harryfat1

Cruise lines have a lot of buying power to get volume discounts for food. In the old days, the ship used to provide a laundry list of how many pounds of various meat/eggs/potatoes were consumed during the one-week voyage. You multiply those amounts by 20 plus ships at each different company’s fleet, that’s a lot of buying power they can bargain hard to get the food at a very low price at a wholesaler level. Not the same as you or me buying a dozen eggs at the grocery store. If you think about it, even at $20/day/pp for food cost that is still a very low number given how much/often people eat on each cruise. That $20/day food number includes some of the high-end steaks and sushi at the specialty restaurants and not just the lower-end buffets. The food cost at those restaurants brings up the average. Think how much lower the food cost number would be if there were no Chops/sushi/Wonderland on board to bump up the average daily costs. We will never have the insider info on the cost of the food at the buffet and MDR but if we can just isolate the cost of the regular complimentary food of the buffet/MDR/café promenade, that would be very interesting info. As for consumer buying psychology for RCI, I think it’s the promotion of the “hardware” as every RCI ad I have seen on TV/YouTube, it’s about the “wow factor” of the Oasis class ships and the exciting things first-time cruisers can do on a ship. If they are new to cruising, they have no point of reference on what cruising used to be 10+ years ago and think it's OK to have fried chicken and enchilada are part of the MDR "fancy meal". It’s like the Magician act on every cruise sailing – they want your eyes to be focused on the wrong things as they deceive you with the other hand

I think you can safely remove the word "probably" from your opening sentence... You should do a YouTube video on this process and call it "Customized RCI Luggage Tag Hack". This should get you like 50,000 views and YouTube will pay you enough money for your efforts that you can buy a ream of paper and ink to just print the tags the regular way...

Hidden Salmon is the only one I know of. Others can chime in if there is more hidden food. I assume you can get more sauce if you ask someone on the other side of the counter. The only issue may be that the egg section is crazy busy every morning with people's special egg ordering so you may not be able to get someone's attention easily in that area

Luggage tag folding is part of the cruise vacation process as it means you are one step closer to boarding the ship so of course you should be excited. Until buying the luggage tags this time, we never folded the tags until the morning of Day 1 from the hotel where I asked the front desk person to borrow a stapler so I could staple all the tags in the front lobby as we were checking out. Safe driving and have a great cruise. Hopefully, the Hurricane makes a fast eastward turn and misses all land masses.

It’s almost a novelty that people talk on a phone nowadays on a cell phone. It’s mainly texting and using Apps as the primary functions of the phone. Whenever a new cell phone debuts, all the YouTubers and online reviewers care about is the phone’s photo quality. Nobody ever talks about phone call quality in their reviews. People are fixated on the camera’s performance more than a phone’s performance in making phone calls. Soon we should change the name of the device to "cell cameras" instead of cell phones as we take pictures more often than make calls with it...

The same worker will probably just shake his head and think Americans are crazy in getting excited to see up close a boring mooring line or smelly and loud sea lions…

I wasn’t intending to look into the cost side of the food for RCCL but the numbers is eye-popping in going down significantly while people are paying more for their cruises. RCCL filed its annual SEC Form 10-K on February 23 of this year. Assuming they will file the next annual report around the same time next year, it will coincide with my intended Odyssey post-cruise trip report. By then the new menu will be out for almost a full year and we can see the longer-term impact. Let me give it some thought on what other metrics we can compare next year to incorporate that into the new report. Any Finance folks are welcome to contribute to this discussion on what else we should measure once the 10K comes out. The problem is the company just gives you high-level summaries of the Financials and not enough details to do a deep dive on where/when/what. Those are privileged company-specific financials they don’t share outside of the company. As for ornaments, yeah, a key chain would work in a pinch. Maybe the ornaments are seasonal in that they only come out during the holiday periods. Will keep an eye out for them in December. We had a port day on the Navigator on the last day, and I didn’t like the fact we had to come back from the tour late in the afternoon to have to pack and shower by 7 PM as we had to attend a show/dinner and then all luggage must be outside by 10 PM. It made the last day very rushed. The sofa by the glass window is very wide but hard and has no back cushion. In theory, if you get a couple of pillows as back/butt support, you can sit sideways leaning against the wall and people-watch as you read/play with the phone

Piano man working hard outside of Windjammer. After breakfast, back to the cabin to decide on what we wanted to do for the morning by looking at the hard copy of the daily schedule. By then Melanie had already cleaned our cabin and left us some cute friends. I like these small towel animals versus the old-school towel animals as props like eyes and ribbons, they add another dimension This is from our cabin Adding the boys' towel animal to make it two Adding the inlaws to make a triplet family

