A Canadian takes on a S2B2B on Oasis 1/2/22, Odyssey 1/9/22 & 1/15/22 (hopefully)

[JessyCruises]

I was not planning on doing a live for this set of cruises, but with everything I have been seeing online, I thought it might be helpful for those who have cruises coming up and/or who might be travelling from Canada to share my experiences and answer any questions I can. 

 

My husband and I will be boarding Oasis on Jan 2, 2022 for a 7-night Eastern w/ Perfect Day which is supposed to go to San Juan, St. Maarten, and Cococay.  We are moving to the Odyssey on Jan 9, 2022 for a 6 night Western & Perfect Day going to Roatan, Cozumel, and Cococay. On Jan 15, 2022 we are being joined by our 19 yo son, his bestie and my sister. That one is an 8-night Southern Caribbean and is supposed to go to Nassau, Aruba and Curacao.  I do not think any of the cruises have all of the original stops that were planned, and I fully expect that each of our cruises are going to have ports changed again, with some eliminated entirely.  Hopefully we get to sail on all of these cruises.  I honestly do not care where they go at this point. 😊

 

Edited December 29, 2021 by JessyCruises

[JessyCruises]

We are casino folks and are prime members, so all of these cruises were casino comps.  For the Oasis cruise, we are in a Central Park Balcony.  On the 6-night Odyssey, we are in a Oceanview balcony.  These were both rebooks of cruise comps that were cancelled over the last year.  I have lost track of what we had originally booked.  For cruise #3, Hubby and I are both using our annual tier cruises and got 2 interior cabins. They are not connecting but are next to each other. In one cabin we have my son and his friend.  In the other is my hubby, my sister, and me. (Don’t worry they like each other).  It was not in her budget to get a 3rd cabin and have cruised together in one cabin before.  It was cozy, but fine. We do have a Royal Up bid in to get a Spacious Ocean view, (fingers crossed)!  None of us wanted to bunk with two 19-year-olds 😊

 

We are Diamond Plus and have 287 pts now.  We have been on 7 cruises since the restart.  We did a B3B on the Odyssey in August/Sept and a B4B on Allure in Oct/Nov.  There was 1 day in between the 1st week on the Allure and the subsequent 3 cruises, so I guess technically it was a S2B3B?  Not sure of the lingo...

 

Our experiences on our other cruises this year were great.  The Odyssey sailings in Aug/Sept had a very low passenger count.  On the 8-day cruise in the middle, I think we only had 500 or so guests.  For the Allure sailings last month, it truly did feel just about “normal”. Paul and I said this several times throughout the 4 cruises.  I do not recall the passenger counts but the numbers 2300-2700 are ringing a bell.  Casino & events were all well attended.  On all the cruises, covid protocols (masks etc.) were all being followed and we never felt unsafe. The Windjammer was open for dinner for all our Allure Cruises which was great.  We did not hear of any cases on any of the 7 cruises but I assume there were at least a couple.

 

We are Canadian and were very comfortable with how Royal handled the testing for our previous cruises.  Not only the antigen testing but the PCR testing they provided onboard at no cost that we used to get home.  Based on our prior experiences, we were very comfortable with cruising during covid and were excited for our family to finally be able to cruise as well. 

 

As you know, lots has changed over the last couple of weeks. It seems Omnicron is wreaking havoc on some ships among the crew which is affecting onboard activities and ships are being turned away from ports.  We are pretty good with rolling with the punches and are hoping we are healthy and have no covid issues that would impact our ability to sail or that affect us onboard and that any changes experienced do not prevent us from having a great time.

[JessyCruises]

TESTING

We ordered proctored antigen tests from Switch Health to use to fly and board the cruise.  We used these same tests when we cruised on the Allure and had no issues.  They are $79 CAD for 2 tests.  We will be taking the tests on New Years Eve.  We fly to Florida on Westjet on the 1st.

 

On 12/20/21 Royal announced it would no longer be providing PCR testing for international guest that needed it to fly home for cruises leaving after Jan 5 and that we would need to find our own PCR test either at the terminal, or another venue.  I tried to get the cost of the testing at the terminal, but RCL was unable to provide me any information.  I ended up buying some RT-LAMP tests which are proctored online like the antigen tests but they are accepted by Canada for re-entry.

(https://switchhealth.ca/en/partners/aeroplan/#collectionKits).  I only ordered 2 to start so my husband and I would have them before we leave this weekend in hopes we would be able to get more information on the terminal tests while onboard before the others had to pay for tests.  The cost of the tests was $149 CAD per test.  I ordered them the same day Royal made the announcement which I believe was a Monday and received them by Wednesday.  They do not expire until July.

