sgmn

2 hours ago, Sunshine3601 said:

Thank you Graham.  I hope you and Pauline have a fabulous day despite the gloomy weather.

We are expecting rain all day here.

We're having a named storm go through at moment. Not too bad in the South,  lots of rain and wind mainly. But up north (where Graham is) and Scotland have had it pretty bad with flooding .

Out on the River doing housekeeping chores, pumping out and filling up, getting the boat ready to be taken out next week.  It's cold and cloudy here today 

17 hours ago, BonTexasNY said:

Please forgive me in advance for bringing this subject in here.  I feel I'm living it in my mind even though physically I live in safety.

 

Everyday Jack and I talk to his sister in Israel.  Her grandson is part of the 300,000+ troops stationed along the Gaza border. People go to bed, not that they sleep, in their daytime clothing in the likely event that they will have to get to their bomb shelters quickly.

 

We have so many friends and family in Israel and we include Dani and her family among those we hold in our thoughts and prayers to stay safe.

 

I look forward to coming in here and reading all the wonderful posts especially @Sea DogGreg's live Adventure review.  It keeps me sane knowing how many decent people there are in this world.

 

Wishing all who are cruising or about to cruise, sunny skies, smooth sails and fabulous adventures.

 

 

Thank you Bonnie, prayers and wishes for safety to Jacks family and of course to Dani and her family 🙏 

Surely a large corporate travel company like Royal Caribbean can do the right thing in this case, their passenger is in a war zone!

OP, I hope you are in a safe area and that you, your travel agent and Royal Caribbean can work something out

3 hours ago, Pandamonia said:

Royal has alienated so many cruisers in Europe the diamond lounge is mostly empty on every cruise with just a few die hard royal cruisers still in there rethinking their loyalty. 
 

im amazed how royal manages to keep finding new cruisers on the UK but seeing how bad inflation cost of living pressures are getting in Europe I think royal is in for a shock in 2024

On Symphony in May, cruise was full but only 6-10 people in DL (CL?) for HH. 

We eat late and often skip lunch so like to pop in for a few snacks and a couple of drinks for an hour or so in the evening. Snacks weren't great (not as good as Serenade last month) and took ages for drinks to be delivered and often wrong. I would ask for a dry rose and I got sweet (yuck).

Serenade  with the lovely VC lounge next door was much better

You can pre buy through Royal Caribbean some bottles which will be waiting in your cabin when you arrive.  I believe, as you bought through RC, there's no corkage charge if you take them into the dinning room .

Probably not much different than buying on board though.

And if you are diamond or above you can use one of your vouchers to get a 40% discount off a bottle of wine under $100

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/royalgifts/wine-liquor

8 hours ago, Luckynana said:

@jmh2006  HAPPY ANNIVERSARY JENNIFER & DAVE!!!!  🥂🌹🥂

 

 

🚢

 

+1, Happy anniversary, have a fab cruise 🛳 😀 

Sue

This sounds an excellent cruise with interesting ports. Will enjoy reading along. Thank you for taking time out to do the blog.

Hope your travels to embarkation port goes well 👍 

9 hours ago, Sunshine3601 said:

Great news!   When I told my boss that we cancelled our January cruise he invited us to their home in Cape Coral for a long weekend.

 

Yesterday he told me he booked a couple of days at Boca Grande, Gasparilla island.

 

We will sail on their catamaran to the island.  Dock and stay onboard as their catamaran sounds like a small yacht with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, full living room, full kitchen, and hot tub on sun deck.

 

I never heard of this island off the coast of Ft. Myers but it looks beautiful from everything I saw online last night.

Wow Debbie  he sounds like a great boss. How absolutely fabulous 👌 

Happy anniversary Greg and Mrs Sea Dog. Your cruise has great ports, will be following your blog with interest 

11 hours ago, aussielozzie18 said:

DH has re-discovered his holiday mojo.  After years of only holidaying  in the exact same location,  he is now keen for variety.  First it was beautiful Noosa.  Yesterday, he sent me a link to some lovely cottages at the base of a lighthouse on the NSW coast.  We are booking one of the cottages today.

 

Looks like my days of cruising are coming to an end.  I started cruising in 2013 because I was bored of holidaying in the same spot every year.  With DH being keen to explore more,  both my “kids” soon to be living overseas and limited leave as I work full-time,  land trips are going to be my focus from now on until we retire.

Glad hubby's found his wanderlust again. 

