bobmacliberty

I can't add anything re: sailing with diabetes, but the Allure is our family's favorite ship to date. You can find more info about the Royal Family Suite on the Allure here:

http://www.royalcaribbean.com/findacruise/cabinclass/cabinTypes/cabinType/cabin/home.do?br=R&cabincls=D&cabinType=FS&shipCode=AL

Note that the living room also has a sofa bed.

We have typically sailed with the parents in a balcony and the kids (2 girls) in an inside across the hall, as Brillohead suggested. It does save some money. We made the "mistake" of putting our daughters in a balcony next to us on our last cruise and they are now balcony snobs. I can understand want to have connecting rooms for your situation.

I've looked several times at getting a RFS instead of 2 rooms but the price was never even close enough to consider. Since we are a family of 4, Royal won't typically even open the RFS to just 4 people until shortly before sailing. You may have better luck with a family of 5. My guess though (and it's purely a guess) is that you will not be able to get a RFS at a reasonable price for a summer cruise, since summer cruises are often fully booked. Never hurts to ask though.

Looks like there is a lot still missing. Are you referring to the Abyss?

I'd also vote for an Oasis eastern itinerary cruise. Allure is easily our favorite ship to date (almost the same as Oasis) and our eastern cruise last summer was our favorite itinerary. We really enjoyed CocoCay (Royal's private island) and St. Maarten (do a YouTube search on Maho Beach!).

We're doing the southern itinerary for the first time this summer and the consensus opinion here seems to be that southern is best. As others have noted, the ships will be slightly older and smaller, but that's all relative. The Adventure of the Seas that we will be on, and her sister ships were (I think...someone will correct me) the largest in the world at the time they were built around 2000. There is only 1 sea day (relaxing by the pool with drinks :)) and 5 days stopping at different ports. That gives you flexibility to take tours and visit interesting places, or find a great new beach every day. We will also spend a day in San Juan before the cruise starts. As others have noted, you will be in warm weather from the moment that you step off the plane until you get back on a week later. The same is probably true when leaving from Ft. Lauderdale on Oasis but several people can attest that wasn't always true this winter.

We've only cruised out of Bayonne once (5 day cruise to Bermuda) and my wife will never cruise from there again. We had very rough seas (in June) on the first day leaving and the last day coming back. All outside decks were closed. If you or your fiancé are prone to motion sickness, that's a consideration. Some (many?, most?) cruises from Bayonne get calm seas, but the risk of rough seas seems to be higher out of Bayonne than out of southern Florida. One data point was enough for my wife.

They also may need to replace existing cable and existing wireless access points. Older Ethernet cable likely cannot handle the bandwidth needed by VOOM:

Ethernet Cable Identification and Use

Another vote for the sea lion encounter/swim in Coral World on St. Thomas.

Bulbs last years or decades instead of weeks or months. They do super cool things like change colors and cost you a fraction of old bulbs.

 

We have LED bulbs throughout the house (a few CFLs) it's remarkable how much cooler rooms are and how exact you can work it. You can get different lumens and different warmth levels that are light years ahead of the old 35W, 45W 60W 100W in soft white or bright white.

I'm mostly with you, but the prices and bulb formats aren't quite there yet. We have an open kitchen/family room area that has 17 recessed can fixtures that use PAR30 short neck halogen floods. I'd want to replace them all at the same time so that they all looked the same when turned on. That would cost me $350-400. I'll just keep buying replacement halogens for $6 each as long as my Lowe's still carries them. I wonder if we'll start using lumens rather than referring to equivalent incandescent wattage levels in my lifetime. :)

Back to the original thread of making fun of the OP... :D

I just looked at my C&A profile to see if there was someplace where you can indicate whether or not you want to receive email messages, since I haven't received any. Couldn't find anywhere to turn this on or off, but did find in the Cruising Preferences section where you can check future destination preferences. Mine only had West Indies/Caribbean checked. This is giving their IT Dept more credit than they probably deserve, but maybe their mass emails are based on this selection?? I tried also checking Europe to see if I might get notified next week.

Thanks...following also. Sailing her in June. What is your itinerary?

Add me to the list of Bernard's fans. We didn't see any topless women in the area of Orient Beach where we were. The southern part of the beach is better known as the nude beach, although it sounds like you could encounter topless women on any beach on the island.

We ran a little late because we spent more time than planned at Maho. As first time visitors, it was definitely worth spending the extra time there. As a result, we skipped the drop off in town and went straight back to the ship. Still got back with at least an hour to spare.

I will expand on the previous comment about the shuttle buses that they use. We were the last to get on our bus and DD and I ended up sitting up front with the driver in flip down seats. DD was in the middle and her feet were even with her bottom. It was a little awkward, but she's young. :D Required a little bit of climbing over seats to get in/out at each stop. This wouldn't be an issue for most people who sit in the "main" part of the bus and although it bugged me at the time, looking back it wasn't really a big deal. I actually had a great view from the front of the bus for taking pictures.

Really wish you guys hadn't told me about those airplane forums. Even though I'm not a plane fanatic, I can easily see losing several more hours of my life scanning through those sites.

