Cruise Gopher

Hoping to hear from others also. We sail the week after you, on November 19th.

We are RCCL Diamonds and made the move to Celebrity about 8 years ago and never looked back. Royal just isn’t for us anymore.

Weather has been amazing! Super hot in CocoCay but that’s ok plenty of water to cool off in. Food has been excellent too.

Certain ones work, like Cisco AnyConnect.

Who said I was on vacation? Not everyone on a cruise is on vacation. This cruise was dirt cheap so I was hoping to work during the day and enjoy my evenings onboard with my free diamond drinks and sit down meal service, a nice clean room all made up for me twice a day, etc. I know Starlink is still very new and they will have lots to learn and the technology will evolve over time, but I sure hope Royal Caribbean can evolve with it and open up VPNs, don’t filter websites, don’t throttle people, etc. It’s like we’re stuck driving a Ferrari through the streets of Manhattan at this point.

Currently onboard Liberty of the Seas 3 night sailing, I have purchased the unlimited Surf + Stream internet and they have Starlink onboard. The internet has been crap to say the least. When running a speedtest the speeds appear to be amazing, like 100MBps download and 20-50MBps upload. But it's all smoke and mirrors. I can't even do a Microsoft Teams call on my laptop. It connects fine and I can hear people fine, then as soon as I go to speak it drops the call. I tried a couple Facetime calls last night and those performed miserably as well. Oh and I guess I should have done more research beforehand because Royal Caribbean blocks VPNs and so there went any hope of doing any sort of real work while on the ship. They really need to disclose this up front on their website and also before you commit to buying an internet package. Does anyone have any tips or advice as to what parts of the ship might be better to try and get a better signal or service? I am on deck 12 forward, so about as close to the satellites as you can be.

I read through most of your review but I don’t know if mentioned, did you have the Surf + Stream package or just the Surf package with those speeds you were posting?

^^^^^^ this honestly is the very best option to do. Just book a random cruise for way out in 2024 so you have plenty of time to change it to something else. Make sure to book the refundable deposit rate option.

Not sure how this is relevant. For this offer you have to spend $1k directly with Royal Caribbean.

Sounds good to me! 😁

Here is a thread about this happening on Royal.

This was reported over on the Royal Caribbean board this Summer. I can’t remember what the exact issue was but I will see if I can find it. It wasn’t something that was a big deal in the end and the poster was able to take care of it at check in at the pier.

This Facebook page is sketchy at best. It appears to be a UK based page and does not have the blue check mark indicating it’s a verified account. It probably was created and is ran by some travel agency in the UK.

Someday the cabin doors may just eventually have facial recognition on the door to open it. Think about it, they already use this for so many things onboard the ship. The price will just have to eventually come down to have a camera at each door.

Celebrity no longer offers the option to order real luggage tags that they mail to you. You have to print them out from your eDocs, or have the porter at the pier tag them.

You don’t need any of that.

We are in a PS next month, and I really want two of the robes to take home. Does anyone know if they will sell two new ones? I know on some cruise lines you can buy them.

Wow, this is an amazing new offer!

Travel agent needs to generate a code in a special amex website for travel agents then they call the cruise line to give them a code that was generated by the amex site and then the cruise line adds the OBC to the booking.

The terms state that it’s not combinable with TA Group rates so that is typically the only catch. Also, the agent never talks to anyone at AMEX, it’s just an online AMEX website that you fill in some info. But when you call into the cruise line they will tell you if it’s combinable or not. Like I said, the only one so far I’ve been denied was when it was a TA group rate/booking.

Yes that is correct.

So if you don’t like the location of the cabana can you just switch cards around before the other cabana party shows up? 🙂

Things changed since he said that. It isn’t happening now.

Highly doubt Royal will do this directly.

You do NOT need to book through AMEX Travel. I just applied this to three reservations in the last week. The agent logs into a special AMEX portal, then types in the customer’s Amex card number to have the system validate that it’s a Platinum card. Then you input the cruise reservation details into a from, like the sail date, ship, res # and total cost and then submit and it generates a confirmation number. Then you call a special number at the cruise line and they ask you for the confirmation code and then they add the OBC (and sometimes other perks like bottle of wine) to the reservation. That’s it. It’s super easy for agencies to do but they do have to have their agency registered with the special AMEX website.