frisbeewife

Love the title of this post. :D

I never get any of the beverage packages but I'm taking the grandkids on a cruise next week and thought the Royal Refreshment Package might be good for them. Does it "work" on CocoCay? Will they be able to get soft drinks there without paying for them? I know the alcoholic packages work on CocoCay but I'm not sure about the soft drinks.

Thanks.

I've obviously been on the wrong cruise line all this time.... :D

Good, cuz I'm having a heck of a time getting the website to let me make a reservation for more than 1 day.

I might have left this a little late, but I'm leaving June 27 for a 4-night cruise on Majesty with my 3 grandkids (just the 4 of us). I chose MTD because I didn't know what time we would want to eat each night. I've never done MTD before and maybe it doesn't work quite like I thought it would.

Do I HAVE to make reservations for every night, or can we just show up and wait in line until we're seated? Or is that kind of like flying on standby where you're hoping 4 open seats will come up?

You probably already know this, but the Monarch and the Majesty are very similar. Sometimes, I can remember the layout of ships I have cruised on before - sometimes not! Anyway, thought if you could conjure up some memories, it might help you figure out what you were getting into this time.

What I remember most about Monarch was how hard it was to get on an elevator, especially since we had my Mom with us and she was in a wheelchair. One time it took over 20 minutes before an elevator came she could get on - nobody would get off any of the others to let her on. That was her last cruise. She just felt like too much of a burden, even tho I keep telling her the newer and bigger ships have a lot more elevators and it's not a problem.

Anyway, I figured Majesty will be pretty much the same way regarding elevators. And I do remember the half-stairs situation - that was another issue with having Mom in a wheelchair. It's not a bad ship, just not really ideal for wheelchair passengers.

Thanks for all the advice. I don't have a wheelchair but I could borrow or rent one - it would be worth it to see the look on the faces of my 15 & 14 year old grandsons when I told them they'd have to push their Grandma around. I can see the eye-rolling now. :eek:

I will have to go to Guest Services when we board anyway to get our Sea Pass cards set up to open each others' rooms (15 & 14 year olds in 1 room, me and 6 year old in room next door) so that would be a good time to bring up the stair situation.

And we're on deck 3 so the "half stairs" shouldn't come into play, although I could probably handle those OK.

Looking forward to it! Hoping for good weather and calm seas!

Going on a 4-night cruise June 27 on Majesty. I have bad knees (getting them both replaced in a couple of months) but I can walk up to maybe a half mile and I don't need a wheelchair to get around. Stairs are a killer, though. A few are OK, but going up and down a whole flight is tough. I booked this cruise 18 months ago and wasn't too bad then, but it's gotten worse since then.

I seem to remember at certain times (muster drill, going to the tender, etc.) they herd everybody toward the stairs and away from the elevators. They must have exceptions for wheelchair passengers - if I get a note from my doctor saying I can't take the stairs can I use the elevators at those times too? Has anybody else had this situation?

BTW, I do expect a wait to get on an elevator on Majesty. But this is a special cruise with just me and my 3 grandsons and we've all been looking forward to it for a long time, so I'd rather wait for an elevator than cancel!

From the website. Can't use C&A or Shareholder discounts with this sale.

Offer is combinable with current standard/full fare rates, 1,2 Free, Free Children, restricted rates (for example, Seniors, Residents, Military) and Next Cruise offers. Offer is not combinable with any other offer or promotion, including, but not limited to Group Standard, Interline, Travel Agent, Travel Agent Friends and Family, Weekly Sales Events, Net Rates, Crown & Anchor Discounts, and Shareholder benefits.

Why would anyone care unless the cruise is in the winter or somewhere cold?

 

There are always some muster stations inside and some outside on almost all cruises.

 

It depends on where you cabin is and its associated muster station.

 

Good grief.

 

JC

Well, it DOES matter to some people. Maybe not enough to make you change your mind about the cruise, but enough to be prepared for the heat, humidity, and long standing time if mustering outside in the summer. I'm surprised they don't have more people collapse during muster - especially older people

Side question - what do they do if one of Florida's notorious summer afternoon lightning storms comes along at muster time? Make everybody stand outside on a metal deck floating in the water?

