Jimbo

22 minutes ago, Ocean Boy said:

The bottom line is they have the means to accommodate all the souls on board. I'd have no problem with a raft. I would probably feel less claustrophobic. They should stop trying to scare people by implying that it would be a Titanic type situation.

25 minutes ago, DeltaOne said:

Some here may enjoy this video about the state of the cruising industry.  I found this YouTube channel after the bridge collapse here in Maryland.  The fellow is a long time merchant mariner who now teaches in North Carolina.  His videos on the bridge collapse are good.

 

This video summarizes the recent CLIA (Cruise Line Int'l Association) meeting.  Fun facts: cruising is significantly down in Asia and the RCL Icon of the Seas doesn't have enough lifeboats for all the passengers -- you may end up in a life raft.  Video is about 20 minutes.

 

https://youtu.be/zE5XbaBz70o?si=8w6DSL3oIO_Q2_-u

 

Don't think that is correct, the way I heard it, they have enough lifeboats for the passengers, but the crew would be assigned to the life rafts.

10 hours ago, RobInMN said:

I captured the full transit from my balcony with my GoPro. And since I had no idea where else to put/share it, I uploaded my very first YouTube video! It's just the raw camera video, no music, no post production, no graphics.

 

Very impressive, I think a couple things amazed me, how much faster the clouds were going then the ship and how fast those mules were traveling back and forth. 🤣

The last 2 sets of locks went so much faster then your first set. Also amazing how many ships went by you in your first set of locks.

9 hours ago, Sea Dog said:

So upon the recommendation of my son Jonathan we are now watching on Netflix the series called “One Piece.” It’s based on a Japanese Manga comic and is about a boy who wants to find a lost pirate treasure and become the king of pirates. Of course this sea dog pirate loves anything about pirates so this is right up my alley. Think, Marvel universe meets Treasure Island . The production on this is incredible and the special effects are amazing. The art direction and sets are wild with a steampunk kind of look. It gears towards younger audiences but this old man has really been enjoying it. If you are looking for something unique that involves the sea, ships and adventures this might be for you.

 

 

One Piece is currently at 1089 episodes, with episode 1090 airing this Sunday, January 14, in Japan. A full episode runs for around 22-24 minutes.

What episode are you on? Where are you streaming it from Amazon Prime?

7 hours ago, perfect match said:

 

My surgically repaired legs wouldn’t have done very well with all of that standing either. I will have to keep that in mind if I manage to get a Panama Canal cruise planned.I know those leg cramps all too well.

After the first set of locks are done, go for the 2nd or 3rd sets where the crowds thin out significantly  because of  the heat etc. Plus you can sleep in somewhat.

1 hour ago, Teeara said:

 

IMG_5006.mov 871.43 MB · 1 download

Here’s the full experience for you.  Let me know if it posts okay.

 

Otherwise, to answer your questions, there was only chicken.  You point at what you want - carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, broccoli, peppers, onions, mushrooms and garlic.  He puts it in his pan.  You don’t touch the food.  You can choose between thick and thin noodles.  He puts soy sauce and another sauce in the pan and then he asks if you want it in a bowl or on a plate.

Video worked great, thank you very much.

Wonder why no beef option. Cost more then Chicken I guess? Had the chicken been pre cooked before he put everything in the pan?

I guess between Covid and Cruising coming back, The days of yourself loading your own plate as to what you want  stir fried are over.

1 hour ago, Sea Dog said:

Second this week our power has gone out on a beautiful day. Don’t know if everyone turned on their AC at the same time but this is getting ridiculous. And our lines are all underground.

31 minutes ago, A&L_Ont said:

Sometimes outages happen for no reason, that is immediately and visibly known. Might have been a transformer caught on fire, a car taken out a power pole etc… 
 

We had a huge wind storm Friday night here and lost power for almost 12 hours.  There was outages all across the province.  Our generators fired at all 3 houses and things were good. Unfortunately there is clean-up to do again at all locations.

Something weird happened here too. Been very windy here the last 3 or 4 days. Never lost power as far as I know but something tripped the 50 amp breaker on our hot tub. It has happened before and the Breaker has been tripped one other time but that is when the heater element went bad and shorted out. I replaced with new a while ago and has been running fine up until today.

After I was finished mowing the grass this morning, I just checked the hot tub by taking the cover off and noticed the control screen was black meaning the hot tub was off...............I thought to myself oh no the heater element went bad again, but nope put the breaker back on and as of now it is running fine and has heated back up to temp. So so far everything is good again.

I'm not sure if there was some kind of power surge or what?

Also want to add a few pictures of our apple tree this year..............Lots of Blooms this year compared to last year when we hardly had any apples........Last year I think the tree got hit with a hard late frost and lost almost all of it's blooms(frozen).

