beckster42

Looking at this for our upcoming cruise this Sunday. Does anyone know if this works on any drink (like the frappuccino's or chai) it is it truly ONLY espresso based drinks?

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Thanks to all!! I will keep checking daily and hope for the best. We are looking at an early December sailing and never thought it'd fill up so quick since it's not over any holiday or break. We were wrong. LOL

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We are hoping to book our first Disney sailing for December 2017. However now the sailing we have been looking at is now sold out of all 4 person staterooms in all categories (were available a few hours ago and now they're not). We've never dealt with a sold out sailing on any cruiseine. But from any of you Disney experts, do these sold out sailings typically have rooms that open up? Or is sold out this far out usually the end?

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Many years ago, we sailed in this cabin on a Panama Canal crossing. And it was fantastic!! Loved the bigger balcony and don't remember any drawbacks at all.

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Have an amazing time! I hope you love it as much as the Brilliance. She still is our favorite ship!!

We just cruised with our 18 month old last month and I don't think he even had a clue we were moving most of the time! We took along child sea bands and some ginger candy but didn't need any of it. He did great! Good luck to you. I'm sure little one will be fine!

So happy to see you have a little boy now we met you both on the Brilliance when you were on your honeymoon happy memories.

Mary :)

You have a great memory Mary! 😊 5 years went by fast. We want to relive that trip one day!!

We brought everything with us last month when we cruised with our 18 month old on the Freedom. Granted we drove, so that made it easy. But even if we had flown, I'd have packed what I could and then made a Walgreens/Target pit stop on the way to the pier.

We planned for the worst. I brought enough diapers for the worst diarrhea for 7 straight days. Same with wipes. I would MUCH rather lug some extra diapers on the ship and not need them then end up with a sick little one and panic because we ran out. We brought a lot of diapers home, but I still felt at ease having them. I packed a shoebox and filled it like a medicine cabinet. Snot sucker, baby saline, child SeaBands, infant Tylenol/Advil, bandaids, Neosporin kids, gas drops, aloe, hydrocortisone, Benadryl, etc... I put the shoebox inside a huge Ziploc and packed around it in the center of the suitcase. The shoebox was great since I could just put it on the shelf in the closet and didn't have little bottles and stuff everywhere!

Our son is a temperamental eater at best, so we brought quite a few pouches and snacks with us. With meal time being so off and him being so active all the time, we ended up using the pouches a lot for lunches and snacks when we were short on time. I just packed a little duffel with pouches, snacks, water bottles, a few spoons, a little bottle of dish soap for washing, and a bottle brush and carried it onboard.

Prolly more information than you wanted to know (sorry) but I was lost when I was packing and looked for all the tips I could find!!

We cruised on the Freedom last month with out 18 month old and had our City Mini with us and it fit through our cabin door perfectly fine. We also had no problems going down the hallways or anything. In Grand Cayman, we kept our son in the stroller to get on and off the tender with no problems. We didn't do any excursions in any port, so I'm if no help there. We did use a Frogg Toggs cooling towel and it seemed to help some. We used it both in the stroller as well as in our Tula carrier.

Tashak, I hope your cruise goes well and that you enjoy every minute. On a positive note, our son has been eating better than ever after we got back from our cruise 2 weeks ago! He used to eat like a bird and now he shovels food in. We can't figure out why. Must have been the Caribbean air and the endless cruise ship food options!!

We took everything we needed for our son on RCCL a couple weeks ago and nobody even batted an eye. I also requested a fridge (a real one since the room ones are just "coolers") and it arrived the first day. My son drinks a drink like PediaSure and eats a lot of string cheese and baby food pouches still so we brought it all with. He doesn't eat well and struggles with gaining weight, so his things we took were basically for medical reasons. I almost asked for a doctors note, but decided not to. If somebody wanted to try and take away my toddlers food, he'd have screamed at them. LOL. We drove to port so getting it there wasn't a problem. But I packed his drinks and food in a duffel that we carried on with us and it worked out great. One more thing to carry, but I didn't mind at all.

I would rather the ships be non-smoking all around, however I do appreciate the new change in policy. And I understand the designated areas for smokers around the ship. Some are easily avoidable by non-smokers, others are not.

