HappyTexan44

I can see this being a huge problem when they switch to once-a-day service. The before you moved in clean would count as the clean for that day, so they wouldn't be back that day.

I am used to hotels swapping out the beverage cooler for a genuine small fridge. I think I like this better. Daughter's medicine is $X,XXX for each vial (which is good for two weeks). I like the idea of a dedicated fridge that we aren't opening all the time.

For those that got the med. fridge, did they remove the beverage cooler?

I used to work with a guy that was stuck in Alaska for an extra week while doing a primitive survival camping thing. The plane was supposed to get him on the afternoon of 9/11. His backpack was smaller than ours when we spend the day at Six Flags. Things like a knife and a fish hook. The worst part was that he couldn't roam far because he had no idea when a plane might come to get him.

I think what makes this article OK to me, is that Royal reached out and offered the cruise. If it was an assignment I would be more inclined to say it was a bit of a hit piece sending someone that prefers tent camping and whose favorite part of the ship was the running track.

I used in a tech manufacturing building built during the cold war. Neither the offices nor the elevator floors had numbers. Presumably a spy could be spotted because they would wander around lost. So, you learned to navigate by art. For example, for the cafeteria you got off the elevator the Grand Canyon picture. Spotting spies would never have worked. Any construction that blocked off a hallway led to many employees wandering around lost. One day they moved the art around and all hell broke loose.

There was actually an encouraging bit in it for me. Of course, I'd already booked our starter cruise. I've gone live-aboard scuba diving. Of course I was in the room alone, but the room size was fine. Knowing that the cruise cabin is much bigger is comforting.

As a Texan, I'm pleased.

Also, at home I have multiple towel racks. Each towel is by itself and the room has good ventilation. Cruise bathrooms aren't big enough to keep multiple towels drying. Then you add that standard cruise advice is to bring Poo Pourri because 'there really isn't any ventilation' in the bathrooms.

I wonder if you can get some of your money back?

I so wish our ship had the freestyle machines! Voyager doesn't have them. We are very familiar with them from visiting Six Flags and Universal Orlando.

Not about the savings. They don't have Diet DP on board. DH vastly prefers DP. I am particular about my wine. They are likely to have the same quality of wine that I'd bring onboard, but not the precise thing I want. For example, I'm likely to bring a Natural Rose Champagne, they won't have that and they'd try to talk me into a big name Champagne that was neither Natural or Rose.

I've been giving some thought to logistics of our carry-on. We will have 4 bottles of wine (two rooms) and a 12-pack of Diet DP. That will get pretty heavy. I was originally thinking of dragging out one of those wheeled fold-up luggage things from before luggage had wheels. But, now I am thinking it will be more secure to use a wheeled luggage as carry-on that I normally use as checked luggage, and carefully packing everything in there. Putting in the wine, sodas, daughter's medicine, swimsuits, and enough extra clothes for padding. Could even add bubble-wrap. This dropping all the checked luggage off with a porter is a game-changer from flying since we don't need to worry about restrictions or the luggage being abused.

Correct. It isn't that I'm scared of flying, never have been. Former job took 30-ish RT flights a year, mostly in the US but some to Europe and Taiwan. The problem is the service-decline creep. It hit me in the stark contrast between my first flight and my daughter's first flight. We were both 8.5 years old. I was average sized, and she is very small for her age. Comparable flights, mine was MSP-DFW on Braniff, hers was DFW to Vegas on American. 40 years apart. I remember enjoying the flight and it was a grand adventure. I remember the seats wide enough that I could turn a bit sideways in the seat and nap with my head on the back of the seat. Security was not a concern. This would have been '79 so I think they were just x-raying bags? Checked luggage was free, so I think all I took on was some things to keep me occupied. I remember nice flight attendants and being offered a wings pin that I cherished. I think we got food, I wasn't impressed with that but that was OK. My grandparents met me at the gate with big hugs. We live in an exurb outside the area that airport shuttles will service. Drive is two hours to the airport. There is one woman in town who does Uber/Lyft. I didn't know then if she was reliable so we had to leave extra time to change gears in case she didn't show up. So, we left at noon, 5 hours before the flight. Then there was security who was being particularly anal that day. At one point much of our stuff was 20' away beyond the rape-scan (really rapiscan, but the name is horrible because the change is so obvious, so I always think of it as the rape scan). Our electronics were just sitting over there waiting for any random person to grab. While they were fussing because we had too much in one bin. For example, a laptop power cord and a cell phone were too much. So, the number of bins we were using kept growing, along with my stress levels. Once we finally got past the rape-scan, we then had to try to put all our stuff back together while security is fussing at us that they want their bins back. And getting our shoes back on. My stress level was through the roof and that effected daughter. She'd really really wanted to fly, and the landscape would be boring so we had decided it would be a good time. Then we get on the plane which is completely packed. I don't have flight status anymore, so we were near the end to board. There was the stress of finding space for our carry-ons and I think we got the last spaces. The three of us were together and even daughter was cramped. Remember she was a small 8.5 year-old. The flight itself was very cattle-air. The flight was packed and it took forever to get off, then we had to get the rental car I reserved through Sixt, horrible people. By the time we got to the hotel it was almost 1am after leaving at noon. We checked into the hotel room and crashed glad that we'd planned a rest day at the Golden Nugget pool for the next day. We all agreed that we wished we had drove. If we'd driven and left at the same time, we would have arrived at about the same time we woke up in the hotel. And if we'd driven, we'd have our car which is the touring Cadillac. I am convinced that any other vehicle without a bed in it, is a torture device in comparison. We like to drive straight through and driving at night is the best. It helps that my husband is a former long-haul truck driver. For example, to Orlando is 18.5 hours. Two times ago he drove all but the last 1.5 hours. Last long drive was to Carlsbad, CA a little over 20 hours. I thought that might be too much and we'd want to crash in a motel. But, nope we arrived at noon the day before we planned. Our niece used to live in Hawaii and we'd discussed visiting her. We agreed that Hawaii might be interesting enough to suffer the flight. Then she moved back. But our rule now is flights only when an ocean is involved.

