harryfat1

Thanks for the info. I was wondering how people would order a drink when they board the ship, say 11:30 but have no access to the cabins until 1 PM to gain access to their Cabin keys and it sounds like they just need to whip out the handy dandy phone App to have the bartender scan it to pay for the drinks. I wonder if anyone on CC has ever reported fraudulent charges to their room with someone stealing their room keys and charging drinks? Do the bartenders have a tablet that has your onboard picture show up when you charge the drinks? As much as I have complained about Princess Cruises from last year's Alaska cruise, their Medallion system is very convenient. We sailed with the perks of the drinks package included as part of the base fare and every time I walked near any bar to get a bottle of mineral water, my picture showed up on their tablet, and they addressed me by my name as the Medallion device I wear on my neck automatically connects me to the system.

Anyway, enough paranoia about the theoretically stolen key that may never happen, let’s go inside - the official name is Promenade View Connecting Interior Cabin. It’s technically listed as an “indoor” category – at least that’s how most travel agencies’ sites list them. But they are priced almost like an ocean view cabin because, unlike the classic inside cabin, these have a view. The only difference is you see the neighbors across the way. Now I know many people on CC dislike these cabins as they complain there’s no privacy but we like this category of cabins as it’s great value. Being motion-sensitive, I can’t be inside an interior cabin. Been there, done that. Got a major league seasick on my first Alaska cruise. Never again. Don’t care how cheap of a vacation it is if you are on your back and tossing cookies regularly and you feel like you are going to die. This is our third time in the Promenade View cabins. Had it on the Mariner and Freedom of the Seas. Switched to Oceanview on the Independence and hated that as the porthole was right over the bed – who designed that? My son said it felt like a downgrade going from this Promenade view to Oceanview even though Oceanview costs more. So this time, we are coming back to this. If we go to Europe on an RCI cruise and it’s on a Voyager class, I wouldn’t hesitate to get this type of cabin again. Great value for the money spent. I like to have 2 separate sofas to sit on. As with many land-based hotels, there are 2 sets of curtains. Be sure to close the black-out curtains if you need privacy. The boys are next door and connected via the inside door but we can’t open it ourselves. We had to wait for a “supervisor” person later on to do so. On the Majestic Princess last year, we were able to do it ourselves as they have 2 separate doors and as long as both cabins open their end, the 2 rooms will connect. Royal only has 1 door so it’s locked by default and only opened upon request for families traveling together. We like to people watch and see what’s “happening” downstairs so that’s part of the reason why we like these sets of cabins. The party noise doesn’t bother us at night because we are part of the party noise but if you need to sleep by 10 PM, then the bass from the street party will likely keep you up. The first time we had these cabins was back in 2010 when the boys were younger, we used to watch the street parties from the rooms sitting on the sofa as they would be trampled by the adults if they were downstairs so having these cabins are great for little kids as they can see the activities from below but in the safety of the cabins. The final note on the cabin is this is the first time we are on deck 8 of the 3 decks. We typically get the middle deck on Deck 7 as some people complained that the noise from Deck 5 pub could disturb their sleep on Deck 6. Also, Deck 6 is just above the people walking around so there’s less privacy. I would opt for 7 or 8. Deck 8 is higher and you get the slanted window so you can see more of the street 3 levels down.

