The Fun Researcher

By the time you are done with class, it is right around lunchtime, so it makes sense just to stay and eat it.

Even though I gripe about it, we still have amazing cruises with Royal Caribbean. All cruise lines and ships have their pluses and minuses. Late night food options are one of the minuses. They more than make up for it many other areas.

That’s one gripe I have with royal Caribbean and most of their ships. Very limited late night food options. You can get room service for eight dollars with unlimited food, but then again, you are waiting in your room rather than out and about.

You could still eat it there afterwards though, right?

Pure assumptions and suppositions, and yeah, I guess you told me. 😂 Requests have been been common practice for over a decade. This is nothing new. Sure, they might stop taking requests but I doubt it. Doesn’t hurt to ask. Now we can debate asking for specific tables, or being overly particular, but simple requests are just that, simple requests. I’d rather have it this way than take zero requests beforehand. Would hate to get on the ship and wait in a massive line at the MDR on embarkation day with everyone trying to get accommodated with their table requests. People aren’t going to stop making table requests so I’d rather have them work on it during their slow times of the day beforehand than to slam them on embarkation day.

If it was the March 19th sailing my son and Mother in law were possibly there with you. Here was their combined takeaway container

You get to make and eat your own food and nobody shares it. If you have other friends or family on the cruise with you, you can share it with them afterwards but you did not share it with other people in the sushi class.

Yeah I didn’t request a certain table, just a table for 9 and a table for 7 preferably near each other and away from the entrance of the MDR

Probably “eel sauce”. Eel Sauce is a traditional Japanese condiment made from a mixture of soy sauce, sake and mirin. It basically tastes like a thicker soy sauce with a bit of sweetness. Very tasty

👍🏼Yeah, that should work. How big is your party? We are all linked also. Made sure of that when we all booked our cruise. We have a very large party this time, 16 of us, so they cannot provide one table that large. I think the biggest table I have seen is 10. So I wanted to help guide them for the two table sizes that would work best for us, which is 9 and 7.

Hmm, never thought of that. I’ve always included our booking numbers and names. Maybe room numbers are easier for them to address. Maybe it doesn’t matter . Anyone know? I will probably resend the email again next week with room numbers as well.

We've done it at least 3 times. It's very worth it IMO, especially considering you get to eat what you make. It's fun to learn and also enough to feed at least two people.

Yeah, that’s what I thought and what I have done on my last number of cruises, but the email confused me with the timing mentioned in the response. Thanks for the reply. Do you know of a specific phone number to call for special requests?

I sent an email for a table request for our upcoming Alaskan cruise on the Quantum July 10, 2023. This was the auto reply. "Please be advised, requests that do not have the ship and sail date in the subject line cannot be processed. Non group requests will be processed 30 days before departure. Table assignments can be found on your Seapass card received at check in at your port of departure." We did include the ship and sail date in the subject line, so all set there. We are all traditional early seating. I found this part interesting: "Non group requests will be processed 30 days before departure." We are not a "group" sailing by Royal's definition, so I'm wondering if I should have sent the response prior to that 30 day mark? I sent in the request 19 days prior to our sailing which means there is the current sailing, followed by two more full sailings before ours. I didn't want to send the request too early in fear of it getting lost or being irrelevant because it was too far ahead. I just hope we aren't too late. We have a large group of 16 immediate family members, with 6 booking numbers. I requested a table of 9 and a table of 7 and gave an example of which bookings could go with each table. Hopefully they are able to accommodate. Since this is a close family group we really don't want to be seated with strangers, and would rather sit with our family. Anyway, thought you all might be interested since I've never received this response before. We'll see what happens once we board and have our table numbers. Hope this all works out as this truly is a once in a lifetime for our group, which is convening from all across the country to make this happen.

You will get no elevator noise, and probably less passenger noise in those cabins versus ones that are in most locations on the ship. I would be good with them.

Can celebrity accommodate her? With the reciprocal benefits celebrity might be a better choice. When researching celebrity versus princess, I would (and have) certainly choose Celebrity.

For that particular week, maybe choose a cruise line that caters more to adults like Celebrity, Princess, or Holland America? We've sailed the week before Christmas on NCL (which caters to pretty much the exact same crowd as Royal) and didn't notice an abundance of kids. Not at all. Felt like most of the other cruises we do, however we are sailing more and more now in the summer months (when kids are not in school)

Just remember the Solarium is good for 16 years old and older. So some of those "kids" might be totally following the rules. I know we'll have my 16 year old son in the Solarium next month on the Quantum.

Totally agree about the seating. For a venue that is meant to have shows in it, I can’t believe how many seats are not in good locations to see the show. (Or not comfortable to watch a show from)

Hi Jim. I wouldn't worry about Royal. Maybe look at it this way...? Of all the wonderful things about cruising you only highlight two negative differences. I agree that these are negatives versus what you are used to on Princess, but I'm pretty confident that you are going to find at least two things on Royal that you wish Princess was doing. It's hard to have a bad cruise. Happy sailing I guess I would word that a bit differently. You can make reservations on Oasis and Quantum class ships ( and I would suggest it), but even so reservations aren't required. They always open up the shows to those without reservations closer wo show start. Later in the cruise there is a lot more walk up availability.

Thank you all! She does not have any sort of brace or cast. Pretty amazing. However to help with the swelling she does need to keep it elevated a lot. She’s also using those soft cloth covered ice packs pretty regularly. Hopefully the swelling is a non issue soon. I think the key is going to be when they allow her to put weight on it. If that’s the case before the cruise then maybe a wheelchair would work out for her because she can fold it to enter the doorway and then open it again once inside. Fortunately, their balcony room on the Quantum is one that has the bed by the balcony so the couch is closest to the door. That will make it nice so that she does not have to try to get around the bed every time she comes in the room to get to the sitting area. Will still work on her to get a scooter but we’ll see 🙂

Thanks brillohead, do you or others have an idea of the width of doors on the balcony cabins on Quantum? My mom isn’t sold on a scooter for some reason but is ok with a wheelchair. Do wheelchairs fit through the cabin door? Maybe Special Needs at Sea has specific ones for cruise ships? Maybe I can convince her that a scooter would be better but it might be a wheelchair

Not sure what to say. We had a fantastic cruise on Anthem in March. Happy sailing

We're doing Royal for our first cruise to Alaska in a few weeks, but there are reasons why. We have 16 of us, my sister's families and my parents. We know Royal very well, and pretty much everyone else is new to cruising. We will have kids, ages 13-21, on the cruise so we wanted enough activities for them, and Royal fits that well. We chose Royal (Quantum) because I knew I could make sure everything was planned out well since we know the cruise line so well. We are also confined to leaving from Seattle, where one of my sisters lives. So that is why we chose Royal Having said that, I would probably choose Princess or HAL if it was just my wife and I, especially if we were trying to get into Glacier Bay. Princess really does Alaska right, from what I've looked into. Happy cruising.

Celebrity S class really are beauties. My only grip is the centrums rather than a Royal Promanade. It just makes the interior chopped up with no grand space like the Promenades get you. Having said that, LOVE so many other things on those ships. Sunset bar, the lawn area, the gorgeous dining room, Sushi on 5, the indoor pool and hot tubs, the outside focus and connection to the sea, I could go on and on...