Lane Hog

And it didn't. Noodle Shop was very much serving satays, noodles and other Asian fast entrees ranging from $2-$6. Also had free cookies and mini-hotdogs.

I don't think I've ever seen crew in a guest elevator on RCL. I don't recall seeing them on Carnival either. Crew have their own elevator banks. That's also how the baggage gets from Deck 2 to the guest floors...

Been up here all week and now on way to Victoria, and we had high 50's in Sitka, and 80-ish in Juneau yesterday. Layers are key. Sea days will be much colder than your land days. Long sleeves were fine, and the hoodies came off by afternoon. A rain shell is necessary.

Having a passport will speed up your checking in.

I'm 3 for 3 bringing a short corded power strip with three outlets plus USB ports. Always goes in my carry bag with my laptop, terminal security never notices, and the room stewards never seem to care.

Unlikely. Seems to be tailored to smaller ships for niche brands.

We are on QOTS right now and yes, the elevator situation is ridiculous. Our cabin is aft (only option available for a disability room when we booked), and there's a forward and a mid elevator bank. No aft bank. For any activity aft to our cabin we walk the length of the ship... next time we will choose a different cabin, but it won't change the issue of long waits at the midship elevators. 2/3rds of the ship is using them.

Iced tea for me the last ten years. Never a problem on Carnival, but on Royal I've had to ask for it in the mornings.

Post-it notes on the back of the door, and mandatory meet-up times for meals worked great for us.

Unbelievable that the outdoor screen is still out of service. It's been 18 months if not longer.

Belize is building a deep water pier facility -- Port Coral -- which will be able to have four ships docked simultaneously, and will have shops and private beaches available. My understanding is they'll also have larger tenders running in a ferry style operation to the mainland. Longer term, there will be a causeway which will allow tour buses to board directly from the man-made island. It was supposed to open this year. Not sure of the actual timeline, but there was definitely construction underway 16 months ago.

Are rangers essential to the sailings? Precedent was set during the last "shutdown" not to penalize tourists by allowing privately run concessions to continue operate.

We were on Liberty a couple years ago... never felt too big. Was easy to get around, and even at boarding and arrival never really felt like there were 4000 other people onboard.

People with iPhones say it can't be done because Apple products are incapable of dual wifi. Those of us with Samsung and other Andriod devices know it can be done. My S20's hotspot SSID is set to broadcast the same name and password as our house's SSID. Once I'm on Voom, everyone else's device connects thru mine just fine. There's really no way to block it -- the Voom router only sees packets coming from the same MAC and IP address for the radio that is logged into Voom. The phone knows which device the return packets get routed back to.

Not entirely true regarding jerky specifically... I've carried it into Australia and coming back into the US. It's country specific, and country of origin specific. Just be sure to declare it and don't get caught trying to sneak it by. The beagles and other breeds they use for finding illicit food are really, really talented.

You don't get the role of airline meteorology apparently. It's not about one airplane and one airport. The outlook for whats going to be happening 48-72 hours from now is more important than whats happening today. You have no choice but to react to todays weather. You can pre-plan around tomorrow's weather. Hardly different from marine needs.

Just curious as to what you expect Royal or any cruise line to do if a port isn't available. Safety has to come first.

I have personal knowledge of two of those... the lone "staff meteorologist" basically oversaw and signed off on what the outsourced TWC folks were doing as the grunt work.

You can't just Google "what are the seas going to be at 9am next Saturday in Galveston" and hope that it's correct. My airline uses The Weather Company to provide 24/7 on-site meteorologists in the operations center. I seriously doubt the outsourced meteorologists are cheaper than insourcing would be, but I do know it's easier to approve an operating expense than it is to get anyone to agree to ongoing salary & benefits for someone in relative perpetuity...

Probably not much. Cruise lines make money on the upsells like beverage packages, excursions and the casino, not the cabin. It's great that you are for the customer on this one, but what's your argument for why overbooking shouldn't be legal? If you're advocating for "never get a refund under any circumstances" then overbooking wouldn't be necessary. But... that's anti-customer. Customers die, get sick, lose their passports, or have other emergencies and simply no-show all the way up until sailing time. And some of them may be entitled to a refund. Going to no-overbooking is going to result in fewer cases where a refund might be issued. There's also a percentage of higher end suites that never get booked for full retail. Without a need to free up lower category cabins thru upgrades, offering the upgrades might not make as much sense.

Why wouldn't it be? It's tolerated by the airlines with the right guardrails e.g. full refund and it seems Royal was still doing the right thing by asking for volunteers. And after 35 years in the airline industry... you'll always find a volunteer at the right price.

I've had good success working remote from both RCL and Carnival ships, but that's been mostly in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Glad to hear it worked for open ocean where I can probably get away with remote working for a week.

Maybe I should consider packing my own plastic straws for next month?.... are they labeled as being as dangerous as a rogue extension cord or Keurig?

I'm fine with interiors unless the price for a balcony is too good to pass up. Like OCSC Mike, I'd rather spend the money on something else. The view from the deck upstairs is as good as the view from a balcony. We're trying a virtual balcony next month which may get us the best of both worlds...

I'm really irritated by this. Our June 19th sailing on Quantum is skipping Skagway for Icy Strait Point, and they have zero excursions listed in the planner. Skagway was the entire point of our cruise. We would have rebooked had the info been available in January or February before time-off was locked in and flights were booked. I get that rocks happen, but c'mon. It's been a year now. This wasn't a surprise.