At exactly 1 PM, they made the announcement that the cabins are now ready so we made our way up to deck 8. We were in cabin 8287. The boys were in 8289 – as we had the connecting inside the cabins. The in-laws are in 8283. No 8285 as that’s a storage area like towels and stuff for the staff. I saw it open once with a worker inside getting things inside. I felt odd taking a picture while he was working or else I would have taken a picture… These cabins are center ship located so we can see what's happening on both ends of the Royal Promenade. We like to people-watch and the location is good since I'm motion-sensitive, mid-ship cabins have less vibration and movements compared to bow and aft cabins. We had Aft cabins once years ago on an older Carnival ship and I felt the movement of the ship's propulsion from our cabins. It was like sleeping on top of a car engine. Not for me. As I mentioned when we first checked in at the cruise terminal, in the old days they issued you the cabin keys then. Similar to check-in at any land hotel. However, RCI now has the cabin keys waiting for you outside of your cabin in an envelope. I knew about this new policy after watching enough YouTube videos on what’s new with RCI since I’ve been away for a while. The thought of leaving my cabin keys outside made me nervous for a while as couldn’t someone else come in and steal my card? But after thinking about it, there’s nothing to steal inside the cabin as we haven’t checked in. The luggage is not up yet (who wants to steal my holey underwear anyway?). The 2 cabin keys are sealed inside the envelope so if you see the envelope opened, it means someone has tampered with your cabin key and you should go to guest services to have them re-key it for you or at least check any balances to your account in case of any fraudulent charges. 2 cabin keys sealed inside an envelope tucked away by the door number sign at each cabin As the shops on the ship are officially closed until the ship sails, no one is buying a Rolex with your card if they try to steal it from the cabin. The only thing I can think of is they buy drinks at the bar with it. That brings up a question – How do you buy drinks at the bar at 12 noon after boarding and before getting your room key? How do they charge for that service if you don’t have the Set Sail card to charge things against it? I don’t buy drinks at the bar so that has never been an issue but just curious now as I am being paranoid about the disadvantage of having a card waiting for you at the door instead of at check-in. What’s the advantage of this method anyway? Faster boarding to keep the port side worker having to do extra work? Now they just need to scan the set sail card, scan the passport & take a photo ID and leave the cabin keys to the ship staff? Here's what the envelope looks like after it's been opened. Note the message from RCI to report it if someone had opened the envelope prior to you opening it.

Good info to have. We don’t always go up to that part of the Bay Area but if we do, I will keep this info in mind.

Yeah, it’s a good idea to check out the dining arrangement ahead of time and if you need to make changes, do so early around lunchtime as it’s chaos to do so at dinner time on Day 1. I had forgotten which cruise, but on one of the previous cruises, another couple was assigned to be with our family’s table. We found out during the pre-dinner check and had to stand in line to talk to the head waiter to swap us out to another table. Think the issue was that the couple was doing a B-2-B and they were assigned the same table as the one I requested. Anyway, it’s never a bad idea to check out the table location and size of the table. I was going to do the same but the two MDR ladies were watching me like a hawk as in the Police song, Every Breath You Take, so I left without checking for my table.

After the theater tour, time to go up one deck to deck 5 as that's the heartbeat of the ship - the Royal Promenade. Café Promenade where it’s opened 24 hours a day to provide quick bites and pizzas within certain time slots. As it’s a Voyager class ship, it doesn’t have a dedicated pizza place like Sorrento’s Pizza on the Freedom class ships. We stopped by here a couple of times during the cruise to grab some snacks as well as get water to bring to the cabin nightly before going to sleep. Playmakers – the Sports Bar concept that RCI installed as part of the Amplification Process. As it costs extra to eat here, here’s the one obligatory picture from the outside and that’s my extent of checking out the place. Looks like the place isn’t that busy so I guess if you plan to eat there during the cruise, boarding day lunch might work for you. I see people with luggage as they are waiting for the cabins to open up As with a typical RCI Royal Promenade setup, there’s a car on deck 5

After MDR, it was time to check out the rest of deck 4 As we don’t gamble, this is the one and only picture of the casino from this cruise Same for Schooner Bar. The classic RCI bar where the ship has organized trivial pursuit contests is here. I don’t have enough intelligence or memory power to attempt to play these games. A simple man with simple mind – I like Big… The typical cruise ship theater that hosts the main nightly entertainment venue

