RobInMN

We wouldn't rule out a factory tour if it's something we're interested in.

We might book a cheap transportation only "shopping" excursion just to get to the main shopping/dining area if we aren't doing any other excursions.

The hard part of avoiding being a hostage to shopping, is that they aren't always obvious. Maybe we should have known better, but in Naples, we did "Capri, Sorrento, and Pompeii". Capri wasn't bad, but Sorrento was a waste as it was just a bus ride then a walk to his kickback store (inlaid wood things), I think lunch(?), then time to shop. Finally, while the tour inside Pompeii was good, he led us out and then took us into the store immediately outside the exit for a shot of Lemoncello, and then told us we had 30 minutes to shop. I'd have rather had 30 more minutes in Pompeii! 😡

I have my first Radiance class scheduled next summer on Jewel. We also booked a JS. I believe that in this class, all the JS (actually all the suites, other than 3 2-bedroom owners suites) are on deck 10. The room review spreadsheet in the cabin information thread (https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/1167958-royal-caribbean-cabin-information-compilation-no-cabin-questions-posted-here-please/) has mixed reviews, but there's no other floor options.

I think Royal learned their lesson after this and don't put suites immediately under the pool deck and windjammer any more? at the very least, not all of them.

https://www.cruisedeckplans.com/DP/deckplans/category-detail.php?c=893

5 hours ago, nursinadream said:

Hi Rob.  That sounds like great pre and post cruise visits.  Did you arrange those on your own?  If done by AMA I'd like to know what was included.  We're doing our first river cruise Mar 2022.

Deb

Hi Deb! (that's my sister's name lol)

While I do believe that Ama might have had a Paris post tour, the pre & post tours were done on our own, with some help from a TA. She gave us some hotel recommendations, arranged the rail tickets, and recommended a tour company in Munich and we booked the Munich tours through her with them. We booked our Paris tours our selves.

For Munich, we used Radius Tours (https://www.radiustours.com/tours-in-english/) for all tours:

• Munich Bavarian Beer Tour
• Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site Tour
• Third Reich Tour – Munich’s cruel history
• Neuschwanstein Castle Tour

We really liked this company and would recommend them. Unfortunately, the way the tours fell, and with our short time, the only window of opportunity we had for the Holocaust Museum (NS-Dokumentationszentrum Muenchen) was the day that it was closed. This was highly recommended to us, but it just didn't work out. We were able to get lunch at the Hofbräuhaus München, and dinner at Augustiner-Keller the next day.

Hotel was within walking distance from the main train station. We took the subway from the airport to the train station, and when we left, we took the train from Munich to Nuremberg, and a cab to the ship.

On the back-end, the normal dock/port that is right next door to the commuter rail station had construction or something, so we had to use a different location. So we took a short cab ride to the commuter rail station to the main rail station, then took the high speed train to Paris. Took a cab to the hotel, which was about 2 blocks from a metro station, which we used the rest of the time. I think we might have taken a cab to the airport after?

In Pairs, we used a mixture of tour companies. After our Rome vacation, we were big fans of City Wonders (https://citywonders.com/) and tried to use them where we could make it work.

• Private Tour : Notre-Dame, Ile de la Cité and St Severin Church (individual via Trip Advisor)
• VIP Evening Eiffel Tower Tour & Seine Champagne Cruise (CW)
• Versailles Palace and Gardens, Skip-the-line by Train from Paris (Guidatours via Trip Advisor)
• Private Comprehensive Louvre Masterpieces Tour with Mona Lisa (CW)
• Loire Valley Castles Day Trip from Paris with Wine Tasting (CW)
• Ghosts, Legends and Mysteries – An Eerie Evening Tour in Paris (CW)

Originally, we had booked 'Notre Dame Tour with Towers and Île de la Cité' through CW, but after the Notre Dame fire, that was obviously cancelled. That's when we booked the walking tour with the individual via Trip Advisor. Our private guide for the Louvre was amazing.

The only one we didn't like was the Guidatours to Versailles. Our guide was terrible, the heat was terrible, and honestly didn't think we got anything more out of it than had we watch some History channel show on Versailles. Plus, "skip the line' just puts you in the slightly shorter "skip the line" line (in the sun & heat).

