MacMarauder

3 hours ago, ALWAYS CRUZIN said:

This is nothing new at all. Over the past years there have been major deaths from diseases. Far worse than this one and we all over came them. Didn't we! Bubonic plague for example. "Bubonic plague: Patients develop sudden onset of fever, headache, chills, and weakness. Over 100,00 died in one city alone." 

"The bubonic plague is considered as one of the deadliest bacterial infections

 in all of human history. In fact, Europe experienced over 50 million deaths during the gruesome plague in the Middle Ages." It has not been eradicated a couple died from it last year after eating a raw kidney of a marmot. How did this virus start? Raw weird animal meat, maybe! So what do you do? Nothing more than what you have done for years. One or even maybe two years from now we will do nothing but think of how this effective all of our lives. All of us will continue on as we have for years and years. To run scared is nothing more than being scared. I for one am not scared and just remain cautious as I always have. As for wearing a mask on a cruise. Not sure if that well float. Pun intended.

I was talking about how quickly COVID spreads not the total death numbers. But you're correct that people die from all sorts of things including the bubonic plague. I'm not scared of COVID but I do think it's amazing that a brand new virus can go from one province in China to millions of people and 200+ countries in a matter of months. 

If one person on the Diamond Princess can lead to over 700 infections I think COVID is effective at spreading, asymptomatic or not. Also it managed to go from 110k worldwide cases three months ago to over 7 million now which is pretty incredible when you think about it.

This is good news thank you for sharing OP! IMO having a vaccine for COVID-19 is critical for the cruise lines and for us cruisers lol.

I'm not sure what is acceptable or not, but I will say that the cruise lines are going to have to be extremely careful this summer. If there is another cruise with a COVID outbreak this year the media and anti-cruise crowd will be all over it 24/7. 

I'll throw out another suggestion, we have stayed at the Ft Lauderdale Airport Courtyard a couple times and like it. There is a shuttle to the cruise port, and there are a couple stores/restaurants & a fishing hall of fame that are a short walk. 

1 hour ago, spookwife said:

Newsflash:  they don’t market every ship the same way.  Some are going to be less exciting for the diaper set than others.  

We went on Anthem when my son was two and I thought he would find the tiny baby splash area lame, but he actually loved it. You never know with little kids!

MSC has been less expensive than Royal for awhile now, I think it is part of their strategy to gain market share in North America. 

Well no surprise there, at this point the absolute worst thing that could happen would be another cruise with a coronavirus outbreak. Until the cruise lines are 100% sure they can prevent that from happening not sailing is in their best interest IMO.

On airplanes yes we wipe down armrests tray tables etc. I'm not sure if my wife wiped anything down when we got into our cabin on our last cruise in December. It sounds like something she would do but I'm not sure. So put me down as a maybe.

Well, for some promising news for your weekend here is a positive article about vaccine development!

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52674739

25 minutes ago, 20165 said:

i dont think i saw the feasibility of toddlers wearing masks in this post.  Not sure thats going to work.  We have teenagers and its a challenge to get them to keep their masks on in the stores, i cant imagine what it would be like with say a 5 yo.  i guess the response could be dont cruise if you have small children but that will really limit the customer base is you eliminate families as well as people over 70 without a Dr note.  

I have a 5 year old and a 2 year old. We got a cool Ninja Turtle mask for our 5 year old so he is good with it lol. The 2 year old, I assume she will just rip it off although we haven't been anywhere with her yet so who knows.

The big problem with little kids is, they put their hands on everything and also their hands in their mouth. At least mine do, our last cruise in December I couldn't count the number of times I told my son to keep his hands out of his mouth / off his face. 

9 minutes ago, Milwaukee Eight said:

Don’t you think someone will buy and use those ships if NCL goes down?  I do. Otherwise they can become artificial reefs. 

Exactly, the ships might even still say "NCL" on the side even if the company is structured differently. Six Flags went bankrupt and the parks still exist. Chrysler went bankrupt but you can still buy one today. Going bankrupt doesn't mean the end of operations, as long as cruises can be operated safely and profitably someone will run them.

I actually had pretty good timing, went on a cruise in December right before the whole Coronavirus thing hit.  I was going to wait until my daughter was out of diapers to cruise again which should be late 2021.  I'm just hoping that cruising returns and is fairly close to what it used to be.  I'm actually not as worried if the companies go bankrupt, if cruising is viable someone will operate the ships.

19 hours ago, BSocial said:

I thought I’d read this recently, maybe it wasn’t on Royal’s board.  Or  It may have been the scenario that had to do with Oasis’ room reclassifications.   Either way, it was involuntary.    And not a good outcome. 
 

edit:  I probably misspoke by saying upgrade,   I should have said ‘moved’. 

Yes this happened to me and it did have to do with the Oasis reclassification after she came out of dry dock.  One of our connecting rooms got moved to another deck but thankfully I got it straightened out before sailing.  We moved to a different set of connecting rooms and they actually turned out to be a better location.

