RobInMN

The same son that did a summer internship with royal and said that the Quest was never coming back after COVID?

I think I'll put a bit more weight on what the captains are telling people at the Q&A's.

But until there's some official announcement (or a very well sourced leak), it's all speculation.

6 minutes ago, ONECRUISER said:

Yes, seen many Videos posted River Cruises where the Line has 50 Bikes to use on stops or Bike Excursions

Yes, this is a thing for some European river cruises. We have sailed on AmaWaterways, and they have a number of bikes and even have bike tour options for some ports, and when we were in Amsterdam, we saw some river cruise ship docked among the many river ships that appeared to be some sort of all biking thing. It's definitely not all companies, and not sure if this is a thing only in Europe or if you find it elsewhere.

Yes, all Royal Suite Class perks are the same on all ships (except Spectrum sailing the China market)

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/what-is-royal-suite-class

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/what-are-the-benefits-of-royal-suite-class

While I think it's largely a ridiculous thing to want to do. Lugging a folding bicycle around. I do find the response from the ship puzzling, since I have seen crew member YouTube videos that show that the crew has access to bicycles (full size) that they can check out and ride in (some?) ports.

1 hour ago, renza said:

It’s gonna be more of the radiance class. Smaller ships that will be able to get into many ports that the larger ones can’t.

I am not sure where you are getting you information, but every time a captain has mentioned anything about size at a Q&A, they have mentioned Voyager class, and even freedom class. While I would personally love a Radiance class size ship with the modern amenities, I really don't think that the economics of a new Radiance class size ship will work for RCI. There are a couple threads where this has been discussed quite a bit. The length and beam of Voyager vs. Radiance is not that great: 

Voyager class: 311m x 48m, 64m above the water, Freedom 339m

Radiance Class: 293m x 33m (can't find an official stat, but an estimate of 52m)

Radiance was specifically built as a PanaMax, which is 290m x 33m, 58m above the water line.

NeoPanaMax is 366m x 51m, and still 58m. The 58m limit is not due to the locks, but the bridges. Bridges appear to the the limiting factor for a number of ports. Maybe more so than pier. We went on the Arctic Circle on Jewel (Radiance class), and in Flam, the ship is longer than the pier, and in Honningsvag, I swear the pier is less than half the length, maybe closer to 1/3. So I am not sure how much pier length/width is a true limiting factor.

My guess is that we will see something close to the length and beam of Voyager, possibly longer, but limiting the height to something that can get under the bridges that they need to. So probably 58m max, and probably using retractable stacks. It will meet other Panama Canal requirements, like the life boats being within the hull line. and likely a self-contained tendering ability like the current Radiance class.

@Daisi. I highly recommend getting a charging station. Then you can charge everything with even just 1 outlet. You don't have to worry about changing what's charging. This is the one I have, but there are many out there. I recently upgraded from one that was all USB-A to this one that has 5 USB-C (including 2 65W PDs) and 2 USB-A's. Plus, something like this will charge a lot faster than the low powered built-in USB ports you'll find on any ship or hotel room.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BX3V6ZZX

I also bring a few of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0058EG0KC

And a couple of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YDF8GCT

I also bring a 10 foot USB cable.

This combination of adaptors/chargers should make it so that you don't need to worry about layout.

OK, I realize this is over a year old, but I only recently discovered this sub forum. 🙂 

These were actually over 3 weeks, but it made more sense to me to put them in a single post rather than resurrect 3 threads.

These are all from the Grand Danube river cruise on AmaMagna.

Took almost 1000 pictures 🤣

From our Radiance of the Seas Panama Canal cruise. One picture is from the next week.

Ship:

Excursions

Just found this thread.

2024, April - Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - Radiance of the Seas

Other side, with Norwegian Encore, Radiance of the Seas, Neu Amsterdam

2024, April - Panama Canal - Radiance of the Seas (from the canal web cams)

Miraflores Locks

Pedro Miguel Locks

2023, September - Puerto Costa Maya, Mexico - Allure of the Seas

2023, April - Golubac (Fortress), Serbia - AmaMagna

2023, March - Linz, Austria - AmaMagna

2022, November - Catalina Island, California - Navigator of the Seas

2022, June - Flam, Norway - Jewel of the Seas

2022, June - Honningsvag, Norway - Jewel of the Seas

2022, March - Willemstad, Curaco - Odyssey of the Seas

2022, February - Coco Cay, Bahamas - Odyssey of the Seas, Jewel of the Seas

2019, December -  Basseterrre, St. Kitts - Symphony of the seas, MS Azura

2019, July - Trier, Germany - AmaDante

2019, July - Cochem, Germany - AmaDante

Here's my first time-lapse video I did as a test prior to the Panama Canal. It's of us arriving in Cartagena, Columbia.

Not sure if it qualifies as a "Sail In", but here's the one I took of our Panama Canal Transit.

GoPro 10 using linear and a picture every 2 seconds. So 1m video = 1hr time

Thought I'd add my video. This is my second time lapse. The first one I did was a test video of us arriving in Cartagena, Columbia 2 days before, GoPro 10 using a picture every 2 seconds (so 1m video = 1 hour time), linear. We had a couple delays to get started, so it took us 13 hours total.

I used a JOBY GorillaPod, 

secured it with a safety tether 

and attached a 10,000 mA Power Bank 

Technically, it's a helium balloon. as far as I know, it's permanently inflated. It's also permanently tethered and just goes up and comes back down. No idea how long it stays up. Never done it, and not sure it was even operating the 2 times we went to Coco Cay. It's not a hot air balloon like you might be picturing.