BTW, by "3 days", this was: the arrival day, of which we had somewhere between 1/2-3/4 of a day, then 2 full days, then leaving first thing the next day!

Hope this helps, and maybe gives you some ideas. Have a great trip!

We did this itinerary (but in the opposite direction) Summer of 2019 on AmaDante with my family (9 - 3 generations, youngest 10). I think everyone had a great time. We only had 2 complaints. Summer 2019 was unusually hot and the first half of the trip, the boat had problems keeping the temperature comfortable. They did the best they could, and kept the blinds on the south side of the ship closed during the day, but the A/C was underpowered for the heat. The other issue we had was on going from Rüdesheim to Lahnstein through the Rhine River Gorge with all the small villages and castles, a barge got stuck on a sandbank upstream and we were delayed in Rüdesheim for 3-4 hours waiting for it to clear. This meant that the sun set on us part way through this area, and for probably half of it, it was too dark to see anything. The staff was great, especially the hotel manager. The captain was fun. Tour guides were very good, and the on-board entertainment was enjoyable. Food was generally good to very good. The history of the cities visited was amazing. In Trier, the official tour bused you to a starting point. My sister's family, my daughter, and I left early and walked up to the baths and the amphitheater on our own before catching up with the tour where the busses dropped them off. I don't know if it's typical of all Ama itineraries, but there was a lot of wine tastings!

My wife, daughter (19 at the time) & I did 3 days in Munich before and 3 days in Paris after. Munich was amazing. Unfortunately, this was post Norte Dame fire, so that was out.

You'll love it! I sincerely hope that COVID does not impact your trip.

I wasn't a fan of the 70's in the the 70's, and still not a fan. Except Kiss, and Sweet's Ballroom Blitz.

Now, 80's/90's heavy meatal, "hair bands", and other 80's/90's rock (up until grunge, and no rap, very little pop) thrown in, and I'm there!

I agree with what others have stated. My summary is that it is a party cruise, with 30 minutes of snorkeling. It's all about selling pictures and getting tips. After doing a few "snorkeling" excursions this appears to be fairly common, to the point that I am very leery about booking future ones, especially through the cruise lines, without research. I'm not looking for 4 hours of travel & cruising for 30m of snorkeling.

26 minutes ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

That said, since you are sailing in November, maybe, you have time to get vaccinated properly?

I was going to ask the same thing. The shots are the same for both doses, so I would think if you got a second AZ or Pfizer, that you would be considered single vendor fully vaccinated. 

Sorry for your loss.

I think this thread from 2 months ago has exactly what you are looking for.

The walk in served as a great changing room since we were travelling with my college age daughter in the JS with us.😁

Welcome to 23 hours (and 199 posts) ago....

D, then C.

The reason I would put D first is that I have been looking at Norwegian Fjord cruises for a few years now, and their availability has changed dramatically, whereas the Baltic states cruise seems to be a well established constant. We are booked on the Artic Circle cruise (basically a longer Norwegian Fjord cruise) on Jewel next Summer. The Baltic one is also on our list.

We did a Disney cruise years ago with a bunch of families, the rotating dining was fun, but the ship was designed for it. The don't have 1 main dining room, they have 3, each holding 1/3 of the guests, and all themed totally differently.

Unless you build the ship to specifically do this, I don't see either how you could have rotational dining with 1 main dining room and a number of smaller venues, or what the point of rotating between main dining room floors would be.

If you're going to go "Dynamic Dining", then I think you have to go how I understand Virgin Voyages will operate where you don't have any "main" dining rooms, you just have a bunch of different restaurants/venues, and even no set dining times. But again, you have to specifically build the ship to operate that way, you really can't retrofit it. Well, maybe if you chop up the main dining room space into a bunch of smaller venues that all share the main kitchen.

10 hours ago, bonsai3s said:

It took us a few years to discover the value of b2b, b3b, b4b...for us, when rccl left California, we had to fly to every embarkation port...it just made sense to do a b2b (or more) to save on airfare.

 

Note: During our early days of cruising, we also sailed "s2s",.....consecutive cruises, same port, but different ships. Not as relaxing, but you learn so much comparing each ship. For example, we sailed the Allure out of Port Everglades, then walked over to Celebrity Solstice tbe second week. Or when we sailed the Indy then shuttled our way to Royal Princess. Or when we sailed the Voyager, then on to the Grand Princess.

