Hutcha

My 3/9 Icon is down to $31 The drink package is still insane though. $1350 with tip for two people.

Is the $20 limit per day, or per day / per restaurant? IOW, can I have lunch at JRs and then go to Playmakers later?

Has anyone used it yet? We have it on our Mar 9th Icon sailing.

Shuttles are good if it's just 2 or 3 people. Anymore than that, and it's best to look at alternatives. Uber, rental car, private van.

Definitely book 6 and 2. Get the other 2 UBP and having any drinks anywhere on the ship will be covered. Including having the genie deliver drinks to the room. Without the UBP, the genie can still deliver drinks to the room, but they'll be out of luck around the ship. Do not consider getting drinks at a bar for free and passing them onto your friends. That's a no no. When the genie contacts you, they will probably tell you to have the other 2 board with you. Get specialty dining to cover all nights for the other 2. The genie will be able to handle reservations for the whole party that way. You don't want to eat MD when you're Star class. Consider putting the other 2 in a sky class suite. You say you don't care about CK, but it's the best place for breakfast, and their dinners are good too. The genie will pamper you and take care of all of your needs. They will decorate your cabin, plan in cabin dining, plan an in cabin party, have drinks and treats delivered multiple times a day, have a standing order for Starbuck to be delivered every morning, reserve the best seat for shows, and so many other things.

I think they are trying to avoid people stocking up on the packaged snacks and taking them home with them.

I'd say 30-40 mins, in the beginning, because that is the "tour" part. On the way back it's three 7-10 min rides to the different stops.

It is indeed Med. I liked it. I thought the bottled products were better than the dispensers they had mounted in the shower.

It's not a long bus ride, and it's a nice air conditioned coach. I think the excursion you're referring to also involves the same type of bus, and it just takes you to the dune buggies and then the falls.

I don't remember if they had them in Ocho Rios. I'm sure they must have.

A note on the elevators. They are frustrating. Wait times have been fairly long, but never more than 5 mins or so. My keycard and wristband never worked for priority, and I didn't want to go through the hassle of having them reprogramed. Carly's would occasionally work. When scanned the display would read "VIP - Select floor". Once selected, it would tell you what elevator to get on. We never noticed any "priority" with this service. Even when being escorted off of the ship by a butler, the elevator still stopped at all of the floors, on the way down. As @morpheusofthesea noted in a review, by the end of the cruise, frustrations showed. There were several busted call pads that I noticed on the last couple of days.

Assorted Dumplings. Very good and flavorful 5/5 Herbed Gravlax Salmon. Loved it. 5/5 On the first night, Arthur the Maître D ask if we had any special request. I asked if it was possible to get beef wellington one night. He gave me a side eye and smirk and said "I think I saw someone mention that on FB." I'm pretty sure that's where I got the idea. He said he would check with the chef, and the next night he said to let him know which day we would like it. All three of us had it tonight. I was a little worried how the chef would pull it off, not knowing exactly what time we'd come in. He ended up cooking the puff pastry and mushroom separately and then wrapping a perfectly cooked filet with it. It was really good.

Today is Ocho Rios. We have breakfast up at the pool deck and kill a little time until our excursion meeting time. Today, we are doing the Dunn's river fall tour that has sightseeing and lunch attached to it. There was a lot of standing around before getting on the bus, but the tour was definitely worth it, though the sightseeing was a little lame. The climb up the falls was longer than I remembered (I was 30 years younger), but it was not strenuous at all. A photographer follows your group up, and takes video and individual pics along the way. You can pay $40 at the end, and they will email you the edited video of the group and your personal pictures. It was well worth the $40. On the way back, you stop at a beachside resort for lunch. It was a very good meal. On the way back to the ship there is a short stop for shopping. We didn't get off of the bus. I don't know what it is about Ocho Rios, but I've seen pics of long lines to get back onboard before. The lines were definitely real. There was a long line, leading up to a choke point on the pier, before you could break loose from the crowd and find a YC rep. It took us about 30 mins to get back on the ship, and it would have been longer if we couldn't bypass the last part of the line. I think a part of the problem is that they only have one crew member per screening station. This person runs the x-ray, metal detector, and searches bags that they want to pull aside.

Was that a forward facing accessible penthouse? Don't know if that's an apples to apples comparison to to the base YC balconies. The YC deluxe balcony was a really good size. It was about 50% wider and longer than a normal balcony. The bathroom was smaller than some Haven bathrooms (I had and Aft facing with a great bathroom), but it is still pretty big. The shower had a bench and plenty of room.

I rarely saw a butler on the pool deck during the day. There was the occasional butler that was on bar waiter duty, but really no one attending to their guests personally. There were pool attendants and multiple bar waiters to take care of you. FCFS worked really well and there was usually at least one open cabana. Being able to reserve is a nice benefit, but I can see it being frustrating to look at multiple empty cabanas, because the people that reserved them decided to not show up or only show for a brief visit.