Maybe I'll start Airplane Critic. :D

Have you ever seen the one at MCO? Hidden in the trees, you can just make it out on 528. I may take my grandson if I can figure out how to get to it

Saw this for the first time flying home from MCO last Thursday. Not sure how I could have missed it before. John...I'd be very interested in knowing if you can tour through it, if you figure that out for your grandson.

Lou - I'll trust your judgement that the 787 is a better bet at this point than the A380. I flew an A380 from Seoul to Atlanta a few months ago and all I can say is Wow. The entire upper deck was outfitted as Business Class...26 rows set up as 2/2/2 = 156 business class seats, plus small lounge areas in the front and back. Korean Air did a great job with their service. I can see how it takes a special gate(s) though to handle the number of passengers on these monsters.

Sounds interesting. What's in it?

A Miami Vice is half Strawberry Daiquiri and half Pina Colada. My favorite frozen drink. Remove the rum from both to make it virgin.

We too will be crushing in April with our 16 year old. My kids have always hung with their teen groups and have Loved it! We have to make them hang with us sometimes!

Similar experience with my 2 daughters. They were on Allure when they were 12 and 15 and it is still their favorite cruise. The teen area is bigger/better on Oasis class. As they get older though, they participate in fewer of the organized activities, and do more hanging out in groups. Make sure they attend the first night activity as this is when kids tend to meet each other and form their "pack" for the week.

A possible option would be to rent a car or 2 (or 3), drive to PC, and then drop the car(s). Several car rental agencies have locations a mile or 2 from the port with shuttle buses running regularly. Worked great when we did this but we only had 4 people and arrived a day early.

Check the Florida Departures port board for several other options/opinions.

They can make just about anything that you asked for, so long as they have the right booze and mixers. Search for one of the "what is your favorite drink onboard" threads here on CC and write down what sounds interesting. You can create your own drink menu. Personally, I'm a Miami Vice fan also.

Just a note - unless there is an adult booked into the "teens'" cabin you might have a problem - you're allowed two bottles per cabin AS LONG AS one of the passengers booked into that cabin is at least 21.

Geri - Do you know if this is definitely a rule (although I guess it makes logical sense)? We'll have 20 and 18 year old daughters in their own cabin (no one 21+ booked in that cabin) and were planning to bring 4 bottles total for us (the parents). I didn't see anything here stating that this was against the rules.

Internet packages are not room based (or at least that didn't impact us when we cruised on Freedom in 2 cabins last June). You can purchase a single device package and have all 4 of the people in your party use the same package...just no more than one device at a time. Would be a good way to either limit the kids, or create an argument over who's turn it is. :)

Other than our first cruise when our 2 kids were younger, we've gone with 2 cabins for the added space and second bathroom (especially with 2 daughters!). At first, we put the kids in an inside (technically, in a Promenade) and had a balcony across the hall for the parents. The kids were 12 and 15 and LOVED having their own room. You'd obviously know best if this would work for your kids. This saved money vs. 2 connecting balconies. You would need to price this out to see how much more expensive this would be compared to putting everyone in a single cabin.

I think that RCI is encouraging overconsuption and missing out on the revenue it could make from drinks.

I'm pretty sure that RCI knows MUCH better than we do how to maximize their revenue from drinks. Any business of any size that has at least one Business School grad understands price elasticity.

We have a taproom which has 40 craft beers on tap. On their beer menu they include Coors. The description? "Watery, no flavor, very light body". Do people still order it? Yep!

 

 

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There's a new higher end pizza and beer place near me. They have TV monitors that show all of their craft beer options, with a brief description, and a picture of a keg with a level line in it showing how much beer is left in that keg. Across the bottom, they list what beer is next on tap. All that said, they always have PBR on tap for $2. :D

Last cruise on Freedom we had no problem getting seconds on drinks in the MDR (with package). YMMV

I'm always curious about why these drink price threads get people so cranked up. They way I see it, you fit into one of 3 groups:

1. You don't drink much alcohol (or even none at all) on a cruise so prices don't matter
   
2. You drink lots on a cruise so the package is a reasonable (and maybe even a good) deal
   
3. You drink a little bit but not enough to justify the package.
   

Group 3 is the only group that should really care about the prices and given the relatively few drinks that they would have throughout the cruise, they may pay an extra $50(??) in drinks for the week from higher prices. As someone else noted, factor this into the cost of the cruise, order drinks when you're thirsty, and enjoy your cruise!

Some info:

 

http://www.royalcaribbeanincentives.com/resource-center.aspx/frequently-asked-questions-%28faqs%29/full-ship-charter-faqs

Interesting that the cost of displacing already booked guests is a part of the charter cost. $6M to charter an Oasis class ship for a week sounds like a bargain!

Coral World Ocean Park (with Sea Lion encounter) with Coki Point Beach nearby. We rented a car and drove. Easy to do.

Add me to the list of those recommending going on the first night. If your 17 y/o is a little Brillohead :D, she will meet people quickly. If not, there will be plenty of other kids there who are also more on the shy side. The staff there will help them meet. When my kids were that age, they didn't participate in too many organized activities, but they did meet people that first night to hang with the rest of the week. With social media, they still stay in touch.

I'd like to add that we typically fly without all of the heavy liquids that we (I mean DW and DDs) will need on the cruise like shampoos, conditioners, lotions, etc. We buy them at the cruise port. There is a CVS and a Walgreens within walking distance of the Embassy Suites and nearby hotels.