Sigyn

I took my mom in 1999 and I didn't need a timed ticket then. but it could have changed soon after.

there was an activity last month that would result in 1 captains club point. I can't remember what it was. it was short lived and I didn't do it.

Who pays $20K for a suite? 🤣

Desserts have been mentioned several times here. I was underwhelmed by the desserts as a whole. Of course we tried them. We love our sweets! The buffet desserts at Windjammer were all very meh and not worth the calories. The MDR desserts were the same. The melting chocolate cake was just a lump of chocolate cake with what seemed to be chocolate syrup squirted on to make it seem like "melting" chocolate cake. And in the specialty restaurants, while the desserts looked gorgeous, they were either overly sweet with no specific flavor other than sugar (the pavlova in Jamie's) or just pretty without anything else to redeem them, but decent enough that we still ate half. (We're not animals!) The lemon meringue cheesecake at Jamie's fell into this category. It looked utterly amazing, but it didn't have a strong enough lemon flavor and the cheesecake wasn't creamy enough. It was just meh as far as cheesecake goes. The meringue on it was delicious, tho. The red velvet cake in Chops was about a 6 on a scale of 1-10. It was just cake. The frosting wasn't good. The cake was average. I can make better myself, and have. Oh, the churros in Sabor. My son loved those. I didn't taste them, however, so I can't comment. Came back to say I remembered the warm apple pie in Chops - that was pretty, pretty good.

The cruise date and itinerary worked for my son's spring break. I booked five weeks before the cruise. it was a last minute decision. And I thought since it was a mother-son cruise, the focus would be on him and he'd enjoy the experience. I was right. He did. He LOVED it and didn't care about the quality of the food. He had a blast. I'm the whiner here. (My next cruise in 80-some days is with Celebrity. I've never tried Celebrity before, but looking forward to it.)

haha. the game of telephone lives on!

I hear you on the timestamp stuff. So annoying! It's why we didn't visit the Getty on our last trip. I used to go there fairly regularly when I lived nearby, often just to wander around the gardens, but now it's such a pain. Throwing out another idea - the South Bay (Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach in particular) offer really cool beach towns. Both Hermosa and Manhattan have piers that you can walk down, and there are nice restaurants on the water for brunch. You might want to look into those and see what you can find. I took my family there on our last trip and they really enjoyed seeing my old haunts. It hadn't changed THAT much from 20 years ago, which isn't usually the case. It's still the South Bay and still full of surfers and a laid-back beach vibe. There's a boardwalk that runs for miles and you can park your car, get out, have lunch, and walk as far as your heart's content to see the scene. If you do that, I'd probably start in Hermosa, eat and park there, and walk north up toward Manhattan Beach. I used to live in Hermosa Beach. I love that place. I can't believe how expensive it is now. What I thought was expensive THEN, is insane now!

Wow, this sounds fantastic. I found one video of the cabin before I booked it, and that cinched the deal. I have found a few pictures thanks to the search suggestion from @Stem to Stern so that has made me really look forward to our cruise. It looks like a fantastic cabin, particularly for cruises like Alaska where the scenery is everything.

I know this is an old post, but I just booked this very same room, 8166 (but on Millie) for an Alaskan cruise and I'm super excited. it looks fantastic. And I think your photos were before the refresh!

Definitely stay in Santa Monica over Marina del Rey. There's so much more to do in Santa Monica, and to walk to from your hotel. You won't regret the choice. As for traffic, there is always traffic in LA. One time it took me two hours to go from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills. That's 3 miles. You just never know what is going on or why it's suddenly a hot mess on the roads. I lived in Venice Beach and then the South Bay for a long time, but not anymore. We were out there for vacation last summer, however, and we did the late night arrival thing and went ahead and got our car at the airport at midnight and drove to our Airbnb and arrived at 1 am. It was a pain to do that, but so much nicer to wake up that first morning and be settled into where we were staying for our entire visit. You don't want to traipse back and forth to LAX for a car rental, etc. That is just a waste of your vacation time and you never know when a half hour trip can turn into two hours due to unexpected traffic. As for your choices, you will LOVE the Petersen automotive museum. it's fantastic. The Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica is enjoyable, so you might want to stroll down that, and see the street performers on your unplanned day. Check out Abbott Kinney Blvd. in Venice Beach, too. Lots of interesting shops and things to see there. The Getty is great, but I've heard that now you'll need to reserve parking in advance. It fills up fast. I haven't been there in years so I'm not sure about the process, but there's info on their website.

it's definitely a bit steep, but I thought about how much we'd enjoy the deck, and the second room in the cabin, and took the plunge. I only spent $3,400 on the cabin before this upgrade, so being in for $5,200 isn't bad for a week long vacation. There's about $350 in OBC in there somewhere, too. A couple of weeks ago I cancelled the $700 I had spent on the separate boat ride to see the Hubbard Glacier up close, because it just seemed like too much to spend for two hours on that particular experience, so this seemed like a better way to spend some of that money.

