Brandis

When the first ship tours of Wonder came out earlier and I saw that big movie screen on the pool deck, right over Central Park, I was worried that if they ran movies on that, the sound of the movies might spoil the atmosphere in Central Park, especially when eating outside at Giovanni's or listening to the guitar player. Looking at the current ship entertainment schedules, it seems that movies are always playing in the Aqua Theater. That would be a great change. But then I'm wondering if the screen on the pooldeck is being used for anything now.

A friend of ours who is joining us on Wonder of the Seas TA is a semi-professional icehockey player. I was wondering if he could bring his own shoes to skate during the open sessions in Studio B? Or do you have to use the skating shoes they provide?

Indeed, I'm currently cursed with the split-cruise problem. Since we aren't boarding at the main port bit mid-way in the cruise, the app won't let us do online check-in.

We booked an Oceanview GTY on Wonder of the Seas on the 4-nights pre-TA cruise. Because it is a split cruise with the main departure from Barcelona but us boarding midway through in Rome, the app doesn't recognize this cruise and we had to do the check-in on the website, where the boarding passes are shown but cannot be sent to Apple Wallet. On the readable part of the Set Sail Pass, cabin no. still says TBA, but when I scan the barcode, it supposedly shows a cabin no., which would be a balcony cabin on deck 8, which would be very nice of course. But then I'm not sure why it still says TBA. Also, I thought a GTY would only get you a cabin in the cat. you booked. Or could you get something better if you're lucky? Muster Station is already shown as D02, which is Studio B, if I'm not mistaken. Does this sound about right for an Oceanview on deck 8?

Could it be that the current cruise has been cancelled for some reason? When you look at the menus in the main dining room, it always shows the menus of the current cruise. If the current cruise is only 8 nights long but yours is 15 nights, you'll see tabs for the menus of 15 nights in the MDR, but after night 7 or 8, it will just say "Venue closed".

Or I just go back to wash my hands again before starting to eat. Besides, I normally don't eat with my hand but use utensils 🙂

However, the agent I was talking to didn't even try to answer my question and said right away that she would have to get in touch with a "resolution specialist" who supposedly should know that stuff. But given the answer, I'm still not very confident that we won't have to test for the TA even though we have been on a short med cruise with no test requirement as the first leg of the B2B.

Yeah, I know. It's mostly because then you aren't in the middle of it all and are a bit shielded at least on one side. Also, being from Europe and not being used to AC, I found that usually there is less chance of a draft when sitting near the outside walls.

Similiar situation for me. We're doing the 3 nights cruise from Rome to Barcelona, followed by the Transatlantic on Wonder. Since the first is shorter than 7 days and doesn't go to Greece, no test is needed. However, for the TA, full vaccination is mandatory and a test done not older than 3 days before boarding. Since the previous cruise will already have started outside of the testing window, I called RCL to ask if they would offer tests on board for B2B passengers. The agent I talked to didn't know, so she contacted a resolution specialist and his answer was we wouldn't need to do a test for the TA as no test was necessary on the first leg, so the same would be true for B2B passengers on the second leg. Still not sure about this, but in case it's not, I really hope they will let us do the test on board.

We like Fishlips Bar & Grill, it's pretty close to Terminal 1. They have a second floor deck with great views of the waterway and the ships. Their food is very good as well. If we vacation in Orlando, we usually try to get in an afternoon trip to Cocoa Beach to visit Fishlips and do some cruise ship watching. https://www.fishlipswaterfront.com/

Even worse, if ships call in Warnemünde in Germany, most itineraries say "Berlin" which is landlocked as well and a 3 hour trainride away.

We have done 2 cruises over Halloween in the past. First was 2018 on Harmony. There, they had decorations and carved pumpkins all over the ship. In the evening, Windjammer had a Halloween dessert buffet with cool looking scary cakes. They had a walk-through haunted house in Boleros which was fun. Later in the evening, there was a packed Halloween party in the promenade, complete with a balloon drop. Lots of people in costumes. 2019, we were on Spectrum out of Shanghai to Japan. They had a few decorations on the Esplanade, the Halloween Dessert Buffet in Windjammer was very cool as well. About 80% of the passengers were Chinese, which usually disappeared from the public areas by 8 or 9 PM. Of the remaining Westerners only a few had costumes. But they had a cool Halloween party with costume contest in the aft 270 lounge with a projected animated Halloween backdrop. Our upcoming TA on Wonder leaves Barcelona on Oct. 30, so Halloween will be on day 2, looking forward to it and bringing a costume myself this time.

