ARandomTraveler

Not sure what they cost, but we got root beer floats and a milkshake using our refreshment drink package, so my guess would be that the Diamond drink voucher should work. edited to add: I just looked at the photo of the menu I took, and it doesn't list a price. It's says "all beverages are available at current bar pricing." This was from Symphony during the Thanksgiving week sailing:

I have a similar issue. I only weigh 120lbs and can't tolerate the patch for more than a day and a half. I usually put it on the morning of the cruise, then take it off after breakfast the next day. The medicine seems to stay in my system for a couple days, and then as long as the ship isn't rocking too much, I can tolerate it. If not, I always have 2 more patches I can put on. My issues with the patch are that by the end of day 1 it makes my throat hurt, makes my mouth dry, makes me feel a little weird in the head (not seasick, but queasy in a different way), and if left on for more than 3 days, my eyesight gets blurry to the point where I can't even read the dinner menu, (and I have perfect vision normally, I don't wear glasses). Ginger, apples (recommended by a waiter once), those pressure point wristbands (threw up on mine), peppermint etc... these are garbage remedies for people with genuine inner ear issues. Not sure about Dramamine. The only time I tried it was after I was already seasick so it did nothing for me except make me tired. I did my 1 day trick with the patch last week on the symphony. I could feel the ship moving most of the time, but it only got worrisome when at the front of the ship (the theaters, the solarium, hooked restaurant). We only had 5ft waves the whole week which was lucky. I had a couple instances when I was worried the rocking might make me sick, but I was fine and never had to break out another patch.

On my last cruise I tipped the auto-gratuities, and on top of that: $10 at every meal at a specialty restaurant except Johnny rockets and playmakers. $5 at Johnny Rockets when we got a burger and fries, and $3 when I got a root beer float. $5 at playmakers when we got nachos and a campfire cookie, and $3 when we just got the campfire cookie. $3 in the windjammer whenever someone brought us fresh squeezed juice $50 to my room steward. I was conflicted with this because while it's seemed like (and I think was) a generous tip, I also felt like maybe I should have tipped more because she cleaned our room 3 times a day, and she was so stealthy about it. She had our routine figured out and went into our room and had it clean every morning, afternoon and evening. $50 divided by 7 days is only $7.14, which seems like a weird amount to tip someone, why not make it $10/day? But then $70 seemed like a lot because we didn't make a mess, and also, I spent most of my cash and didn't have another $20 bill and was too lazy to ask guest services to change in my $1's, and I guess I also used the hassle as an excuse not to tip $70 because I didn't really want to 😂. $2-$3 for drinks at the bars (usually $2 if I got 1 drink and $3 if I got 2, but sometimes I only tipped $2 for 2 drinks, and there were a couple times I didn't tip anything because I decided to get a drink when I walked by a bar and didn't have cash on me). $0 at Sorrentos, promenade cafe, solarium bistro, park cafe or the smoothie place at the gym, which my daughter pointed out to me as being kind of hypocritical since I was tipping everyone else but for whatever reason it didn't seem like a tippable experience.

I'm not surprised. I'd be willing to bet that transatlantic sailings have more people over the age of 65 than other sailings, which significantly increases the number of people on the ship in wheelchairs or with other mobility issues that make a handicapped room more comfortable for them.

I don't have experience with anyone with a mobility challenge on a cruise ship, so I'm sure there are a lot of things to consider that don't even cross my mind. But the one thing that stood out to me on my last cruise was that the elevator situation seems like it gets frustrating for people who can't take the stairs. There were many many many times throughout every day of our trip where it took a long time for elevators to come, or where elevators were full. We ended up using the stairs a lot more often than the elevators, even when carrying 2 full plates of food from the windjammer down 12 flights of stairs, because it's was faster than waiting for the elevator. It wasn't even that the elevators were always full, it was just that they wouldn't stop on the floors to let people on. So, that could be a challenge. But I think that will be a challenge no matter which ship you're on. Oasis class ships have a lot more floors, but on the other hand, once you're on a floor that you want to be on, there's enough to keep you entertained for a longer time so you won't need to go up and down as often. I feel like it would be a good idea for them to dedicate one elevator bay on each side of the ship to be used for mobility challenged people only. It should stop on every floor, rather than being programmed with whatever AI that the other elevator bays have which makes them pass up floors even when the buttons have been pushed.

Don't know about super bowl but I would assume so, at least if you're on an Oasis class ship. They were playing a big World Cup game on the aqua theater screens on Symphony on thanksgiving day and it was a blast!! The Brazilians onboard brought drums and noisemakers and horns and flags and a TON of energy. It felt like being at the game in person. So much fun.

Windjammer on symphony served breakfast until 8:30am on disembark day last weekend.

9am. Got off last weekend and I had an early disembark tag (#3), but our flight didn't leave until evening, so I asked guest services how long we could stay on the ship and they said 9am. Didn't buy us much time but it was better than nothing.