Agreed. Flying is a fairly short experience. Awhile back I remember reading an article about first-class vs. economy-class. They interviewed a woman that was a CEO of a big company and was flying in the ordinary seats. She said, "If someone offered me 10K to sit in uncomfortable chair for 5 hours, I'd do it. This is the same thing." Although many people have talked about a line beyond which they'll change lines or stop cruising. We've reached that point in flights and we don't fly cattle-air (which is all of them).

I had thought that I wouldn't mind the change in hotels to a clean every few days. I'm one that would rather no one enter my hotel room after I check-in. But it ended up with disgusting hallways. They became an obstacle course with dirty towels and bags of trash outside nearly every door. Plus, a hotel room bathroom is bigger than a cruise bathroom. So, on a cruise there is less places to stash the wet towels. I could totally see people dumping the wet towels outside the room. Is there enough room in the bathrooms to store twice the normal number of towels? Hopefully they will have someplace that always has the next day's cruise compass. I am not using my phone for that.

Had that been pre or post lockdown? Somewhere I read that they got rid of them because you can't really get them clean.

Isn't getting an wine ice bucket an option? If the room merely has a cooler, then ask the room steward to keep the bucket with ice and then always have a can or two in the bucket. I love those freestyle machines. We've booked Voyager and it doesn't have one. We'll have two teenage girls and even though my daughter doesn't like soda (yeah) we'll buy the soda package for both. I don't want soda to be the forbidden fruit and the other girl occasionally drinks soda.

Thanks, but no. We will have the blankets and pillows in the car with us anyway. All we have to do is to shove them in a duffle. Although, ... considering what I've found between the supposedly clean sheets into hotel rooms I've just checked into maybe I should do that anyway. On the other hand, I've got this idea that on cruise ships the between-guests clean is more thorough mainly because they don't want the norovirus taint. Could be wrong.

I don't know about cruises, they might actually wash their blankets. But the ones in hotels are absolutely disgusting! They are never washed and think about what people have done on them! First things I do in a hotel room is to toss the blanket(s) on the bed into the corner. Wash my hands. Do bedbug inspection with black light. Don't accidentally reverse that order (shudders). If I drove I then add my pillow and blanket. If I flew and therefore needed a blanket, I'd call down to the desk tell them I needed a new blanket because I 'spilled a drink on it'. I am not a clean-freak, but those blankets/bedspreads in hotel rooms are gross! I used to travel for work spending 180-ish nights in hotels. There was one place close enough to drive and I'd love it because I'd sleep like I was home in my own bed since I could bring my own pillow and comforter. Now that travel is with the family, when we drive we like to have blankets and pillows in the car to help us get comfortable and sleep. We'll be driving to the cruise, so might as well bring them with us. Also, I can't use wool blankets. As for as why we bring Maple Syrup? Well, once you have the real thing that 'pancake syrup' is no longer edible. Real syrup is one of those creature comforts I enjoy when traveling.

Well, once you bring your pillows and comforter, the carry-on idea goes out the window :) We have a lot of duffles and packing cubes and the luggage that fits within each other for storage. Also, bins that fold flat and pop-up hampers. Our room will look cluttered, but that is OK.

We are people that would rather have lots of luggage than do without creature comforts that we can think of that is possible to get onboard. For example, a back scratcher and real maple syrup are both essentials. So, we'll be putting our luggage out the night before.

Well, as the OP, I can state that I am on the fence, leaning back toward auto-grat. if I can't think of a more fair way of handling the money. (This isn't new news. I previously said I was on the fence and the WJ tips might sway me back to auto-grat.) Even then, my original question wasn't Should I manually had out the tips in cash, but basically the logistics for those that have done that.

Adding this to the word file for my cruise notes. We were planning on parking at the port. But I could see us arriving back to a car almost on E that stunk from old food. We also learned the hard way to put the car keys in a special known place. One time at a convention after not using the car for 5 days, we had to search through our luggage to find the keys and we had no clue where it was. We just knew it wasn't in the room.

That is so common that while my husband does must of the driving, I usually do the morning driving on trips. Yes, it doesn't seem to be how I originally envisioned it. My idea was like how I used to do when my flight arrived home at a reasonable time of day. Home airport is DFW so lots of people have connecting flights. I'd wait until the mad rush was over then exit the plane. I'd leave when about 50% were still on the plane, so not delaying anyone or the plane. The past tense is because I swore off flying when it became cattle air. I know people generally have flights to get home from a cruise. Although after I started this I read somewhere that 80% of Galveston cruisers got there by car.