That's our thought on our first b2b next summer on Jewel. Arctic Circle then Iceland/Ireland. We want to do both at some point, so why double the airfare plus pre-cruise hotel, etc. to do them at 2 separate times?

Prior to this booking, we did have a pseudo "s2s" booked for this summer, which was COVID cancelled. We were booked on a Norwegian Fjord cruise out of Southampton on Anthem, then 5 days, then the Baltic cruise out of Stockholm on Jewel (which is back on the todo list). These were replacements for 2 other COVID cancelled cruises; Norwegian Fjord and Iceland and a separate Trans-Atlantic (also back on the todo list).

Logically, this makes no sense, but we didn't think much of the pizza on Allure, but really liked it on Symphony (twice). Go figure. 😜

If you are debating about which port to use, here is a thread discussing just that:

This is airing again tomorrow, Sunday 06-Jun-22 at 2PM CDT.

30 minutes ago, DCGuy64 said:

Listed as, yes. However, I mailed my old passport in on March 13 for regular processing and the new one arrived exactly 5 weeks and 2 days later. I think the State Dept is just covering itself in case it takes a long time.

Yeah, I renewed mine as soon as my June/July cruises were cancelled. Normal processing, and I think almost exactly 5 weeks from the date I mailed my stuff in. Got it back 2-3 weeks ago. 

Global Entry, on the other hand, sucked. We applied (first time applicant, not renewal) at the beginning of Feb 2020 (just before the pandy hit). It was not processed until end of December (or was it first week of Jan?). Interview was mid Feb. So basically over 1 full year! Hopefully they've caught up and no one has that experience.

Even if a super nice Loyalty Ambassador were to upgrade us on the day we hit the milestones, in our case, it would basically be on disembarkation day. 🤣 8 night JS in Feb will take us Platinum to Dimond (Skipping Emerald) by 2 points, and a b2b 24 night total JS next June/July will take us to D+ by 3 points.

Congrats to anyone that hits those milestones earlier in their cruises.

Quest is a blast, at least when in Studio B. I've only been on Oasis & Voyager classes so far.

In that setting, your "team" is essentially your audience section. It's perfect for even just watching & cheering others on. You can participate as much or as little as you want.

49 minutes ago, lenquixote66 said:

I love Labadee.I wonder if there will ever be a cruise just docking there ?

If you use the RC search for Labadee, look at the shortest cruses.

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/search?q=labadee itinerary&page=1

here was one that only did Labadee & CocoCay, and one that only hit Labadee & Key West. As for literally Labadee and nothing else, can't say I noticed any.

Hey, on a whim, I thought I'd try the search. The the RC search is pretty good.

putting Labadee & cococay in the search comes up with at least 9 different itineraries on 8 different ships: Symphony, Allure, Radiance, Mariner, Explorer, Odyssey, Jewel, Harmony

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/search?q=labadee+cococay&page=1

Found one!

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruises/itinerary/5-night-labadee-from-miami-on-radiance/RD05MIA-3097494966?sail-date=2021-12-05&currency=USD

I imagine a lot fewer itineraries hit Labadee, so just iterate through the itineraries.

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-to/labadee-haiti?&country=USA

I did the math too.😉

We are currently Platinum @ 50.

We have an 8 night booked for Feb in a JS that will take us to Diamond, (+32 = 82)

Then next summer we have a b2b, 2 @ 12 nights, also in a JS (+96 = 178) that will take us to D+. 😁

(assuming these all happen)

Yes....

1 hour ago, davecttr said:

Just for info

 

Ireland (in English) Eire (in Irish) is part of the EU and can make their own decisions as can every other member state.

 

Great Britain is not a country, it is the largest island in the British Isles. Originally called Great Britain to distinguish it from little Britain, Brittany in France.

 

The United Kingdom is a country and and Northern Ireland is part of the UK.

 

The UK and Ireland have a common travel area and various rights such as being able to vote in general elections etc whatever country you happen to be residing in. this may complicate matters somewhat!.

CGP Grey's inaugural video!

And if you search his channel, he's got a few good ones explaining Brexit which includes the Ireland & Northern Ireland issue travel issue.