One thing to note about Windjammer on boarding day lunch is that it will get very crowded very fast. The major advantage of arriving early is you can get a table and start eating before the later crowd shows up. To complicate things, the cabin rooms are not ready until after 1 PM and many people who have carry-ons are rolling their luggage around the buffet area to further make the boarding lunch a chaotic scene. Some people avoid this by upgrading to “The Key” option where you get a few perks such as early room access to drop off luggage as well as sit down lunch inside a restaurant and avoid the big crowd but that program is very expensive. Some people rather dine at the poolside venue like El Loco Fresh (Mexican food) or down on deck 5 at Café Promenade. The menu options there are more limited but probably less chaotic than the buffet so it’s a trade-off, depending if you prefer more food choices or fewer crowds. As someone asked previously, there are some specialty venues that might be opened on boarding day lunch so research those if that's important to you. As the Windjammer becomes overflowing with more cruisers coming than leaving by 12:30, they have a pre-recorded announcement requesting that people who are done eating to vacate their tables so the other cruisers can use the space. It’s a tough situation because, people carry-ons, have no place to drop them off as the cabins are not open it and they rather not drag their luggage all over the ship, including the very crowded buffet area. Part of the reason why we didn’t have any carry-on luggage with us and only one backpack so that we didn't have to deal with the luggage right after boarding and it was easy to walk around the ship as we vacated the buffet area. This is our second sailing on a Voyager class ship on top of 2 previous sailings on the Freedom class ships so we are very familiar with the Royal Promenade area. Nevertheless, it was good to see the setup again after not having sailed on RCI for many years. First of many sets of the Royal Promenade area. My son said this area to him is a signature RCI cruise layout. We all like this setup more than the Princess ship. By then the RCI App had informed us of our table number (we have traditional dining at 8 PM) so we wanted to check out where our table is as we made our way to check out the MDR. It is also a good opportunity to take pictures of the empty MDR as RCI does not open the area for onboard lunches. As we were there taking pictures of the area, a couple of workers kept asking if we needed any help as they didn't like us just taking pictures but not like we were touching anything as we walked by. I kept telling them we were only there to take a few pictures and that we didn’t need any help. They kept telling me to stand in line at the front of the restaurant to talk to the head waiter if I needed help – and I kept saying I didn’t need any help. Either my English is bad in them not understanding me or they are not used to people taking pictures of the empty MDR. Not the most friendly RCI Welcome Aboard crew.

OK, onward and forward on the trip report for the 5% of the folks reading this thread who actually want to know about the Mexican cruise.... ++++++++++++++ We last left off at the onboard lunch on Day 1. Dessert Time. They give you the small plates in the dessert section but that makes getting multiple sample items a difficult thing. My tip is to get the bigger plate from the hot food item section and use them for the desserts so you can bring different items to sample with the family or eat it all by yourself. No one is judging you while on vacation… Don't use the small plates here You can ONLY fit in 2 or 3 desserts comfortably on the small plates. Then you have to get a second plate for more... See how much more you can hold in getting a bigger plate? You can share (or not) with people in your party. Just tell yourself that you are saving water/time by not having the workers wash the second plate so you are saving the environment while you gorge on the 5th dessert on the plate... You will need coffee or hot tea to wash down all the desserts. RCI serves LavAzza coffee. I have bought these from Business Center Costco previously so I am familiar with the brand. RCI makes its coffee pretty strong so be ready for a good kick to your coffee

We bought a Corteo Christmas ornament from the souvenir stand so that every Christmas we will remember that we attended the show 20230826_171826.mp4 20230826_174217.mp4