Below:  This is how many apples we got from the tree in September 2022, last year in 2023 we only got about 1 of those crates.........So very disappointing.

16 minutes ago, ashlynn1021 said:

Hi All!

A little about myself since I haven't posted on here in a very very long time, I am Ashley, a 30 year old from Arizona who has been cruising mostly with my parents (and grandparents before they passed) but sometimes solo, with friends, and with groups since I was 9 months old. I have mostly done Royal Caribbean but I have also done some Celebrity and Princess as well as one each of Holland America, NCL, and Carnival (we don't talk about those, there is a reason it was one each). Anyways, all that to say I am very loyal to Royal with nearly 80 Royal Caribbean cruises under my belt. When I am not cruising, I am a full time software engineer to pay for my cruising habit.

 

And now for some history on this cruise.... my parents and I first booked this itinerary for October of 2021 in the summer of 2020. Heck, we also booked cruises in June of 2020 when our May cruise was canceled, August when June was cancelled, November when August was cancelled, so on so forth, you get the idea. Fast forward to summer of 2021 and well over 40 FCCs later, the restart was finally happening and the final payment due date for this cruise was quickly approaching. There we still a lot of unknowns about Israel and what the covid requirements would be to go there and as that was the main reason we booked that cruise (more on that later...), and after a family meeting we cancelled it and I spent 2 weeks in October on the Symphony of the Seas with a friend (and my parents ultimately joining for the second cruise after some convincing) instead where I finally earned pinnacle after waiting the entire restart only a little more than 1 cruise away (I promise, I am not a snotty pinnacle, I refuse to wear the pin and prefer to go with the flow instead). With that I had finally made it back on a ship for the first time since January 2020 but I still hadn't made it to holy lands.

 

Fast forward again to February 2023 when my parents were on the Celebrity Beyond celebrating their 40th anniversary without me (to quote Stephanie Tanner: how rude... not, they deserved the vacation without me and they had their neighbors with them to take my place, also I am pretty sure my work would have killed me if I took another cruise at that point). Before they headed out on their cruise, I looked at the itineraries released just a couple months before for Europe in 2024 and found this one, and made the mistake of emailing my parents with the details. It didn't take much convincing that we had to book this cruise. A week later, after a lot of back and forth with them and the future cruises agent on Celebrity Beyond, we finally got this booked and everything confirmed. Note to my future self and really everyone reading this: never book Royal on Celebrity, while we have successfully booked Celebrity on Royal before with no issues, this was a nightmare to say the least, the on-board agent had no clue what the different cabin categories were and after pleading with her that Odyssey had J1s, J3s, and J4s and they were all Junior Suites, she was finally able to find more than just the J1s available.

 

With the cruise finally booked, let's talk about why we wanted to do it: Israel. My mom and I are Jewish and my mom has always wanted to go to the holy land but has said she would never do it by land, she just didn't feel comfortable due to some experiences her parents/my grandparents had when they went. And similar to me, she loves cruising. So this seemed like the perfect solution. I had also unfortunately aged out of birthright during Covid as a result of them changing the age policy during that time so this would give me a taste of Israel to see if I wanted to join a volunteer trip or something else in the future. When June 2023 arrived and the flights opened up to book, there wasn't a doubt in our minds that we were going on this cruise. Before booking the flights we had a family meeting and I made one important note to my parents: If this cruise doesn't go to Israel, are you still ok with going for the other ports? They both said yes. My mom has always wanted to go to Santorini since watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants so while it was not Israel, there would still be something on her bucket list to cross off. Even though the itinerary at the time didn't have Ephesus, Turkey on it, we knew it was likely this would appear if Israel was removed and my dad wanted to see the House of the Virgin Mary after missing the opportunity to see it while on the Splendour of the Seas in 2000. After that discussion, our flights were booked and we started making hotels and other plans for the trip including booking excursions for every port except Israel since conveniently none were open for Israel and also I knew if we did make it there, we would want to do a private tour so we could cover both the Christian and Jewish heritage there adequately.

 

Once again, let's fast forward this time to November 2023. Unfortunately, we all know what happened on October 7th. The days that followed made it very obvious that this was sadly not like other times Israel had been attacked. They were not getting out of this quickly. We received the not at all surprising email that this itinerary was changing. Out was Israel and in was Turkey, as I unfortunately predicted, along with Mykonos. After yet another family meeting (I think this is at least the 3rd one in this story, sensing a theme here...) we unanimously decided we were still going, barring any crazy world event. It was full steam ahead and I finally decided to start planning the tours for our pre-cruise stay in Rome. We also booked an excursion for Mykonos through the ship and I left my dad to figure out Ephesus himself. I still don't think he has that planned, you can tell who is the planner and who isn't in this family.

