JK805

I may just have to do this myself

Haven’t done Med, but usually there’s a meet up point for Key guests and they escort you to the tender for priority boarding. You should also get a call in your room the day before giving you the info. My only tender experience with Royal I had a Royal sponsored excursion, so we already had tender arranged and didn’t use the Key benefit.

I get hungry a lot when browsing the menus, especially when not on board - followed by disappointment I’m not on board lol.

If only kids menu is showing, the menus haven’t been loaded and probably too far out. Follow @The Fun Researcher’s steps to choose another sailing (you can choose any to view, even if you aren’t on that one - I sometimes like to follow along on some to get my “fix” when in between cruises) and if you choose one in the next few sailings the menus should be loaded.

I’ve been trying to find the extras as well, as I have two 13 night ones in 2024. Last cruise was a 10 night, and had all of the ones mentioned except Royal History and Asia. Head waiter on my last cruise did say they have 20-something total menus for the MDR, but not many sailings they get used on. Just followed along a 12 night on Anthem (I believe) in the app to see the menus and did see the Royal History and Asia menus for that sailing. Best bet I think is to try and do the same in the app with a longer sailing if you can find them. Maybe I can follow along with yours in September to see those extra menus 😂. Along with Welcome Aboard, France, Royal Night (for sailings with two+ formals), and Bon Voyage, I’ve also read that Caribbean & Mexico are usually served on the night of first port in those locations too if the sailing has them.

Best bet to see the menu is to go to the app and find a similar cruise sailing in the next few weeks (or else menus may not be loaded yet too far out, more than a few weeks). Most important is find a similar amount of nights as that seems to be the most important variable for rotation. Exact menu may vary by night, but usually same 5 menus should be on most 5 night itineraries (or change number of nights) but may vary in rotation. I’ve read somewhere that Royal usually tries to line up Caribbean night with the first Caribbean port, and taste of Mexico with first Mexican port - but YMMV. Also, taste of France is usually first “dress to impress” night, and Royal night the second. On my last sailing a Head Waiter was talking to my table about the menus, and said they have up to 20-25 total dinner menus, but typically it’s the “main” 7 used since most are 7 night cruises. But up to 20-something nights shouldn’t have a repeated theme.

Yeah, doing “indoor walk” makes it a bit more accurate, but because of sometimes force of habit I forget… and remember right as I start getting the pace notifications LOL. Also, newer ships/cardio equipment in gym have NFC and can start workout on the watch just by hovering over the spot on the cardio equipment as you start, and syncs up the time and metrics between watch/machine.

Pace seems a bit slow… I hit a pace of <4 min/mile on a previous cruise - all while my watch was alternating notifications between constantly asking if I was “still working out” and my next mile completed notification 😂🤣

Port side of Deck 4 (outdoor promenade deck), port side of Deck 11 (pool deck), and port side of Deck 12. Plus casino when open and actively playing.

I haven’t noticed one at embarkation, but doesn’t mean there have been none. Did see one debarking at Baltimore last month. The line of passengers went right past him as we were entering the CBP area, but as far as I could see it didn’t trigger on anyone around when I went through.

When I went to ABCs last month, ship docked on the port side for each of them, and the approach had the land on that side as we arrived. But we were also the only ship in port except for Curaçao where there was one other, so that could have an influence too. Could well vary depending on ship and where it’s coming from, but any time in the ABCs is a wonderful time.

Yep, at any bar or place that has it. With the deluxe package you can grab two bottles at a time. I always grabbed some at the end of the night to take to my room. And they usually have a cart near the gangway in the morning for you to grab a bottle or two on your way into port if you have a package.

True, may not get that much better for pricing. But you can always cancel and rebook of price drops after you bought - you will just have to wait a few days possibly to see the refund to the CC used. I’ve started taking screenshots of the per day price when booking and saving in my folder for each cruise (where I add my booking invoices, eDocs, luggage tags, etc) to stay semi-organized and know for sure if it was a price drop.

Definitely weird… But at least it didn’t amount to that huge of a bill for you.

My math usually comes in at if I have 5 alcoholic drinks (which spread throughout the day is reasonable to me -each person decides that for themselves their own way), plus fresh OJ at breakfast, americano or similar at Promenade/Latte-tudes, plus waters whenever I want to grab them I’ve met or come darn close to the package pricing. I never try to “come out even or ahead”, I, usually looking at it as a budgeting before versus bill at the end factor.

