doppelganger2621

Oh wow this is great news. We went there last time in Nassau and it was great.

You can’t even go to Royal’s website without the healthy sailing protocols plastered across the banner. I agree that the TA should have provided you with the information but it’s also not like Royal has been hiding what their vaccination requirements or Cruise with Confidence policies are. We booked post-vaccination for kids requirement, but I did receive an email when the mask policy was updated in a dedicated Healthy Sailing email

We're going with a large group of friends and requested to dine together--I would greatly prefer to dine with people I know if I'm going to have to be seated with others.

Yeah, I totally meant Washington but had Virginia on the brain when I was typing

I totally didn’t mean VA—I meant Washington haha

For US citizens, you can use any WTHI or trusted travel documents, which includes “enhanced” driver’s licenses. HOWEVER, only five states have what are considered enhanced driver’s licenses: Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington

Heading out on Allure in two weeks—thanks for the write up!

It sounds like you are getting a PCR test which you don’t need. You need to get a rapid NAAT or antigen test and get the results in a couple hours

I also just got this email for our 8 year vaccinated and boosted daughter. Everything on the app shows her vaccination record as validated. It does seem like this is a blanket email from this thread but I'm calling Royal anyway to make sure

I know on an Allure of the Seas video tour I watched, AO does have the “small” toilets for kids

I will just say that if you see BOGO at $84 that’s typically going to “mean” $84 a person. $84 at BOGO means $63 a person, and there’s no way that price is being offered at embarkation right now

Weather

Thrill waterpark tickets for our Allure sailing this month sold out back in March or April

If my vacation doesn’t start with a mimosa by 8-9 am, I’m doing it wrong.

There seems to be an obsession with somehow convincing people that you can’t possibly justify the price of a package, even when presented with actual live examples of how the package is of financial benefit to them. But I’ll add—I have no problem admitting I don’t actually care if it actually ends up saving me money. I mean, I bought it because I believe we will get the cost benefit of the package, but even if we don’t that’s ultimately fine to me. We don’t specialty dine. We don’t pay for RCI excursions. We’re typically just a “go to the beach” family but we’re taking this cruise with friends our age and haven’t cruised in 5 years. The beach is nice and lazy, but I have to drive, I have to go get groceries, I make dinners, we still have to clean up after ourselves, do laundry, etc. and honestly I’m looking forward to having to do none of that. This is a once-every-five-years splurge vacation for us. I had already budgeted a number for the drink package that if it went under that number it would be “worth it” and I would buy it. It’s not like I’m going to care much if I spent $850 only to drink $750 in drinks—I’ve already planned and budgeted that money into my cruise, I mean it’s already paid off, it’s money that’s no longer in my wallet and now I don’t have to worry about it. I do enjoy the piece of mind of not tabulating the amount spent on drinks and I’m ESPECIALLY enjoying that I don’t have to, at any point, tell my wife “hey we need to cut back a bit because this is way more expensive than I expected.” And just because you can’t quantify this worth doesn’t mean it doesn’t hold value. I think most of us concede we may very well not buy what we spent on the package, but what we’re saying is we’re okay with that whereas it sounds like for many others that if you spent $820 on an $825 package that it totally shows the DBP is a scam If you like the knowledge that you spent less than a DBP buyer, awesome, and without even going into my drinking habits of why the DBP makes more sense to me than lugging bottles of wine and buying $40 bottles of rum that cost $15 at my local grocery store, I’m just going to really enjoy my vacation

You can test as early as Friday.

Same for me on an Allure sailing. I checked EVERY DAY since October and the best it ever got was $60.99. I snagged that right before what seems to be a large price increase. With only one true port day on a 6 night sailing (other stops being CocoCay which we can use the DBP and then Nassau which we probably will just briefly get off the boat and then get back on), we’ll have no problem getting our money’s worth

You can’t buy liquor from the duty free shop and then drink it, you can bottle 375 ml bottles from Royal directly for delivery to the room. Obviously at a high markup too. Each stateroom can bring in two bottles of wine

Oh I’ve been an active participant in this thread, it’s just funny how 13 pages later it’s basically just “Welp, this totally subjective statement is in fact subjective”

So what I’ve learned in this thread, is that for some people, the DBP is worth it through some combination of cost and convenience, and for others, it is not. Glad we solved this issue!

Yes

All it takes is for me to remember the times I’ve been subjected to a flight delay. Thankfully it’s been sparse in my lifetime, but there have been four specific occasions in the last 10-15 years where I’ve had a flight delay of more than three hours

90 minutes before departure (3 pm)

I doubt it's recommended, but I've also done it before for a cruise about 9 years ago and was fine. However, with the pilot and FA shortage occuring now, you're cutting it close that if your flight gets cancelled or delayed, I wouldn't do it now, especially during hurricane season.

You basically get one log-in that you can use for multiple devices (so you can use as many devices really as you want, just only one can be logged-in at a time). I've seen that the surf and stream is usually between 3-5 mbps, and YMMV on that.