 

Now let's fast forward to February 2024. It was Super Bowl Sunday and I had plans to go to the Phoenix Open with my dad in the corporate tents on the 17th hole. Instead, I got woken up by a call at 6am with news that my mom had passed out just before midnight the night before and they were in the ER room at Mayo Hospital. This cruise was far from the first thing on my mind, I wanted to know how my mom was doing, what had happened, if there was anything they needed as the hospital is less than a mile from my house, I can literally see it from my backyard. In the weeks that followed, and what seemed like hundreds of doctors appointments, a couple dental appointments, and a surgery later, we finally brought up this cruise again. Her doctor's gave her the all clear to go, they just warned that we had to be careful, she couldn't over exert herself. Another family meeting and the swapping of tours later to some less strenuous ones, we were once again on track for this cruise to happen.

 

Now finally we have made it to today. We fly out in a little more than 2 weeks on the evening of 4/30. We finally settled on a hotel for our one night post cruise in Rome before flying home so the last thing is planned. As many hurdles as this cruise had and the amount of times we thought this wouldn't happen, we are looking forward to it finally happening, even if it is a little different than originally planned. I am just grateful that we are all still here to enjoy this as a family. I have never done a live blog of a cruise before. Something about this cruise feels different, while I hope this isn't my last big European adventure with my parents, I know there is a chance that will be the case so I really want to remember this and document it. Not only are my parents getting older, I am also getting older and who knows what will come for my future as well. While we have plenty more cruises planned as a family out of the US to the Caribbean as well as the Mexican riviera on the west coast, I don't know that I will have a trip like this as a family once again.

 

I promise my future posts won't be as much of a novel. There was a lot of backstory to cover and I hope I at least made it interesting to read. In the coming days I will start to talk about our plans for both pre-cruise and on the cruise but figured it made sense to start with the back story first.

 

Since I have never done this before, not sure how to end these, I am sure I will figure that out better as I go. So for this one I guess I should say TTYL!

 

Quite a story to get to where you are today. Hope it goes as planned "Now" and it's everything you had hoped for.

Enjoy your trip, you have earned it !

40 minutes ago, Jimbo said:

Like you said, I see now why so many people were upset................Makes for a very long day when things don't happen as scheduled.

 

You might have been on the longest Panama Canal crossing in the history of Royal Caribbean taking ship through there.

 

Very disappointing but out of control on Royal's part.

 

I was beginning to think you were going to have to back up out of the locks and sail around South America to get to the**** West Coast.****

Edit: West Coast

Like a 13 hour transit................amazing !!

1 hour ago, RobInMN said:

And finally Miraflores Locks:

What time was this picture taken?

Should take 8 to 10 hours for the full transit....

19 minutes ago, Teeara said:

I was up at 5:00 this morning and at the front of the ship around 5:45.  We were originally supposed to hit the locks at 8:00, but got bumped to 9:45. We finally started moving towards the canal at 8:55.

 

 

We were approaching the bridge by 9:10.

 

 

We started approaching the locks at 10:10.  It was slow going this morning.

 

 

 

 

People were 8 deep by now and tempers were running a bit high at this point.  And yet as you guys have been posting, we weren’t moving.  Since I had a front row seat I can show you exactly what the hold up was.

 

The left side locks were working fine.  We had two ships go through the locks before we were even in our first lock.  As they were waiting for the water to drain this is what it looked like.  Notice the massive amount of water being released on the left side.

 

 

Now, here’s how our lock looked like as it was draining.  Note the small amount of water coming from the gates and that no water was being released on our side the way the left side was.

 

 

As a matter of fact, there was a group of workers under the right arch.  So obviously they were having issues with the pumps to get the water out of the lock in order for us to enter.

 

The lock finally opened at 11:00, a full 3 hours after our original time slot or 1.25 hours after our second time slot.

 

 

 

 

 

It was now 11:30 and I had been standing at the front for 6 hours.  I was hot, tired and hungry so I left.  But here’s me just before I left to give you an idea where I was, front and center.

 

 

Here’s how the people looked during my walk back to the cabin.

 

 

More to come.

Like you said, I see now why so many people were upset................Makes for a very long day when things don't happen as scheduled.

You might have been on the longest Panama Canal crossing in the history of Royal Caribbean taking ship through there.

Very disappointing but out of control on Royal's part.

I was beginning to think you were going to have to back up out of the locks and sail around South America to get to the East Coast.

56 minutes ago, h20skibum said:

I hope you are bringing them luck for a win.  They are in the driver’s seat for a playoff spot.  All they have to do is win their final 3, but all three are good teams. 

