RobInMN

Yes, if you look at the link(s) I posted, there are a lot of little "nicety" benefits. Mostly "priority" access to a number of things. Just not really much of anything that I would consider as having real "intrinsic" value like Free WiFi and included DBP & UDP like you get with the Royal Suite Class.

It seems to depend on the ship. On Jewel, we could just switch it. This is the first, and so far only, time I've tried to use the Firestick. I've read other threads that say that on newer ships, like you indicate, the remote either doesn't have an input button or that it is locked out. I'd have to search and find the instructions, but I think it involves, turning off the TV, disconnecting the network cable, then turning the TV back on. Without begin connected to the network, it will no longer boot automatically to the ship menu locking you out. I am not sure if it will automatically detect the HDMI Input or if you can then use the Input button to switch. The other thing I have seen mentioned (and I brought one, but did not need to use it), is to bring a universal remote. I believe I read that the difference on which method you can use depends on whether or not you can view your bill via the TV. If traveling internationally, you may want a VPN service installed. Especially for any streaming service where you can get local channels (YTTV or Hulu+Live)

Oasis class and Quantum class ships have the "Royal Suite Class" Rooms: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/what-rooms-are-included-in-the-royal-suite-class Benefits: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/what-are-the-benefits-of-royal-suite-class All other (older) ships just have the "Suites Program" https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/what-are-the-benefits-of-the-suites-program And no, the Suites Program does not include any benefit that I would consider as having actual "intrinsic value" I would agree though, throwing in free Voom on the highest level suites on the older ships would make sense. Heck, under the Royal Suite Class. you get free Voom on both Sky as well as Star class, which means every full suite from Grand up. The only "suite" that doesn't get it are Junior Suites.

Here's some previous threads with some personal experiences in the replies:

Duplicate

Not sure if you are referring to the DVD Player or the FIrestick, but you wouldn't need WiFI for the DVD Player. Firestick, yes. I had Voom S &S, and as the WiFi quality went down, the picture quality decreased. But it was still usable. See my answer in this thread:

Norway: But yeah. Branch out. Lots of European cruise itineraries out there. In addition to other things already mentioned, Australian, New Zealand, & a Pacific TA on our list to do at some point.

On Jewel, you should have easy access to the HDMI ports. I brought a Firestick 2 months ago and was able to use it just fine. So maybe bring something like this ($50). You can use the built-in screen or connect to a TV via HDMI. https://www.amazon.com/YOTON-Portable-Battery-Multiple-Projector/dp/B09P12W1SQ/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2SNJZYWBAKZTX&keywords=portable+dvd+player&qid=1662120407&sprefix=portable+dvd+player%2Caps%2C112&sr=8-4 If you need BluRay support, here's one for $99, without a built-in screen: https://www.amazon.com/Blu-Ray-Portable-Theater-Control-Support/dp/B08ZCNXN4W/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3ESIFQA1UXGOA&keywords=portable+blu+ray+player&qid=1662120616&sprefix=portable+blu+ray+player%2Caps%2C89&sr=8-6

Did you book the once a couple weeks ago during COVID? If so, it was very likely booked during the double points promo. For the 2019 Enchantment, any chance you actually booked a Junior Suite? That's the only thing I can think of, other then it being a straight up error.

I had S&S. I would say that the entire time we were on the Arctic Circle leg, internet was fine to tolerable. Even when we were at Honningsvag. They warned us that while we were in the fjords, the mountains could block the satellite connection for periods of time, but I honestly don't think I ever experienced that. I actually had a firestick connected to our TV and watched a little YTTV every day. Once we were above the Arctic Circle, quality was questionable, but it was still watchable. Now, on the Iceland & Ireland leg, which we should have arguably had less issue with, we had more issues, especially on sea days. It would be unusable for hours. We ended up getting 2 days of internet credited back. Might have been that, for some reason, the passengers on that leg skewed quite a bit lower, with a lot more kids. So maybe there was a lot higher demand? The Voom desk person said that they were also having technical issues with the satellite connection and working with the home office IT to try to fix it. I don't know. I think it was more demand. For picture uploading, I have our phones set to backup all pictures to Amazon Photos and videos when connected to the internet. Photos would upload without issue. Definitely slower that at home. Videos could take forever depending on size. Short ones would usually end up uploading overnight when there was less demand, large ones would eventually time out. The best thing for that was to connect to free wifi in ports long enough to get the videos uploaded. This picture was taken on our Honningsvag excursion. Note the angle of the satellite dishes. They're basically angled for a satellite being on the horizon 🤣

In general, totally in favor of your plans. Had we had more vacation, we might have stayed on for the British Isles making it a B3B. There was a very large number of B2B & B3B (and even some B4Bs?). When you throw the initial TA into the mix that's a tough choice to make. All things equal, it's a no-brainer to do that plan. But on the other hand if it was just "Fjords" vs. "Arctic Circle" (like the OP), it's Arctic Circle all the way. Unfortunately, the only way to do Arctic Circle (with Honningsvag and the Nordkapp) is either the Jun 17th or Jul 11th combined with Iceland & Ireland and British Isles one way or another. Which also means limited Scotland (just Glasgow). Hmmmmm........ Well, either way, you're going to have a great time. That will be amazing.