Here are some of the pictures from our show yesterday. As with my trip report, you all get the "mail person" version with various stops instead of just 3 pictures and then we call it a day. That's not I roll... As only Patti and I are from the Bay Area, here's the intro to our subway system, BART (not the Simpsons)... Saw this info for the Transbay tube while waiting for our train. I never knew that about the tubes underneath the bay This next picture deserves some background info. In the old days when George Lucas was a more famous household name, if you rode BART on weekends, the train operator would point out the cranes you see around the port of Oakland as the inspiration to George Lucas in him creating the Walker Tanks from his Star Wars movies. Lucas is from the Bay Area - his company is in Marin and he created his Star Wars walking tanks based on the cranes. Part of the useless info you learned in reading this thread... These are the cranes from the port From the movies: SF city light rain train station (MUNI) - the LED lights at top (Blue colored lights) change color few seconds Between BART and MUNI transfer, you arrive at the front of the Chase Center in SF where the Cirque has their show in SF

I just posted my Cirque history and we have pretty similar backgrounds in the selection of shows. If anyone is a Beatles fan, go check out the "Love" show in Vegas. The entire show consists of Beatles hits. The "permanent" shows have better stage sets and props as the entire show is made for the theater they were housed. A perfect example is the Ka wall. You can't take that on the road. We still need to see "O" somewhere down the road. Next time we are in Vegas for the next road trip, that has to be top of the list. Few "KA" pics - a bit blurry but hard to take good photos on the cell phone in the dark with fast moving objects...

Good to talk to another Cirque fan. I tried to remember yesterday how many Cirque shows I have seen and had to do a count in the old man's memory bank: Alegria/Varekai/Mystere/La Nouba/Love/Ka were the old shows I had seen and now adding Corteo to the list. Still need to go and see "O" as that was the crown jewel show in Bellagio which RCI "stole" (errr, I meant inspired by) to create their water shows on the Oasis class ships but the "O" tickets are very expensive for Cheapo people like me to buy. Guess will need to suck it up and buy it as a "bucket list" item. Corteo has been around for a while so not surprising if you saw it.

Hi, Thanks for reading along and appreciate your compliment. We didn't utilize any Specialty restaurant so I can't comment for sure what is open. I'm sure someone will chime in quickly after reading this to provide the exact info. I know for sure the Playmaker sports bar was open for onboarding lunch. See the picture below as people were camped out and you can see their luggage with them. I want to say Hooked was open as well as there was a guy at the front podium around 1 PM trying to get people to eat there but he didn't get many takers. They use one of the specialty restaurants on deck 11 as part of "The Key" extra fee program to provide a sit-down lunch but I can't give you any details on which one and what food is covered under that program.

Hi everyone, We are going to the Cirque du Soleil show later today so I won't be home to post any Mexico cruise pictures today but will share a few highlights from today's event later on - maybe for some that's probably a better trade-off as you are tired of seeing cruise related photos. Here's the preview of the show:

I believe the major chain hotel reservations don't go out for more than 1 year. Airlines go 11 months out. LA/Orange County region is a massive area so you will have no problem finding a hotel room for the night or two. The only question is how many nights pre-cruise you plan to spend in the area as that will likely influence where your hotel will be. I think anything from LAX onward south to Long Beach will work. We were near LAX and it was less than a 25-minute drive to get there on the freeway as it's a reverse commute on the 110 Freeway so it's not that big of deal as you would need an Uber right either way to get to the hotel on arrival date from LAX or going to port the next morning. We stayed in Torrance pre-cruise for our 2010 and 2012 cruises. That's a nice area as well so if you find any hotel bargains in that area. Here's the Miyako Hotel near the Japan district in Torrance. Lots of Japanese restaurants within walking distance of the hotel. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g33182-d1650996-Reviews-Miyako_Hybrid_Hotel-Torrance_California.html

Excellent point, Mark. In my haste to post my info, I totally forgot to drop in the "good old days" of Muster Drill. Although none of my pictures are nearly as good as your "sea of red" life vests. I think the 2009 timeframe was near the end of the practice of wearing vests to the Promenade deck. I looked back at my photo archives and from photos of the 2009 Alaska cruise on Celebrity, we assembled on deck without life vests. Going further back to the Carnival cruise from 2008, here's a picture of me and the boys inside the cabin before we went to Muster Drill. They were issued the "junior-sized" life vests.