Do you think it is more effective to send a mail a couple of weeks before the cruise or to talk to the Restaurant Manager on the cruise before as we do a short cruise before the TA on Wonder in October. On the longer cruise, we are a party of 8 and have a couple of first time cruiser which might enjoy sitting near a window. I also think those tables usually are a bit quieter than when you sit somewhere in the middle of the room with other tables on all sides.

I guess it's also because people might show up late on the first day, Waiters have to introduce themselves, explain procedures to new cruisers and getting to know the new guests as well. On our Japan cruise out of Shanghai on Spectrum, it was actually quite the opposite. Apparently, chinese cruisers prefer to get done with their meal as quickly as possible. We prefer to take our time. So by the time we had finished with the appetizers, the chinese families around us already were in the middle of dessert, pretty much getting ready to leave. 🙂 Even with telling the waiters to take their time, we were done in less than an hour. But the food wasn't good anyways. For Westeners, they just had a laminated paper with a couple of menu options (even with pictures), it felt like ordering at a street vendor in an exotic country. Luckily we had the lowest category of junior suites booked (they were really affordable) which included their own restaurant and lounge (Silver Dining) in the place where the Solarium Bistro normally is. Service and food there were top class and we never went back to the Main Dining Room. For higher category suites, there was even another dining location on the floor above, called Gold Dining and Lounge 🙂 Looking forward to enjoy the Main Dining Room on our upcoming TA on Wonder. Heard good things about the food quality there.

Once took the train from Villefranche to Monaco. When we left the train, I noticed a purse on a seat. It contained a US student ID and a couple 100$ in cash. As there was a photo on the ID we looked around the station if we could find the owner, but there were so many people and we were pretty much the last to leave the train, so we probably missed them. So I kept the purse and when we passed a police station, I went in and wanted to drop it for lost and found. The officers obviously weren't in the mood to work and almost treated me as if I had stolen the purse, they asked where I found it and since it was in the french train, they said I should bring it to french lost and found (which I didn't have time for, since we had to get back to the ship in Villefrance and the lost and found office for the french train company would have been in Nice). Then they asked me why I just didn't keep the money, it sounded as if they thought I was stupid to hand it in. In the end, I just told them that I thought it was the right thing to do and that I wanted to go on enjoying my vacation day. So he finally, but still unwillingly, took down a report on his typewriter and after about 20 min. I was free to go. Wasn't a very nice experience.

I'm curious how the beds on Wonder will be, as she is fairly new. I also hope firm, as I do have a firm mattress at home as well and my back aches if the mattress is too soft. A couple of years ago, we cruised on Brilliance. On boarding day, we saw how they loaded hundreds of new mattresses. About mid-cruise, they changed the mattresses in our cabin and the difference was amazin. Before, the mattress was sagging in the middle, the new one was perfect. Our last port was Labadee and they unloaded the old mattresses there, I assume to donate them to the communities. Some of them looked pretty gross, but probably still a lot better for some haitian families than sleeping on a piece of cardboard. That said, there is a limit to the firmness I appreciate. We once slept in a Korean-owned hotel in Beijing and the bed literally was a concrete slab covered by a thin topper. That was horrible 🙂

I actually like the Diamond pin better. I carry it on the lapel of my jacket or vest.

There it was even worse. It seems most of their reps are working from home. Half the time I had a horrible connection and couldn't understand them and one time there was a baby crying in the background and the rep seemed distracted, probably by the baby. Another time I got disconnected halfway through the call and while they always ask for your phone number at the beginning of the call ("In case we are disconnected..."), they never call me back. I called them when the package WAS available for one of the other bookings I had but I couldn't go to the payment screen because of some website error. I asked her if she could access my basket and she said she did but had to switch back and forth between me and tech support. Also, I had to log out of the account because otherwise she couldn't get in, so I wasn't able to check availability. After about 30 min. on hold (the entire call was about 45 min.) she came back and told me that unfortunately the package was no longer available. So I ended the call and a few min. later I was able to get back into my account. Sure enough, the 5 Night Dining Package wasn't available in the shop anymore, but then I noticed that it still was in my basket. Out of a hunch I then opened the website on my iPad and there I was finally able to finalize the purchase! It really shouldn't be that complicated.