Connecting rooms worked out great for my family so I think you made a good choice OP. 

Yes they do!  It took us awhile to get both the connecting door and the balcony doors opened though.  The room steward had to have a manager come and do them, we got the connecting door in the stateroom opened the first night and then the balcony opened later the second day.  Not a big deal just a heads up!

3 hours ago, twangster said:

Ate there yesterday.  Very good but the line can be long on sea days at noon.  
 

They have breakfast as well.  

This is the truth, they should really have it open earlier.  Showed up a few minutes before twelve and gave up due to the huge line.  

However it's great for a mid afternoon snack or late lunch as the crowd dies way down after the initial rush.  The quesadillas are great.

5 hours ago, dedels said:

I know this is a super old thread, but.... 

 

Just got off of Oasis yesterday and there IS a pressed penny machine on the boardwalk. Sadly we only discovered it on the last day and our seapass account was already closed out so couldn't  use it.

 

Kids were really bummed out we missed it. 

I thought I saw one last week as well, thanks for confirming!  I skipped it because I wasn't sure if you had to provide your own penny or what the deal was with it.

Does anyone else feel that Royal should open restaurants for lunch a little bit earlier?  I was just on Oasis last week and had an awesome time.  However, I noticed all the lunch restaurants either open up at 11:30 or noon.  Both the Park Cafe and El Loco Fresh developed lines of people waiting for them to open up at 12.  I think if RCI pushed the 11:30 restaurants to 11 and the noon restaurants to 11:30 it would be helpful.  They could even cut the last half hour of operation since most of the lunch restaurants are pretty empty near the end.  I was travelling with my two kids who are always hungry so maybe this is unique to me, just wanted to get others take on it.

Thank you for the great pics!  I just got off Oasis this morning. 😫  That's interesting they are still adding to the playground area, it was already a huge improvement over the old Oasis class setup.  

20 hours ago, blueridgemama said:

 

it's not sounding like MTD if we can't eat until 6;45😟

I was able to reserve 6;30 on my cruise in February

Yea I'm curious about this as well, I reserved 6:30 for the cruise on Sunday so we will see how it works out!  I just checked the app and it's still showing 6:30.

Oasis looking good in Ft Lauderdale!

59 minutes ago, JP82 said:

 

Don't they have title like Oceanview panoramic? Or is the just the suites in the corners?

Sorry double post!

From the title I assumed this would be a really horrible or dramatic situation.  However it sounds like the OP had a pretty typical cruise just a bit underwhelming.  I don't think there is any need to convince OP to sail Royal again, plenty of cruise lines out there.  My wife and I had a great time on Celebrity and probably would still cruise with them if we didn't have small kids!  

13 hours ago, uvadover said:

If you search my username, you will see a separate thread I had on it, in fact.  Long story short, TWO recategorizations, the most recent was about a month ago (after final payment in full).  Connecting is a MUST because we are travelling with 3 kids under 10 years old.  After several hours grinding on the phone, we finally got relocated from Deck 12 to Deck 8 with no difference in fare offered - in fact, they specifically said they were told by "revenue" to dig in on cases like this.  I was told the cabin categories are the same, though it appears I was moved from a pair of 2Ds to a pair of 4Ds.  Ultimately, I had no leverage because I have already purchased over $4k in non-refundable flights, and have planned for a few nights in Miami ahead of the sailing.  Still, I have a sour taste in my mouth and I am still not convinced it won't happen again.  The rep told me he "hoped" there wouldn't be any more recategorizations, but that he wasn't sure - your case suggests there is still shuffling of cabins, which is downright asinine at this point.

Your story is almost exactly the same as mine!  The only difference is that we have two kids under 5, and we started on Deck 7 (but also wound up on Deck 8!).  Also spent a lot of time on the phone, RCI's original solution was to find a stateroom for my son and me on Deck 7 "as close as possible" to our original cabin with my wife and daughter.  I told them that wasn't acceptable, I found 8162/8164 available on the website which showed as open for Dec 8 so I told them to move us into those staterooms.  RCI didn't want to do that because the category was lower than my original and we were after final payment - at which point you can only go up and not down in category.  You can imagine my response to that, but I do feel lucky that they eventually relented and moved us back into connecting cabins.

I'm also worried that it will happen again, I check my emails every day for another re-categorization email.  Until we are on the ship I won't be 100% convinced.  The main thing that bothers me is that all this happened after final payment. 

19 minutes ago, HBE4 said:

 

I'm assuming the cabin re-categorization is related to how many people can sleep in a cabin?

 

Is there a pull-out couch shortage in France and it'll take 3 weeks to rectify the backlog? 😆

How many people can sleep in each cabin is a part of it.  To be honest the explanation I got didn't make any sense, I was told that the original cabin I booked 7694 was changed to a four person cabin which is why I was moved to 6198.  Hopefully this cruise sets sail otherwise my two hours or so on the phone with RCI customer service will go to waste!