With a lot of people at the buffet, it was hard to take pictures of the food without someone sticking their hands out to get food and photo bomb my picture. Tip – If you like smoked salmon for breakfast like we do, you have to ASK FOR IT. As I learned from previous RCI sailing (as well as Princess sailing last year), the staff “hides the good stuff” in the back. You have to go to the staff person behind the “cold cuts” section to get the salmon. Sometimes he gives it to you on a small plate Sometimes he just plops it onto of your plate of other food so be prepared to make space for the salmon. This is something of “tribal knowledge” as they don’t show the salmon early on in the cruise but by the end of the cruise, where they no longer need to “ration” it, they have the salmon out. Here is where you ask for the salmon As I mentioned already, RCI serves Lavaaza coffee and it’s pretty strong so you will wake up fast. The last food picture to get some fruits and then we are done with breakfast

Found a big table near the back of the buffet – a good location as it’s central to where all the hot food is. Lots of people at breakfast at 9 AM My wife prefers a more Asian breakfast whereas the boys and I like the more western style. One of them likes the English-style breakfast with beans and tomatoes. The other one likes the donut... I like the Eggs Benedict My wife’s preference for congee

OK. More on day 2 of the cruise: +++++++++++ To the rest of the world, it’s Tuesday. To you on the cruise vacation, it’s Day 2. But the floor on every elevator reminds you of what the “real world” is experiencing. Maybe back at the office, on Tuesday morning, there’s a staff meeting but that’s not your concern now as you are heading for the buffet for your first breakfast on this cruise. There’s always an RCI dude at the buffet entrance to remind people to wash their hands. I will introduce everyone to Mr. Washy Washy later on. For today, we just had his substitute and the dude was busy playing with a little kid as we walked in. As I haven't cruised with RCI since 2017, when did they install these wash basins in Windjammer? Is this related to Covid or prior to that? I didn't see them on Freedom or Indenpence back then

Yeah, both Carnival and RCI have been trying to mix things up from the classic 3 major ports of the Mexican Riviera itinerary. Unlike the Caribbean cruise of eastern/western/southern Caribbean options of various ports, there are a limited number of viable ports here on the west coast. To make it less of the “same old” Mexican cruise, Ensenada has been added as a swap port of late. Carnival and Princess has some sailings that add La Paz as another port for the longer cruise. Many years ago, we were on the Carnival cruise that went to Acapulco, Manzanillo, and Zihuatanejo from San Diego. Those ports were special. Too bad they no longer offer that itinerary as part of the drug cartel war casualty as I wouldn’t mind going back there again. I agree that Mazatlán is a nice port to visit but many people dislike it as they think it’s an industrial port they just walked around the “golden zone” for the endless number of useless souvenirs and felt it was a wasted stop. Of all the cruise excursions I have been on, the best value excursion was at Mazatlán. https://www.mazatlantours.org/stone-island-tour.htm In this tour, you get a cruise by the bay and then they take you to a beach restaurant of free unlimited booze on top of a free lunch. But wait, we are not done yet. On top of that, you get 2 activities on the list that include horseback riding or banana boat from the list. All this for $39/pp is dirt cheap compared to how much the other excursions charge you elsewhere. If I ever go back to Mazatlán, I will do this again as it’s great value. Did I mention I’m cheap?

You are welcome. Thanks for reading along. We will still be on day 2 of my cruise report by the time you come back Monday morning from your cruise as the whole space/time warp continuum thing distorts real-time versus cruise report writing time. Very nice to have a long weekend break for HS reunion. This means you will be going to Ensenada as your only stop. If you see some sea lions early in the morning while the ship is docking, take a picture and report back here. If you appreciate mooring lines, just ignore the front gate barrier and do a “Patti Maneuver” to take some up-close pictures with or without the sea lion and then point at your cell phone when yelled at by the dock workers. Just say, my friend Patti told me it's OK to do it...

In theory, if I was a diligent trip reviewer, I’d go down on deck 5 and take pictures of the RP while there were no people. But since it’s a “been there, done that” cruise, didn’t feel the urgency to take more pictures. Maybe for the Odyssey in December… Instead, you get up close pictures of the two sofas in the cabin. But how often do you see that get posted on CC so maybe it was a good thing I stayed in today… As discussed previously, the sofa by the window is harder than the wall sofa that has back support as well.

Let's start with some mellow rock music to start the morning as we hope everyone had good dreams the night before: First picture of the morning as I wait for the family to wake up slowly so the room isn't as well-lit Wanted to show the slant of deck 8 Promenade view cabin windows as you see the frame is slanted Some pics of the Royal Promenade below while still early. I never saw the ball thing open up like we had seen on other cruise ships. Most likely it’s broken and they can’t fix it while the ship is moving. On other sailings, I had seen it open up at the nightly dance parties. Few neighbors across the way are awake

Oh, very nice. So you bought a Samsung Flip 4 phone last year? Do you like it? Like this YouTube video... Oh, silly me, I think you meant the OG flip phone... 🤣 Yeah, I admire your stomach to have B3B worth of cruise food, especially in the morning where it's pretty repetitive

Yes, I know the Sea Dog is on a 7 day itinerary but per the RCI web site, there are only 2 sailings that month and both goes to Ensenada as RCI adjusted the classic 7 day Mexican itinerary that Princess Cruises made famous with the "Love Boat" TV series eons ago. So unless there's another sailing not listed, I believe he's on the way to see the sea lions...