I couldn't resist. We were booked in a sunset veranda for our upcoming Alaskan cruise on the Millennium, which is a great cabin, but one of the former family ocean view stateroom verandas, now called an "ultra deluxe veranda stateroom" on the corner with the gigantic balconies opened up so I grabbed it. Cost me an extra $900 pp, but it seemed like a fun splurge for an Alaskan cruise. So, no move up bid will be placed from me. I did it myself. To a steep price. But the photos I'm seeing of this balcony make it seem worth it. Thoughts, anyone? I haven't found many details about this particular stateroom. It's cabin #8166 in the photo. We were in cabin #8170 on this same deck.

There is that. I do like good food and well-prepared dishes. That said, the mushroom soup at Chops was really, really good. I mentioned it in my original post. I told my husband just this afternoon that it was nearly as good as my favorite soup at Goose & Gander in St. Helena in Napa Valley. But that's the thing - the speciality restaurants on NCL's Prima for our December cruise were really good. They were worth the upcharge. Were they all as good as my favorites in Napa Valley? No. But Onda was. And at all of the restaurants some of the dishes were as good, and others came close and the service was really outstanding in all of them. I had high hopes for the same on Royal Caribbean since the pricing was similar and it caters to the same type of crowd.

Because when we went to the specialty restaurants on our NCL cruise on the Prima, most of them were a notch (or two) better than what we would expect when visiting that type of restaurant at home. We went to Onda on the Prima, and the food was amazing, the service was outstanding, and each dish was perfectly prepared. I hoped the hibachi would take it up a notch as well.

I feel the same. I've watched a bunch of videos people have taken on the fisherman's tour and it just seems...commercial. I can see why some people like it, but it doesn't appeal to me. Sitting on bleachers on a boat and hearing the guys talk about their fishing experiences and making jokes. It's not quite the thing for me. If it was $50, maybe. But it's pretty expensive as for what I would get out of it. I could be totally wrong since so many people love it. I'm just not connecting with the appeal of it, obviously. And as for the crab feast. I'm not a big eater, and I'm not a fast eater, so I don't see a lot of appeal in that one either.

In case anyone is interested, I took photos of the Starbucks menu boards during our cruise last week on Harmony of the Seas. It's a little more expensive than my local Starbucks, but not by much: $6.95 for a grande caramel ribbon crunch frappuccino, $5.95 for a grande mango dragonfruit lemonade, $7.20 for a grande pink drink with vanilla sweet cream cold foam and $6.25 for a grande caramel macchiato.

I don't think they need to be better than home or outstanding to be good choices on a cruise. I was just pointing out that the hibachi isn't better than home, which is interesting given that it's a $15 pp upcharge over the cost of the UDP. I had to pay for the UDP plus another $30 in order to get something equivalent to a hibachi dinner at home. Yikes! At least the sushi dinner was not an upcharge and it was good. As a do over, I'd have had dinner there a couple more times. My son had gyoza, a California roll and chicken teriyaki. He said it was good but "not as good as hibachi." lol. yeah. I didn't have to pay an extra $30, either, kid! 🙂 I had a salad, sashimi and a specialty sushi roll. all done well.

I told them when they asked why only a bite or two, or sometimes only 1/3 of our food was eaten. If they didn't ask, I didn't bother. I consider it part of good service to ask why a dish is barely touched. For instance, at Sabor, the waiter asked when I didn't eat the red snapper ceviche, and asked why. I explained that it was flavorless, and that it was served slightly warm, which is weird for ceviche, and the texture was strange and not what I was used to for ceviche. I said more citrus flavor would add some punch. He said he would relay my comments to the chef. He offered to bring a replacement dish, but I had shrimp tacos coming, so there was no point to get another appetizer at lunch. The next dish, the aforementioned shrimp tacos, I barely touched. The waiter did not ask me why I didn't eat them. If he had, I would have told him they were very salty. I had already filled up on guacamole, so I didn't want more food. At 150 Central Park, the waiter did not ask why the beef tenderloin for two was only half eaten, or why one lobster tail was left on the plate. It seems that he would want to know. I did tell him that the pork belly was very fatty and inedible. He offered to bring something else, but I declined. There wasn't anything else that seemed appealing at that point. So it was hit or miss with the wait staff asking about what was wrong. However, they did ask me several times to be sure and rate them a "10" when Royal Caribbean sent a survey at the end of the cruise.