On the Symphony last week (an Oasis class ship) we got smoothies and fresh squeezed juice at the cafe that's located in the spa/gym. They used our refreshment beverage package to pay for that. The refreshment package is the one that does not include alcohol. I asked the guy behind the counter whether my dining package or my beverage package worked for smoothies, and he said the beverage package works, the dining package does not. If you want a milkshake at Johnny rockets, that is also part of the beverage package (but is not part of the dining package).

I brought 2 bottles on Symphony during Thanksgiving week in my carry-on wine suitcase and they didn't even open it. I actually had to take it through security twice because I left the ship and came back. They didn't look inside my bag either time. I also had a large bottle of water in there that was leftover from my hotel room, and they didn't seem to care what it was.

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Starlink worked great for us on Symphony. We used internet, streamed football games, used the phone etc. I only did a speed test once or twice. Here's one of the screenshots:

I did the escape room on Symphony last week and thought it was fun. The description said it was an hour and a half but it was only 45 minutes, or maaaaybe it was an hour, but it was much shorter than an hour and a half. We were paired with I think 7 or 8 other people.

I tried ordering "to-go" from Izumi as well. They told me no. I came back the next day and asked again, but this time I said "if I sit down at the sushi bar and order, will you wrap it up for me to go?" and she again told me that it's against their policy, but she'd do it for me this one time if I didn't tell anyone. But then she said she couldn't seat me at the sushi bar, I had to sit at a regular table. I placed my order for 1 sushi roll and a side, and my order didn't come out for 45 minutes, and even then, it only came out because I told them I was about to miss a show reservation, so they "looked into it" for me. Totally wasn't worth it because we didn't have time to eat the food before going to the comedy show. We took it with us and ate it at the bar, which was probably not appreciated by people sitting near us because it smelled the way food does when you take it out of a to-go container in a space where the food smells aren't expected. I enjoyed our food with the UDP, but I will say that I didn't appreciate how hard it was to change reservations after the first day, and I didn't like how long dinner took (an hour and a half, sometimes more). It's just too much time to dedicate to eating when there's so many other fun things to be doing.

There was a balloon drop on our sailing. They did it on Thanksgiving day. There was a lot of stuff going on that day; they did a pardoning of the turkey, a parade, and the balloon drop, all while a really big World Cup game was being played at the aqua theater, and a football game was being played in the Royal Theater. Playmakers had both games playing side by side. A ton of Brazilians (and Brazil fans) were at the aqua theater with big drums (I couldn't believe they brought them on the ship 😂), horns, noisemakers etc. It felt like being at the actual game, it was so much fun. After the balloon drop, Brazil fans came out to the aqua theater with the yellow balloons, while the people who were watching the Detroit Lions football game at Playmakers brought the blue ones. So I'm not sure if the balloon drop was done because of all those things (they used blue and yellow balloons, which coincidentally matched the colors of the sports teams playing), or if it was because of the holiday, or if they do it every sailing.

They do choose a restaurant for you. You'll have to check with one of the dining reservations desks, or one of the restaurants, in order to see which restaurant they assigned you though, because dining reservations don't show up on the app until day 2 (at least they didn't on my Symphony cruise last week). The reason people are saying that it's irrelevant is because you can change it. And also because you're gonna have to go to a desk to make the other reservations anyway, so it doesn't really matter what they gave you, you can take or leave it.

I think you'll be fine. You have good reasons for choosing the inside cabin and your reasons for wanting to switch to a balcony aren't convincing me that you should (more storage space?). I've sailed on Mariner, we were in a balcony, but we met some friends on that trip and they were in an inside. I couldn't believe the amount of stuff the woman was able to store in all the nooks and crannies and shelving in that room. She had so many outfits and accessories, so much makeup and stuff all over the place, and yet, the room felt fine, at least for the 10 minutes we stepped into it to wait for her to finish getting ready. If you're gonna be out and about on the ship, and your initial feeling was that the inside cabin would be sufficient, stick with it. I went on a cruise last week with my 20 year old daughter and she never stepped foot on our balcony even once. We wore ourselves out pretty well on that trip, and by the time we got back to the room and showered, she was out like a light in the bed. I used the balcony and enjoyed it, but she could have cared less about it. Usually I think it's too cold on the balcony and that it makes the room too humid. For some reason this time it didn't and I liked it, but I probably didn't get $2000 worth of extra enjoyment out of it, and if I were wanting to use that $2,000 on something else, I would have been ok with an inside room.

