mil76

Two weeks ago on Harmony:

Here's what he thought of the staff's attempts to get him to move along:

Hopefully this guy doesn't show up today.  He came by when we were in Galveston last week on Harmony.  Didn't even sign the waiver or do the boogie board test!  Left a deposit on the wave so they had to shut down the rest of the day to sanitize.

Hey JC, following along.  Doing 19 days on Anthem in June so this will bridge the time nicely.  Still trying to convince the DW that taking a flowboard (or two) to Europe is worth the excess luggage fees.

Voyager and I have an issue.  Still haven't cruised her, but had one cruise cancelled by the shutdown and on the 2nd try I tested positive before boarding her in Copenhagen.

They prioritize filling all the staterooms, not just taking the highest bid on a specific category.  A few years ago we did a minimum bid on a JS, and another bid much higher than minimum for a GS.  We figured the higher bid would get us prioritized for the GS and the JS would be a fallback.  Another poster on here only did a minimum bid on a GS.  He ended up with the GS, and we got the JS.  😡

Don't count on them having a clue what kosher for Passover is.  I'll never forget the "Happy Passover" sheet cake at the on-board seder a few years back.

Some other onboard activities which have costs depending on ship and timing: 

NorthStar observation arm (free sessions are hard to come by)

Indoor skydiving (same as above)

escape rooms

Flowrider lessons (open sessions are free)

Been taking at least 1 RCL cruise a year since the return to Galveston, and cruising logistics have improved immensely over the years from transport options, to the terminal, to the ships.  It's definitely not the best, but it has gotten better. 

We usually fly into Hobby since that is half the transportation battle compared to IAH (plus I have free companion status in Southwest). Originally we would fly in the night before and stay by the Airport and take Uber/Taxi/private car service/Shuttle to the port.  But the area around Hobby is seedy, so we started booking a hotel on the way to Galveston and just do 2 Uber trips. 

To make things even easier for us, we have gotten my relatives in Texas into cruising, so we take the first Southwest flight the morning of and they pick us up on the way to Galveston.  I assumed if there is bad weather we will change the flight and fly in the previous day and that should cover us as what else could go wrong.  Then last Sunday the same DEN-HOU Southwest flight we're taking next Sunday is the one where the engine cover blew off... 😵

6 hours ago, zebra36 said:

Seems to be a quality vs quantity thing!

Not a beer drinker myself but I can see the point of the quantity side if only the alcohol side of the equation is most important.

It's the last voucher of the night go-to beer!

16 hours ago, Chiliburn said:

So that would make it American?

Us Australians will be gracious and give it to you LOL 

Most of the Foster's onboard is brewed in Texas.  So it looks like you already have.

I had one on Spectrum and even that was from Texas.

Couple of lessons learned from doing this a few years now:

I try to do all my meetings from the stateroom.  You usually can find a nice quiet spot somewhere in a public area on port days, until they start the "Alpha, Alpha, Alpha" announcements for crew drills.  Those announcements usually don't go into the stateroom.

Don't expect other guests to accommodate that you are working (nor should they).  I use the library/card room a lot, especially Navigator cruises when I want to let my wife sleep while I work early in the morning.  95% of the time it is quiet in the morning, but you can't predict the early riser family who wants to play a board game at 7:00am.  If you are doing a Zoom or need quiet, don't assume any public area will be quiet.

I once was allowed to use the conference center for a Zoom meeting since it wasn't in use.  The problem with that is the conference center has a door to the crew area, so you get a ton of walk-through traffic since they know the room isn't being used.  You also get all the ship announcements at full blast.

Being close to land does not guarantee good Starlink internet.  My worst experience was doing a Zoom presentation just off Cozumel on the way to Roatan.  The connection was crappy and I got knocked off the meeting for a few minutes.  I'm usually amazed at how well Zoom works with low bandwidth, but drops are going to happen.

Bring an HDMI cable which works with your laptop.  The stateroom TVs on many ships have the HDMI ports accessible, and you can use the buttons on the bottom of the TV to switch the input.  I bring a USB-C to HDMI cable and have used the TV as a big monitor.

5 minutes ago, DennysDad said:

What ever happened to vacation time for vacations? Nobody ever looked back at the end of their life and said, I should have worked more.

We cruise 8-10 weeks a year instead of 2-3 because I can work from the ship.  The goal for me is to not look back at life and say I should have cruised more.

The article was on my Smart News feed so I didn't have to pay for it.  But for a publication that spends $19000 at the last minute to get a reporter a solo suite on a cruise he didn't want to be on, I don't feel too bad about reading it for free.  

The article was mainly a middle-aged guy who hates the idea of cruising going on his first cruise by himself and wondering why there was no one else like him on the cruise.  All of his observations seemed a little too detailed for what a first-time cruiser would notice, as most of what he wrote seemed to be a best-of review of the usual threads we see on here. 

