Starry Eyes

Icon’s maximum guest capacity is 7,600. Wonder’s is 6,988. If those two ships both docked that would be potentially be14,588 guests. Of course, ships are rarely at absolute max capacity and not all guests are off the ships (some coming at going at different times of day and some staying aboard for the day).

If you are sharing a table with others, your tablemates won’t wait in vain for you before ordering. Since you have selected traditional dining at 5:30, will have the same table for the entire cruise. The table number will be on the app and on your seas pass card. If you have a table request, email it to rcldining@rccl.com about 2 weeks before your cruise. Wait until then so the email arrives as they are ready to work on the seating plan for your cruise; they’ll be doing other cruises sooner.

Congratulations on the upgrade. Enjoy the 4 nights in the GS.

Disagree…I have been assigned about half Boardwalk and half Central Park balconies from XN bookings over the years. I have never been assigned an oceanview balcony from an XN booking….not even before RoyalUp.

I believe December 2022 cruises were the first ones able to schedule entertainment through the cruise planner. We were unable to schedule for our late November cruise.

A table for two gets quite crowded if the waiter unbidden brings four starters at once; that happens fairly often. There is shuffling to fit them with the bread plates, bread basket, wine glasses, water glasses, S&P, butter, and table marker already on the small table. We’d rather the waiter bring the soup/salad and appetizer separately, as that’s how we eat them. To us it feels like the waiters are rushing us when they dump all the starters at once, though understand your disappointment if you ask for both starters at once and they come one at a time. Perhaps if we were sharing a larger table with others who tended to only order one starter I’d feel differently.

Well, now you learned another lesson…always ask for the category letter code. None of us can travel back in time to know for certain, yet after many years of booking Oasis class balcony gty’s I’m pretty sure had you gotten them, the codes would have been XB and XN. Had you booked that unspecified balcony gty option online on the consumer website (“we pick”), you would have been booking category XN.

That’s typical on an invoice. Nevertheless the agent told you which gty you were booking by saying you’d get a neighborhood balcony. If you’d like to know if XB is available and if so the extra cost, call and ask.

If you have tried going to the RoyalUp page, I doubt your issue is linked to marketing emails. I’ve had the opportunity to bid on all my past cruises, yet I do not have offers for my next one. I keep checking. Maybe I’ll eventually get bid offers; I suspect I won’t this time. It seems random to me. As you can see, other regular cruisers have had the same issue pop up out of the blue, too.

Does anyone on your reservation have a different last name that you could try? Please realize not everyone gets bid offers. One explanation is that some Travel agents (we are not allowed to name TA on CruiseCritic but one is big box agency that starts with C). Other times it seems to happen inexplicably, even with direct bookings.

If you want to keep the family together, you could drop just the large bags off with the porters. Everyone goes with you to park and then everyone walks together to the terminal with just the carry on bags. Your family, your vacation, your call.

There are two types of balcony gty on Oasis class. From what the rep said, you booked the less expensive and more commonly available one, XN, Neighborhood balcony gty. I have booked those multiple times and always have gotten either a Boardwalk or Central Park balcony assignment. The other type category XB, the oceanview balcony gty. I have also booked XB on Oasis class. Is there a chance a person booking a XN will get a free upgrade? Yeah, there’s a very slim chance… don’t hold your breath.

Royal put us up at Radisson at the Port when Wonder of the Seas was delayed last fall. It is a sprawling complex, so you are apt to be given a room far from the lobby. The elevators are sparse and unreliable, so after that walk to your room, you may with walk further to find a working elevator or hauling your bags up the stairs. Our room was clean, basic but not appealing. Even for free, I was ready to leave. Stay there if that’s what us available, I guess, but iI’d look at other options. If shuttle times are an issue for you, have you considered a one way car rental? Then you could stay at any hotel you like.

Here’s a you tube video that includes separate main beds. The sofa is made into a bed for a child in her case but hopefully you can imagine your regular sofa 😉 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8wKM0nAzMws

Well, you learned a lesson you are not apt to forget …if you have a dining table request, you email 2-3 week before your cruise so your request goes to the person planning tables for your cruise at the proper time. If there were tables for 12, that would have given you your best shot at getting one.

No need to exaggerate. Viva’s first sailing is delayed seven weeks not a few months. I did not say cruiselines don’t encounter supply chain issues, I said enough one-off items are making it through the supply chain adequately to build and launch entire ships.

Hmm, the supply chain allows numerous one-off item to arrive pre-planned to building and launch of new ships but there was no way to plan this one-off item?

Liberty isn’t scheduled for another dry dock until 2026; something must have come up that cannot wait until then. That a cruise is being canceled implies the work either (a) cannot be done with ship operating or (b) passengers might be endangered by the work. As the TV is a long standing issue, one would think they’d have either repaired it sooner or planned the gap in the schedule months ago.

Speaking of Texas…I have not heard of Yeshiva week cruise issues on Texas sailings. The reports I have seen have been from Florida and NY/NJ. Do you folks think a Galveston sailing be a reasonable guess for someone wishing to sail Oasis class in Yeshiva break timeframe in future without these partial charter issues?

And a substantial number of children are home schooled

While school schedules can shift, winter breaks for the Yeshivas seem mostly in late January (3rd week for example). I doubt you will be impacted substantially if you cruise in early February. When I happen to cruise that week the kids were kids; they were not feral. They were clearly parented and those children were not especially unruly. I have seen far more unruly children on other cruises.

Quite a bit of time???? Perhaps you are a very slow reader. It took a very short time for me to read that post. That said, it is a shame the OP did not ask the most important questions here on CC before booking and before sailing. If the OP asked about winter cruises with lots of kids, Christmas, NY, Yeshiva and Presidents weeks would have been the likely mentions. If the OP had asked how to get a table for 12 on CC, the OP would have sent an email rather not than wasting 90 minutes on the telephone. Instead the Op only started a thread about freezing breast milk; I guess that worked out.

LOL, we are talking about Royal IT, so it might be too hard. I can imagine the error notification going to people who didn’t get the 30 minute muster notification rather than those who did🤣🤣🤣

A few years ago we unknowingly sailed Yeshiva week on Oasis. There were more kids than we expected yet we had a nice cruise. Switching cruise lines will not prevent you from encountering partial ship charters. On another line we learned after boarding that a jazz charter had much of the ship; many venues were closed so we could not enjoy the facilities or the music. Due to the larger number of closures, that was much more disruptive than Yeshiva week.

There are no exit diagrams on our doors and no crew members by the stair to direct us to muster stations. Perplexing😉