kwbrad

Great news, the bill has passed the house!  One step closer!

I am staying hopeful.  We are booked for Alaska 8/3 out of Seattle.  I was certain ours would be cancelled, but they have gone to the trouble of moving all of the bookings over to another ship and made the announcement that they are trying to sail.  I figure one of two things are true.  Either they (1) really do think they can make it happen or (2) they have gone to all of this trouble to reopen bookings and try to get more deposits to keep afloat.   For me, I think if they were just trying to get more deposits they could have made an annoucement about a different 4th ship, given that the likelihood of Alaska cruises has been so slim.  

Who knows.  I am not sure I will believe we are sailing until I am on the ship and we are pulling away from port.  

4 hours ago, kannm said:

We got the same email. We have an August 3rd sailing on the Freedom to Alaska. I am doubtful!

Same here.  And I booked using a casino rate, so I keep getting casino emails too (auto generated of course).  It is just so mean to tease us this way, lol. 

On 7/13/2019 at 12:22 PM, miss dee said:

kwbrad, did you stay at inlet towers in anchorage.  would you recommend it

That was my original reservation but I changed it. We are now at comfort suites by the airport. We leave in a couple of weeks. 

Thank you for sharing!

6 hours ago, Coral said:

I personally would spend less time in Anchorage and go to Seward earlier. There is more for me to do in Seward scenery wise than Anchorage.

 

I like Captain Cook. No shuttle but you can use a taxi.

We aren’t in Anchorage that long, we land at 1 in the morning and will spend about 36 hours there. Then off to Denali and Talkeetna and Seward before going back to anchorage one more night (I really wanted to do the train and it’s a ton cheaper to drop off the rental at the same place). 

Thank you everyone for all all of your suggestions, I appreciate it!

There are several reviews with folks saying they lost their deposit bc the staff said they were smoking when they weren’t.  Could be full of it or could really have gotten scammed, who knows. 

Close to train would be great, shuttle from airport, prefer not to spend as much on the hotel room as I did the cruise lol. But booked inlet towers before doing enough research and now thinking of canceling

Thanks! We will need 3 nights total, two when we first get to anchorage and one before we take the train to Seward the next day. Location isn’t super important but need a shuttle from the airport since we don’t pick up the rental until the next day. 

Looking for hotel recommendations- I have already booked but am second guessing my choice after doing additional research. So I would love to hear your suggestions. Thanks in advance. 

It's nice to know, sometimes I will turn one on and fall asleep to it, or have one playing while getting ready for dinner. Sorry I haven't seen July's list.

The chef on our visit to the chef's table on the Triumph said some of the appetizers and courses took one person up to 4 hours to create the 15 servings - they make extras in case one is dropped or otherwise ruined - the presentation is so beautiful and craftsmanship is top notch!

Did they have the new menu on the Triumph?

And you know this because you were in contact with the powers that be at Royal Caribbean that made this decision? Right. The only one looking foolish here is you.

 

I was on the cruise on the Navigator last week. We didn't get off the ship until 8 pm and didn't know during the day if we would be able to get into the port at Galveston. Had we not been able to get in port we would most likely have had to go to New Orleans to disembark. So there was uncertainty for all of us.

People had to change flights, etc.

 

Royal Caribbean went out of their way to keep us informed. As it was a Spring Break cruise there were a lot of kids on board. They opened up the Arcade for free all day Sunday and all pay per view movies in cabin were complimentary. We were happy with the way it was handled.

 

Now the embarkation the Sunday before….another story entirely. A real mess. And I am not talking about the late embarkation due to fog, that was handled well with cell phone calls to us from Royal. But when they were ready for us to embark late they had a mass of people trying to get in one entrance door at the pier with no order, no lines, no employees helping, nothing. Royal Caribbean gets a D+ at best for that and it WAS under their control.

 

Great cruise though and weather in all 3 ports was awesome. New restaurants Sabor and Izumi as well as Giovanni's Table were great. Chops however, raised their price and dropped favorite menu items, not a very smart move. We found the food fine but missed the dropped items. I would much rather go to the other specialty restaurants than Chops now.

I wonder what happened with embarkation because when I got off the ship there was an organized line at the door, with two or three employees watching the line and telling folks it would be a while still.

 

And nothing in the compass about tender tickets for Belize. We have an rci excursion and have instructions to be at the theater by 7:45 tomorrow. The compass says an 8 am arrival and first tenders are 8:30. I'm guessing that is for the non-excursion folks.

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums mobile app

Sorry if this has already been addressed - haven't read all the replies yet - it did say in the compass that if you were not on an RCI excursion you had to pick up tender tickets. There was a crowd waiting to pick them up as we were headed to the theater to meet our group.

Can anyone tell me the current cost per minute to call from your cabin? On the website it says 7.95 a minute, just checking to see if that's accurate still. Thanks

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

Just one more week!!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums mobile app

Ditto! I hope that next week is fog free! Right now it looks like we will have a 30% chance of rain and high of 60. Planning on wearing jeans and bringing a jacket for boarding.

Looked like Caribbean Princess arrived home quite early last night, I suppose to beat any predicted fog. Only real impact I would think happened to pax was casino closed earlier than expected.

Does Bayport terminal have web cams? Or did you just see via vessel finder or something...

Don't know about soda package, but have ordered wine package on boarding and was not charged sales tax. So what would be the difference?

Should be the same I would think. Thanks!

Or wait a few hours after leaving port; once in international waters you won't be charged tax.

Yeah thought of that too, but we get onboard early (usually on by 1130) and won't be in international waters until after dinner, I have a feeling I will want a soda or two and a virgin lava flow or two by then :D

I bought mine on-line for our cruise in April, and I paid $20/person/day with no tax.

Thanks Cindy, I know I can get it online for the $140 without tax, and am thinking about doing that. But we have some onboard credit, and I could wait until we board to buy it so I end up using the onboard credit. But if I am going to end up paying tax on it, why spend an extra $10 on tax, you know?

If you have purchased the replenish package in Galveston before leaving port - were you charged tax? I seem to remember several years ago when DH bought a soda package he was charged tax but wouldn't have been if he had waited until we sailed. However, could be remembering wrong, and that was 2007 anyway.

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

We have two reservations on our upcoming cruise, going to try it out but really considering cancelling the second reservation. They also took away the creme brulee, which was my favorite dessert. I am sure there are several things on the new menu that will be very nice, but tater tots? really?

From the recent reports they have also done away with the tablecloths, and seem to be staffing it lighter as most have reported waiters being rushed and serving more tables.

If I am paying extra for the dining it should not be a more casual experience than the dining room, just my 2 cents.

Whoever is monitoring cruise cam is zooming in on her, I have not seen them do this before

She is on Emerald cam!

Bummed to see the fog this morning, we leave in 2 weeks and fingers crossed it is clear that weekend!

Was watching Emerald cam and it cleared up for a while but getting foggy again.