the wandering two

How can you book a cruise without knowing what you've paid for?

That's if they have the availability, no guarantee you'll get what you ask for unless you see it being poured.

You'll only know when you get onboard, we're sailing on Equinox next month & on the app I'm seeing Stella at $10 or $11 & Newcastle Brown at $8 or $9 depending on which bar list you look at. The MDR wine list is showing the biggest selection of wines by the glass on both packages, decoy cab $14.

You've woken up a memory, on the dearly missed Marco Polo (back when Orient Lines existed as part of NCL) doing Antarctica & Chilean fjords. We were sharing a table of six with a couple from Australia & another from USA. Ourselves & the Ausies were bemoaning the tasteless butter being served, so when we found Kerrygold in a supermarket in Chile we bought it & brought it to dinner that night. It went down a treat so much that our waiter put it in the fridge for us & had it on the table every night until we ran out. Can't imagine anything like that happening now.

What's the beer selection like for Mr, we're on Equinox next month, I'm afraid most USA cruise lines are lite lager & not much else.....

Posted the above before I read your reply, at D+ you'll certainly know the $$ of everything on Royal.

Only if you are on a large new ship, our Last Royal cruise on Jewel had the usual theatre rotating mix of show/singer/magician etc, pianist in Schooner bar, occasional participation show in atrium, but not much else. I'd rate P&O higher for food especially Iona with the Quays & Olive grove included. Small plates in Glass House great value, although was only serving a reduced menu when we were last on in January. Eaten in Epicurean, Sindu & Keel+Cow once and underwhelmed with all of them. American cruise lines + drinks=$$$$+18% tip. P&O wins with the virtual queue dining on the app. Read the endless threads on RCI page re My Time Dining problems. Depends if you are cruising for the itinerary or ship. We have upcoming trips on each I mentioned, Iona for the ship & new year, Jewel for itinerary, Iceland, Greenland, Nova Scotia etc.

In the same way that some cruisers (mostly from USA, imho) are fixated on prime rib, lobster & pinot noir.

Hi all, it's been a long time since we've sailed Celebrity, due to be on Equinox in May & have select dining. Having had issues in the past with Royal's "my time dining " mainly due to them using the dining room for a 1st sitting prior to MTD, thought that Celebrity may be easier due to having (we presume) a dedicated anytime venue. Doesn't sound like it's the case, probably book the best time we can & see what happens. Any thoughts?

We were on this sailing too, had a great time. After an eight year gap Iona has brought us back to P&O, this was our 3rd time onboard & had already booked the equivalent new year sailing this December long ago. You need to be really quick booking 710 club, the seats will go within a couple of hours of embarkation although some did open up further into the cruise. At least Olive Grove is now pre bookable around 2 weeks prior to online.

Great review, we've multi ported many times & love it, means when it is your time to leave you're not trying to disembark with another 4000 people. But then Yacht Club guests would go to the front anyhow.

Just off Iona, 3rd time in Alicante & as we had walked to the castle both times previously decided to do something different. Took the tram from Plaza de Los Luceros €1.45 each way to the Roman ruins at Lucentum, one of the MARQ museum sites €3 each. Well worth doing & still had enough time back in town for a few tapas & drinks. Got lucky with the Ocean Race 2023 event starting that day (January 7th) so would certainly look at the Ocean Race Museum for next time.

Based on our experience on Smeralda, the basic package was great. We normally avoid cocktails on cruises especially on American lines as they tend to be really sweet & use a lot of syrups, whereas Costa used more fruit purees instead. Look out for ones that can only be got at the branded bars like Campari (grand sidecar) or Ferrari spritz variations. The ship wide prosecco is Sant orsola, but again you can get Campari prosecco and Bisol 1542(Ferrari) at their bars. Boarding P&O Iona today, our third sailing on her, seem to have a liking for Excel class ships, it was interesting to see the differences between the two.

Great review, we were on Smeralda early December and mirror your views on Infinity bar, Colosseo & food. We've never stayed up so late on a cruise in a long time as there was always so much entertainment throughout the ship. We generally caught the late Colosseo show whilst at Caffe Vergnano for a nightcap after leaving Teatro Sanremo. I'm guessing the layout of Toscana is much the same in that what would be the main forward theatre is very small. Our sailing was at about 60% capacity & people were sitting on the stairs due to the lack of space. The buffet on deck 8 was another odd design decision given that the main pools are on 16&17. The cynic in me would say that this makes you walk past many of the extra fee restaurants on your way there. We'd still return in a heartbeat but would stick to out of season, at capacity would be mayhem.

If you have an upcoming sailing the wine bottle packages are listed in the MDR menu.

Olive grove is now available to pre book online, two weeks prior to sailing.

We noticed the same, booked dining yesterday & entertainment this morning.

Ours was on our account the day after sailing. Got back Dec 5th and no spurious charges as yet. Any idea how long it takes them to apply the sailing to your account and issue the 10% off future cruise voucher?

Success. Had planned to do as you suggest when a reply arrived this morning requesting an updated proof of holding. Sent that & had a reply within a couple of hours.

Thanks for the reply. When I didn't get an automated confirmation of email, like I do from P&O, I contacted customer relations in order to confirm the OBC email & they replied in a couple of hours. Maybe contact them next week. Can't think of what else to do other than resend the original request?

Hi all, Wondering if anyone has any recent experience of applying for shareholder OBC recently & how long they took to reply? Booked Smeralda Nov 28th one week ago & applied for credit on the same day via email as the time span is a bit tight. Only our second Costa, last time used snail mail as the only options then were that or fax. The other Carnival brand that we use is P&O, applied a couple of weeks ago & they send an immediate automated reply & had credit confirmed four days later.

Yes the baggage handlers have spares, we had the same issue earlier this year.

I'll add that my cruise card for those two sailings had my "correct" Voyagers number that I've always had.

I had a similar problem, my account was missing my last two sailings whilst my wife had been credited ok. Noticed that any marketing emails I received from them had me at gold tier & a different m/ship number. Emailed & got no reply, waited a couple of months and tried again & got lucky. Turns out I had two accounts in my name so all sorted. Keep at it, I must have got someone at the other end who actually bothered to look at the issue. We're in the UK & mailed mscdirect@msccruises.co.uk, not sure what the equivalent would be in USA.

Merion_Mom is spot on, Jewel will have a far more intimate feel onboard. Our 2nd last Royal sailing was on J, a transatlantic also, great lounge and centrum entertainment, & rarely went to the theatre shows. Our last a cheapie five nighter on Mariner, we found fit and finish sadly lacking, thought that ships on the domestic Florida runs are forgotten about, but maybe not given your experience. Will be getting on Jewel this Friday, so will be interesting to compare.