harryfat1

Wake view as we are at the very back of the ship

My lunch

My son's lunch. Don't ask me why he would get a RCI burger as they aren't typically very good. Now Guy's Burger on a Carnival (the TV personality Guy Fieri) would be a burger I would get. Haven't had one in 11 years. Looking forward to getting one in December

The windjammer was showing 125% capacity that day as we couldn’t find a table until we went to the very back of the ship. Tip: There are more tables WAY in the back of Windjammer as most people don’t want to walk/carry their food that far back. Not our preference either but when the ship was that packed, you are just happy to find a table at times. Surprised to see a ship this close to us out in the ocean. Why do they need to come this near to us when there's literally miles of space they can be using

Sailing at 19 knots Anyway, it was lunchtime at the windjammer as it was 1 PM now. You can't go for more than 4 hours on a cruise without something to eat - it's written somewhere in your cruise contract with RCI... Oh, yeah, it’s Sunday out there somewhere but you don’t care as it’s day 2 of your cruise as far as you are concerned. As it’s Christmas time, Santa is chilling at the Windjammer. Anyone can take a picture with Santa here. No long wait like in the mall or down in the Royal Esplanade (Promenade).

Oh, as I was looking at my pictures, I realized I did sit down briefly on the balcony chair to take one picture to show the view I have from the balcony if I had sat there regularly. But we are not balcony people. With the windy and overcast skies, it wasn’t what I wanted to do for an extended period. Now it's easier to see what the balcony looks like after they opened it

OK, so where were we on the trip report? Oh, yeah, after visiting uncle in prison ++++++++++++++ After the photo area, we watched the Bionic Bar and the robots shaking their booty for a bit and then headed back to the cabin. Stull a very cloudy day. Saw a Princess ship on the port side in the distance. I assume the same one that was at Port Everglades with us on day 1. Oh, one thing about the RCI obstructed view is that they set the lifeboats further away from the main body of the ship so it’s harder to take pictures without the lifeboats getting in the way as you have to “shoot over it” more than the Princess ships. Here’s a picture of the Princess ship. Notice it’s much closer to the balcony so it is easier to see over it on the horizon. Something to keep in mind if you are thinking of going to Alsaka on the Quantuam or Ovaationn and looking to get a deck 6 balcony to save money. You can still get your scenery pictures but might have to work harder for it (assuming you don’t have a very obstructed view)

I assume you will buy the package pre-cruise as it should be cheaper than the 20% discount after boarding. I didn't notice that great of background from our cruise. Pretty standard set and had lots of Christmas-themed photos as it was a Holiday cruise. They had Santa in a bumper car at SeaPlex. I will look for some and point them out in future posts. Here's one of the boys with the red holiday-looking background on the first formal night with the typical white background you see on every ship

Oh, we missed that part of the app. My wife mentioned that she missed seeing the pictures on the app as they had that on the Princess app but given our old eyes, it's easier to see the pictures on a computer monitor than the tiny phones. I think the majority of the people didn’t know about the pictures in the app as the photo place was PACKED with cruisers on day 7 and day 8. People had to wait to find an available monitor to view and order their pictures. Never saw a photo area that busy before where all the monitors were occupied and people had to stand and wait for an opening. Of course, I will have pictures to show that…

Yeah, the library is tucked away at the corner of the top deck of 270. I walked past it every morning on my way to café 270 (after I found out how to open the secret door). Our cabin was closer to the library than to the elevator. You never know what types of books are in the library so it’s safer (and cleaner) to bring your own

For the December Carnival cruise, we will have a party of 11 as the wife’s side of the family is going as well. It’s unlikely we will do flexible dining time as it won’t be easy to find seating time for that large of a group. It’s easier with a set dining time on top of the food allergy I mentioned previously. Don’t want to explain it 7 nights in a row. You may want to check if the shows on the Alaska sailing are before or after dinner. For the Navigator cruise last August, all our shows were before dinner at 7 PM so we just went to the show and then 8 PM dinner. For the Odyssey, the late show was at 10 PM, after the 8 PM dinner. So show time may be region/ship specific as to whether it’s pre or post-dinner. Alaska doesn’t attract that many younger families. The average age crowd in Alaska is older than the Caribbean crowd so more people are early dinner folks. Another thing to keep in mind is during the summer months, it gets darker much later up north so you will still have sunlight in the Juneau area past 9 PM. However for Ketthcikan in May, there will be a high chance of rain as it’s one of the rainiest cities in the US.

