It'sRC4ME

I agree with the above comment.

 

My DS is confined to a manual wheelchair and we have not had problems with carpets on any of the ships. On embarkations day get one of the wheelchair helper to push your DH on to the ship, it will make life easier for you. During muster drill we are always told that if we help getting to the lifeboats let the CS deck know and they will make a note on their system.

 

 

What makes you say this? If it is because of the width of the cabin door, I believe you can rent scooters that can fit through standard cabin door.

Thank you for your input on the carpet - that's great to hear. For the scooter, we are in a D6 Cabin on Deck 9 (near the forward elevators!), and the bed is near the door. I called our Travel Agent, and switching to a cabin with the bed by the balcony will cost another $1000 at this point. It looks like with the bed by the door, the space available to come into the cabin and get around the bed will just be too small for a scooter. The only accessible cabins available are insides, and I want to keep a balcony so he can chill out there.

One more question - if we do go, do we need to inform RC in advance of his mobility issues? We intend to be self sufficient, but I am wondering if they need to know for muster station assignment or something.

DH and I are booked on Anthem to Bermuda departing September 1st 2018. One month ago DH had a bad ladder fall at work, and is now recovering with a broken wrist and a broken knee. He is progressing rapidly, and we have not decided whether to cancel the cruise. We have insurance, so we'll get our money back if we can't go.

Our cabin won't accommodate a scooter, so DH would be in a manual wheelchair for moving longer distances around the ship. (In the cabin he will be able to move around with a walker, like he does at home). At home on hard surfaces he is quite nimble in the chair, moving around with one foot and the opposite arm for propulsion. I am concerned about dealing with carpeting (is it hard and easy to roll on, or soft and the chair will bog down), high transition strips at doorways, and convoluted routes necessitated by crowds and/or obstacles like decorative steps to get into a particular area. Research so far appears to show that the Royal Esplanade is to be avoided at all costs :-). We'll bring the chair with us, so boarding should be easy enough.

I would love to hear anyone's experiences with a manual chair on this ship. Thanks for any insight you can give me.

For a jacket, one of those packable thin down jackets will pack down to a much smaller size than a polartec zip up jacket will, so when you don't need it you can stash it in your bag with less bulk to deal with. Despite being thin they are very warm.

Things like this are often different from ship to ship. But I have seen the crew on every ship I've sailed bend over backward to comply with some truly stupid requests in the past. As this is quite the opposite of a stupid request, I can't imagine they wouldn't help you out, even if it's something they don't normally offer on that ship.

Here is photographic evidence that they will serve peanut butter on a playing card, if requested. (an extra tip was involved too, and we provided the playing cards). So I think you are safe to assume they will help make it possible to take food back to your cabin.

http://public.fotki.com/tashamike/travels/cruise2009/dscf4016-jpg.html

Here is a link to an article about the Chinese cruise market that may help explain a few things. It focuses on a Costa cruise, but the issues involved are universal to the industry. As illustrated in the article, Chinese passengers who pay for a premium experience such as a suite expect exclusive amenities. Giving them exclusive access to the Solarium would be one way of meeting that expectation without needing to completely redesign the ship to include "suite only" areas that could not be easily converted back to serve all passengers.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-china-cruises/

Why not involve them in choosing the excursions? Maybe they'll be excited to choose what they want to do, vs. sitting back and poo poo-ing whatever their parents anxiously picked out, hoping they would like it. Same for dining. And dig up some compasses to show them so they can see how much there is to do.

Thank you for posting this - we are taking that same cruise over labor day weekend. For the entertainment, were you planning in advance to attend certain things, and still getting shut out, or were you just walking around to see what was going on and finding yourselves crowded/shut out?

DH and I tend to be the "walk around and see" types, but I am wondering if for this cruise we need to make more of a point to study the compass and make plans. We generally don't bother with the big shows, so I haven't made reservations for them and we won't worry about trying to see them. I've never seen a good schooner bar sing-along guy who didn't draw a standing room crowd, so if we want to do that we know to go early. But usually we can find a lounge somewhere with someone playing something and few people there. It sounds like that wasn't the case on Anthem, despite so much entertainment listed in the compasses I've seen.

The beach sand did come back in force after the hurricane (a lot of it wound up on the runway and in the road initially). Since it varies week to week it's somewhat unpredictable. traveltalkonline.com has a St. Maarten message board - you could poke around there to see if anyone mentions the sand level at Maho, or register and post a question. Posters there have a somewhat anti-cruise-passenger bias, but they are very knowledgeable about the island and someone can probably give you an up to date eye-witness report.

I read reports from some of the other cruise lines with these suite areas, I think NCL and MSC. Sometimes the suite pool becomes the kiddie pool.

And I can't imagine that families paying big bucks for the Amazing Ultra Stupendous Family SUITE would be happy to discover their children are not welcome in the Suite Pool.

Here's an idea. Check travelscootrentals.com. These little scooters break down into a compact package, and when fully assembled they fit neatly in a cabin. Rent one and have it delivered to YOUR cabin. That way if the size of the ship does turn out to be a real issue for your dad, you'll have an option to fall back on.