Wow. I wonder what happened to your luggage that the porter wouldn't take to the ship. Did you tip the guy? To answer your question, yes, you can self-assist in bringing the luggage onto the ship yourself. Just know that you would need to drag it around the ship for a while to the lunch area as the cabins are not available until after 1 PM. Unlike Princess Cruises, RCI does not have free MDR lunches on boarding day so you have to deal with taking the luggage with you to lunch. Another option is to time your arrival on the ship to be around 1 PM so you can drop off the luggage immediately upon boarding and then go to lunch.

Yeah, we all learned different ways. I got used to highlighting things from college that I still print stuff out at work to highlight but most people in the office don't print hard copies of things. Everyone has their own preferences.

Anyway, enough theoretical worrying. Muster Station Check-In is out of the way, it’s time to eat. By default, most cruisers will head for the Windjammer, which is the buffet place for RCI ships. If you don’t know where to go after your muster check-in, the workers will tell you the buffet is open upstairs on deck 11 on the Navigator of the Seas. Off we go and greeting us at the opening of the elevator is the day of the week. This is the signature RCI elevator sign to remind cruisers that the “real world” out there is still on regular days of the week. But you don’t care as you are on vacation and as far as you are concerned, it’s Day 1. As we were amongst the earlier group boarding the ship, there were still many empty tables at the back of the Windjammer. This picture had a time stamp of 11:13 so it was less than 45 minutes between arrival at Tent City and having a very early lunch at 11:15 – barely 3 hours after the hotel breakfast earlier. But hey, this is a cruise, so time to open the belly and let’s eat.

But before you get too comfortable, the workers are trying hard to get you to check in at your assigned muster station while you are still on the Promenade deck. You were supposed to have watched the video on your App on how to put on the lifevest and know the sounds of the emergency drill and so on. This is one of those “things are better now” compared to pre-covid. In the old days, you had to stand outside the Promenade deck about 30 minutes prior to the ship’s sail away with thousands of your fellow cruisers in the heat to listen to the long announcements and watch the workers put on the life vests in front of you. If you really go back even further, in the really old days, everyone had to take the vests from their cabins and put them on while standing on the deck. They stopped that after a while and for a while it was no vest, but just showed up. Now it’s easier as you just go to your muster station, let the workers at that station scan your phone to signify you were there and you understood the rules and you are done. On paper, I applaud the idea as it’s fast and efficient since nobody likes to stand outside. But the 9.2 anal/paranoia person in me always wonders how many first-time cruisers really paid attention to the app on this and really know what to do in an emergency? Do they even know where the life vests are in their cabins? You all know full well that if something goes wrong on some future sailing and people don’t know enough about how to use/find the life vests, there will be tons of talking heads on National news shows asking why people are unaware of the life vest process because it was simplified/turned virtual back in the old days (current)...

After visiting the crazy aunt in the basement, you are stopped once more at the edge of the gangway as the staff scans the Set Sail Sea pass once more on the phone or hard copy. So close and yet so far… They scanned the pass and they were unhappy with how my wife’s pictures turned out from downstairs so they took ANOTHER picture from the tablet. I guess eventually they will get it right… OK. Here’s the happiest walk for the cruise – gangway to the ship. Nobody in front of us… Not exactly Stairway to Heaven - more like Gangway to Happiness but I can't find that song on YouTube so this will have to do...