 

On Sunday 12/26/22, Royal came out with additional information.  They are now providing the in terminal testing for cruises departing 1/5/22 to 1/31/22 at no cost to passengers.  For cruises after January, guests will need to pay $105 USD for antigen or $210 USD for PCR.  These are starting prices and will fluctuate based on the port.  We will be saving those RT-Lamp tests we bought for one of our other cruises this spring and using RCLs testing for this cruise.  If the pricing at the ports is going to stay that high, we will continue to order the tests through Switch health for future.  $210 USD x 5 = about $1365 CAD.  That is a lot of unexpected expense, so I am glad RCL decided to grandfather us January cruises in.  Results should be received within an hour and our flight on the 23rd is not until noon so if we get off early, that should leave us plenty of time to get our results and load them onto the ArriveCAN app in time.

 

These is lots of speculation about why RCL is no longer providing the tests.  I am assuming it is a combination of 3 factors:

1) To save $$ for the cruise line by reducing testing costs

2) If the test is not given onboard and a guest test positive, that guest and their party would no longer fall under the cruise line’s responsibility (ie quarantine hotel, flight home, food, etc). 

3) I assume since the guest is no longer onboard when they get tested, RCL may not be required to report the positive tests to CDC?

 

I may not like it, but I guess all these reasons make sense to me.  To combat #2, we are bringing some rapid antigen tests with us.  We are planning to test the 5 of us onboard on the 22nd.  If any of us are positive, then we will report it onboard on the 22nd and request a full test from the cruise line.  We would then fall under their positive covid policy.  Paul and I will have been onboard a ship and in RCLs hands since Jan 2 with testing for our S2S and B2B, so if either he or I get Covid and test positive on that last cruise, it will be pretty clear we got it on their watch.

 

More to come

[kimlet]

Question with the new rules. my cruise in March I have to get the test when I get off the ship am I allowed to get on the plane that day or do I have to stay over night and fly out the next day. I live in Ontario. I have a flight for 11:40 on the day we arrive back in port. Arrive Can says within 72 hours. 

Thanks for any help

[Bronx12]

Thanks for doing this, I love  your writing style! Following along 🙂 

[h20skibum]

We will be on Oasis with you for the 1/2 sailing.  We have it as a B2B on the 1/9 sailing.  
 

We did Odyssey the end of October, and it was fantastic.  I am hoping for a lower passenger count on these sailings, and we don’t mind any of the port changes or if they are canceled. 

[JessyCruises]

3 hours ago, kimlet said:

Question with the new rules. my cruise in March I have to get the test when I get off the ship am I allowed to get on the plane that day or do I have to stay over night and fly out the next day. I live in Ontario. I have a flight for 11:40 on the day we arrive back in port. Arrive Can says within 72 hours. 

Thanks for any help

 

It is hard to say what the rules will be in March and whether molecular tests will still be required for entry to Canada (I really hope we change to antigen).  With that being said, as of right now RCL is saying the tests taken at the terminal will have results emailed to you within an hour, so assuming you get off relatively quickly and there is no problem with your results, you will be able to fly that day. 

 

With the RT-Lamp tests I mentioned, you do it yourself over live video so you could do it the day before dismbarkation and get the results in about an hour and would be able to use it for a flight on disembarkation day. 

[JessyCruises]

3 hours ago, h20skibum said:

We will be on Oasis with you for the 1/2 sailing.  We have it as a B2B on the 1/9 sailing.  
 

We did Odyssey the end of October, and it was fantastic.  I am hoping for a lower passenger count on these sailings, and we don’t mind any of the port changes or if they are canceled. 

 We do not mind as well.  As long as there is enough people onboard to make the events interesting, we are good to go.  On our 4 Allure cruises we did not get off at all except for CocoCay.

[JessyCruises]

We just got an interesting email from Westjet that has thrown a wrench in the works. 

 

They had announced today that they were going to be cancelling 15% of scheduled flights for the month of January.  Our fingers were crossed it would not affect our flights.  Boy were we wrong...

 

The email we received said our Jan 1 flight which was supposed to arrive Saturday at 1:10PM has now been moved to JANUARY 4TH!!  Well, seeing as we are supposed to board on Jan 2 and be at sea Jan 4, that is obviously not going to work!  Time to call Westjet!!

 

I am not looking forward to it - everytime I have called them since Covid, I have been on hold for about 4 hours or so.  I am expecting it to be even longer tonight because of their announcement.  Wish me luck!!

[Bronx12]

Oh no! That is terrible, hopefully you can get it sorted out, Good luck and post how you make out, if you don't mind. 

[JessyCruises]

15 minutes ago, Bronx12 said:

Oh no! That is terrible, hopefully you can get it sorted out, Good luck and post how you make out, if you don't mind. 