But you're right - the muster station can be inside or outside depending on the ship and where your cabin is. I don't know if anybody has a magic decoder ring to tell you where your station will be for any given cabin on any given ship for any given sailing though.

I just asked our TA to add our Daughter to our existing booking, which was made in Nov 2015. Cruise is in Oct 2016. Her price seems to reflect the pricing on the original booking date. However, TA said that she would most probably NOT be getting the beverage package perk which was offered us at the time of the booking. TA said that he was not absolutely sure about the perk, but warned us not to expect it.

We have a JS with a sofa bed, so we did not need to change cabin. We will be having aft corner 8096 on Rhapsody which I was not willing to let go.

I just booked that exact cabin on Monday for a cruise with family next March. I've never been in an aft cabin, much less an aft corner. So take good care of my (future) cabin! BTW, we also booked the cabin next door, 8098 - does anybody know if the dividers between aft cabins are retractable?

The cruise I booked yesterday for 6 people costs $16 more today. It would help if we weren't in a blackout date and our under-12-year-old was free, but I have no control over the timing of Spring Break.

BUT, we got 2 aft JS and a Large Interior at a price I'm OK with. I've never been in an aft cabin or in a JS so I'm still happy. AND it's a week of funtime with my son, DIL, and 3 grandkids. :):):)

I learned a long time ago to book a cruise when you decide you want to go and if the price is something you can live with. If it goes down later you can (usually) get the difference refunded. If it doesn't go down then you know you got the best price you could. I could care less if RCCL (or Honda or Macy's or Home Depot or whoever) wants to call it a "sale" - it's all a matter of the bottom line price to me.

Does Melia accept credit cards for the day passes? And how far of a walk is it to the #10 bus stop from the dock? I have bad knees and I can walk but the farther I go the more the pain builds up, and hills and steps makes it worse. How much would a taxi cost for 4 people from the port to/from Melia? It might be worth it for me to save my knees for the actual beach area.

Thanks!

Any guesses what the price range for cruises to Cuba would be? I'd expect it to be much higher than the standard Caribbean cruises.

Switch to enchantment. The ocean view rooms are tiny (I literally had to crawl into bed on my side), and we both disliked the windjammer. We've been on small, old ships before but we were surprised how much smaller the shower can actually get.

 

If there were any other adults going besides me, or if it was going to be longer than 4 nights, then I'd definitely agree with you. But for a quickie cruise with just the kids I think we can manage with the smaller rooms and showers. At least I knew better than to try to cram all 4 of us in the same room - having 2 bathrooms will be a really good thing!

And I don't much like the WJ on any of the ships so that doesn't matter much.

Thanks for the feedback, though. That's the kind of thing I was hoping to hear!

My son-n-law called RCI and asked about the slides. They told him that Splashaway Bay will be done and there will be slides in Splashaway Bay but they will be kid-sized. The big adult size slides will not happen.

Actually, that would be awesome. It's keeping the 6 year old happy that I'm worried about so if he can do the slides then that'll be perfect. Thanks for the update - I feel better about it now.

Well, they have cruised several times and the older ones are just short of Platinum. The last time I sprang for two Grand Suites for 6 of us - the boys, their parents, and me. The 13-year-old LOVED the Suite perks and will be disappointed at a measely OV. But I figure getting his own room with his brother might make up for having to sail with the "lower classes". And I'm retiring in a couple of years so he needs to start resetting his expectations. :rolleyes:

The other 2 kids could care less about room size, balconies, specialty restaurants, etc. Just give them a pool, plenty of food, and let them stay up late and they're in heaven.

Don't worry - my hopes aren't real high. I'll be happy with clean rooms, decent food, and a clean pool or 2 that my grandkids can get into.

The website doesn't list Splashaway Bay or the poolside screen until 2017 so even though I have a very low opinion of RCCL's website, I don't really expect to see anything in that regard this summer.

Now I just have to decide how much to bribe the teenagers to watch the 6 year old while I sneak off to the casino with all that money I just "saved".... :eek:

As far as I know, that is supposed to happen during this upcoming dry dock in May.

 

The planned upgrades that aren't happening include 3 new specialty restaurants, as well as water slides. I know that waterslides are included in Splashaway Bay, but Splashaway Bay wasn't added to the website until very recently.