Luggage is being loaded onto the ship as well as the power cord. I didn’t know about the power thing until after I got home. More on the power cord thing on day 5 of the report. Anyway, let’s talk about luggage as that was the reason for this picture. Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be a luggage? I mean if Toys can have feelings like in the movie series, Toy Story, why can luggage be alive and have feelings as well? Luggage is probably one of the most underappreciated travel accessories. Most of the time, they are hidden in the closet/garage somewhere. Only to be used during travel times. They hold probably 90%+ of the travel clothes/necessities but everyone takes the suitcases for granted. The only time we care about the luggage is when they are stolen/misplaced by someone. If unlucky, the luggage can be at the bottom of 5 layers of luggage as the workers pile on the suitcase to make sure they fit inside each cargo load. At the end of the cruise, we all just throw a whole bunch of smelly clothes inside the suitcase as most people don’t bring laundry bags to sort of their clothes while on vacation. Bad enough to have to carry all the stuff for the owner and at the end of the vacation, you have to carry the smelly socks and underwear home? Yeah, I wouldn't want to be a piece of luggage either…

Onward and forward on day 1 of the trip report. Where were we? Oh, yeah, Bib still dancing with the ladies to the song "Baby Got Back..." ++++++++++ OK. Enough singing and dancing as Bib sit down to cool off, we move onto the boarding process. Picture of the ship workers talking to us as we took pictures of the ship from the pier. San Pedro has an interesting view where you walk alongside the ship for a few hundred feet and you can take pictures of the ship prior to boarding. I’m not the only dude taking pictures of the ship. You can see it’s a long walk to the gangway along the pier. This picture had a time stamp of 10:48 so it took us less than 20 minutes to go through tent city/security/check-in. That is super fast so even though San Pedro check-in doesn’t look fancy, they are very efficient. Throughout the report, I try not to sound too jaded in the “been there, done that” attitude on this cruise but at this point of my cruise experience, seeing the older ship no longer has the “wow” butterfly in the stomach feel. But if you are new to cruising (or to Royal), the site of seeing a massive ship up close for the first time is a truly amazing experience that too many veteran cruisers take for granted. As you walk down the pier, you will see the shipboard photographers setting up shop along the way. Unlike the Fort Lauderdale piers where the onboard pictures are taken inside the terminal, San Pedro does it from the outside. Different perspective. Anyone who has read my previous trip reports knows I have a name for the shipboard photographers – crazy aunt in the basement. If one reads the typical cruise report here on CC, seldom do the cruise reports talk about the shipboard photographers. Yet, shipboard photography is a big part of the cruise experience as they are there before you even board the ship. They are there as soon as you walk off the ship at any port and in front of every major shipboard activity and nightly dinner outside of the main dining room (MDR). Maybe the CC cruisers are too cool to partake in the cheesy money-grabbing event like the photographers or they are not cruising with large families or big groups so they don’t utilize the shipboard photographers but we will use them as we always cruise as a family and we like to capture the special memory of every cruise we have been on. Anyway, my analogy is that it’s like a big family that has a crazy aunt that they locked in the basement, so she doesn’t injure herself/others. Everyone knows she exists, but nobody talks about her at the dinner table. That’s how I feel about shipboard photography. It’s there as a big part of the cruise experience but seldom discussed like a crazy aunt in the basement. So I will refer to each photo opt as “crazy aunt in basement” for the rest of the report.

Very cool. That makes boarding a very fast process. But to be the number 1 cruise port in beating out FLL and Miami, you must have enough ships that carry numerous passengers through to get you to the top. Maybe this is where "numbers" can lie - does Port Canaveral have a disproportionate number of short cruises versus the FLL and Miami cruises that are longer cruises? For example, if a ship does the 3 and 4-night cruise weekly and each ship carries 4,000 people, that's technically 8,000 people "through the gates" in a week's time. Whereas FLL and Miami have the longer 7-day cruise and they might have the big 6,500 people on each of the mega ships but since the cruise duration is longer and hence less "turn over", by definition they have "fewer" people going through as each ship is only bringing in 6,500 passengers instead of the 8,000 passenger example from above? Orlando is its own destination by itself with WDW and Universal there. People probably prefer short 3 o4 4 day cruises on top of their theme park visits as their vacation time is limited so the short cruises will sell well there instead of the longer cruises. A 4-day WDW visit + short cruise is shorter PTO usage for those of us who work and have limited vacation time...