Will do! At least we have tomorrow and Saturday that we could use to fly if needed

 

[Ginlyn]

24 minutes ago, JessyCruises said:

Will do! At least we have tomorrow and Saturday that we could use to fly if needed

 

Wishing you the best in getting it sorted out.  

[fliprcruiser]

Hoping you get air travel figured out.

 

Looking forward to your Jan 9 Odyssey reports, as we join you on the 15th. Little anxious right now about capacity and what activities will be available.

[JessyCruises]

Hallelujah!

 

Luckily hubby was already on hold with them before I even got home and posted here.  After being on hold for 3 hrs and 18 minutes, a great rep answered.  The only option for Jan 1 that was coming up into Miami had two stop overs and was not getting in until after 8PM.  We did not want to risk that with all of the flight issues lately so we asked him to take a look to see what was available coming into Fort Lauderdale instead. He managed to get us a flight into Fort Lauderdale with only 1 stop in Toronto and an arrival time of 1:28PM.  It took him quite awhile to get the system to take our changes, but he did it and we hung up with a grand total of 4:26:12 including hold time!

 

We have now booked a Budget rental car from FLL with a drop off at their Port of Miami location.  Hopefully the shuttle is running.  I will have to research that tomorrow. 

 

Hopefully we have no more crisis!

 

Edited December 31, 2021 by JessyCruises

[D4]

Wow, your hubby is a trooper!  I hope your new flights go smoothly.

 

Have you considered taking a taxi from FLL to Miami?  

[RoyalC]

Wow, this will be interesting to say the least. At least it is a casino comp and maybe capacity will be lower.

[marchand28]

So enjoy your posts. We were on Odyssey the end of September for the 8 day version. On Oasis the end of February so will be following and as always enjoying your posts.

[JessyCruises]

Just completed our proctored antigen tests that we ordered from Switch Health.  

 

We logged in at 10:30 AST and it said there was less than 10 people ahead of us.  The agent joined at 10:33.  Hubby and I were able to complete the tests on same video call. 
 

There were two tests in the kit.  We had to put the QR codes on the cassettes and show government issued photo ID.  She did my test first.  She had me take my phone to the QR code on my cassette so she could take a photo.  She then walked me through the specimen collection and dropping the liquid on the cassette.  Then she did the same with hubby.  The call was over by 10:40.  

After 15 minutes we had to upload a photo to the website.  They then reviewed the results and issued the paperwork. I was done my test a few minutes earlier than Paul so I sent my photo at 10:49 I had the PDF with the results by 10:55.  We had Paul’s by 11:00.

For home tests to be valid for RCL, they need to be video monitored by a health professional and approved by the FDA.  I know the one we had done in October was Abbott Panio and we had no issues boarding.  The packaging in the kit said this test was SD Bionsensor. I don’t remember what the packaging said last time.

 While I was waiting for my results to come in, I went to the FDA and found the FDA approval for the SD Biosensor.  Looks like it was just issued on 12/24

As you can tell from my photo of my results, they show Abbott this time too.  The two companies must be affiliated. 
 

Assuming there are no more flight mishaps, we appear to be good to go!!

[JessyCruises]

Sorry it looks like the FDA link did not work in my post above.  Here it is again:

https://www.fda.gov/media/155123/download

 

[ticketsunlimited]

So far so good.  Fingers crossed for a great vacation.  We are doing Odyssey 8 day on 1/29

We hope a month will be enough time for things to get a bit better.  Dan

[binro01]

Safe travels and good health! Following your journey.

[JessyCruises]

Not surprisingly, we have received notification that we will not be heading to San Juan on 1/4.  Instead we are going to Nassau on 1/3 from 7:00AM-1:30 PM.  Hubby and I are both working remotely onboard so we will not be getting off in Nassau because we will working.  To be perfectly honest, we probably would not have anyway...

[JessyCruises]

We are now aboard the last leg of our flight and I am enjoying my free wifi on WestJet.  There is something very cool about being online at 10,000 feet.  
 

The plan upon arrival at FLL is to grab our rental car, head to the nearest Cheesecake Factory for lunch then head to the hotel for the rest of the day/evening. We normally would have headed to Sawgrass Mills or Dolphin Mall but are avoiding crowds because of current situation.

 

 

[binro01]

38 minutes ago, JessyCruises said:

We are now aboard the last leg of our flight and I am enjoying my free wifi on WestJet.  There is something very cool about being online at 10,000 feet.  
 

The plan upon arrival at FLL is to grab our rental car, head to the nearest Cheesecake Factory for lunch then head to the hotel for the rest of the day/evening. We normally would have headed to Sawgrass Mills or Dolphin Mall but are avoiding crowds because of current situation.

 

 

Safe flight! I would avoid the cheesecake factory as well. Just order it in on door dash. 

Edited January 1, 2022 by binro01

[vacationlover_mn]

Following!