Well, seeing as how at 17knots you can make the trip from CocoCay to Nassau in about 4.5-5 hours, You've got a lot of time to kill for a sea day. If you are in a nice calm area, the captain probably just parked there for a bit to save fuel. After re-reading it, I guess you were just hanging out and now moving elsewhere, So, any chance that seas were picking up or weather coming in where you were hanging out? Maybe you're just going to somewhere else with calmer seas? You can go pretty far and still make it to Nassau.

Agree with this. I think all of our Norway port arrivals were between 9:00 & 10:30 AM. A balcony is almost a must for Norway. We'd wake up and open the curtains and watch the scenery as we got ready. Occasionally popping out on the balcony, taking some pictures, etc. I think in all cases, the closer to port, the better the scenery and the more to watch/see. There was always plenty of time to get breakfast in WJ and then back out on our balcony or up top to watch us pull in and dock depending on dock side, or down to the theater for excursions. Honestly, I'd say an hour before docking would be fine. Even 30 minutes would net you 75% of the experience. Anything earlier is just more of the same. Still beautiful, just repetitive beauty. Or on a couple ports, anything earlier and you're still in open water. To be honest, we didn't really watch us leave port. We were typically getting ready for dinner or eating dinner. And we had already watched us coming in.

Thanks to this thread, we pulled it up on Paramount+ and found that it had (what they were billing as) seasons 2 & 3. Symphony was the subject of S3E5. I do not see any other Royal Caribbean ships in these 2 seasons.

We just did the 12 night Arctic Circle on Jewel B2B with the 12 night Iceland & Ireland from 20-Jun to 14-Jul. This was offered twice this year. The one we were on went to Flam, the other one went to Geiranger. From my research it appeared that Geranger and Flam have a friendly rivalry as to who has the best Fjord. Flam was beautiful. Norway was absolutely stunning. We loved the fact that the Arctic Circle one went to Tromso and Honningsvag. The later is essentially in the Arctic Tundra, above the tree line. We did the Blue Puffin third party excursion and it was amazing, ending up at Nordkapp, which is billed as the northern most point in Norway and continental Europe (our guide said, technically it's not, but it's such a dramatic location, they just go with it 🤣). As for "Arctic Circle" sea day, it's really just another sea day, there's nothing to "see". But they do an Arctic Circle crossing celebration and paint your noses blue if you want (we didn't), and everyone gets a certificate in their room that night. The fun thing is that we were above the Arctic Circle 4(?) days after Summer Solstice. It was daylight for the 4 full days we were above the Arctic Circle. There was an announcement on Thursday that Sunset would be at 11:34 Monday night. I stayed up late and took pictures of the sun at midnight and 1:00 AM (because Daylight Saving Time). For anyone that has the option, I highly recommend the Arctic Circle option over the "normal" Norwegian Fjords itinerary any day. Our full itinerary was: Amsterdam, Cruising, Molde, Arctic Circle (Cruising), Tromso, Honningsvag, Cruising, Alesund, Flam, Haugesund, Kristiansand, Cruising, Amsterdam. This was our first time on a Radiance class ship. We did Majesty on a 3 day like 20 years ago (and would not want to be on a similar ship very long), and since then, just Voyager, Oasis, & Freedom, classes, and recently did Odyssey. Our main concern was whether or not we would become "bored" of the ship after a while. I am happy to say, we never felt that way, we could have stayed on far longer. We also felt that she was in great condition and still a beautiful ship. She did not really feel dated in any significant way. So I would not let size compared to a Quantum class dissuade you.

Size-wise, it doesn't really matter, it could be any of the Oasis class, but technically, I believe it's Allure. Symphony doesn't have an outside deck in front of the Solarium. And as blurry as the name on the side is, I think "Allure" fits best.

