RobInMN

yep, that's what we got. The lanyard is a pretty nice lanyard, it's RC branded with "All-Access" on it. If I wore my work badge on a lanyard, I'd probably use it. The all access "pass" on the lanyard doubles as a luggage tag.

Symphony btw, I believe we paid $119 pp in 2018

If you haven't already done Rome before, my suggestion would be to extend your Rome post-cruise to at least a week. There is so much to see. We did Western Mediterranean on Symphony in 2018, Rome to Rome, and spent a week in Rome first. We loved it, and there are still things we'd love to go back and do/see. Anything you want to do there, Colosseum, Vatican, etc. find the longest, most comprehensive "skip the line" tour you can. Especially if you only have 2 days. In Barcelona, La Sagrada Familia is the obvious one. I would suggest some sort of Gaudi tour. Ours was a ship one (as Barcelona was a port day for us), and our tour did not include going inside. We want to do that next time we are in Barcelona. The Montserrat Monastery is also on our list for next time, but we haven't actually done that before so take that into account.

in 2018, when we interported on Symphony in the Mediterranean, people that got on in Rome had a different color Seapass card. I think it was Orange(?). Barcelona passengers were the normal Blue. I don't think Royal Suite Class was a thing yet in 2018, so not sure if suite passengers had different colored cards or not. I don't recall noticing any other card colors, but I wasn't looking for them either.

When we did the Western Mediterranean (on Symphony), while the home port was Barcelona, we interported and went Rome to Rome. We spent a week in Rome before hand. Loved it, and still didn't get to everything. We need to go back. For us, "Rome in a day" just would not work. That meant that Barcelona was a normal port day for us. We did the Gaudí’s Architectural Masterpieces tour. That was very cool, however it did not include going inside the La Sagrada Familia, just a stop to marvel at it and walk around it. One thing to note on Florence & Pisa. Our port was La Spezia. The tour option that we had originally booked was the Florence & Pisa tour. I believe it's billed time was 9 hours (might have been 10??). However, once on board the ship, and after a few long days of tours, we changed to do just Florence only, which was still like 6 hours or something. We chose Florence over Pisa since my wife heard that's where you want to go for leather purses. Here's what the Florence & Pisa tour was looking like for us: 1.5 hours to Pisa 30 minute photo op at the Leaning Tower of Pisa (pretty sure that's all that was allocated, and did not include tickets or time to climb it) 1.5 hours from Pisa to Florence 30 minute walk to the tourist center (as close as busses are allowed) 2? hours on your own 30 minute walk back to the bus 2+ hour drive back to La Spezia So, 5 hours of driving just between the cities. 1 hour of walking (not sightseeing). Leaving just 3 hours for the actual cities. I know that only adds up to 8.5 hours, not 9 (or even 10?), but I think there may have been a short bus tour in Pisa or something. Not sure. Again, we switched to just Florence only. Plus, it was 4.5 years ago. Hard to remember exactly something we ended up not doing. Not to say don't do it. Just saying go into it knowing that it's a very long day. If you've had some shorter days leading up to it, it can be easier to take, but if you've done multiple long excursion days in a row, it might just be a bit much. Even doing just Pisa, it's 2-3 hours of bus total, Florence only is a minimum of 4 hours on the bus (plus 1 the hour of walking) In the ports we went to in the Mediterranean, I think someone already mentioned it, but a lot of things can be far from port. 1, 1.5, 2 hours from port each way.

We were just looking at this for Fall '24 also.

Yes, in June you will have 24 hours of sunlight above the Arctic Circle. We did this last June. We loved it! We thought Norway was absolutely stunning. We've never been to Sweden though. We went north of the AC on Thursday, and they announced that the next sunset would be Monday 🙂 The ship if very beautiful and in great shape for her age. The Blue Puffin North Cape is highly recommended in Honnigsvag. The train in Flam (there are a few variations, we did "Norway in a Nutshell). Both of these you'd need to book asap, they fill up fast. In Amsterdam, the Moovenpick hotel is literally right next door and about a 20m walk to City Center. If you are spending any extra days and want to see the Anne Frank House/Museum, be aware of the current ticket purchasing info. Right now, tickets go on sale Mondays for 6 weeks later. Some related threads I've posted in:

This is exactly the conclusion I came to as well. If it was free, I can't even begin to imagine the absolute mess the theater would be after a show. But yeah, on the surface I thought the same thing the first show I went to that had popcorn available.

Since the DBP policy only applies to guests of legal drinking age, I would say no. https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/does-everyone-need-to-buy-the-deluxe-beverage-package

I thought about that, but so far I've only heard about people doing that when one person doesn't drink alcohol at all, which I didn't think applied here. But worth a shot. would be good info for this board if it does work.

Depending on how many alcoholic drinks the both of you will cumulatively drink, it's possible that you might be better off having either just your cabin mate (or both of you) getting the non-alcoholic "Refreshment Package" (obviously depending on whether either of you have interest in non-alcoholic drinks), then sharing your vouchers for alcoholic drinks and making a deal to split the costs of any additional alcoholic drinks. BTW, you just say "beverage package". I am assuming that you mean the Deluxe Beverage Package (DBP - ie. with alcohol). Since you are D+, I'm pretty sure you already know that the "every adult in the cabin" rule only applies to the DBP and not the normal "Refreshment Package".

A tip I read years ago, and has worked for us: Put right on the questionnaire: "No Sales pitch". You can also mention that directly to the staff member before they start. If you're lucky, you'll get a few more minutes of whatever treatment you're getting.