Now I AM confused, which I always suspect is RCCL's goal.... :D

So maybe some parts of Splashaway Bay will be there but not the waterslides? Or maybe none of it will be there? Or maybe all of it will be there? And the website's description of Majesty still says nothing about some of the upgrades not happening - in fact, the website says the upgrades are already in place even tho they're not. ...sigh... Websites are not rocket science but RCCL can't seem to manage to keep theirs even remotely up to date.

Anyway..... I'm leaning toward just staying with Majesty. Enchantment is probably a nicer ship, but for that much money I can buy the boys lots of extra goodies and they won't notice any difference. Plus it looks like maybe Majesty has basketball and Enchantment doesn't, and the 15 year old is really into that right now. We'll just let the pool area be a surprise, one way or another. And a total of 6 hours of drive time doesn't excite me at all, when Port Canaveral is just down the road.

Thanks for all the info and discussion. Should be a fun trip either way!

Majesty wil be getting Splashaway Bay and a poolside movie screen.

Apparently not all of the originally planned upgrades will be made this year. I've seen other posts mentioning that, and on the RCCL website's Majesty deck plans Splashaway Bay shows up under the "Deck Plans from 01-May-2017 to 30-April-2018" option, but not anywhere else. So I don't think it's going to be added by this June.

If the huge pool deck, Solarium, Park Cafe, and Chops on Enchantment are not a big deal, then I'd stick with Majesty.

The Solarium and Chops won't matter. The Park Cafe is something we'd probably use if it was there but not really miss if it wasn't. The pool deck would probably matter, though.

Just not sure how crowded the Majesty pools get. The last thing I want is a cranky 6 year old who keeps getting crowded out of the pool..... :p

Well, I'm very disappointed the pool area upgrades won't be made to Majesty this year as promised. I'm taking my 3 grandsons on a Bahamas cruise at the end of June and that was the deciding factor to me in booking Majesty instead of Enchantment.

So I'm looking for opinions. Stay with Majesty or switch to Enchantment?

Grandsons will be 15, 14, and 6. Love to be in the pool and play basketball. Don't care much for arcades, Adventure Ocean, or teen activities. Love free food in any location - Windjammer, MDR, ice cream machines, whatever.

Booking 2 side-by-side OV rooms.

I live 45 minutes from Majesty (Port Canaveral) and can be dropped off/picked up without having to pay for parking, or could pay the cheaper price at off-port parking. For Enchantment I'd have to drive 3 hours to Miami and park at $$ terminal garage.

Enchantment would be $900 more ($500 for cruise and $400 lost OBC I got when booking Majesty). That's not chump-change, but I can handle it if Enchantment would be a much better experience for the boys.

Looks like Enchantment has more pools. Do both or either ship have basketball? The itinerary doesn't really matter - we live in Florida and a beach is a beach.

So, any thoughts? Thanks!

I'll be in Nassau on June 29 with my 3 grandsons. They'll be 15, 14, and 6. And I'm 59 with bad knees. Anyway, I'd like to take them to a beach with some amenities (chairs, food/drinks, umbrellas would be great) and both the Hilton and Melia day passes sound like a great idea. But should I buy them ahead of time or wait until we get there? If the weather is bad I won't want to spend all that money on a washout, but I know the Hilton at least does get full. I assume there's no refund on non-used day passes, right?

Another question - do either of these resorts have a lot of stairs to deal with? My knees really don't like stairs.

Thanks for any advice!

i found out you have to use Firefox to get into your account.

That won't help. I use Firefox and every time I try to check a price it tells me the site is temporarily unavailable. It's sad when I have to go to an online TA to find out the prices. Hopefully it'll be fixed before I try to make final payment on my June cruise.....

Anyway, if it worked for you after switching to Firefox it was just a coincidence. It works intermittently no matter what browser you use.

I wanted to point out that any evidence of the addition of waterslides, Izumi, or Sabor have been eliminated.

 

When the dry dock was first announced, these 3 things were included in the list of new venues/features.

Bummer! I'm taking the grandkids on Majesty at the end of June and was really hoping for waterslides. I guess they'll just have to settle for a pool.