LACruiser88

The specialty restaurants do not serve lunch. One of the specialty restaurants serves breakfast for those in full suites. On the Sapphire, suite breakfast is served in Sabatini's. I have never seen any "pop-up" salad bars.

You mentioned you checked here on CC, does that include the Roll Call for your cruise?

You or someone with your Captain Circle number needs to be onboard to purchase.

Here's the link to the previous thread on this topic. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2926014-new-for-future-cruise-deposit/#comments

The Vines on the Sapphire is very small and they do not serve any appetizers at all. The original Vines location was replaced by Alfredo's Pizzeria. Vines was moved to the adjacent candy shop.

I can tell now as they are the same folks from the last cruise. #1- 2,208 #2- 1,893 #3- 901 We were #9 and #10 at 756 sea days.

I don't know, but I'll try to ask him tomorrow at the MTG Luncheon. They usually only do 2 month contracts and he has been onboard our entire voyage.

Beautiful day today in Costa Rica! ¡La Pura Vida!

Relaxing sea day. Today started with heavy showers in the early morning and we also had a rain shower at around 1 pm our time. Our time is currently MST. We will be in Puntarenas, Costa Rica, tomorrow.

@JoRoy218 I forgot to mention that you should book now if you are considering this excursion. Shaun mentioned that he already had a lot of reservations for the 2023/2024 season. There are a very limited amount of spots available. There is no deposit taken, you pay cash on the day of the excursion.

For us it's black electrical tape.

Totally agree! That's why we always travel with the two below products. Our servers keep it for us at their station. Flatiron has individual packets that I take to Alfredo's. Cholula's Original and Chipotle are my favorite flavors.

The Embruix, Spellbound and the Malbec were gone a few days into our voyage. How can you run out of Malbec while in Argentina! All of their wine shipments have been coming from Ft Lauderdale or LA. Crazy!!!

We had same experience with my mother's ashes, very dignified. RIP ❤️

The other issue in the MDR is that the Jr Waiters can't tell you what wine by the glass are available, other than a Cab, a Merlot, etc. The Sapphire has two somm's (again, a program they had years ago) but they only help if you are purchasing a bottle. I don't see this current somm program lasting very long. I've had conversations with both of them and they are trying but you can't really call them sommeliers. They were both Princess bartenders on their previous contracts.

@Carnevale Here is the Vines menu. This is what Vines looks like when it's closed during the day. I threw in tonight's dinner menu.

@memoak Has Rui returned as the DRO? TIA

Here's a link... https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/499-cruisetravel-insurance/

We are currently on the Sapphire. Below is a photo of our Emerald deck, aft mini-suite balcony. It is huge and fully covered.

I'll take a photo of the Vines wines later today. However, they are out of about half of the wines on the list. About half of those, they have not had since boarding. The MDR has about 100 selections by the bottle, a few more by the glass than Vines. Who knows what the wine inventory will be in the future. It can't get worse! There is no dancing at all in the Piazza, that is only on Royal Class ships. We are dancers and have done so most nights. They have had a really good husband/wife duo in the Wheelhouse. The party band has been playing in Explorers Lounge and Club Fusion. Every few nights they have had DJ "Ballroom" music in Club Fusion, not for us.

Another fantastic day today in Manta! It stopped raining shortly after docking. It was 85°f and 95% humidity! We hired a cab as soon as we exited the cruise terminal and proceeded straight to the town of Montecristi, about 30 minutes away. My goal today was to buy a couple of high quality Panama hats. This photo pretty much captures the Panama hat district. There are numerous "hat factories" on the street. At several of the shops they demonstrated the process of making the world famous hats. It was interesting to learn that the quality of the hat is determined by the number of woven knots within a square inch. The softness or stiffness of the hat has no bearing on the quality of the hat. Our two salespersons and our driver, Luis (far right). We beat the tour buses as they were just starting to arrive when we left to return to Manta. In Manta we had our driver drop us off near the cruise terminal at "restaurant row." We enjoyed a great lunch of baked black clams and fried grouper. Each dish came with fried plantains (known as tostones in my homeland of Cuba). Here is the grouper before and after. Views of Manta. We ended up with four high quality Panama hats, one for Debbie and three for me. I finally came out ahead of Debbie in a shopping spree! 😜

Arriving in Manta, Ecuador, this morning. It is 80°f and raining. It is supposed to clear up by noon? We were scheduled for an arrival of 10:00 am.