ARandomTraveler

I haven't been since 2018, but I'd say San Juan embarkation is pretty much a ***** show. You'll be standing outside a pretty rundown building. No frills. I should note though, that cruises from San Juan are my absolute favorite. You can get to the most beautiful islands from there. Highly recommend!

You have to go through the whole booking process, putting everyone's names in and everything, and then once you do that, and get to the page where you can select options like adding pre-paid gratuities, adding insurance etc, there will also be an option to make your booking refundable. It's really annoying to have to input all that info just to see what the real price is, but they want people to get attached to the listed price, which is actually the non-refundable price. The added cost to make it refundable can be anywhere from around $100, to $1500 (or so I've read, I've never had any of my bookings charge this much extra). The most I've ever been charged to make my booking refundable is around $300.

I'm sailing in July and interior rooms have been sold out since at least October (10 months prior to the cruise). Price has also gone up, not down. I would book your cruise now, book refundable, and that way if there's a better deal in April then you can cancel and rebook, and if there's not a better deal, then you'll be glad you already put your deposit down.

I think it depends on the particular sailing. If it's a popular one, they do sell out, but as people cancel, rooms will periodically pop up. I booked my next cruise 10 months in advance, and when I booked it, interior rooms and ocean view rooms were all sold out. I saw ocean view rooms pop up for about 3 days once, and then disappeared again. We're now 6 months out and interiors, ocean views and balconies are all sold out. No interior rooms have ever become available, and the ocean view only became available that one time. I check every day because I'm looking for price drops, even though it appears that won't happen. Cabins have remained sold out, and the price has increased by $2500 in the last 3 months. The sailing I'm going on isn't offered very many times and it's one of the only times they do it during the summer months so for my sailing it makes sense. But I'm sure it happens for others as well. I don't think it would make financial sense for them to withhold cabins and lose sales just because they think it might entice people to book a more expensive cabin. I think it's just that more people are traveling. You've got people who are still trying to use up credits from the shut-down when their original vacations were canceled, and I think people were stuck at home for a long time and they want to get out and travel. Prices are going up because demand is going up. And people are willing and able to pay the higher prices.

We came back from the beach in our wet swimsuits, wrapped in pool towels, so we always had an old wet towel in our room that we planned to swap out before going to the next beach. Our room steward beat us to it every time. She would come in to clean our room every time we left, and she'd take our wet pool towels and replace them with clean ones before we came back from getting a snack or eating dinner.

I bought a Surf & Stream2-device plan during the Black Friday sale and it was $14.99/day for the first device and $12.99/day for the second. Right now it's listed as $16.99/day for the first device and 14.99/day for the second device.

Oh ok, that makes sense. I can see why it would be a concern for Grandma. They will not link that credit card for future use. When everyone does their online check-in once the cruise gets closer, they will be asked the put in their own credit card number if they want to use one. They can also opt for a "cash" account, meaning they just run up a tab that they'll have to stand in line to pay at the end of the cruise (either with cash, debit or credit card..or maybe even a check, if they take those on the ship, I'm not sure).

Barbados has some beaches you can easily swim out to dive/snorkel spots from shore. The water is really calm and clear. I wouldn't recommend San Juan, the water is a little rough and visibility is low.

Not to mention the added purchase protection and insurance you can get with a credit card. And the immediate knowledge that payment was received without having to wait for the guy and his horse to make it across the Oregon Trail with your envelope and stamp 😂

I think if they're on the kids sail free, you can just leave them on the reservation and then have the baby be a "no show" if they can't come.

You saved $1000 but now you're stuck in a room with 3 adults and a baby... not worth saving $1000 if it was me. I'd have paid the extra $1000 and left it as-is with 2 rooms and one less person.

For dinner or lunch? That's a good price for dinner. I've never seen it go lower than $54.99/person for dinner in my cruise planners.

My symphony cruise in November was $72.99/day at its cheapest. Refreshment package was $23.99/day at its cheapest. Soda package was $8.99/day, never fluctuated.

My last cruise went down in price 5 times in the 6 months leading up to it. My next cruise has done nothing but go up in price. In fact I looked at the price initially (10 months before the cruise) and figured I'd wait a couple weeks because I knew a potential "holiday sale" was coming, and I wasn't super positive I was gonna take the cruise. About 3 weeks later the price had gone up $500/person, and has only continued to go up since then (it's now $2500 more than when I booked it in October, and the cruise isn't for 7 more months). No harm in just putting the deposit down now, make sure you choose the refundable option, and then if you decide not to go, you can cancel it with no penalty as long as the final payment date hasn't happened yet. If the price goes down, you can call to get the price adjusted.

