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Wow! This isn't good. Now I'll have to get the word on why from our friends on the sports staff. On each of our 5 most recent cruises, there were several riders who brought their boards also.

 

We live in Denver and only flowride on the ships; even so, I thought the price was fine especially for such a nice board.

Hey talia-co, glad to see more Flowriders in CO. Hopefully we'll get one in Denver soon. I was so disappointed when I went to Water World for the "Flowrider" and saw that boogie-board only monstrosity.

You say you only Flowride on ships, do you know about the Hotel Cascada in Albuquerque? They have a double Flowrider there in their indoor waterpark, and it's only $15 bucks for 5 hour sessions if you tell them you only want to do the Flowrider. They also do lessons for $15pp for the hour before the park opens. We found it in December and have already made the trip down twice. It's a long drive, but it gives us our fix between cruises.

I hope this isn't true. I'm so looking forward to using my board to try out the new Flowrider on the Navigator at the end of March.

On my last cruise on Oasis I saw a bunch of people with their own boards, but I suffered with the ship's boards, which don't match my style of riding at all. I made my first visit to a land-based Flowrider in December and tried out one of the WaveLoch Carve boards and noticed a change in what I could do immediately, so I bought one. I don't have any problem lugging it with me. I see plenty of people lugging golf clubs with them on vacation and my Flowboard is much smaller than that.

As far as how much time I spend on the Flowrider, since the Navigator only has one, I'll probably be there for every moment they have stand-up sessions. I'm loyal to Royal because of the Flowrider.

Maybe I'll learn more about this when I continue reading. I'm amazed at what my friends told me tonight........all coffee tables gone from all cabins, JS, and down. Where do you eat, when wanting to eat in?

 

What gives???

 

This is great news as far as I'm concerned. We always sail with 4 in our room, and the coffee table is always in the way. The first thing we do every cruise is put the coffee table out on the balcony. Sometimes we get in trouble with the stateroom attendant, but usually is just sits on the balcony the entire cruise. Our cruise next month on the Navigator is our first interior room cruise, and I was wondering where we would stash the coffee table. Problem solved!

I thought Bud products cost more because they come in the 16 oz. aluminum bottles, vs. 12 oz. for the Miller/Coors products.

It's on Airport Blvd right next to Hobby.

This week we booked into Hobby for our Navigator cruise on March 30th. If you are flying in the day before, you may want to check out the La Quinta. We booked it for $189 for the night which includes RT transfers to the port (with dropoff at the airport on the return) for up to 4 people.

Southwest cost us a bit more than going into IAH, but for what it costs to get from IAH to Galveston, the La Quinta deal made Hobby more convenient and cheaper overall.

Another thing to keep in mind for Central Park is if you get rough seas, you may get water from the pools directly above you. I have been on cruises where we had rough seas and they had to close the outside patios at the restaurants due to this.

We have only done Boardwalk balconies on Oasis/Allure, and we like to watch all the action below (and above). If you don't want it, you just close the door and draw the curtains. We do ocean view on other ships, but this is a different experience we enjoy.

The goal of my vacations is not to have to go for hernia surgery when we get home, since that's what happened to me on my first cruise on Adventure years ago. My DW has never been a light packer, and it's always a huge negotiation when preparing to cruise. Of course I always end up using one of the additional 50 things she packs during the trip, and she uses that as ammo to convince me we have to take everything the next time.

You'll want to check with the airline, since if you are flying international the weight limit may be more than 50lbs. We did 12 days on Celebrity Equinox last summer along with 3 days before and after in Barcelona and a 3 day stopover in London on the way back. We took 2 of the Kirkland brand hard side suitcases from Costco, a rolling duffle for the 14 year old and a smaller suitcase for the 11 year old.

The key is to take multifunctional clothing and do laundry at every opportunity. My wife and I have amassed a decent wardrobe from GoLite just for cruising. I can get 3 pairs of their pants in the same space as a pair of jeans, and they can span the spectrum from touring around Rome to the ship's dining room every night but formal night. To not have to pack formal clothes we did specialty restaurants on formal nights.

Laundry on the ship is a given. Use whatever discounts you can and take advantage of the "everything you can fit in the bag" laundry days.

Finally, it's a good idea to scope out your transportation for the days you are going to need to lug the bags around. On our stopover in London on the way home, we flew into Gatwick airport and took the train to Victoria station. The problem was that the Victoria Underground station does not have elevators or escalators, so we had to deal with stairs with all that luggage. We could not avoid that, but we made sure that any other times we had to use the underground we did it using stations that had elevators/escalators from street to platform.

We cruise every Halloween and we put a full-sized Halloween themed door cover on our door every year. We'd do the same thing to our door at home on Halloween if we weren't cruising, so I don't think it's too silly. We just use clear packing tape to put it up and cut a hole where the stateroom number is. We never mistook staterooms the entire cruise.

It was pretty funny this year as the door cover had a huge "Keep Out" on it. I always got strange looks from younger kids in the hallway if they saw us coming in or out of our room.

Straight to Park Cafe, then Flowrider.

The Freestyle machines on RCL have changed the way I get soda forever. Before the cruise I would always hold the cup up in the air under the nozzle to fill. Now I always put the cup down squarely on the base, perfectly centered under the nozzle. Gotta make sure it can read the chip!

Do you know if they have the unlimited internet, if so how does it work, is it pretty fast.

I was on last week as well, and there is still no unlimited internet. I also used the mobile data extensively and it was just as slow as ever. The interesting thing was that my phone said 4G for Cellular at Sea, where I had only gotten G or E in the past on any RCCL ship. Even with the 4G on the phone, the data was still brutally slow. So I'm figuring they upgraded the ship side of things, but the bottleneck is the uplink/downlink.

It was the 2nd and 5th night last week, on the sea days on the way to Labadee and between Falmouth and Cozumel. We did specialties both formal nights so we didn't have to dress up and they even offered lobster tails in Chops in addition to the normal menu on the 2nd formal night.

Sort of mixed feelings on this. Have done Boardwalk on both Oasis and Allure, and am doing it again on Oasis this fall. I find we spend very little time in the room on these ships, and really don't use the balcony other than drying wet clothes. You definitely don't get that solitude feeling of an Oceanview balcony, think of it as like an oceanview balcony but having another ship across the pier from you the entire cruise. But then again, when I go out on the balcony I see all the stuff I could be doing (Flowrider, Zipline, ping-pong, mini golf), so I head back out. We find it's just a different cruising experience on Oasis/Allure, so the oceanview balcony isn't as important as it is on other ships, and this is a really good alternative to an interior cabin.