HappyTexan44

In a recent Royal Carib blog video he mentioned that being next to the elevators used to be a problem because of the noise, but they've care of that.

I look at it by how else I could spend that money. An annual pass to the nice nearby water park is cheaper. If someone didn't live where there was outdoor water parks, there is probably a Great Wolf Lodge where they could spend the weekend for the same money.

His twin nieces did something almost as bad as toddlers. In public, they'd take off their clothes and run laughing in opposite directions. Their mother started using Duck Tape on their clothes.

I'll demand a refund if too many games are broken. I love air hockey, but even I can't see spending $150 on it (Two arcade packages that cost $75 each)

What I wonder is can you keep track of the arcade balance like with other charges? I read that with charges in general, it is best to check the charges daily so that you can dispute fraudulent ones right away rather than wait until everyone is disputing at the end of the cruise. If I could see the remaining arcade balance, I'd feel better about giving the girls a spending amount per day. (If you wonder why it seems I have one kid, but then use plural, we are taking a friend of hers).

That was my husband. He had an actual dog leash because the cute backpacks weren't a thing then. The breaking point was when he went for a stroll on a ledge that went all around this public building at the third story. He was 3 or 4 and has vague memories of wondering why all those adults on the ground were freaking out. On the ships, you have to actively try to go overboard. I could see a wandering 3-year-old actively trying.

I've also read that they still charge you if you try to use a machine and it doesn't work. You have to go to Guest Services to get an arcade refund. If you want to allow some money for him to use, you can also put a daily spending limit on his card. There is one there by default, but it is an obscene amount for a kid. I'd bought that for our Feb 2024 cruise, then I worried I'd bought too much and it wouldn't be a bargain because too much in credits wouldn't be used. So then I researched if the arcade was just in a no-adults-allowed area or if I could play too. I learned that adults can go to a arcade, and that there is air hockey there. I love playing air hockey, so if they get bored with the arcade, I can help use up the remaining credits playing that. I told DD the wonderful news. She said, "Don't worry mom. We have it covered."

Then you add in that many normal cleaning do nothing to Noro. Hand sanitizer also does nothing against Noro. A major reason why I'll be cleaning our cabin before I settle in. Hydrogen Peroxide works and is allowed.

We have four rooms, four adults and four teens (I hadn't mentioned the teens before because they didn't impact the wine allotment. So, in either the old or new rules 4 bottles of wine should be fine. I'll probably bring 3 since I'll likely be the only one drinking wine and it is a 5-day cruise. If I bring 4, I will likely be sharing my wine with people sitting nearby.

We would be able to even collapse the wagon and send it through the scanner. I added a note to my cruise document to not have loose stuff in there. I can see stuff just getting tossed in as we leave the car.

My plan is to put my two or three bottles of wine (four adults in four rooms), one or two 12-packs of soda, and the carry-ons for four people in one of those collapsible fabric-sided wagons. Try really hard to get earliest boarding. Then finding an out of the way comfy chair and reading a book until the rooms open up.

Well, Americans are free to call any wine made with the champagne method as champagne. The restriction was based on a treaty that the French trotted around. America didn't sign it because we were already doing something even more stupid (prohibition). When we said we were signing because we were drinking (theoretically), the French accepted that. Really, the whole idea is stupid. Pilsner beer doesn't have to come from Pilsen.

That is a thought on the scrambled. I know for scrambled eggs in hotel breakfasts, the eggs are usually just poured from a carton and cooked. I would guess that the ship is the same. With poached you know that it has been in a shell until recently. I adore eggs, but I often don't eat them away from home because we have free-range hens. But then at some point away from home, I miss eggs enough that I order some and I like to get the best I can. Soup is something that does seem to need salt, or at least some salt. I wish Brita removed salt from the water. At home we have an RO unit, and that does remove salt, but it is the high-pressure membrane that does that. We have Brita water bottles that we like to use on vacation.

Not Oasis, but on Voyager I looked at the activities in the app for a current cruise that is the same as mine and I was impressed with the activities for the young teen crowd. Might have been just my perspective since I wasn't expecting much.

@new_cruiser Was this since the new menu? If so, that is awesome!

So, I was thinking between restaurant food being generally saltier, certainly more than at my home, and the water having salt in it left from the desalination, I will probably want to tell them I'm on a low-salt diet. At home, I'm not officially on a low-salt diet, but I really just don't like the taste. If I buy canned soup, I reach for the low-salt version. On popcorn I put butter and cheese powder, no salt. Even the butter is usually unsalted. With recipes I've figured out which ones really need to salt, e.g. bread and which don't and drop the salt from the ones that don't. When I used to travel a lot for work, and therefore lots of restaurant meals, within the US I'd start to notice all the salt in the food, and I'd feel off. When I spent a lot of time in Germany, at some point I'd crave Pringles which I figured out was a salt craving. So I wouldn't say I'm ultra-low salt, but lower than an American diet. I understand during pre-new menu, this wouldn't have been a problem. The waiter brings the next day's menu out, and you order the day before. But, with all these no-substitutions rules, I wonder. Will they tell me to just eat a naked chicken breast every night?

Yes, for us, two two-person interior cabins were cheaper than one four-person cabin. I had been genuinely confused. Although, KSF might have changed that.

Am I the only one that thought, "This is never a question."

That is good news. Particularly since the only reason for them to NOT allow that is if all food for that dining window were already plated before you ordered.

I get that many people don't like the giant ships. But, I think they are awesome for expanding the customer base. What are the reasons people don't want to try cruising? I think I'll be bored, and I'll be seasick.

That is bat-poo-crazy. If they are still doing this silliness by our cruise (Feb) I can see us pairing up. Like DH orders cake and I order ice cream. When they arrive, I dump my ice cream onto his plate, hand over the empty plate and say, "I'd like some more ice cream." Some things just need to come together.

Now this makes sense. If there is a bit of salt in the water, then people might drink more water than usual because of the sun/swimming/walking/heat. So maybe another help would be tell the dining you are on a low salt diet.

Well, the reason they are being built is that the economies of scale make them cheaper to operate per passenger. For example, a ship twice as big doesn't need twice as many shows, it just needs more seats.

I stay away from land-based casinos because of the smoke. I have sinus troubles and being around a lot of smoke for a couple of hours causes months of sinus misery. On our cruise, I plan to try to organize a poker tournament in the game room just to be able to play in a smoke-free environment. So, I would be one that would go to the casino only if it were smoke-free. They might lose people that wouldn't go unless they could smoke, but they would also gain people. The question is, which is more? I know in Disney World discussions when someone would complain about the masks and point out that more people would come without the masks, someone would always pipe up that there are those that wouldn't go without the masks, so it didn't matter. With mask etc. rules, it seems clear which way gets more people. (Just making an analogy here) I don't know what the answer is on smoking-gambling. I have observed that a gambler is MUCH more likely to smoke than the average person. So maybe the connection is strong enough for casinos to stay smoking. I can also see the casino thinking that when people cashed out to go smoke, a good number of them would wander off and do something else.

The first place I noticed it was The Mansion in Dallas. I saw it in a Michelin ** place in Paris, and another place in NYC. I remember the name of the first place because it is local. You might not have noticed if you had a similar appetite to others with you since you would have received around the same amount of food. Even then you'd have only noticed if you'd had courses.