pyrateslife4me84

Unfortunately, many parents don’t parent now. We have twin 11-year olds and find the unparented kids really frustrating. Like we will ask our kids to respectfully stand next to the hot tub and finish their ice cream cone before joining us to warm up while an unparented 8-year old waltzes in with theirs and promptly drops it in the water. Ugh. Not the 8-year old’s fault but where are the parents? My wife and I are teachers so we have no problem using “teacher voice” on the unparented kids, however. Something tells me they are used to hearing that voice lol…

Is it the Oasis-class Med itinerary from Barcelona/Civitavecchia? Plenty of kids when we did that.

Buy a yacht.

I see so many comments online from people wanting to do Royal “on the cheap.” I’m sure that’s why Royal provides an old ship, hoping that you will then book the more expensive new ships for your second cruise.

Absolutely. And we can presume they will continue to replace new ships with newer ships out of PC and Miami. And they’ll do the bread-and-butter 3, 4, and 7-night itineraries. Mass-market ships on mass-market itineraries. These are the locations they know can fill 7000-passenger ships all year.

Just in time for them to announce Wonder will continue 7 nighters until September…which we already knew. I think they’ve known this would happen for a bit.

All of this redeployment talk makes me fearful of ever booking one of the unique itineraries…much safer to book an itinerary that runs again and again 30 times in a row.

We thought it was fun and scary (because it’s a big drop). Definitely didn’t get hurt, though! It does close in high wind.

not in summer 2025, though.

These plus Wonder summer 2025.

But there is still some long Caribbean to release.

They could always just send up the Oasis-class ship a bit early. It’s about as well-suited to winter as Odyssey and it shouldn’t be too cold by March, anyway. Those March and April cruises do command a premium price so I presume they’ll want something sailing. Could also send Liberty there in March and have it just sail down to the Bahamas until it switches to Bermuda in May.

Given that snorkeling is available on Coco Cay, Cozumel, and Roatan, why not focus on the beach at those 3 stops and go to Chacchoben in Costa Maya. It’s a relatively short stop there, anyway, and Chacchoben is close.

Agreed. They do make it obnoxious, since KSF has been active for many months now but is only free some of the time on some sailings in some categories.

LOS fares are about double what they were summer 2023. But plenty of time for price adjusts!

Got the Bermuda cruise we’re hoping for. Fare is sky high so we will hope for price drops!

Can’t actually book anything…it keeps saying “oops”

We got VERY lucky for our upcoming April cruise—our kids were legitimately free (just pay taxes, of course). We were very pleased with the price. Easter is early this year but our kids are still off in mid April, so the dates weren’t excluded. They’re 11, so this won’t happen again for us. Flights were cheap, too!

It’s pretty much always available for booking (has been for many months) but excludes any time kids are out of school. So it doesn’t work during Spring Break, around Easter, during summer, around Thanksgiving, or the weeks of Christmas and New Years. In effect, you only get it if you pull the kids out of school. Kids Sail Free excludes all sailings departing on or during any of the following dates November 22, 2024 – November 29, 2024; November 20, 2025 – November 28, 2025, December 16, 2023 – January 5, 2024; December 20, 2024 – January 3, 2025; December 18, 2025 – January 6, 2026, March 8, 2024 – March 22, 2024; March 7, 2025 – March 28, 2025; March 6, 2026 – April 9, 2026, March 22, 2024 – April 4, 2024; April 12, 2025 – April 24, 2025, May 22, 2024 – August 30, 2024; May 22, 2025 – August 29, 2025 and Radiance Alaska Cruise Tour sailings departing May 17, 2024 – September 13, 2024; May 16, 2025 – September 12, 2025.

At least there is Adventure 6/8.

I have not seen anyone suggest that’s the plan. They’ll have Utopia doing 3 and 4 nighters, Star replacing Wonder, Adventure doing 6 and 8 nighters, and perhaps an older ship doing 4 and 5 nighters (it’s Voyager this year).

I must’ve been on a different cruise than everyone else or maybe it’s a post-pandemic, fewer Americans abroad thing. I found people to be even more casually dressed than in the Caribbean. Lots of tank tops at dinner. We agonized over buying appropriate clothing for Europe because I had continually read about how nicely people dress there. Imagine my shock at seeing everyone in Nikes, t-shirts/tank tops, and shorts walking around Spain, France, and Italy. I’m talking in ports. Americans got more casual during the pandemic and I gather the same happened in Europe. At least we look nice in our pictures…

In my experience, not many. This was the Med. It led to many issues because kids were unable to understand English and therefore listened to crew members even less than they do on Caribbean cruises. In a week, we ran into one other American family. Given how European education works, I would imagine the kids actually did have some idea what the crew member was saying and pretended not to. Lots of issues in the MDR finding crew members who spoke the same language as guests, but this is common at vacation destinations all over Europe. I presume it’s different on the itineraries from Southampton but OP is asking about a Med route.

We had free lobster in Europe.

Both main seatings are before 9 pm now. They are something like 5 pm and 7:30 pm now.