Alrighty, we have the daily schedule displayed above. We know what we want to do as we looked at the schedule from last night in the cabin. That's our ritual as we go back to the cabin at night with water/hot tea to drink and we ma[ out what we plan to do the next day as to set the alarm for the right time. So Day 2 is a Sea Day for this itinerary. I will be the first one to admit that I don't like Sea Days. I know that goes against the popular opinion here on CC as many people love Sea Days because they relax in a lounger by the pool with a drink at the Solarium. As I already mentioned, that's not my preference. Here's my "perfect" cruise itinerary: Day 1 - Boarding Day 2 - Port Day Day 3 - Port Day Day 4 - Port Day Day 5 - Sea Day to rest/sleep in Day 6 - Port Day Day 7 - Port Day Day 8 - Sea Day to pack and buy whatever is needed on the ship Day 9 - Disembark So I typically don't look forward to sea days but since this short cruise only had 1 sea day, I'm OK with it although I prefer Carnival's itinerary for their 4-day Mexico cruise more as they have Catalina and Ensenada as the first 2 port days and last day is a sea day. I rather have the last day as the sea day as we need time to pack and it's easier if it's sea day. However as I will show later for Catalina, they can't handle 2 ships in port the same day given their infrastructure so Carnival got first dibs on visiting Catalina as they never left this market like RCI did.

Page 4 For the most part, this is really the only page I read carefully. On other pages, I sometimes bypass it as I just want to know what is happening and when. This schedule tells me on one page. No scrolling the dang App up and down trying to find what I want. Yeah, old man and his ways... Some old-school cruisers like to bring yellow highlighters or pens to circle/mark off important events they plan to participate in. These jpeg files are hard to read because CC displays them at a lower resolution, I have also scanned them in PDF below so in case anyone wants to look at them at home in hard copies, you can download the PDF version and read them. You are welcome... Day 2.pdf

Page 3 I'll get into the odd dining room hours later at dinnertime

Page 2 Besides being cheap, there's no real need to have Internet on this short cruise. True, we had no internet from 5 PM of Day 1 until the morning of Day 3 but we had Internet access on both port days so unless you have some real urgent business back home, not having Internet access can be good for the soul as you disconnect. I never saw that they had the Silent disco party until reading it now. But not like we could have made it anyway as we had 8 PM dinner and the thing is from 7:45 to 9:15. But we did note on the calendar of the Belly Flop Contest at 2 PM. That one is a MUST for us as we like to be entertained...

August 8, (Tuesday) Day 2 - Sea Day In my previous trip reports, I like to post the daily compass at the start of every day as it serves as a guide on what we are doing for the day. In the old days, these were always on your bed the night before as part of the “turn down” service but nowadays you have to request the compass separately from the cabin steward. In addition, since we requested daily cleaning to be done during the day, the cruise compasses were not part of the nightly routine. So now we get the daily compasses prior to leaving for shows/dinner nightly. I will be the first one to admit I didn’t read EVERY single line of this while on board the ship as I had too many other things going on but now I’m reading the info, they wanted people to go to the App by day 3 at 11 AM to sign up for departure info. Ooops. Didn’t see that. Oh, well… I was talking about getting free booze at an art auction years ago. It looks like that tradition has remained the same. Check out the info on the top of page 1. Cynics would say there must be a HUGE profit in that area for them to give you free booze and be front and center on the daily compass to grab your attention… As typical of most cruises, day 2 is “Formal Night” or that was what it used to be called. Soon we will all be dating ourselves as we call day 2 formal night when the cruise line is calling it “Dress to Impress” – what MBA marketing genius came up with that phrase? Who are you trying to impress? The captain? Never saw him the entire cruise. Maybe it's post-COVID protocols nowadays in not having come out to meet with passengers anymore.

No. Our cruise director was a guy. The assistant cruise director was the gal. Sorry, I didn't recall their names. Here are a couple of pictures from the cruise: The cruise director is the dude with the sailor hat and a good body The assistant cruise director is in blue

Thanks for following along and contributing to this report. Too bad I couldn’t get any good Line pictures from this cruise. You might have better luck next year or just ignore the dock workers like Patti did and squeeze through the barricades. Maybe the sea lions will be back on your cruise

Wow. Thanks for the compliment. Glad the trip report has been entertaining in getting you ready for your upcoming cruise. Yeah, I would be “checked out” of work a few days prior to sailing as well. We were on the Mariner years ago for a 7-night Mexico cruise when she was out on the west coast – the same San Pedro port I discussed ad nauseam many posts ago. As it’s effectively the same ship as the Navigator with some cosmetic changes, hopefully, the day 1 pictures I have posted so far have gotten you excited for your cruise. Maybe you can take pictures of all the areas I failed to take pictures of and you can upload them here after you get back since the two ships are identical inside such as drawers and electrical plugs and bathroom tiles - Yeah, I know, you are not THAT bored... I saw the news on Hurricane Lee which is forecasted to grow even bigger by early next week. Does your cruise to the Eastern Caribbean that might need an itinerary change to avoid the Hurricane? Hope everything turns out well.