Funniest line was when he thought the crew told him "I'm sorry, this is only for pendejos" when they were saying Pinnacles.

We spent a week in Santorini 2 years ago and did something similar (obviously not a ship excursion) and this was the highlight of our trip.  Oia and Fira are so overwhelmed with crowds that this was a great way to escape the bedlam.  

3 hours is probably good, since you'll still have time to explore Fira (and get an understanding of what I mean about the crowds).

I'm not a bridge-phobic person, but those Cheasapeake Bay bridges are pretty scary to cross, especially in the summer when everyone is going "downeyoshin" and they switch all the lanes around.  It would be nice if the silver lining of all of this is they bring both crossings up to modern standards.

I sure hope they don't move Navigator out of LA.  For a Voyager class ship it punches way above its weight.  It was amped before Royal went into Covid cost reduction mode so it has great venues like Playmakers which Quantum doesn't have.  Quantum makes sense for the shorter cruises in the winter which don't go far enough south, but I prefer Navigator over Quantum for the Mexican Riviera route.   

Here is a balcony door on Navigator.

We had it opened since our kids were in the next room, but we found it to be a pain and wouldn't do it again.  Our kids were college aged, so YMMV.

The door is big and it swings freely, so if you get rough seas or wind it will end up banging.  It covers most of the sliding door to the cabin on the side it opens, so it makes that balcony pretty unusable.  It is not so easy to navigate around it when you already have 2 chairs and a table on the balcony.  These door were not designed for making it easy to get between rooms, it is more for maintenance on the ship like cleaning, etc.  Newer ships have sliding doors which were made for opening up between staterooms.

2 hours ago, Tree_skier said:

I'm heading to downtown Los Angeles tonight...  Keep me in your prayers. 🙂 

You have rekindled my memories of working in the garment district in Downtown LA back in the early 90's.  If I worked late and it was after dark, I used to fly down Los Angeles Street in my MGB to get on the 10.  A red light could be a life or death situation.  I was convinced the song "The Freaks Come Out At Night" was based on downtown LA.

13 minutes ago, RoperDK said:

This is timely.  I have just started seeing the guarantee cabin offers.  We usually upgrade to a suite.  How does that work?  Can you apply the guarantee cost to the upgrade or are you just out of luck about upgrading?  

You can call the casino number and pay to upgrade or try to Royal Up (RU won't work for interior to suite though).  My wife gets GTY stateroom offers, and she'll call and pay for the upgrade to Balcony.  We have done about 10 comped interior rooms so far and have never stayed in an interior.

At some point Royal will release unsold accessible rooms to the general public.  Most of our cruising is casino comps so we are booking just a few weeks/months out.  The comps are usually interiors, so my wife (the gambler) will call to see about paying to upgrade to a balcony.  Sometimes they will offer her accessible staterooms that haven't sold.  We try to stay away from them when offered since people would see us in that stateroom and assume we did something wrong (see previous posts).

28 minutes ago, Hutcha said:

Is the $20 limit per day, or per day / per restaurant? IOW, can I have lunch at JRs and then go to Playmakers later?

Yes.  It's per restaurant.

35 minutes ago, Chiliburn said:

Their shore services will be busy with 2 ships on the same day.

Do you think they will fill 2 ships?  I thought they might have sent Navigator to Australia.

 

I can't imagine the Uber/Lyft wait times with both in port the same day.

1 hour ago, fac429 said:

 

Issue might be that there aren't a lot of ports on the Mexican Riviera that can handle a ship that large.  From what I've read in the past, I don't know for sure.  

From the site posted above, it does show that Quantum will be stopping in Cabo, which from my experience is the slower tender port.  Catalina is the other tender port, but they have much bigger tender boats so it seems to go quicker.

13 hours ago, little britain said:

It’s a sea day… so shopping day!
Shoes, coats, jeans… 👖… never seen so many brands for sale on a ship! 
Armani X

Bally 

Cocinelle

Hilfiger

Largerfeld

Marc Jacobs

Kate

Coach

One thing they definitely DON'T have is any of the T-shirts you see on Caribbean/Mexico/Alaska cruises.  We asked if they had any Royal Caribbean T-shirts for the ports we visited, and we got a very snotty "if you wanted a T-shirt, you should have bought one while you were off the ship" response.  🥶

5 hours ago, Ocean Boy said:

It isn't just you. I think it is ugly from both ends.

Any big ship with only one Flowrider is hideous to me from the back end as well.  For selfish reasons in addition to the horrible feng shui!

On 11/25/2023 at 8:24 AM, RobInMN said:

Still looks better than the Norwegian Epic, That thing is absolutely hideous.

 

Maybe it's just me, but I think Icon is pretty bad as well.

By day it looks like Sergeant Schultz

And at night it looks like a Cassowary bird