ws422

Thanks for the input. 

As of now I think I'm scrapping both ideas and looking at 7 day cruises on the Oasis.  😊

Okay, I need some help deciding on a cruise for fall 2020!

My choices are:

• 4 night Bermuda on Norwegian Encore from NY in mid September
• 4 night Labadee on Oasis of the Seas from Ft Lauderdale in early November

Pros/cons for NCL Encore

• New ship!
• Can drive in day of the cruise to get to NY (But where would we park the car?)
• 2 "free" perks offer - beverage package!
• First and last day might be chilly
• Hurricane season

Pros/cons for Oasis

• I've always wanted to try Oasis class on Royal!
• Price is fantastic
• Should still be warm in Fort Lauderdale & pretty much out of likely hurricane time
• Diamond perks on RCCL
• Royal Caribbean Visa rewards - redeem for OBC
• Have to fly/more travel time

Any thoughts or things I'm not thinking of?

Price-wise I think they would end up about the same because of airfare on the RCCL cruise.

Been to both Bermuda and Labadee before.

Also been on both cruise lines.

On 10/29/2018 at 10:58 PM, cruisers without kids said:

Cool Cruiser,

One warning about that flight you have.  I was booked on that late flight, Jet Blue for a cruise in 2017.  I always book far in advance.  About 3 months prior to leaving, they cancelled that flight.  I had a choice of much earlier in the day (would have had to take another day off from work) or early the next morning.  I choose early the next morning.  Got in 10 hours later than planned, but saved a night in the hotel.   I told jet blue that I was going to miss an tour that I had booked and they moved me to a more leg room seat at no charge.  I hope your trip goes as planned but wanted to make you aware.  BTW, I was flying from Newark.  Have fun!!!

I almost booked that flight...now I'm glad I didn't.  I booked United instead (from Newark) and am arriving at 1AM.  Since we just want a place to crash for a few hours and don't really care about amenities, we're staying right at the San Juan Airport Hotel.

I'm looking for these too! :)

Bumping this because I'm looking for them too...I'm going the week after the OP. :D

To those who've taken this tour, do you consider it to be a "fun" tour? I've seen all the fantastic reviews and been very impressed by the booking process and communication from Janet.

My main concern is that my boyfriend will be bored. He's not much of a history person, and I know he has (unrealistically) high expectations for our Jamaica stop. I've been there before, he hasn't, and he leaves the tour arrangements up to me.

What I guess I'm asking is: do they keep it lively and entertaining?

You might want to check out reviews on Rosegal before ordering.

http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.rosegal.com

I would be too scared to order from there.

Do you remember which company you booked with? The one I was looking at was Cozumel Cruise Excursions dot com, which I think is the same as Island Marketing...these broker companies are kind of confusing to sift through.

After lots of hours looking at excursions online, I think I've narrowed our choices for Cozumel down to:

The Jaguar Bus, Bike, and Beach Adventure - Royal Caribbean CZ1C ($85)

or

Dune Buggy Excursion - Cozumel Cruise Excursions.com / Island Marketing ($69)

They both go to Punta Sur, include lunch, and shouldn't require additional costs (taxi) to get to a meeting point.

I can't find a whole lot of reviews on the RCCL excursion. Royal Caribbean's website has 2 positive reviews and the tour operator (Jaguar Expeditions) has positive reviews for other destinations on TripAdvisor but nothing for Cozumel. I checked the operator's website and it doesn't appear that there is anyway to book the tour besides through the cruiseline. (If anyone has done this tour, I'd love to hear from you!)

Jaguar Bus:

Pros: I like that there seems to be quite a bit of time at Punta Sur, opportunity to try paddleboarding and try out tandem bikes. Since it's through the cruiseline, no worries about refunds for cancellation, getting back to the ship on time, etc.

Cons: The $85 price tag per person is at the top of my budget for the day.

Dune Buggy:

Pros: I think my boyfriend would get a kick out of driving it, and I would have fun riding in it. And of course this excursion is cheaper. :) Also, it specifically says the buggy tour picks up at the pier, which should be convenient.

Cons: Mixed reviews. It includes snorkeling (which we are doing a lot of on the day before) and tequila stop (which we don't really care about). We would prefer a little more beach time relaxing (or even more driving time sightseeing) instead. For anyone who has done this tour: did you get some time to relax or did they rush you from one thing to another?

The third tour I'm curious about is the Punta Sur Adventure Eco Tour from Pedego Cozumel / Beach Bum Bikes on electric bikes, so you don't have to pedal if you don't want to. It's $89 (top of the budget, again, and we would have to taxi to the meeting point on top of that). It includes 5 hours at Punta Sur. The reviews seem great. I'm mainly worried that this tour would be too strenuous for us. We haven't ridden bikes in years. Has anyone on here done this tour?

