JokerABC

Just now, adline1 said:

You can book it online thru my ncl, once you’ve created your account. 

Yeah, I already have a login account.  I booked a bunch of excursions already, but nothing available for anything else like spa.

I now have 89 days left til our western Med cruise on the Epic and wanted to book a spa massage and specialty restaurants.   From recent cruisecritic searches, it showed I can book this stuff within 90 days. 

Do I need to book this stuff on the first day of the cruise?  I thought everything can be done online these days?

Ditto. The cruise lines rely on the ignorance of NON CC'ers to pay the insane prices. My cruise has doubled in price.

And you know unfortunately, the majority of cruisers are NOT on messageboards like CC. Majority of people with any particular interest group are not on forums actually.

I just put a 50% deposit down on this Property Brothers cruise on the Mariner of the seas. It's fully refundable til August 27 so sounded like a good idea.

Would be excited to try out a theme cruise with all the other fanatics.

haha I'm with you. Although granite seems to be losing its popularity slowly.

I'm not sure what type of "theme" cruise would interest me.

Correct, it's now quartz :D. Super strong, doesn't absorb liquids so no need to seal.

Thanks for all the tips/info. Not sure either whether a theme cruise would be cool but maybe will try one out.

So I called the travel agency that is teaming up with the Property Brothers for the Mariner of the Seas Dec 3, and they said they have half of the ship's rooms reserved for this event.

He said everything will be blocked off for Property Brothers guests only, including the dining room, shows, shore excursions, workshops etc. I'm not sure how this will work since I've never been on a cruise like this. He said, "If you book Mariner of the Seas on RCL.com, it will just feel like a regular cruise without access to any Property Brother events."

Not sure how many events this is worth it to do? The price is quite a bit higher than a regular room on RCL.com.

Wanted to take a cruise to the Baltics, maybe 7-12 days, something in that range, for June 2019. Is it too early to book that? When do those dates come out? I only see things up to 2018 on RCCL.

I always wanted to be those people that have cruises booked way in advance! We usually book cruises like 4 months before.

Figured a Baltic cruise would be something different than the normal Caribbean that we do, since I love the Oasis and Freedom class ships. They usually sail the Radiance class in the Baltics?

Just took 4 rum runners filled with vodka distributed among 4 suitcases on the Disney Fantasy on Nov 11. No issues and no problems. Lasted a good while for me without buying drinks!

Clear liquid like vodka is much easier than taking some dark rum. Have used rum runners on every other cruise line, so Disney is no different.

Enjoy!

I tried to search but couldn't find much info - any recommendations for city/rum estate type tours to do in Falmouth? Last time we just walked around the port. This time we wanted to do an excursion planned from the ship. No water type activities since we have other ones planned.

How is the Hampden Estate Rum tour?

No opinions or no one has tried any estate or those rum tours in Jamaica? Do people only do Dunn River there or something?

The Disney board definitely has much less traffic than RCL or other cruise lines! Must be the super expensive prices that people are not willing to fork over for this!

I tried to search but couldn't find much info - any recommendations for city/rum estate type tours to do in Falmouth? We've been to Falmouth on another cruiseline without an excursion and just "walked around" and it was a huge mistake. Nothing but people hounding us for selling their services and they would not take NO for an answer.

This time we wanted to do an excursion planned from the ship. No water type activities since we have other ones planned.

How is the Hampden Estate Rum tour?

Well that is the difference isn't it. Other companies do backstage areas, DCL don't.

Because at Disney your experience is a show. And show is their number 1 priority after safety.

Which is why their employees are called cast members.

The cast members wear costumes, whatever their role.

Why non-guest areas are called backstage.

Why every cm has character integrity lessons before they start work.

 

In the end, it doesn't really matter if you think it's any different or not. Disney care about detail and don't want to ruin the magic unnecessarily for anyone (even their crew in some areas).

 

Whatever you saw at WDW, someone somewhere went very wrong, whether it was your guide or 'Mickey grabbing a smoke in a cast member area'. I would take a bet you are one of the very few that have seen that (especially as Disney have strict rules about what you can have around costumes: food, drink, cigarettes) so count yourself lucky if that impresses you, but it's not really much of an argument for backstage tours on DCL, lol. And if anyone with power found out, I would doubt that that cm is even a cm anymore.

That's ridiculous. So why is it actually a "positive" if Disney doesn't offer a behind the scenes tour? What does "show is their number 1 priority after safety" even mean? Every cruise line offers a tour to see how the cruise operations works, like all the service lines, engine room, mechanical issues, etc. It's very interesting to people these days.

We are going on the Disney Fantasy in November with a large family who are all engineers LOL! So I guess I can go ahead and tell them to forget any behind the scenes tours, correct? These engineers are a different crowd and are always thinking the technical stuff behind every single event!

We have a large family, along with a 7 month old (at that time in November) and a 3.5 year old, for the Disney Fantasy on Nov 11. We have never cruised with young children before, but wanted to try out a Disney cruise - sounds exciting!

But coming from NC, we would rather not drive with a 7 monther and 3 year old. We want to fly. Is it easier to stay in a hotel in Orlando and do the transfer in the morning to the port? How about car seats required from going from Orlando to Port Canaveral? Do I have to bring one just for that, or do vans and taxi's don't care? If I bring 2 car seats, where am I going to store this stuff?