My opinion would be that if you are interested in doing a hot air balloon ride, I'd look for something local on a real hot air balloon. We did this with my grandmother when I was a kid, and it was pretty cool. We watched them fill it, got in, drifted for well over an hour and came down. A chase car followed us to give us a ride back. That could be well worth the money.

If you are interested in descriptions/reviews of the port stops on Ama, I did "Magna on the Danube" which is essentially the same as "Romantic Danube", as the first week of the "Grand Danube". This has a very similar itinerary to the one you are doing. (The second week is "Gens of Southeast Europe").

Review is here:

39 minutes ago, Mum2Mercury said:

Well, I'm an American, and that's exactly what I do.  I use my credit card to buy groceries, gas, a haircut, a cruise -- seriously, I put everything on my card.  If I buy something as small as a coffee, I use my card.  The day the bill comes, I pay in full.  I pay 0 interest

Us too. But we split most of it between Costco and Delta Amex. Costco has the cash back and Delta Amex is for Medallion status

4 minutes ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

To quote my son:  "Whatever"  Please don't correct spelling, grammar or word choice (CC guidelines)

You should pop over to the RC board when "free" vs. "Included" is debated 🤣

4 hours ago, Daisi said:

 

 

I've never Ocean cruised - to big of boat, to many people for my comfort level, but I think that is one of the main differences about river & ocean cruising. Ocean cruises are all about the boat, river cruises are all about the ports. They do tend to wear you out, which is probably why the evening entertainment is low key. Mind you, we do tend to do morning and afternoon tours as we want to see everything.

To quote Captain Kate: "It's not a boat". Whether we are talking about river or ocean, these are ships.

I beg to differ on a couple points:

• Even the largest ocean cruise ships can have a larger per person square footage than a river cruise ship. Yes, there's a lot more people, but there's a lot more places those people can be spread out to. If you don't want crowds, you can almost always avoid them (unless you want to watch something like a parade).
• While ocean cruise ships can be "all about the ship", they don't have to be. If you are cruising the same Caribbean islands over & over, yes, it's probably about the ship. But we like ocean cruising for much of the same reason we like river cruising. Unpack once, and your hotel comes with you. Ocean and Expedition ships can get you many places a river cruise is not. In addition to many Caribbean island (very few repeats), we've done the Western Mediterranean. Norwegian Fjords and Norway up to Honningsvag, Iceland & Ireland, and most recently, the Panama Canal. We've even gone to a couple different Mayan ruins (including Chichen Itza) in Central America from a cruise ship. This fall we will be doing Greece & Turkey (which was originally booked as "Holy Land" with 2 stops in Israel). None of the things we've done and seen could be seen as part of a river cruise.

Oh, and then there's the whole category of World cruises.

Duplicate

Adding to to previous answer, the RC FAQ:

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/gbr/en/faq/questions/can-i-take-my-hair-straighteners-curling-iron-onboard (not sure why this is only found on the UK site)

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/prohibited-items-onboard-policy

and the Health and Safety Policy

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/guest-terms/guest-health-safety-and-conduct-policy/english/

1 hour ago, Ocean Boy said:

Thanks. Now I really have no idea how they keep it in place. 

https://www.whoi.edu/know-your-ocean/ocean-topics/ocean-tech/moorings-buoys/

https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/ocs/moorings

41 minutes ago, Ocean Boy said:

Any idea how of the water depth there? I'm just wondering how the secure the buoy in place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island

"The depth of the seabed beneath the Soul buoy is around 4,940 metres (16,210 ft)."

3 minutes ago, island lady said:

OH... and BTW.  What is the difference between a Coco Loco and a Labadoozie?  The name.  😄 

Same:

While I can't say we've split off from a tour early, in Trier we left the ship early and walked to the Baths and the Amphitheater on our own and then caught up with the walking portion of a bus/walking tour. 🙂 

There have also been walking tours where the tour ended, and the tour guide gave the option of wandering on our own or following them back to the ship.

50 minutes ago, Mikewa said:

Ovation's sister - Odyssey.  I realize they are the same class, and Odyssey is a bit younger

Technically, Ovation is a Quantum Class with Odyssey being a Quantum-Ultra Class. 

So step-sisters? Cousins? 

I've never been on any other Quantum/Ultra other than Odyssey, so other than things mentioned, I'm not sure what the big deal was that made them give Spectrum and Odyssey a slightly different class designation. According to Wikipedia, Odyssey has the smallest gross tonnage of the 5.

While I've done a few Ama cruises, bringing my own wine was never anything I needed to look in to 🙂

I did a google search and there is nothing on the Ama site itself.

It's a bit difficult since so many cruises talk about wine! But anyway, I did find a couple statements from peoples reviews (one was on CC somewhere). One stated that you can bring your own wine and open it in the room. The other added that you can bring your own wine to dinner. Since wine with dinner is included and not charged extra (unless you're picky I guess), they don't mind if you bring your own.

Don't see anything about bringing it to the lounge and drinking it there. But since wine in the lounge is not included, that might not be appreciated?

Anyway, sounds like you should be able to bring your own and enjoy it in your room at least. And since you were wondering about buying in a port, there is opportunity to confirm where they would prefer you enjoy it before you do. BTW, from other posts, I recall that you can definitely buy alcohol to take home and keep it in your cabin. They don't hold it for you. So based on that, I can't see how they'd care if you also drank it.

To add the companies I'm familiar with:

GC - River Adagio/Aria - 418' x 38' - 162 Passengers

AmaWaterways:

• Older ships: 360' x 38' - 140 Passengers (4 ships)
• Newer ships: 443' x 38' -152-162 Passengers (15 ships)
• AmaMagna: 443' x 72' - 196 Passengers