Wow, this post is turning into a book...any insight on these excursions is appreciated!

If you redeem points online for OBC, how do you know it has actually been applied to your reservation? Is the email of the point redemption all you get? Is there any way to confirm without calling RC directly?

Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. I will find another excursion.

To anyone who's done the recent Western Caribbean itinerary on Independence, did they tell you to change your watches at all? (And if so, what nights?)

I'm particularly concerned about the ending time of one of the excursions I'm looking at for Grand Cayman in September. If ship's time is the same as island time, it'll be okay, but if ship's time is an hour later, I'm not going to feel comfortable cutting it so close.

We did this through Royal Caribbean in late May. It was $80 per person. It was a decent excursion but we encountered a few things that we found annoying. It started out when the bus for the time slot we'd reserved was overbooked. The tour operator blamed it on Royal Caribbean but I spoke with one of the excursions staff who was walking around and she said otherwise. So, we had to stand and wait for about 45 minutes while the bus took a load of passengers there and came back to get us. The ride to the river was relatively brief. When we arrived at the river, we had to sit around for another 30 minutes waiting for guides and rafts to become available. The ride down the river was nice...very relaxing. Our guide wasn't particularly talkative so we tried to engage him as nicely as we could by asking about him, etc.. We saw other guides telling their passengers about the plants and other things passing by but not our guide...almost no narration at all. Then, when we were nearing the end of the trip, he told us how he and the other guides personally did some carving and he'd like us to purchase something he'd done and handed me a bag. The bag contained about 10 small wooden (a coconut shell perhaps?) cups of varying sizes with the identical designs on each cup. I later saw that all of them had the same cups so it was pretty obvious these were not done by the guides as he had told us. I agreed to take one of the smallest items. When we reached the end, I wasn't sure how much to give him. I had only $40 in my wallet and offered him a $20. Since the excursion cost $80 and included other stops, I thought $20 was a reasonable tip for his part. He looked at me and said he wanted $50. I explained I didn't have that much and offered to give back the cup which I didn't want in the first place. He clearly seemed unhappy so I decided to just hand him the $40 to avoid any sort of situation and got off the raft. So, the excursion ended up costing me $120...not worth it.

I think you're quite generous. I would have handed back the cup and tipped $10-20. And if he didn't like it, he'd get nothing.

So...I'm considering a tubing / rafting / kayak tour for the next cruise (docking in Falmouth). It seems like many people consider the tubing too tame and have done tours where the tubes are tied together or you hold onto the tube next to you. What I'm curious about is whether this differs based on the river used for the tour, so if anybody could share their experience based on the river as well as well the tour company, that would be extremely helpful.

In researching tours, I've seen...

Rio Bueno - closest to Falmouth

White River

Chukka (not sure if this is a river or a tour company)

Any others??

We sail on 5-31 and somebody posted the cruise compasses on this board two days ago if you want to dig back a few pages. I kept the link for Day 1 and here it is.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/09ussgmjrqvqw65/AAA69S9QRm9yyBDc_JOSCv1Va/Day%201%20%282%29.pdf?dl=0

Those are the Eastern Compasses, but here's the Western from 5/3 thanks to treborry in another thread:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3xicPR_DjwIQ3RzM2tIbnlWOW8&usp=sharing

Here's a link to the Western Caribbean Compasses from the week of May 3rd

 

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3xicPR_DjwIQ3RzM2tIbnlWOW8&usp=sharing

 

Rob

Thanks!

I'm also looking for these!

Can anybody hook me up with the 7 day Western Compasses/menu rotation for IOS? They'd be much appreciated! :)

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I think it's a keeper, assuming it fits when it arrives.

01 Cobra brings up an interesting point. As much as we're told to wear our heaviest clothes/shoes to avoid overpacking charges, it's so much more convenient to wear sandals through security.

In winter that might not be an option (unless you're lucky enough to be flying to a tropical climate:cool:).

So the QUESTION is: Do you wear shoes to the airport that are easy-off, easy-on?

I LOVE this thread...being reading for awhile, but I think this is my first time posting.

The few minutes of actually being shoeless going through security don't make much difference to me. I never wear sandals to travel because I'm always freezing (especially my feet) on the plane. In the summer, it's sneakers; in the winter, I'm all about boots.

I'd love some input on a dress I just got. I'm hoping this will look nice enough for a formal night. I'm thinking that it will be ok because it's polyester (not cotton) and has some embellishment at the neckline. Any thoughts?