People are probably booking the paid version now under the FOMO syndrome and if somehow they can’t get any free reservation time slots after boarding, at least they have something booked, even though it’s going to be pretty expensive. You have up to 12 hours before the paid appointment time to cancel without a penalty so if anyone wants to play it safe, book a paid appointment for the end of the cruise. Board the ship and see if you can ride it as early as possible (day 1) to see if you think the experience is worth it. If so, maybe keep the paid one and you get the extended experience as round 2. If not, cancel the day 7 appointment after the initial day 1 ride. For those curious, it's $40 to $50/pp for the extended experience for the 2 events What are your tentative plans while at the ports in Alaska?

Yeah, St. Maarten is famous for jewelry and electronics shopping along the main road just off the cruise terminal. On every cruise I have been sailing there, the ships promote the jewelry like they are going out of business the next week – buy/buy/buy… Diamonds International is everywhere. They are even here in the US. Saw them in Alaska with a huge store in Ketchikan and Juneau. Maybe 20% of the stores along the main street in Juneau are probably jewelry stores. The bus driver that took us to the Mendenhall Glacier said these jewelry store workers are transplants. They show up by April just before the summer cruise season and leave town by October when the Alaska cruise season is over. So, all the jewelry stores along the cruise ship docks are empty half of the year when cruise ships are not in town. Jewelry stores all along the main street along the waterfront in Juneau awaiting all our upcoming Alaska cruise friends starting in April. See my red arrows? DI store in Jueau is next door to the Effy Jewelry store, which is now RCI’s new jewelry partner as RCI promotes the Effy guys to no end at the port talk. Not once was DI ever mentioned. DI must be partnering with another cruise line An even bigger DI store in Ketchikan. Can't miss this store with its colorful storefront and massive size on the corner right by where the cruisers disembark

I wonder if the sign is just a standard on all RCI ships even if they no longer stamp the books? If whoever will be sailing on other RCI ships soon verify if that ship library has a similar sign there? As for the rain, yeah, it looks like the biggest storm this season is headed this way by Wednesday at lunchtime. This will make for a terrible commute home tomorrow night. For those not sure what we are talking about – Patti and I are both from the Bay Area and we had severe drought the past few years until last year when many series of storms blew through CA and saved us from having water restrictions. So far this year, the weather has been pretty mild some sporadic rain but a couple of big storms are coming our way riding the “Atmospheric River” – a jet stream that carries all the water to our doorsteps from Hawaii or sometimes people call it “Pineapple Express”. Here in the west, we don’t get rain often so any major storm will cause a bunch of down trees and power lines and our roads get flooded easily as they didn’t design the drainage system assuming there would be much rain. So if I don’t post anything tomorrow night, it’s because we have no electricity/Internet connection from the storm….

Since we were visiting the crazy aunt (aka shopping and shop talk), we didn't want the uncle in prison to feel left out so we went to visit him as well (aka going to check out the pictures we took last night after dinner in front of MDR). Yeah, I know, I have a dysfunctional family tree... While the wife and the boys were checking out the pictures, I took a picture of the photo package prices: As I mentioned, if you sign up for the package by the end of day 2, it's 20% off. But obviously, if you buy it from home (especially at BF sale), the discount is even bigger. So check out the price of the 100 photo package that I bought pre-cruise. I got it 50% off the old price of $300 or $150. Now the package costs $400 or $320 with a discount. So the $150 is a bargain if you need that many pictures. But my 100 picture cost of $150 is cheaper than the 10 photo package without discount... If your future cruise is after BF, by all means, wait for BF sales to get the discount. Better than anything you would get after boarding...

