acegolfer25

We will be on a 7-day cruise on Harmony next week. Will the ship have access to live TV that shows World Cup matches?

Walk to town and take a bus to Mullet beach and walk to Maho beach to see the planes would be my suggestion for a nice economical day. Your daughter will see a little of the island that way and a beautiful beach and something very unique to St. Maarten.

Not OP. Family of 4 /w 12 & 8 yo girls. I found this to be the most informative and will likely follow this instruction later this month. TY.

Was there a large convention on the cruise? I have a friend who just returned from the Indy this morning and she was on a Scentsy leadership cruise.

 

Maybe they had events/seminars that made large groups congregate in certain areas.

 

I for one would love a "deserted" ship.

That's it! https://imagelive.scentsy.com/CMSImages/files/Resource%20Library/Scentsy%20Events/Travel-Info-US-EN-V2.pdf

I wondered what those private sessions were for. Perhaps, I'll book my next cruise when there's a big convention on the ship.

TY for inspiring the idea!

Just got back from 4-night Indy. Everywhere I went, there were not many people. Empty tables at dining rooms, lots of empty seats at theaters, virtually no lines everywhere.

Of course, it's the 2nd weekend of January but I checked online and found all the rooms (except for balcony) were sold out the day before departure. I don't think it was really sold out.

Have you experienced such cruise where you didn't have to face crowds? Can you share the month/week so that I can use it to book the next cruise?

Perhaps, there's a better method. But this is what I did to get a window table at independence. I hope it works.

First, book My Time Dining.

Second, when on board, go to the desk in front of the dining room (not to the guest service desk with a long line). And make a reservation (I reserved for an early dining time). The staff asked me to come early for a better table.

Third, at 5:30 pm, I went to the dining room got a windowed table.

Once the table is assigned, it stays with you for the rest of cruise, no matter when you show up. (I doubt it works if you show up 2 hours later, tho)

My family enjoyed the beautiful sunset while dining. Another reason for early dining. It was a fantastic experience.

There's a door in deck 7 next to the rock climbing area leading to aft cabins. Using this, you can avoid deck 6 traffic especially after diving shows.

How about deck 6? Is there a door between deck 6 aft hallway and the aquatheater?

It says 3pm boarding.

Does RCCL want to discourage this type of booking?

I don't think this is unique to RCCL. A family with 2 young kids were on Princess Cruise last year. We were quoted $2,500 for 1 cabin of 4 vs $1,200 for 2 cabins. We saved $1,300 for booking 2 cabins.

I guess this is a common practice.

Yorkvillain,

Thanks so much for verifying it. This is excellent for us who booked deck 7 port side aft cabins.

A&L and rake,

Thanks for your replies. Hope the door on the port side (close to our cabins) exists.

How to access the rock climbing? Is there stairs to rock climbing area?

I read " Also at the back of the 7th floor theres a secret door you can take at the end of the hallway where the staterooms are which takes you to the rock climbing area which leads to the boardwalk/jogging track. Nice shortcut if ur in that area :) We found it very useful! (found it on like day 4 lol)"

We just booked. Were deciding between 3-night majesty and 2-nighter.

This is a better schedule for FLL families with school-aged kids.

Thanks.

In theory it is passengers who are settling their onboard charges with cash.

But the reality is that the line is full of people deleting the daily service charge.

I'm surprised that hundreds of ppl would remove service charges.

Let me be the first to suggest it might have been those who like to tip individuals rather than pay the hotel charge.

I really appreciate the services, but I wouldn't stand in line for an hour to tip individually.

Just got off CB so not sure whether it applies to your ship.

We decided to self carry out. The day before disembarkation, they handed out walk off pass by groups at the shore excursion desk. The first group was 7:30 am staging at Coral dining room. We went down at 7:20 am and ppl were already getting off the ship and they didn't require the walk off pass. We cleared immigration/customs around 7:35 am. My kid was 10 minutes late for school (20 min drive from port).

Keep in mind that Horizon court gets busy early on last day. The long line started even at 6:30 am.

We had a fraud charge on our stateroom account at 6pm on the last night. Called front desk and was asked to come to the front desk to dispute the fraud charge.

When we got to the front desk, there was a long line. Had to wait in line for almost an hour frustrated.

Is it because everyone was trying to resolve fraud charges? Or is it because they didn't register the CC for express check out and had to pay manually?

I got back from a cruise that departed from Ft Lauderdale last week. The ship departure was 4 pm and we checked in at 2:30 pm. Had 1 family in front of us at the check in counter. Almost no wait.

One problem of checking in late is not enough time for a late lunch because of the muster drill at 3:30 pm.

I read a few posts implying devices can communicate with each other using ship wifi network (without paying).

I hope they are correct.

I think the advantage of ship wi-fi/network is that you will be able

to blast through multiple metal decks. Probably a problem for

point-to-point cell phone wi-fi.

If the ship allows peer-to-peer communication within its wifi network (intranet), then we won't be having this discussion. Problem solved.

If we can get hundreds of ppl creating a mesh network, then we don't need ship's network to communicate with each other on board. Look up firechat.

I tried several point-to-point messaging apps on carribbean.

 

In my experience, there were no router tables set up for this.

 

I could NOT send a message to a particular station on my subnetwork,

but I could send a broadcast message to all stations on my subnetwork,

and the second station would receive it.

Thanks for this valuable information.

Can you explain how to send a broadcast message to all stations (I suppose this is for the same subnet).

After researching, I found that devices can't locate (ping) another device even in the same ship subnet. So using any p2p on ship network is probably not going to work.

An alternative is firechat or serval mesh. Both theoretically should not rely on access points. However, both have limitations and I'm looking for a method to overcome these.

Found a solution that the cruise line cannot block. Install firechat app on your smartphone. Its a peer-to-peer network which doesn't use ship WiFi.

There is a thread below this one on using an android to communicate with others on the ship for free.

The conclusion of that thread is it doesn't work.

I am aware of ripple. Last time I checked they didn't have android version.