When we were working we thought we would be jumping on cruises every other month and taking long trips abroad.  But reality is we are probably doing the same amount of cruises as pre retirement, 2-3 a year and more short trips. Partly because of the grandchildren and family commitments, partly because of costs, living off pensions, cost of living etc, partly because of the boat which costs a small fortune in mooring fees, we need to get our money's worth out of it.

We really enjoyed our European road trip this Summer and want to do more like this 

9 hours ago, Arzeena said:

L and J were going to the West Deck for lunch. I was absolutely thrilled  to meet them yesterday. 

If you see J can you ask if he's still doing a blog for his world cruise on you tube or elsewhere? I was really looking forward to it.

I don't unfortunately do fb 

Sue

7 hours ago, Bruin Steve said:

  By the time we're onboard, I'm guessing there will only be a scant few passengers less than D+...

EARN MO

Reading some of the individual sectors roll calls I think quite a few 'normal' pax booked without knowing it was part of the world cruise.

So there may be a few diamond and below members, including us. 

But I agree it will be interesting to see how they can make any kind of exclusive experience for pins and D+ when over half the ship are at that level.

Just hope we won't be kicked out of whole areas/lounges. Love sitting in the Viking Crown lounge having a pre dinner drink 

Hoping someone will do a trip report and let us know.

Our sectors are in July too and I'm thinking of cancelling for this and other reasons

31 minutes ago, bucfan2 said:

. Heck, 3 post-covid cruises in a suite and one could go from newbie to diamond. 

True, but a lot of people (most I would think) cruise just once a year in a balcony or below. All my points have been earned one night, one point. 

I've  also cruised other lines,  therefore it's taken a long time to get to the highly anticipated Diamond level. 

Hoping that the op's experience was a one off and the CEO of RC will honour what he said when he announced the change of name of the lounge

The weather has finally turned chilly. Yesterday was about 8c but bright and sunny, just how I like it.

We went for a walk along the Thames in Henley.  Up to the weir and lock and then back into Henley and hot chocolate with chilli at our favourite cafe.

Molly wasn't happy on the wooden bridge with water rushing under 

Love the name on the third boat along in the second pic

7 hours ago, Momof3gurlz said:

Captains Club Benefits - this is what Celebrity calls their loyalty program.  As Diamonds, Celebrity matched us to their Elite category.  There are some similar discounts offered on things like internet, drink packages, spa services, etc. and these are comparable to RC’s.  
Instead of 4 drink vouchers, Celebrity has a nightly happy hour with free drinks for Elite members (only certain drinks are included). Our booking included the drink package so on this particular cruise the happy hour wasn’t any benefit to us. I think the 4 free drinks per day on RC is better because you can have any time of day. What I did love was the free bag of laundry each, this is a great benefit IMO.  Advantage: None 

Overall - we found Celebrity to be much more organized with fewer lines for anything. The morning we disembarked we had not received a final statement either in our cabin or by email. I headed down to guest services expecting a wait but I was the only one there!  Self disembark was as easy as embarking. We simply dinged our sea pass cards and walked off- no line whatsoever.  Overall, if I had to describe the difference between the two lines I’d say Celebrity is more refined.  Now is that because this was a Mediterranean itinerary instead of Caribbean, I’m not sure.  I’d be interested in trying out Celebrity in the Caribbean to see if there’s more of a party atmosphere.  So Celebrity came out with a slight advantage but the difference was not as substantial as I expected.  
I’m happy to answer any questions!
 

Great review Deb. We did three Celebrity cruises when cruising restarted, Beyond and twice on Silhouette.

Your review is very fair. We were a bit disappointed with the food as everyone had raved how much better the food was and we felt it was same as RC or maybe slightly better in the Dinnng Room. The daily snacks delivered to our concierge cabin were awful. 

Our main complaint was we love a big upper deck oceanview lounge at the front of the ship where we can sip our pre dinner HH wine and look at the sea. On Edge class that area is given over to suites and not accessible to non suite guests.  We thought the shows on Beyond were excellent, on Silhouette, similar to the smaller RC ships

We quite liked the infinity balconies and thought they would be great for a cool weather cruises 

Sue

39 minutes ago, Billy Baltic said:

Does RC follow these laws?