Regular power strips with surge protectors are banned. But you can charge probably more devices than you have by using something like this, and it's perfectly allowed:

Wow! You'd think the world was ending. I don't think anyone has indicated that Royal is going to eliminate the paper compass all together. All we know right now, is that this is just another option. Even if they eliminate the mass auto delivery, I can't imagine that if you wanted a paper compass, you would not be able to pick one up by guest services or arrange for your stateroom attendant to leave you one at turn down for the foreseeable future. Especially if the pdf version continues to be the pdf that they print for the paper copy. Will they kill it off eventually? Maybe. But I highly doubt it. Not with today's technology anyway. Maybe with some great new form of integrated augmented reality or something. I don't know. Anyway, I like the app and use it. I mark stuff I want to do (just like using a highlighter on the paper copy) and the reminders work great for me (which you can't do with the paper copy). Is it the greatest app I've used, not by a long shot. There's plenty of suggestions I could make to improve it, but it does get the job done, and there have already been some good improvements. For me, I always have my phone on me. I text with family, both on & off the cruise. I still monitor work emails to either answer quickly or route to someone else. I stream podcasts or music, I look at the Google news feed and some news web sites. And of course it is my camera. I do not FB, Twitter, or any of that, but I will keep up with CC. If you also have your phone with you at all times, also don't want to carry around a paper copy, but don't like or use the app, then the PDF version sounds perfect for you. If you still want the paper one, great! go for it! My preference is irrelevant, to you and honestly, I couldn't care less if I see you carrying one around with you all day. All this bashing of phone apps and/or complaining about not liking to read pdfs and such on you phone by zooming just seems a bit over dramatic and unnecessary at this time. Sounds like my daughter. Ever since she was old enough to form an opinion, anything she disagrees with is just stupid and "nobody likes that". And she's 22 now.

Item 18: Deposits made toward Guarantees and Grand Suites and higher categories are non-refundable and subject to NRD Booking terms. https://www.royalcaribbean.com/terms-and-conditions/digital-terms-of-use-and-end-user-license-agreement Outside of the Cruise With Confidence COVID program, that's been the case for as they've had NRDs, which I found out last night was introduced in July 2017. It's also listed in item 18 above. You can also find this on your Cruise Vacation Receipt under Deposit and Final Payment Schedule.

The Bionic bar is nothing more than a novelty. It's a total gimmick. I mean, how many people have actually gotten more than 1 drink from there? And I don't mean just per cruise, I mean like ever. That percentage has got to be very, very low. My family did it once, many cruises ago. 2 drinks for 3 people. Is it cool? Sure. Fun to watch, Sure. But really, once you've done it or watched it, it's "Been there, done that". I don't see people hanging out there for hours buying drink after drink. Even if you consider the fact that you are not paying one or two bartenders, whenever I have watched one, I want to say there has always been someone maintaining it. Wiping up, replacing bottles, etc. It's not "labor free". In the end, I'd have to believe that this is not a revenue generating venue for Royal. And I really don't see it categorized like other free activities that are just part of the overall cruise experience, where people more or less expect them and do them over & over.

Yes, I understand what the current Celebrity policy is, and I also understand you are saying that the RC policy used to be the same. However, quoting the current Celebrity policy is not evidence of a past RC policy. That said, I did some Googling, and found references to the NRDs being started in July of 2017, and at that time, some of the articles stated that you could cancel and get the deposit minus the $100 change fee as FCCs. https://oasisoftheseasallureoftheseas.com/non-refundable-deposit-program-for-royal-caribbean-international/ and a blog post at the site we are not allowed titled "Royal Caribbean announces new non-refundable deposit program" from May 09, 2017. To answer some of the mystery as to when you have that option, they also said that NRDs would be available on cruises booked longer than 6 months out. So cruises within 6 months do not have that option. Not sure if that is still the case or not.

Interesting. Could that be less on official policy and more at a CR's discretion ? All listed documentation I have seen, including on my old cruise documents, only points to what I would consider a standard definition of "Non-Refundable". That the $100pp change fee is just that, for changing dates and/or ships. Nothing about a "change" including "Cancel" such that you can cancel minus the $100. Even the Cancellation schedule, which is still the same pre & post pandemic, implies that you will loose your NRD. BTW, Yes, Unfortunately, like many of us, I was forced to do the whole FCC re-book thing during the pandemic also. But hey, in the end I parlayed everything into a good portion of a B2B 24 night total Arctic Circle and Iceland & Ireland.😁 that we just returned from about a month ago.

I believe I read that is also correct. I should have added something to that effect.

No. This has not changed. I believe the OP was confusing cancelling with changing (as well as CWC). If you look at your cruise receipt or google the RC website, the $100pp change fee to change date and/or ship is still there and valid.