Lots of people are visiting their crazy aunt in the basement this morning (aka shopping) with whatever sales they have out for the day. At 11 something, we made our way to the port talk. I typically avoid these but my wife wants the freebie charm they were passing out so we went with her as there wasn’t anything else on the schedule we wanted to do. Way back on the Mariner of the Seas cruise eons ago, I won the port talk raffle in getting a couple’s massage. It was ok. Not something I would pay for out of my own pocket but we all like what we like. We didn’t win anything this time. Oh, speaking of visiting the crazy aunt in the basement (aka shopping), I noticed that the RCI is no longer promoting/partnering with everyone's "favorite store" - Diamonds International. I remember in the old days DI was top of every RCI list but not this time. They were never mentioned as RCI found a new jewelry company to partner up. Since I know how everyone can't get enough of DI, I made sure I took a picture of the store while in port to share with everyone...🤪

I think it's their version of the Dewey Decimal system that you see at the various public libraries where they classify non fiction books by 100/200/300/400 series and so on. I think in the old days when they had a full time librarian, they have those color dots they would put at the bottom of the book facing the reader, like the Dewey system you see at the library but less sophisticated. They would just file all the books by color so that if someone wants a book on the ship, they can find it by the group color instead of looking at every shelf. But nowadays with no librarian on staff and hardly anyone reads the hard covered books at the ships, don't know if anyone is tagging the books. Especially post covid, people are pretty sensitive on touching public books versus bringing their own or read their kindle instead

After the event, as we were on deck 6, I wanted to see how to go back to our cabin from deck 6 as I was still trying to understand why the deck plan showed an opening but couldn’t see it in person. Then my sons and I finally figured out that the heavy double metal doors that looked like a “service door” reserved for the ship workers were the way that connected the corridor to the cabins. This picture was taken the next morning from the other side but you can see why we walked right past it on day 1. There were no signs that said “THIS WAY TO 270” from deck 6. If we didn’t open it from the other side coming from 270, I wouldn’t think of opening these doors if I were on deck 6 as they looked like service doors. Do note these doors are HEAVY. Coming from the other side, I have to push and lean my entire body to move it. Then when it closes, the door closes at its own speed and slams with a very loud BANG sound. So a note to the Travel Agents reading this part, do not book any of your clients at the back 5 cabins on deck 6 as they will have problems sleeping or getting woken up early with folks like me who figured out the shortcut and go in and out to 270 regularly from the back of deck 6 Especially if they are late sleepers or have hangovers - hearing the big door slam at 7 AM can't be good...

At the top of 270 on deck 6 is the library. Didn’t see anyone use it much the few times I walked by. I saw more people playing board games at the tables than reading here

Breakdown of repeat cruisers for our sailing: Then the cruise director introduced the captain who made some comments and they honored the top 3 cruisers on this sailing with Mr. Paul at over 1,800 points getting this honor. Super impressive as I don’t even know in my lifetime if I can get to 80 points to make Diamond level let alone 1,800 points. Wonder if he knows what his home looks like…

At the event, the cruise director gave the breakdown of the number of passengers on this sailing. That’s when I learned we had 5,269 passengers or 125% of double occupancy. Here's some music from the event 20231224_102640.mp4 20231224_102821.mp4

Speaking of free booze, here's a question for you veteran RCI cruisers, when did they stop the free booze on day 2's formal night when the captain used to welcome guests at the bridge of Royal Promenade and they were giving out free booze to anyone and everyone? Since I was back at the Allure folder for the previous posts, I saw the free booze for the first formal night. This was back in 2014 I didn't see any alcohol in my 2016 Freedom of the Seas folder so it must be between those 2 years that they stopped the practice of captain's welcome party on day 2?

Fast forward to now as we have cruised with RCI the past few cruises to be bumped up to the Platinum level, the lowest tier that is invited to these events. Have your sea pass out at the front as they do “card you” to make sure you are worthy to enter as this was the only free alcohol we were served on this sailing. Other higher-tier folks get more perks but for us peasant + 2-level folks, this was it in terms of free alcohol. See the ladies at the front entrance of 270? They want to see your sea pass in case anyone tries to sneak in.

Oh, cool. I guess I must have missed the visits to the uncle in prison during my prior visits.

After breakfast, we went back to the cabin and just chilled out for a while before going to the first event of the morning. The welcome back cruiser event or as RCI calls it, top tier event. We are not frequent cruisers and even when we do cruise, we don’t have a super strong loyalty to just one cruise line (as you can see from my cruise history below). So we aren’t very high on the RCI’s hierarchy of frequent cruisers. Way back in the old days (10 years ago), we were invited to the return cruiser event as a lowly peasant + 1 (Gold level) when we were on the Allure. But after that, RCI stopped inviting the Gold tier folks like us to these events as I assume there were too many of us ghetto cruisers at these venues. Had to dig deep into the 2014 Allure folders to get these "welcome back cruiser" events from the old days when even the lowly peasant +1 folks like yours truly got free drinks