Perhaps the wording is due to it being a UK site.

Yeah - I could tell it was a British message before I even got to the UK phone number at the bottom. Probably popped off for a cuppa.

Google "dialysis cruises" and the top result is a company called Dialysis at Sea, which should be a good starting point.

It was a ship, where I will go to sleep at night, and wake up at a new and exciting location. I will have a good dinner at night. After a good dinner, they will entertain me at a show, and a bar. I will look at the stars at night, and hear the waves. During a sea day, I would lounge on deck, splash in an extremely small pool, and get entertained on the ship, with silly things like a belly flop contest.

This is so sweet.

Thanks all! Just didn't want to be one of those folks who doesn't check the school schedule for the local area and then comes back complaining that there were 3000 kids on their cruise!

I am considering the Anthem of the Seas Bermuda sailing leaving on September 1st, which is Labor Day Weekend. Can anyone speculate on whether it will have thousands of kids on board, or will they have gone back to school? I'm asking as I don't have a sense of the New Jersey / New York / Connecticut school schedules. Obviously there are always some children, but if that week is that area's last chance for vacation before school starts I will pick a later sailing. Thanks!

If you mention to an Indian waiter/assistant waiter/head waiter how much you like Indian food they'll usually offer to start bringing you the Indian entree of the night. Usually a vegetarian curry, rice, papadum, naan and raita. I have a well educated palate for Indian food (I lived there for 3 years) and have always found RC's Indian food to be really, really good.

Years and years ago we had a cabin OVER the theater on Grandeur. We could definitely hear the shows going on, which wasn't much of an issue because we weren't trying to sleep before they were over. What we didn't count on was being able to hear the rehearsals in the afternoon. We didn't get many naps in! If I were you I would switch cabins.

Some demographics are such that 6pm dining is very popular and lines would be long. Others may have the long lines later, around 7:30pm. These kinds of things are not predictable pre-cruise..

 

 

Why didn't you end your inquiry with the initial sentence? Why was it necessary to look for offense?

Because I thought you were referring to the demographic of the party of two, not the demographic of all the passengers on the cruise, and was astounded that you would make that statement as if taking demographics into account when seating a party of two was the most normal thing in the world. Now that I understand that you're talking about everyone on the ship, I totally agree with your observation.

If you have a large party, making reservations would be a good thing as it would reduce waiting time. If you are a party of two, depending on demographic, you could have little to no wait without reservations.

I'm curious - what do demographics have to do with whether a party of two is seated quickly? Are older folks seated ahead of younger folks who have been waiting longer? Are minorities made to wait unnecessarily?

Must be an American thing. Here such discrimination is illegal and no large business would make a mistake of not training their staff properly around this. I recall when my previous employer adopted the dress code from the UK operation - the only change made was "no bare midriffs for women" was changed to "no bare midriffs"; which for me was an improvement too since the former might be delightful but the latter absolutely never so.

Ha! Google Beijing Bikini and see what your employer cleverly avoided!

Ha! My in laws once returned from a cruise to discover that raccoons had come in and out of their house via the cat door, and trashed their kitchen. Not sure if that's worse than a Netflix hack though.;p

This makes me wonder - we are cruising on Grandeur next year and I have just got a really wonderful mattress pad for my bed at home. Since we're driving to port, can I just roll up my mattress pad and put it in a duffel bag and bring it with me? I would tip the steward extra up front to remake the bed with it.

Not on a cruise but related sort of . We were on a cruise several years ago that ended in Vancouver .Nearly everyone on our flight to NYC had been on the cruise . We found ourselves seated behind a couple who was on the cruise . The husband sat down on his seat and pushed it back as far as he could nearly crushing my knees .I screamed in pain and his reaction was to push even harder .He then got up to go to the bathroom and his wife took his seat and she pushed the seat back into my knees and again I screamed in pain .I could barely stand and called over the nearest Flight Attendant .She was unable to reason with the people.She was able to find my wife and I other seats on the plane .When we left the plane I confronted the couple and asked why they were so rude and they told me to F-off.

A few days later I was in a restaurant not too far from where I live and this couple was dining there.I came in with friends,pointed to the couple and proceeded to tell my friends about them.I guess they were embarassed because they left immediately.

 

This couple were Cruise Critic regulars .If they are still posting here they have changed the names they use .

Ha! That's great. DH and I have a theory that the weirdest people on the flight to the cruise will be on our ship, and the weirdest (or rudest) people on the ship will be on our flight home. Proven true over about 12 cruises now.

That is what I thought it was but guest services told me that they use something that comes out clear? What a load of BS! Why would soot turn to rust though when washed in some spots? Also why don't they have a warning or towels to wipe down the seats before you sit in them? We can't be the only family this has happened to.:confused:

I think the majority of the ships airborne emissions ARE clear, kind of like what comes from your car's tailpipe, but I have seen that big black puff of soot when they start the engines on every ship I've ever cruised on. I don't know why the black soot spots would get rusty-colored when washed, but maybe it's sort of like an oil stain.