ancestry

4 minutes ago, Ourusualbeach said:

The website is outdated.

 

I book kids in a separate room all the time for clients.  It does not even have to be beside, it can be directly across the hall

May I ask what you are saying to them to get them to do this? Like I posted above I fought them over this for our upcoming March cruise and the "kids" are 19 and 20 and multiple agents (I called several times) said nope they had to be in a connecting cabin. The 20 year old is turning 21 in less than a month after the sailing so their policy does seem a bit ridiculous but I have not had any luck ever getting them to allow this. We experienced the same thing for a cruise we took back in September as well. Or is it because you are a travel agent that the system allows you to do some things that the RC agents on the phone won't budge about?

20 minutes ago, Merion_Mom said:

 

And in practice, the required proximity is adjacent OR connecting OR directly across the hall.

 

I'm glad to hear you have had luck doing this. I have not and I even tried several times with adults over 18 but under 21 (didn't even try with little kids).

We were told NO multiples times (on at least three different sailings) unless we had connecting rooms. 

In fact we are sailing again at the beginning of March with my daughter and her friend. The friend is 20 and will literally be one month shy of turning 21 and they would not allow a 19 and 20 year old to be in their own cabin unless it was a connecting cabin to ours. Yes, I know we can juggle after we are on board but then the room cards are a pain especially is the charging isn't all going on one card.

6 minutes ago, Merion_Mom said:

 

Yes.  It is your choice whether your children are old enough to be there without a connecting door.

According to Royal Caribbean's website this is not correct. Their website states: "No Guest younger than the age twenty-one (21) will be assigned to a stateroom unless accompanied in the same stateroom by an adult twenty-one (21) years old or older. A guest's age is established upon the first date of sailing.

This age limit will be waived for children sailing with their parents or guardians in connecting staterooms; for underage married couples; and for active duty members of the United States or Canadian military."

Source: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/international-age-policy

The official requirement is each cabin must have an adult 21 or older listed in it.

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/international-age-policy

HOWEVER, if you have connecting cabins (ones that have the door that open between them on the inside) they will usually allow you to have people under 21 in the other cabin. I'm not sure if there is a minimal age limit for this but we have done this multiple time ever since my kids were teenagers. However we had to have connecting cabins.

The other way around it, is to list an adult in the cabin with the kids but then juggle people around once you are on the ship. It is a pain with the room cards but might be doable.

We just got off Mariner of the Seas yesterday. My daughter and her boyfriend had a lot of pictures taken of them by the ship's photographers. The last night we were on the ship my daughter had to tend to some school work and to save time she let her boyfriend select the pictures that they wanted to purchase.

Well, we got the email to download the pictures just now and of course they sent all of the pictures to view, not just the ones he purchased. My daughter does not like the ones he picked but really like some of the other ones and is willing to pay for them. 

Is there any way to purchase some of the other pictures that were not selected for purchase on the ship?

We can see all of the pictures they took but the ones that her boyfriend didn't select have a watermark over them.

This is pdf result that they emailed for the (adult) kid who took the test at between 10:18 pm and 10:55 pm on September 8 eastern time. As you see since they converted it to UTC time the date of the test is actually showing as September 9 even though he took it late on the 8th. 
 

However the app does not convert to UTC time. The app shows your current time zone when you took the test. 

1 minute ago, seapad said:

Thanks for the info. However, do you know what's the DATE of the test that the result is showing? I understand about the UTC time and the hours countdown, but the date would help. The cruise line (as far as I know) looks at the date of the test.  

If you take the test after midnight it will show it for that day.  Everything is date and time stamped to the very minute and second. If you take it at 12:01 AM on September 9 it’s going to stamp it for September 9. But it does have the timestamp on it.  If you want to see it I can screenshot everything (paper and app) and upload it. I just have to find a way to block out the personal information. 

My adult children tested very late last night for our sailing tomorrow. I don’t recall the exact time but it was pretty close to midnight. The timestamp on the printed report is UTC time rather than our current time zone. Since it is in UTC time the form is dated for September 9 even though he took the test very late at night on September 8. 
 

You of course get the results in your NAVICA app but they also send you a printable PDF with the lab and the time your took the test and other pertinent information. That form shows the time you took the test in UTC time. 
 

The app shows how many hours or days it has been since you took the test. So when you open it up it’ll say you took the test 16 hours ago or two days ago. The part of the app that gives greater detail shows the time you took the test in your local time zone. 
 

10 minutes ago, puerto penasco lady said:

Got my antigen test this afternoon.....results in less than 15 minutes.  Sailing Sunday on Independence.

Can I ask where (which store or lab) did you go to?  
 

We are looking to book last minute on Royal Caribbean mid-September. But like the original poster wrote about in this thread I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to get our test results back in time or even get an appointment to get tested.
 

Every place around us is taking longer than three days to get the PCR results in right now. Most places are limiting testing to those that are showing severe Covid symptoms in order to even be able to get an appointment to get tested. 

Good Morning! 

We are considering booking a RC cruise for this coming March. We all need a vaccation!

Is there anywhere I can find a posting or announcement about what the new protocols will be on board Royal Caribbean ships in regards to COVID protocols? I tried searching online and here for this information and couldn't really find any types of details.

I want to be informed on how they will handle things such as show seating, shore excursions, moving around the ship, etc. before I book so I can determine if it is something that I want to put up with for a week. 😉

Thanks for your help!

Thank you everyone! I appreciate the help!

We are traveling on Allure of the Seas next year (July 2020). What started as household only vacation of four people has now expanded to a family vacation with the older kids and their spouses/significant others. At the moment we are up to 11 people coming from multiple countries (US and Canada) who are booked through five separate reservations and we may be adding 1 or 2 more. 

