deltahog

It worked out perfectly for us on Princess, when my wife wanted to take one of her many vacation naps, and I just wanted to read my book, I wheeled the dirty laundry down the hall to the washroom and we were both happy. "I don't do that" is no more meaningful than "some people like the buffet" and "some people hate the buffet." Yes, of course.

I took the OP's question to be about what happens to the person who shows up, and to the room. Not what happens to the person who didn't come. My sense was confirmed by his/her follow up question.

It's not just paying for an airline checked bag. The more important part is that I have a disjointed connection flying to Europe (into LaGuardia and out of JFK) and me and the wife have to make our way from LGA to JFK. I'd rather do that without a large piece of luggage, so that public transportation becomes an option rather than just cab or Uber. Also, if no checked bag, then we can walk straight out of LGA and go as quickly as possible to make sure we are at JFK in time. With a checked bag, we have to wait for the carousel of death. So I had the bright idea solution, "hey we can just use the one rollaboard and one 'personal item' and do laundry on the ship!" My bright idea quashed by safety concerns due to lint buildup. Now that "no laundry" is on the other side of the scale (along with the pre-existing "travel size liquids only"), I might have to reassess.

2 days in Athens, 8 days Athens-Barcelona on Voyager, 2 days Barcelona. The entire plan of "no checked bags" revolves around doing laundry on the ship. We just did this last year on Princess, our Alaska cruise, on which laundry rooms were on most cabin floors. Couldn't find a laundry room on the Voyager deck plan. Huh? Googled. "Q. What laundry services are available onboard all Royal Caribbean cruise ships? A. For safety concerns self-service laundry facilities are not provided onboard our ships, but we do offer washing, pressing and dry cleaning services." Huh? "Safety concerns?" Can anyone detail what "safety concerns"? The reasonably equivalent Princess ships have laundry and I must have missed all the ships going down due to the self-serve.

Neither may be my daughter! I think the charter that George mentions is probably what she has seen videos of.

My daughter sent me some TikTok stuff about Broadway shows on RC. She wants me to investigate it. CC is a good place to do that. 1) Are there cruises that have MORE than one Broadway show? Different shows on different nights? If so, what ships, and how do I find those? 2) I did search "Broadway" in this forum and found out that some ships have Broadway shows, and some do not. How did I find out which is which, in advance, as a key factor in deciding what cruise to book? Thank you.

Last day - buffet still not looking good to me. A bit of Indian fish. A potato cake. Glad it's the last day. Dinner was wonderful. Crispy sweet and sour shrimp FINALLY larger shrimp. Well flavored too. Companion's prime rib very flavorful. Yum. Creme brulee finishes it. Well done Princess.

Next to last day and I hit a wall. Nothing looked good in the buffet at lunch. Sandwich. Didn't have the energy to go to dinner/formal night. Chicken-bacon sandwich from the Salty Dog Grill was surprisingly good. A standard piece of pepperoni from Slice. Hope to get back on the horse for the last day tomorrow.

A couple of ship notes non-food. The washer and dryer have been free all week. So is the detergent and dryer sheets. Perhaps trying to get rid of stuff before the end of the season? The jazz trio was fabulous, but they had guest horns (trumpet and trombone and flute). Probably a little less fabulous when piano, bass, and percussion only. Rock Opera was a visually fantastic production but I couldn't detect any theme or story. Could be just me, I'm not that good at this kind of thing. As I have always found on cruises -- comedian bad, magician good. I hate how they do Trivia. Everyone grades their own papers. No one is watched at all. No prizes to speak of. It should be much more formal. Nothing in the room was on a motion sensor as others have said. Dark stays dark even for bathroom trips in the middle of the night. Maybe different ships have different systems. We have figured out that those smoke detector looking things every 10 feet in the ship are the geolocators.

