tribute bands. I think that they got off in Nassau and a 3 piece Bob Marley tribute band came on. We only saw them once in 270 but I thought they were very good. The Royal Swedes were present in both the music hall and in Bolaros. We enjoyed them as well.

1 hour ago, grouchomarx said:

We were on this cruise with you! It was wonderful. There was a very good energy on this sailing.  Passengers were friendly and cool, kind and courteous to one another. Staff were simply amazing top to bottom.

I agree, the staff were all top notch and the sailing was wonderful. I was afraid I would get bored as this is our second time with this itinerary in less than a year but I would go back on tomorrow if I could.

Here are some general observations about our cruise on Anthem. We arrived at the terminal at 10:15. After going through security and we made our way toward the check in lines. We are met by a person with an iPad and did our final check in on the spot. He took our pictures with the iPad and confirmed that we had a printout of our Set Sail Pass. There were a few extra questions about our recent travel history and general health. We were then directed toward the general seating area. After getting to our seats within 5 minutes the started the boarding process. This was around 10:35. Earlier than I recall on our previous cruises. We had a bit of a wait before general boarding started. We stepped on the ship at 10:55. Very smooth and quick process.

One thing that I noticed about this cruise is that the ship seemed to be fully booked and there were a lot of children on board, We cruised on the same week last year and I don't think there were nearly as many kids on for that cruise. I don't mind cruising with kids, just surprised about how many younger kids were onboard. I was also surprised that the ship seemed fully booked in light people cancelling. But as  I mentioned it was a very good cruise.

Hello,

My wife and I just returned from this 7 night cruise on Anthem. This is our 8'th cruise with RC and our 3'rd on Anthem. I'm not planning to do an in depth review as others are far better at that sort of thing then I am however I will say we had a very good cruise and am happy to answer any questions that people might have about our experience on this cruise.

Thanks

Hello,

We have a cruise booked in 2021 on Empress of the Seas which leaves and returns to Miami. The cruise ends on a Sunday and there is a very good flight out of the Fort Lauderdale airport which leaves at 12 noon. It's a direct flight straight to Toronto. I'm not sure how much time is required for check in which also depends on whether it's considered an international flight or not. We are very mobile but I think we will have too much baggage to self disembark so we would need to go through the terminal and retrieve our bags. Our cruise last October we were off Anthem by 8:30 and Empress is a much smaller ship.  I would be interested to hear if this is a reasonable amount of time as I'd like to purchase the flight while the price is low. I'd also like to hear any suggests about getting from the Miami cruise terminal to FLDAP as well.

Thanks

Hello - In 2021 we have a cruise booked on Empress that returns to Miami on a Sunday. There is a really good deal on a direct  flight back to Toronto that leaves from Fort Lauderdale at 12 noon. I'm thinking that should be OK however I wanted to get other opinions before we book it. Also any recommendations on how to get from Miami cruise port to FL AP would be appreciated.

Thanks

Hello,

I saw it mentioned recently in a thread that RC will pick up your large bags from the hallway on the last night and send them directly to  your departing  airport. This sounds like a great service for us as it would allow us to walk off first thing in the morning of arrival. Do you have to have arranged your flight through the Air-Sea program or will they do it for any passenger? Also if your cruise ends in Miami but are flying out of Fort Lauderdale as we are will they send your bags to FL airport even though it not the closest airport? Any info would be appreciated. Thanks

Hello,

I know people are very interested in getting their room assignment when they have purchased a guaranteed type of room. The official room assignments seem to come out randomly however we've got our last 2 about 2 weeks out. I saw a couple of threads where people mentioned that they were able to scan a printout of their Set Sail pass or Boarding pass and the room assignment was there before getting official notification. I can report that it seems to be the case. We are sailing on Anthem departing Feb. 23 of this year. We were assigned our muster station in early December and determined that we would be on deck 11. Last Sunday I remembered the mention of scanning the bar code on the Set Sail Pass so I printed it out and using my android phone bar code scanner I checked the bar code and sure enough our room assignment was clearly there. The complete scan showed a 9 digit # separated by a space with a 5 digit # starting with 11XXX. We have not got our official assignment yet but I'm fairly certain that our room has been assigned. I suppose they could change it between now and the cruise but I doubt it. It would have been interesting to see how long ago the bar code contained the room #. I'll have a chance to check that out on our next cruise coming up in October.

I drink Mt Gay rum and unfortunately have never found it on any RC ship.

Thanks for the explanations around the empty sailings, I forgot about that rule. Looking forward to this last cruise and of NJ for the season. I wonder how the crew will be? Might be the time when a lot of contracts end and new crew join the ship for her new set of trips from Florida.

We are booked on that cruise and didn't realize that its the last out of Cape Liberty. I assumed there is a repositioning cruise immediately after we return however if  there is I can't find it on the RC website. Would they cruise back to Florida empty?

I was on Anthem last month and drinks were allowed in the Solarium hot tubs however when I moved to the Solarium pool with my drink the life guard informed me that drinks were not allowed in the pool. I had placed my drink at the edge of the pool but it wasn't until I reached over and took a drink that the guard asked me to not drink in the pool. I didn't have a problem with this but it was the first time I'd ever been told that drinks were not allowed in the pool. I don't know if this was being enforced in the other pools on the ship.

Is the 10 Beer card available on all the ships all the time or is it only offered for sale randomly like the 10 drink card? If it is available is it simply something you ask for at one of the bars? We go on Anthem next week on the 5 day Bermuda cruise and it would be nice if the beer card is available. Thanks.

Thanks for the replies. I know about how they keep onship purchases of liquor for you till the last night of the cruise but I thought these were more of a room service delivery item. Guess I'd better order 2.

I know they are small bottles but I only mix 1 once in a large glass of club soda so I'll get about 10 drinks. That's $4.30 per drink which makes it about the cheapest alcohol on the ship.

I see that these liquor and mix packages are available for sale prior to boarding as in room gifts. I was wondering if they can also be purchased on the ship during the cruise and if they are is the price the same or is there an upcharge? I plan to purchase 1 package prior to the cruise but if I should need a second I was just wondering if it is available as an onboard purchase. Thanks