Look at the other answers specific to Alaska, but in general, I believe that the answer is yes, RCL can require an excursion to leave the ship. Might be extremely rare, but it can happen. For instance, when we were on Symphony 2018 Western Mediterranean, the port for Florance & Pisa was actually La Spezia. I don't know if the normal cruise port was too small or too busy, but for whatever reason, I am almost positive that the port we used was strictly a commercial port, and as such, I believe that RCL RCL required you to be on an excursion in order to leave the ship. No other traffic was allowed into the port (ie. taxis, independent tours), and it was completely unsafe to have any passengers attempting to walk through it.

Oops! reversed that in my head as I was responding.

Congratulations! We did the same cruise in 2018, also Rome to Rome and also on Symphony (her inaugural season). Basically, you are doing days 5, 6, 7, 8 (nights 5, 6, 7) of 1 cruise, and days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (nights 1-4) of the next cruise. If they keep things the same, about 2/3 of the people port from Barcelona, and about 1/3 in Rome. This was pre-COVID, and so the muster drill would have been everyone in the theater, but I honestly don't remember if we (Rome passengers) had to do this on embarkation day, or if everyone did it on Barcelona embarkation day regardless of where you boarded. Didn't really seem to be a big deal to be a port day for most of the ship. I really don't remember things being real different or anything. Luggage worked the same, can't remember if they still had people stay out of the halls until like 1PM or anything (either port). The only thing odd was that the "Bon Voyage" party was day 4 for us. And the app was a little messy. at that time, you had to select the cruise you were on, it was all information, not interactive. So you had to select the Barcelona cruises, and change cruise part way through. Hopefully they have that working for the instructiveness the app has now. Are you spending any time in Rome before/after? We loved Rome. Spent a week before and still have a list of things to do if we get back there. This is the main reason we picked Rome over Barcelona for our embarkation port.

Passport control at CDG SUCKS! Just went through there last week. Should have missed my flight back to the US, but since there were so many of us, they actually held the flight as long as they could (~25m), and most of us made it. People divided into 3 lines. EU facial rec, US facial rec, and live agents. Only 6(?) facial rec machines total for both EU & US, and most people seemed to need to scan their passports twice to get it to work, and hardly any agents. Took forever. If you have any option, I would go through AMS. Unfortunately, I'm just realized I'm going through CDG again in March. We'll see if it's any better arriving international. Thankfully we go through AMS on the way home.

My post you responded to was not meant to be taken seriously, Hence the laughing emoji and the 5 people that "Haha"d it.

Technically, cruises are not by "days", they are by "nights". You don't take a 7 day cruise, you take a 7 night cruise. At least by RC terminology. Check the website wording. So if vouchers are "per day", embarkation and disembarkation can both be considered "days", even if they are not full days. And yes, I know beverage packages and wifi in the cruise planner are listed as "per day" and when they charge it, the multiply by the number of nights, not number of days.

Concierge Lounge for D+ Nightly turndown service (second room service) Poolside Lounge chairs "Classics" on the main dining room menu All-you-can-eat small lobster tails Diamond Lounge Happy Hour 😅 *runs for cover*

I don't know about anything off the dining room, but there are spaces on Deck 6 (second floor above 270). Conference Room, Library, and The Boardroom.

We'll be with you on the Radiance 2024!

We did this on Symphony in Summer 2018, and it was $119 pp. At that price, I think it's worth it to do once. Especially on an Oasis class ship or a newer ship (not just size-wise, but also technology). The only "swag" we got was the "All Access" pass, which doubles as a luggage tag and fairly nice All-Access lanyard. There was some food/drink in the dining room after the kitchen portion, but I don't recall the specifics. In December 2019, we did Symphony again, and it was again $119, and we sent my In-Laws on it. We did not so it again. With inflation, I could see $129, maybe $139 (pushing it) but at $159 or $200, I really can't say that it would be worth it at those prices.

Next cruise is actually a river cruise. Grand Danube on AmaMagna, end of March to beginning of April. Next RCI cruise is on Allure Sept 10-17.

We got off from 24 nights as you were boarding! One of our headliners was a guy that performed tricks on a BMX bike. That was a little fun and different at the beginning, but he sort of just devolved into plain juggling for the second half of his show. Trivia in the Schooner lounge. It was basically my home away from home.🤣 Between trivia and games, spent a lot of time with the entertainment staff. I believe all of them indicated that this was their first contract as entertainment staff, but honestly, they were some of the best we've had and really worked well together.

I don't know if anything is different in the Caribbean, but we did B2B on Jewel out of Amsterdam this summer, 2 @ 12 nights. They shuffled headliners on & off about every port or every other port. Even up on Honningsvag Norway, the previous night's headliner got off to catch a flight to their next gig. I believe we only had the same headline act once, for 2 consecutive nights (different show). It was a b2b sea day anyway, so they were available. The designated headliner cabin happened to be 2 doors down from us, which was right next door to our friends, and they chatted with some of them on the balconies. Chatted with one in Schooner bar once also. All of our rooms, including the headliner room was a JS, which I thought was nice that they did that for the headliners. One of the headliners said they were going to a Disney ship in the Mediterranean next. Apparently there is a booking company that books many cruise lines for the headliners and they can bounce all over the place, many times needing to fly from port to port. At least for the European ports anyway. I suppose it's harder for them to stay exclusive to one line and just switch ships in port.