MDR Day 5: A seafood bisque in pastry wasn't a bisque. There was very little liquid in it at all. It also was the same small seafood as all other dishes. Yet, it was very tasty and worked. The carrot-ginger cold soup did not. It felt like taking my (ginger) medicine. Bruschetta went overboard on the chopped tomatoes and underboard on other ingredients (I couldn't find any basil). Just ok. Rack of lamb FANTASTIC. Tender, flavorful, generous portion of 2 chops on bone. The only nit was a ring of fried dough around the outside -- kind of like a wellington? Not necessary and not described on the menu. Simply removed it and proceeded with the wonderful meat. Sugar free coconut cake - fabulous. Princess Love Boat Dream dessert -- not. I couldn't figure out what all the too-solidified ingredients were. And they were all too stiff. And stale. And old. I dissected it and left it to die on the plate. Some As, some Bs, some Fs, overall grade of B.

Day 4, MDR dinner, WELL DONE!! Steelhead salmon appetizer, adequate, it was seafood. Cold banana rum soup, delicious. Baked cod with panko this time, fabulous. Some kind of chocolate-banana-rum tart, the best dessert I have had on the ship. Excellent presentation, excellent taste. Great service. A+ night.

Day 3 dinner, Ketchikan MDR. Service again very good, so two out of three on dinner service. Seafood antipasto starter - again small shrimp, tiny tiny tiny scallops (they looked like scallop seeds) and the smallest calamari rings I have ever seen. Where does Princess find such tiny seafood? That must take quite some effort. Arancini B+, good flavor but a bit overwhelmed by truffle, and a little mushy. But fried well. Veal main, the sauce was not over the veal but underneath, and the presentation of the veal was awful, a washed out piece of meat on top. Ok tasting. The creme brulee had a good crust and flavor but was too loose underneath, it's not supposed to move around like pudding. It's supposed to set up firm, which this was not. All in all kind of a "miss" night.

Regarding service, make of this what you will: First night MDR Ketchikan, extremely slow, our help staff would disappear for long stretches of time. Even mentioning something about it did not help speed up the process. Over 2 hours for dinner. Tea MDR Skagway: we were seated in an area that was never serviced. We sat and watched platters of sandwiches go multiple times to the same tables. Over and over and over and over, with literally our 1/3 of the dining room not being served afternoon tea food. We mentioned something to the head man, and he sent TEA over. Not sandwiches or desserts. Eventually, a second complaint brought food to our table, and the two or three right around us. However, the sandwich guy then left and went back to the other side of the room. Tables near us were never, ever served. After about 30 to 45 minutes they left. Even while we were watching other tables being serviced over and over again. It was very strange. 2nd night MDR Ketchikan: very quick and efficient service with a different set of wait staff. Dinner completed in 1 hour.

I will make a couple of ship notes. It is new and pretty and well decorated. A good aesthetic experience. However, it is EXTREMELY poorly designed for traffic flow. Getting from here to there is at best slow, at worst nearly impossible, and almost always counterintuitive. For example I visit the Fitness Center on 17. The only two ways there are to cross the outside upper deck (which has often been closed due to inclement weather), leaving literally the only route to the Fitness Center.....through the buffet??? Why would I want to walk through the buffet to get to the Fitness Center? Opposite goals. Ketchikan dining room on aft end of 6 can only be reached by the very last set of elevators, or the very last set of stairs. There is no flow from Ketchikan to.... anywhere. The running track is all the way up on 18 sports deck, and again, it has often been closed. So there is nowhere to walk around outside. The elimination of a promenade is maddening. "You Can't Get There From Here" is the theme of the day. Whoever designed this ship's traffic flow should be fired, or at least a stern talking to.

No Crown Grill or any other specialties. With the fire hose of other food available, can't justify spending extra on those. Continuing - Day 2 afternoon -- Salty Dog Grill by pool - very good fries. Hot and crispy and salty. Burger "just a burger." The telltale perfect round shape and thickness of a uniform prefrozen product. The cardinal sin of throwing cold cheese on top at the end and calling it a "cheeseburger." MELTY is the whole point of a cheeseburger. Dinner I went minimalist and had merely a crab cake appetizer and the Alaskan Halibut. The crab cake was very good if a bit mushy on the inside instead of lump crab. The halibut was a fist sized lump of pure meat. A little dry but tasty. Dessert of turtle (pecan caramel) cheesecake tasted weird and I just scraped the caramel off the top. A specialty dessert for our anniversary of it appeared to be chocolate mousse on top of a thin layer of chocolate cake, boxed in by thin chocolate wafers. Mousse good, cake bad, again scrape it off the top. Food coma. Must adjust habits on future days.