We did all of the specialty restaurants. They were all good in their own way. Wonderland was really unique. I wasn't that interested in trying it, but was really glad we did. I would go again and it was the most memorable of all the specialties. The Hibachi was delicious. They had the most tender steak I ate on the whole ship. And the fried rice was much better than the fried rice they serve on the Izumi Sushi side (probably because they mix it with huge heaps of garlic butter). 150 Central Park was great, flavorful food and nice dining. I would have liked to eat here more than once, but didn't have the opportunity. Hooked was great (if you like seafood). You can get whole main lobster there, or warm-water lobster tail, shrimp dishes and a good clam chowder. Chops was a standard steakhouse. But it was good. Izumi was ok, but not the best sushi I've ever had. I prefer more simple sushi with less "stuff" in it (one of the rolls we ordered was covered in some sort of flavored mayonnaise which ruined the roll to me). The ramen wasn't the most flavorful I've had, it was ok but not great. I'd eat there again and try ordering something else. Jamie's was good, but it didn't taste like fresh made pasta like they advertise (but this is my snobby critique after having just come back from Italy). I liked dining outdoors here. Playmakers was low-quality pub food. Good for snacks and late night eating but I wouldn't have a real dinner here. The campfire cookie everyone talks about was good. Very rich though, two of us couldn't even finish half of it, but we went and got one twice (maybe 3 times?) throughout the week. Johnny Rockets was better than I expected. The burgers were better quality than I expected them to be. I was expecting a thin hard meat patty, but these were nice and juicy. Fries weren't the best but they're good enough. They had kind of a hollow texture to them which is why they weren't my favorite, but flavor wise they were fine. I think that was all the paid specialty restaurants.

I didn't find any one activity a "not to be missed." I would suggest you let yourself just explore the ship and go with the flow. There's so much to do that it's really easy to start feeling like you're missing out on everything. Even if you pack your day full of fun stuff, you won't have time to do everything, so you could end up feeling like you missed out if your "not to be missed" list gets too big. We went to bed every night around 11pm and we kept saying "how are all these old people out-partying us?!" Because they would still be up, energetic and dressed up and having fun, and we were too exhausted to keep up. And then we realized that we probably weren't seeing the same people during the day as we were seeing at night, and that the night-people probably rested more than we did during the day, and the day-people had probably gone to bed just like we did. Or maybe not, who knows, all that is to say that we realized that we were comparing our energy levels to the amount of available things to do, which were endless, and our energy wasn't endless. So we stopped worrying about our list of "not to miss" things and just started going with the flow and it was less stressful. One or both of us skipped a show or two, and opted out of hanging out at a music venue if we were too tired. We never did make it to Jazz on 4, which I was told was a "not to miss, but after the first 4 days, I let it go. I do suggest you make sure to book all the shows, because they're all fun and entertaining, but if you end up missing one, it's really no big deal. If any of the shows came to my hometown, I wouldn't buy a ticket, so it's not like you're missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Hamilton.

The only time I realized how many thousands of people were actually on the ship with us (Thanksgiving week) was during the parade on actual Thanksgiving. I accidentally stumbled across it and I couldn't believe how many people were lined up on both the 5th and 6th floor to watch it, but even then, it seemed like pretty much everyone had a space to see something. I Besides the parade and the windjammer, I feel like I never saw more than 30-100 people at a time on any area of the ship that I was on. The ship is very well designed to spread everyone out. I've avoided Oasis class since the first time I saw one back in 2013 because I thought they'd be too big and too complicated, but I loved it.

Lucky duck! I always keep my eyes out for them, but have only seen them once and it was at the port before we sailed out of Galveston.

Yeah this is discussed on here in depth every time someone asks about the coffee card. There was a post about this exact thing around 2 weeks ago, it's unfortunate that you didn't read these boards at that time before buying the card. They should advertise that there are different punches taken for different sizes, but they aren't really false advertising. You COULD use your card for coffee, it just wasn't as good of a deal as you expected it to be. Here's the thread where this was discussed most recently (it was on page 21).

I'm sorry you didn't have a great experience. I was on that sailing as well, and had a completely opposite experience. However, I got on early (11am) and booked all shows and dining immediately. I can confirm that most everything was completely booked by 11:30am. So a major bummer for people like you who got on later. I can also see it being difficult to accommodate 9 people (there were only 2 of us). We had the dining package, so we never ate in the main dining room. We did eat in the windjammer almost every day for breakfast, and sometimes for lunch. While it was often full, we always found a table for 2 available. I did notice bigger tables were harder to find when it was busy. We were told there were 6400 passengers on board, but I almost never felt like it was crowded. Perhaps our schedule was opposite of the masses though, and we just happen to do things at different times than other people. I also went into this cruise assuming that most people would be traveling in large groups, which would make it easier for us. I don't think I'd attempt a holiday sailing with a large group, or if I did, I wouldn't expect to do a lot of things together.

I think you'll be fine. Check every day to see if anyone cancels. The other thing that happens when people have to book ahead of time is that they have no idea how tired they're gonna be by that time of day, or they may get wrapped up doing something else. If they don't remember to cancel the show beforehand, you'll at least get in by standing in the "no reservations" line. Slim to no chance every single person shows up.

Better than swai fish at least. I've seen many a "high-end" caterer buy cheap swai at the Asian supermarket and label it as some other white fish. Most people never question it.