I usually check a couple times a week on pricing, as their “sale” cycles tend to be something like Tues-Fri and Sat-Mon (or some slight variation). Often times it just bounces between two price points, but last year I got the cheapest beverage packages the week before Halloween ($5-10/day cheaper than Black Friday prices came in at even). But don’t pay attention to the % off they have listed, just look at the actual pricing and compare to that as their “math” is often a bit off - for example last year on Navigator on board price of DX is $102/day, CP had it as $76.99/day claiming it was 30% off, but mathematically it’s really ~25%.

Yep, or they’re taking the attitude of “blame the local/country regulations” and hope the customers just accept that and go away so we don’t have to do anything more. But the cruise lines all seem to take their own path in dealing with local regulations. Take Galveston and the Texas liquor laws - Royal says your selection will be limited until we are out of Texas jurisdiction but you can still use your package/benefit for what they can sell while in Texas waters, but others say your package/benefit can’t be used the first day of sailing and you pay a la carte for each drink first day as the way they deal with it.

Could be related to taxes while in port, and NCL doesn't want to try and figure out the taxes that will be owed (or doesn't want to program the POS systems) so they made the decision to not allow sales but will allow package redemptions since that's essentially a zero bill and no taxes will be owed. I know some rules in port require ships to collect local taxes on individual sales while in port (I think even some US ports require that for embarkation day). For example, in the app there's a blurb for the days when the ship is sailing in Spanish waters about taxes and restrictions for a current sailing.

I saved the cruise planner sheet as well. I found another one on another board that worked well too, but since this one is a Google Sheet it can follow me around on the cloud to whatever device I'm using.

My experience has been that usually the minimum goes up as it gets closer to sail date. I usually like to wait until I get my cabin assignment if I booked a GTY before I consider a bid to see where I end up or if the ~1% chance or so I get a better category without paying for it. But there are a lot of factors that play into whether I decide to bid or not.

True, not much more they likely can do to an already “amped” Voyager class ship. But I like her how she is, and even enjoy one of the newly added staterooms added during her amplification, even if I need to keep an old card on hand for the cabin lights!

From what I think I've read, biggest part of a dry dock is doing a full hull inspection to make sure everything is good down there. They might add some minor work inside, but nothing major like a redesign or "amplification" style work - especially for only a 2 week scheduled dry dock. I agree it will be sad to be without a ship in LA for the ~6 week period or so, but at least there are dates populating for 2025 so the West Coast seems to be good business for Royal. Would be great to add another ship, but the limited selection of itineraries might make Royal think it isn't that good of business sense. I'll take what I can get for Navigator being my home ship though. I'll even take the shorter weekend ones to get me out on the water. I can usually find a way to avoid the ones wanting the short journey as a party cruise, and still find a way to enjoy myself.

I happened to run a speed test when I was on board, and was actually surprise about how fast the speed was while on board. The screenshot of my test is below, and this was in a public area of the ship where speeds are fastest (rooms tend to be a little worse connection being a metal walled room not as good for signals). Connection can fluctuate since you're on a ship, but there was a pretty solid connection overall. Electronic PDF version can be obtained via scanning the QR code. I've found the printed codes at the cruise compass rack or on the desk in the stateroom don't always work, but the ones on the TV channels for the CD entertainment summary broadcast (if playing) on Channel 1 or the Compass Activities on Channel 2 have worked every time for me.

That’s how I’m doing my Mexico B2B later this year - a 4 day followed by a 7 day. I did it in reverse last year (because the short one tempted me as it was getting close and I could get my same cabin) but think the short followed by the longer relaxing one is for the win! And time the staterooms were ready seemed to be more with the USCG inspection interrupting turnover operations - I saw what looked like ALL crew on the ship mustered with life jackets as I got to the terminal and boarding didn’t start until about 45 min after planned (though that was faster than the 1 hour delay Royal warned about in pre-cruise communication).

As reported, B2B is largely ship/port dependent, but for most US based sailings Customs makes everyone disembark and go through Customs (their requirement so the ship has no say). I did it on Navigator out of LA last year and it was fairly easy. They put us in a separate lounge, gave us our new SeaPass with the old one marked up (so I had my new one right away instead of waiting), walked us off the ship to Customs, then right back on. We just had to wait 1-2 min before getting scanned on board because the system hadn’t loaded the new sailing yet for security. But Royal made it a very easy process, and I’ve got another B2B booked later this year.