Question 1) We have all chosen the late night 8:30 PM fixed time dining. What is the largest table they have available? Any chance we can all get seated together or will we be split over two tables?

Question 2) For those of you familiar with traveling with guests from a different country who booked under their native currency --- We always have issues linking reservations between the US and Canadian groups when we have traveled on Royal in the past because of the differences in currency (forms of payment) prohibit the reservations from being fully linked together. Last cruise we couldn't get dining (or shore excursions or anything) linked together for seating purposes until we boarded the ship and talked to the dining room staff who then linked us together. With such a large group this time I don't want to wait until we board because I want us to eat together. Currently only 2 of the 11 are under Canadian currency bookings where the rest are US. Any suggestions on making this happen?

Thanks!

For our upcoming sailing on Harmony we received our cabin assignment about 2 weeks before the sailing date.

UPDATE: Actually my daughter just realized that the age restrictions on the RC iPhone app shore excursions don't match the age restrictions shown for the exact same shore excursion on the RC website.

On the website it states "Children between the ages of 4 and 12 must be accompanied by a ticketed adult." On the app for the exact same shore excursion it states "“Guests under 18 years old may require adult accompaniment.”

Several of the shore excursion in Nassau (mostly the Blue Lagoon dolphin ones) state “Guests under 18 years old may require adult accompaniment.”

Does anyone know what they mean by “may”? Shouldn’t it be either adult accompaniment is required or it isn’t required? Or perhaps required under a certain age?

We are two families traveling together. Two of the teens want to do this tour but none of the adults over 18 do. One teen is 17 1/2 and due to his full beard looks like he is in his 20s. The other is a girl is who 16 1/2 (a few month shy of 17 at the sailing) but because she is so petite looks like she is 14 especially with no makeup on. 

We wanted to book the shore excursions in advance but don’t know if they can do these by themselves since RC uses the vague word “may.”  Any ideas?

Thanks everyone for the information especially those with the Canadian experience. 

Just to clarify we both booked together at the same time on a conference call directly through Royal Caribbean over the phone. We didn’t use travel agents. During the initial booking we were told that everything was linked together. 

OWe have cruised many times but this is the first time we are traveling with a party from another county. We are US based and they are Canadian.

We were able to link our reservations together for the purpose of check in and getting our set-sail passes. I can see theirs. They can see mine. 

However we were having all kinds of problems making our on board entertainment reservations and dining reservations together.

We kept getting a computer error which said “Unfortunately these reservations may not be combined to create a single reservations. Please proceed to make separate reservations for each party.”  

Three long phone calls to Royal Caribbean. No one seemed to know why. Finally during the last call the customer service agent said the problem is because the reservations are in different currencies (US dollars and Canadian dollars) and that entertainment and dining reservations will need to be made by each party separately rather than linked because of the currency issue. 

The customer service agent got us the dining times we wanted and reserved them for each party since we both have my time dining. I’m concerned that even though both parties were able to reserve my time dining at 7:45 PM that we may not be seated together since the dining reservation isn’t showing for a party of five but rather a party of three and a party of two. The agent said that would not be a problem and the five of us should just show up together and say we want to eat at the same table and we would be seated together. I don’t feel confident with this answer. 

Any one have experience with this? Does the different currency answer make sense?

We are a family of four - mom, dad and two older teens who are twins. The teens want to bring a mutual friend on the cruise (which would make five people total) but the friend can't commit fully for scheduling reason until closer to the date.

Should the friend not be able to go we would bring another family member instead (probably one of my older adult children). Bottom line is I couldn't provide the name of the fifth person until about 60-90 days prior to the sailing date even though I want to book 6-9 months out.

Is there a way we can book with a TBD for the fifth person or book with the friend and switch to the family member later if necessary?

Any way we can do this on Carnival without being faced with fees? (Cross posted on the Royal Carribean Forum as we aren't sure which line we are going to go with).

We are a family of four - mom, dad and two older teens who are twins. The teens want to bring a mutual friend on the cruise (which would make five people total) but the friend can't commit fully for scheduling reason until closer to the date.

Should the friend not be able to go we would bring another family member instead (probably one of my older adult children). Bottom line is I couldn't provide the name of the fifth person until about 60-90 days prior to the sailing date even though I want to book 6-9 months out.

Is there a way we can book with a TBD for the fifth person or book with the friend and switch to the family member later if necessary?

Any way we can do this on Royal without being faced with fees? (Cross posted on the Royal Carnival Forum as we aren't sure which line we are going to go with).

Just got back from a Royal Caribbean cruise. My teenaged daughter is vegan. Options were very limited and we were told they don’t offer a vegan menu.

I hate to say this but you will get better options (and treatment) if you say you are a vegetarian with a dairy allergy. Once you use the allergy word they act completely differently and try much harder to meet your needs.

Even their plain pasta comes with butter. It was nearly impossible to get plain pasta without butter in a basic marinara sauce.

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We use an app called Marine Traffic. It is pretty good although sometimes there is a delay on the update of the position of the ships.

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Never mind I figured it out. :-)

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Local Floridian driving to the Port of Tampa. Sailing on RC Brilliance of the Seas. First time for us sailing out of Tampa.

Will we be able to hand off our luggage to the porters *before* we park or will we need to park and drag our luggage from the parking garage to the porters?

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A lot of it depends on personal preference. If you walk in to eat whenever you feel like it you may have a wait. I’ve seen reports on the boards of waits up to 45 minutes to an hour to get a table at peak my time dining hours.

We prefer the fixed time dining so I don’t have a lot of personal experience with the my time dining. Just know you may encounter waits.

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