I think they follow the law of the country the cruise departs from. For instance in USA they can only drink alcohol from 21 years, in Europe its 18 years

On my last cruise the napkin folding demo was held in the schooner bar and two children aged around 10 did a great demonstration of folding a napkin into a ship  after the crew member had finished. I was very impressed with a) their skill and b) their confidence 

30 minutes ago, Ocean Boy said:

I thought she was talking about J&L too.

Me too !!!

19 minutes ago, OCSC Mike said:

 

I do, lol. As long as they don't take away my morning cappuccinos, I can live without the snacks until I'm D+.

 

Same here, may  save me a few lbs in weight 

10 hours ago, Sunshine3601 said:

Eric and I have had an physcially and mentally exhausted week.    

As you may recall we had a last minute problem with laundry sink in basement of his Mom's house that we were selling back up.    We did get a drain guy out there Monday night to look at and he came back Tuesday morning to do a clean out.     Said it was the drain pipe from Master bathroom and hall bath upstairs that had a clog.    Said all was clear and good to go.    

 

Closing was supposed to take place Tuesday at 2 pm and in good faith we asked our Realtor to let the buyers know that we had a last minute drain issue but all was resolved.     The buyers asked to extend closing until Thursday as they wanted to make sure themselves all was good.    We agreed.    Thursday came and went and they asked to extend closing until Friday afternoon.    We told him he had until 3 pm Friday to close.     Friday at 3:30 pm we received his request to terminate contract asking for full refund of their $10K deposit stating they had concerns about drain but were unable to get a plumber inspect.     

 

Twist to this story is the buyer had hired their own electrician to do some work in changing out main power line that connects to the house (that we did not authorize).    We stumbled upon this contractor working on Wednesday.     We immediately called our realtor and advised we did NOT authorize this electrical work.   He phoned the buyers and was told "he forgot to cancel the electrician as he had scheduled him thinking he was closing on Tuesday"    Now that he had the main power line for the whole house disconnected.    We told the electrician to finish up and reconnect/restore power to the house asap and that we are NOT responsible for paying him as we did Not authorize the work and the person that hired him did Not own the home.     He looked shocked and kept apologizing.   

 

On this same trip to the house we noticed a couple of items that we said we would leave with the home in the shed and garage for the new buyer (snow blower, lawn mower, small pressure washer, leaf blower and some misc. garden tools that were hanging up) were all gone from the property.       Looks like some sneaky action by the prospective buyer but this was Wednesday so I we thought okay let's see if he closes by end of week.   

 

Back to current time, he did Not close and we advised him we will Not issue full refund of his deposit money until he provides proof he paid for the electrician he hired to insure we are not financially liable and we want everything that is missing from the home to be returned ASAP.    

 

Eric has been so stressed out about everything so last night we turned off the outside world and had a nice relaxing evening in front of the fireplace with a bottle of kraken (almost gone).  

 

Meanwhile our Realtor contacted a couple that had made a back-up offer and we accepted their offer last night and they are scheduled to close on November 10th.    Fingers and toes crossed this one happens.      

Ah Debbie, what a nightmare. Buying and selling a house can be very stressful.  I like the Scottish system, once you put in an offer you are committed. So all checks gave to be done first .

Glad you had a backup couple 

Such great news, I'm so pleased for you. Have an absolutely fabulous holiday 😀 

16 hours ago, fredmdcruisers said:

If your lower count makes you feel the thread doesn't matter so be it. 

I didn't say this, please don't put words into my mouth.

Doesn't matter to me if you come to a different number than I do.

On 10/11/2023 at 3:08 PM, TravelGirlinDallas said:

This is an epidemic now that the 2nd housekeeping service has been removed. There were trays on the floor throughout the entire length of the cabin corridors on the Allure this past summer. 

We noticed on our last cruise that any dishes we left in our room were put outside our room, presumably by the stateroom attendant. I can only think that now they have more rooms to look after the new procedure is for someone from the kitchens to collect all the dishes left outside by the attendants 

9 hours ago, Sea Dog said:

 

My goal was to lose 12 pounds before the cruise. I'm at 200 pounds. I weighed 250 before my right knee replacement. I want to get down to 175 eventually and get off blood pressure meds.

Congratulations on your weight loss , 50lbs is amazing, you must feel so much better 

17 hours ago, Ocean Boy said:

Too bad he got himself banned from CC and now most of us get info second hand.

Sorry to hear he's been ill. Such a great character, he was so generous with his time doing great blogs

I was so looking forward to his world cruise blog 😕

I make 24 15+ night cruises in 2024, of which I am on one of them