Just got off of Harmony of the Seas. I was surprised at how bad the food was. We've cruised Carnival and Norwegian and the Royal Caribbean food was on par with Carnival. Which is to say, not good. Norwegian's food is quite good, and the specialty restaurants on Norwegian are as good as fine dining restaurants in the real world, but Royal Caribbean is just blech. We did the Unlimited Dining Package and ate in specialty restaurants much of the time to try to overcome the yucky food factor, to no avail. Chops, 150 Central Park, Sabor...the food was all pretty meh. Jamie's was delicious for lunch one day, but the very same dish - prawns with linguine - ordered for dinner another night was dry and disappointing as if it had been sitting out for hours, waiting for someone to order it and then they'd heated it up again. The pasta carbonara was a favorite of my son's every time he tried it, fortunately. If I had to pick a decent specialty restaurant, I'd opt for Jamie's, since sometimes it was good and some dishes were tasty. The lamb chops at dinner were very good. But the eggplant parmigiana, not so much. At Chops, the steaks were tough and overcooked. The bacon appetizer was a strip of fatty, wet pork. The mushroom soup was a win, however. At 150 Central Park, the pork belly was literally a blob of crispy fat with not a speck of actual meat within it. The tenderloin for two was overcooked. The lobster thermidor was chewy and meh. We cancelled a second dinner we had scheduled at 150 Central Park out of disappointment from night #1. The ceviche at Sabor had to be sent back. It was bland and the texture was weird. The shrimp tacos were overly salty. But the guac was good. Wonderland was fun, but only half of the dishes tasted good. On and on...we did formal night in the MDR and were completely underwhelmed. On the positives, the hibachi restaurant was very good, and we thoroughly enjoyed that but it was no different than any hibachi restaurant you'd find at home. The Izumi sushi restaurant was good, too, but it wasn't outstanding, just a regular sushi restaurant. But since we'd had such awful food until that point, we were happy to have edible food we could enjoy. I did really like the Greek salad I had on CocoCay from the snack shack on Chill Island. That was very good and completely surprised me. We did Windjammer for breakfast each morning and that was actually okay. Funny that the buffet was the best thing we did. Maybe because I just ate yogurt and fruit and my son ate pastries and waffles. Altho the coffee was lukewarm. My son enjoyed Sorrento's Pizza, but I didn't try it. I was so disappointed in the food. I had hoped it would be better and that everyone's complaints were overblown. They were not.

As mentioned, if you do it on the first day of the cruise you will get in a drawing for a prize (it was an extra $250 OBC on my cruise this past week on Harmony and then they extended the drawing for people who booked on the first three days of the cruise), and OBC. And you get the lower deposit. You don't have to actually book the cruise to get these benefits. You put down a $200 deposit for a future cruise and you have two months to book the cruise and still get the OBC. If you can't pick a cruise within those two months, you can forgo the OBC and take up to 12 months to book a future cruise and still get the lower deposit. I might end up doing that since the OBC is only $100 for a 6-9 day cruise. The deposit is $100 pp. So if you just do two people, your original $200 deposit is enough. If you add one person to the cabin, you pay an extra $100 when you book your cruise, even if it is 12 months later. And that cruise can be anytime in the future, not just 12 months from when you paid the original $200 deposit.

Still on Harmony: 4 pm on a sea day right now and the download speed is better, upload is worse

On her right now. She looks fantastic. Looks fresh and new. We were just on the Norwegian Prima in December and that ship is brand new. Harmony looks just as amazing.

You did fantastic with your deals! I tacked mine onto a business trip so I didn't have time to do tons of research, just kinda went with what was there. We stayed at the beach club and really loved it, but yeah, no discounts to be had, and we booked so late there were no dining packages, either. Did a character breakfast, a couple special things like Star Wars, etc. Honestly, we spent just under $9K out of pocket, but that was because one night was part of my business trip and my flight was covered through my work trip. But it was $10K overall with what my company paid, too. Just nutty how much everything was. but we were at beach club, not the grand Floridian. I have stayed at the Polynesian for work trips, too, and love that, but would never pay $700 a night out of pocket. The beach club was $450 a night plus all the taxes and fees, so like $500 a night. all of the food, and flights, and car rental, just added up so very fast. and tickets to the park. ouch.

Very, very true. That's a different level of wealth. I have looked at what I consider mid-luxury suites on Silverseas and Oceania (not the $34K suites on the Ritz Carlton's new yacht) and they're not bad for what you get - $9K to $10K for two adults, all drinks, some excursions, etc., included, with a butler and a very high level of service and food. I think those could be worth it. I have only opted against it because I realize I might like it TOO much and never want to cruise "down" again! It's like eating the best dessert in the world. You don't want to know it exists because then I'll want it all the time and gain a bunch of weight. And yet I cannot cruise like that all the time, nor eating crazy fattening desserts all the time. It is funny that others here questioned why I need to save to get the immediate cash on hand for what amounts to $35K of carpeting and a garage remodel. If I had $35K extra cash sitting around that wasn't earmarked for other expenditures such as kids college tuition, high school tuition, mortgage, bills, or general savings accounts, I wouldn't be questioning how people spend $20K on a cruise ship suite. That was the whole point of this thread. 😂

I'm guessing the $800 is the estimate once park tickets, food, and souvenirs are added to the cost. I see $800 as the daily cost of attending WDW if you stay in a value hotel. And the $213 is before all of the taxes and fees that are thrown in. I bet it's about $300 a night once those are tacked on.