Flyers need to win their last game and if all 3 of the teams ahead of them lose out, Flyers sneak in for the last spot. Flyers last win was against the Rangers 🙂

9 minutes ago, Essiesmom said:

 Because of the drought they are using the approaching ship in the neighboring lock to transfer the water lowering it sideways into the lock you are in to raise you.  Unfortunately it makes the transit through the locks longer as they wait for the second ship to move into place.  EM

I hope the Cruiseline and passengers get a discount fare then for the buddy system for the transit?

6 minutes ago, Another_Critic said:

Maybe the "mules" are taking a siesta?  😄

Another lunch break, for the guys on this end of the locks!! They are in a different time zone.

For those going through the locks in the future, this is not the usual way it works, very unnormal for it to take this long.

and here comes another ship moving into the picture and Radiance just sits there.........................

Blocked out by that other ship, couldn't see the people
on the bow.

@RobInMN You guys should get a do over for the amount of time this is taking, I don't get it. The other ship that was coming toward you is long gone. Almost out of sight!

This is painful, I'm giving up on watching it!

It's turning into taking well over 2 hours to get through these sets of locks. Unbelievable.

Canal is going to dry up before you can get through..........

Did the Captain anchor the ship there?

7 minutes ago, RobInMN said:

Actually, it's hard to tell on the web cam without another ship, but we are in the far set from the web cam

Yes, I see it now with another ship in other lane coming toward you.

That  other ship is flying through the locks, Radiance is still going super slow, doesn't want to damage the paint job I guess !!

This is like watching grass grow............so slow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would love for them to put a webcam camera on one of those light poles, that would be some awesome video.

@RobInMN Make sure after you go through the last lock, run to the back of the ship and try to get  a shot of the sea level you left behind after getting dumped into the Pacific.

It should be a real cool picture if you get just the right angle from the right deck.

We are going to get a good look at Radiance, She is in the inside lane  close to the camera.

*Picture is so deceiving, you are on the outside lane

Hope everyone onboard smiles !!

22 minutes ago, RobInMN said:

"30m delay getting lines attached", but no idea why. I think we should have entered the bottom when Neau Amsterdam entered the top?

Lunch Break ?  🤣🤣

Wow Rob we are thinking alike...... Union break !! Must not work until I eat !!

What's the humidity like? Can't have a Panama Canal crossing without a thunder storm and a down pour and watch the people on the bow scatter !!

I have never seen  a ship stay that long in a lock without moving.? Wonder if there is an issue?

That Holland America ship looks huge sitting in that lock.

Edit: Finally it moved out !!!

http://webcams.delcanal.com/gatun00009.jpg?9975370

Copy and paste the link above to get the picture.

I think that is Radiance coming through next, once it gets closer. We will know for sure.

https://multimedia.panama-canal.com/Webcams/gatun.html

13 hours ago, Teeara said:

Reprosa also had the beautiful Molas that I wanted to get.  Pam got one of the fish.

 

 

We next stopped at a big shopping mall for lunch and then went to the old town area to learn a bit more about the history of Panama.

 

 

We boarded a tram that took us to the museum.

 

 

Inside there were several dioramas and maps to explain the time frame and what had happened in the time before the Spanish came and the effect on the native people.

 

 

 

 

Then it was time to head back to the ship. All aboard was 5:30.  We got there at 5:34, but because we were on a ship sponsored tour, we didn’t have to panic since we knew they wouldn’t leave without us.

 

Sailaway was at 6:30, so only 30 minutes late.

 

 

The dark building on the right is the cruise terminal.  We exited through this terminal when we arrived.  But when you return from a shore excursion, you have to go through the duty free shops in the bright building on the left then enter the terminal.  We wish we had more time.  The duty free building looked good and the duty free in the terminal looked good too.

 

We had dinner in the Windjammer tonight so no food porn.  Here’s some menu porn instead 😉😁

 

 

Lastly, here’s today’s Cruise Compass:

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow we do the full Panama Canal transit.  Originally we were scheduled for 8:00 a.m., but now they are saying 9:45 a.m.  So a little more sleep tonight.

 

If you get a chance, in the Windjammer, can you get a few pictures of the stir fry setup they have? Should have both meat and veggies. See if each passenger gets to put on their own raw meat on a plate with the veggies and then hand it over to the chef to cook. Just wondering how Radiance currently is doing it.

14 hours ago, SeaHunt said:

 

Why bring an air mattress when you can just take your mattresses from your room and put on your balcony. That's definitely the bed by the balcony floorplan LOL 🤪

 

 

(Seriously though the cruise lines will have to watch out for this because it is all over SM now and there are many comments with people saying they are going to do this on their next cruise)

 

I wouldn't see people on a Caribbean Cruise doing that, Between the humidity and the heat you would roast out there. That would be so uncomfortable.