The only problem I see here is bad planning on the part of you and your friends. You booked a cruise inside final payment before bothering to ask your friends if they wanted to go (so you were obviously fine with going on this cruise whether they came or not). And your friends booked a cruise and never even bothered to tell you about it, and didn't invite you until after you invited THEM (so they were fine going on their cruise without YOU). You've all cruised often enough to know that these are the rules, and expecting them to change them just because you guys are frequent cruisers and because some "potential friends who weren't gonna go at all, but now think they might have gone but are now maybe not going at all" is also ridiculous. Don't book a last minute cruise and assume everyone is gonna jump on board to go with your plan. Maybe next time, check with your friends first if there's a chance you'd change your plans to match theirs.

I'll be on spectrum this summer and have had a hard time finding any posts on cruise critic about it, understandably. For port info, I'd suggest looking at the descriptions of the ports on the "explore this itinerary" section of the Royal Caribbean website (for example, do a search for your cruise as though you were making a new booking, you should then see an "explore this itinerary" button). I found the descriptions under that section to be really robust and full of information that I've never noticed on the website before. I would also do a search on YouTube for the ship, there's a lot of videos from people who've sailed different itineraries on the ship. Cruise Critic doesn't have port specific boards for the Asia ports, but there is an all-encompassing "Asia" board. It's not as helpful as the Caribbean port boards, but it is helpful. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/43-asia/

Drink packages, individual restaurant reservations, and excursions didn't start showing up in mine until 195 days out. It only shows excursions for our first of 5 stops (we're at 186 days out.

I don't know, but when we were on Symphony I recall the milkshake being charged to our dining package, and the root beer float being charged to the beverage package. I figured it was because ice cream is more like a food. Although root beer float has ice cream too, so I don't know. I just recall them asking us if we had the dining package when we ordered the milkshake, but asking in a way that made it sound like she was saying we needed it for the milkshake. But it's also possible that because we also ordered food, the waitress may have assumed we thought we could order it with the dining package and the language barrier made it sound like she was "telling" us rather than asking. We had both the dining and refreshment so she may have figured that out on her own and charged it to the refreshment and didn't say anything to me about it. I just remember that when we ordered the milkshake, she didn't ask if we had the refreshment package. The root beer float was definitely the refreshment because I asked when we ordered it separately later. Sounds like milkshake is refreshment based on everyone else's replies so I guess it is.

Sea days, because on port days, even if you don't do organized excursions, you're probably gonna get off the ship and walk around, maybe go to a beach, be out in the sun. On port days I tend to get up earlier, even if I don't have a specific place I need to be, so I'm more tired come dinnertime. I often want to just grab food in the buffet and take a nap, but on my last cruise we had specialty reservations every day and I had to pull up my bootstraps and get pretty whether I liked it or not. I found it hard to muster the energy to shower and be ready for dinner on port days, I was just exhausted. Sea days are more laid back, you get more rest, and can plan your day around going to dinner.

The refreshment package is the one that gives you non-alcoholic drinks, coffees, bottled waters and protein shakes and fresh pressed juices (on ships with a vitality cafe). I think that milkshakes need the dining package.

Good point 🤔 May as well not even consider the elf.

I'd consider paying more to have a gnome or an elf.

Just checked mine, it's listed under "VIP Passes" but then when you click on it, it says "The Key."

They weren't sailing full a year ago though

The hibachi upcharge is for an upgraded menu. I don't recall what the difference is but for the sake of example, hibachi comes with a menu of "steak and chicken" but the upgraded menu with the $15 upcharge comes with "teriyaki steak, chicken, and shrimp" or something like that. This past week there was a really good sale on the hibachi. Someone posted that they saw it in their cruise planner for $28.99/person when it's normally $55 or $60, and then a bunch of other people looked at their cruise planners and saw that they also had the sale, so they jumped on purchasing it (myself included). The sale has now ended (some people think it was a glitch but I think it was just a sale cause it lasted a couple days). That being said, it seems like the hibachi is often fully booked before 11am on boarding day (it was on my last cruise), and now that there was such a big sale on buying it ahead of time, I wouldn't be surprised if that continues to be an issue for people who are waiting to book onboard. If you have specific restaurants you want to go to, and you'd be disappointed if you weren't able to get a reservation, then I'd suggest paying full price and booking it ahead of time. Buying the discounted packages is a risk. I do both (buy the dining package, but also book restaurants that I want to be sure to get a reservation at for full price).