Sorry, no question, just got really annoyed by RCL IT and need to vent. How is it that those huge companies (Disney is equallly bad, maybe even worse) can't get their act together with IT related stuff? One would think they have enough money to get it done professionally. I'm currently missing two 5 Night Dining packages for our TA cruise and they seem to be sold out for quite some time now. So I go into the cruise planning page every so often to check if it has become available again. Every now and then, it shows up, but once I select the guests and click continue, it tells me that this option isn't currently available and to go back to check available stuff. And it's there again! Another time, I was actually able to put it into the shopping basket, only to have an error at checkout. So I went into a different browser, luckily the package was still in the basket and I could finish checkout only to get a message that the package is no longer available. Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhh!!!! Do they want to sell us stuff or annoy us?

Make sure your cabin attendant is aware you're doing B2B. We once did a B2B with my uncle and aunt, where we stayed in the same cabins. So of course we didn't pack anything. The attendant was training a new employee and since it was turnaround day, each of them did separate cabins. For some reason, the new attendant thought my relatives forgot to pack and started to just throw all of my aunts cosmetic products into the trash. After a while, our regular attendant caught up with the trainee and realized what he had done and nearly had a mental breakdown. He was literally almost crying when he told my uncle what had happened. He even went through the trash bags to rescue the beauty products but didn't manage to find all of it. In the end, the chief purser came and apologized personally, accompanied them to the perfume store on board where my aunt basically just could pick whatever she was missing and since they hadn't the kind of hairspray she prefers even told her to try and get it at the next port of call and they would refund it as well. They also got a bottle of champagne as well as pralines sent to the cabin.

Sorry for piggybacking on your question, is there a separate pin for Diamond +? If so, what does it look like? As for the Diamond pin, did you ask for it at the Loyalty desk? Maybe they forgot about it. My uncle once forgot to pack his for a cruise once and he was talking to the loyalty ambassador about something else and the ambassador asked him why he wasn't wearing his pin, when he said that he left it at home, he got a new one.

OK, so you have to actively ask for it on boarding day? Then I'll just keep the first one and if it stops working halfway through the second cruise, I'll just ask them if they can reactivate the chip. If they can't, they still can give me a second cup. Or maybe, after two weeks I'm so done with the freestyle drinks, I don't even notice that the cup is not working anymore. For me, the soda is just an added perk anyways, I get the refreshment package mostly for the fresh OK in the morning, mocktails and some JR malts.

We're doing a 3 night cruise, followed a 14 nights TA. For the first leg, I just purchased the soda drinks package, since there is only one sea day where I could really profit from the Refreshment package. However, on the TA we have 8 seadays, making it worth getting the Refreshment package (just for the JR milkshakes alone) 🙂 So I should get a Freestyle cup on the first cruise with the soda package and as far as I know, those cups are not indivdually programmed for each separate cruise lenght but usually just have a default number of days programmed into them to cover most cruise lenghts. As I have so many of those cups already, I just leave them in the cabin at the end of the cruise to be discarded. Bus since we do a B2B, getting 2 cups feels like a real waste. So I was wondering if I just can tell them at the beginning of the second cruise to not give me another cup and still use the one from the first cruise. Or do you think it would stop working mid-way through the second cruise and I still had to request a new one?

We are 1 point short of Diamond Plus as well. Thought it's a shame to only get to Plus after our TA on Wonder in November. When I was looking for a short cruise before that, I noticed that Wonder is doing a 3 night Repo cruise from Rome to Barcelona just before the TA. So I booked that one and we're now doing a B2B. with the TA as the second leg and with the Plus benefits. Probably not worth the effort just for that 1 point, but it's a nice extension of our cruise.

I try to minimize the checkout bill at the last morning of the cruise, so I always ask the travel agent to add the gratuities to my booking, that way I can split it up into several smaller payments until final due date.