ARandomTraveler

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.

I didn't have this issue on Symphony last week. We ate at specialty restaurants 13 times in 7 days (would have been 15 but we cancelled 1 lunch and 1 dinner because we were too busy or tired to go). I ate at Izumi twice, and ate from the set menu both times. The first time I went by myself and received a receipt that showed $42+/- of food that was comped and given to me for $0 with the UDP. The second time I went with my daughter and I don't remember the dollar amount on the receipt (I feel like there wasn't one that time), but know that the bottom line was also $0. The physical menu had a note on it about ordering from the set menu, or using a $34.99 credit to order a la carte. I went to Playmakers twice, which is one of the restaurants you have to use the $20 credit at, and I asked the waiter what the current deal was because I had read that you could now only use the $20 credit once per day, and I wanted to know if you could come back later in the day to use the remaining credit if it wasn't fully used the first time. He said he hadn't been notified of any such rule and that as far as he knew, you could come back as many times as you wanted in the day, and use a new $20 credit each time. We also used the $20 credit at Johnny Rockets, but not on the same day that we went to Playmakers. We never used up the entire $40 that we had available between the two of us in one day, so I can't say from personal experience whether there was a system in place to stop you from using the $20 credit more than once. We did visit more than one specialty restaurant in a day (for example we used it for lunch and then again for dinner, and again for dessert). We also used it one day for 2 dinners (really it was more 1 dinner, and then an after-dinner whole lobster for my daughter later that night). No problems doing that either. We never ordered more than 1 entree a piece, but we were brought additional appetizers and main dishes without asking for them. We did order an additional appetizer without realizing it one night, and they gave it to us without charging us anything extra. The only issues we had using the UDP all week we're A) it was hard to get reservations at the times we wanted after day 1 because our ship had 6400 people and B) It was more food than we could eat, but we made our best attempt.

I wouldn't cancel it, Coastal kitchen is totally different than unlimited dining. If you're on an Oasis class ship, there are a ton of different dining options, with different menus and different atmospheres. Coastal kitchen is just a dedicated main dining room with (supposedly) upgraded menus from the regular main dining room, but it's certainly not the same as being able to visit different restaurants with different themes and food categories every night.

10:30am is the earliest. I had an 11am time last week and was through security and on the ship in 9 minutes. Make sure to book all your shows and dining (if you have a dining package) immediately when you get on. Some of the restaurants (wonderland and hibachi) were fully booked before 11:30, and others had minimal time slots left.

My next cruise is 7 months away and then only drink package available is the soda package with Voom internet.

Tell me about it! A junior suite is selling for $4200 PER PERSON for my Spectrum sailing next summer. Over $9000 per person for a "sky" junior suite, and over $8,000 per person for a "sky" balcony. Want a grand suite? $9,883 per person. Owner's suite? $12,648 per person. Ultimate family suite? $37,264 per person. And the ship is almost fully sold out 🤣😵‍💫. Granted, this isn't a typical 7 day Caribbean sailing, it's a 12-day Asia sailing, but still. I spent a lot of money on a regular balcony for this one, but it looks like I might be able to call for a Re-price because I see regular balcony rooms are available again (they were sold out before today), and they're only $2500/person now.

I'm not sure. Back when he left the boards, the explanation given by another member was something along the lines of him wanting to spend more time dedicated to his wife and family, or something along those lines. I haven't seen him back since.