Smoking in the casino, fine, I don't gamble so I don't really care. BUT with it now being the ONLY indoor smoking venue, the ventilation definitely needs some help. On the Freedom earlier this month, it just smelled nasty. Stale smoky air at all hours of the day, whether or not the casino was open or not. We only smelled it when walking through the casino from the Schooner to the dining room. The proximity of the pool smoking area to the baby splash pool however, that is a bit absurd. I did take issue with that.

On our honeymoon 5 years ago, we had heavy heavy smokers on the balcony next to us and that truly did change how we enjoyed our balcony. So I welcome the no smoking on balconies.

We went in October a number of years ago on the Serenade and it was fantastic. Hot, yes. But even with a couple brief showers, we had no issues. Beautiful weather in our days before the canal. And beautiful weather in our days after the canal. Predicting the weather... It's kinda like a box of chocolates though. Never know what you're going to get.

We were on the Freedom when the World Cup started a couple weeks ago and were very disappointed. There was never, not once, any mention of the games in the Compass nor was there any signage or anything done to promote the games. So much for their big Coca Cola/World Cup/RCCL partnership they have advertised! We were able to watch the games in our room (except the Mexico game which they didn't have the rights to air because we were docked in Cozumel at the time) and a couple by the pool. But when the first game aired, it wasn't even mentioned at all. My husband had asked in the pub about it and was told there would be a viewing party there. But when he went, he was told it was cancelled and that "maybe" the game was on at the pool. We were thoroughly unimpressed. They did however promote the NBA finals viewing parties. Guess the World Cup isn't as important!

Anyone have any idea what would be the minimum time we should allow to turn in points for OBC? Seems to me that points don't become 'officially' yours until the end of the billing cycle. We will only have a few days between the billing cycle date and our cruise departure date....just trying to earn as much OBC as we can. :)

The absolute latest, without exception, that you can redeem points is 7 days prior to sailing. It is recommended to do it earlier of course with at least 14 days prior being ideal. But I was told when we called that requests made 7 days prior to sailing will be accommodated. If you call 6 days prior to sailing however, you are out of luck.

When we redeemed points for OBC last month, we were told that the absolute latest with no exceptions that you can redeem is 7 days prior to sailing. The woman I spoke to recommended doing it 10-14 days out if possible (we were waiting for our statement to close to reach the next 5,000 point increment) but said up to 7 days prior it will be applied to your sailing with no problems. We called instead of doing it online too. Felt more comfortable with doing so for some reason.

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We had reservations for the ice show on the Freedom last week. I made the reservations online and was able to add in guests from other reservations. The "tickets" were then just linked to our Seapass cards. When we arrived at Studio B prior to show time, they scanned our Seapass and only those people with tickets/reservations were allowed to enter until 10 minutes before show time when those without tickets were allowed in to fill remaining seats.

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Call the Crown & Anchor number. They are the same team that handles redemptions of the My Cruise Rewards Visa points. I called and booked our cruise over the phone and did the points redemption at the same time. They were very very helpful!! We called back a few weeks later to redeem more points for OBC and had no problems at all.

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Glad that they were able to provide some resolution to you!! I agree that sometimes the servers are just "off" at times. We also had a very poor dining experience on the Freedom recently with a server who was borderline rude. To the point where I was ready to just eat room service. But we were able to get things resolved via the maitre'd and the dining room manager and switched tables on night 3 after giving the original server 2 chances. Had they not accommodated us, I would have been quite dissatisfied. But one way or another, our week ended on a good note!

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The bacon appetizer is DELICIOUS!! The French onion soup, crab cake and caesar salad are also quite good. The filet is delicious as long as it's cooked right. (Our whole table ordered medium rare last week and were delivered medium well and were in a hurry so we didn't send them back but still ate them.) As for the sides, under the old menu they were all delicious but now most are just OK. I had the tater tots which are gigantic and pretty good but filling so definitely share them with the table. The corn was not good (tasted like doctored up frozen corn). The mushrooms were pretty good though. As for the deserts, the red velvet cake was nothing at all like what is pictured above by another poster. Tasted like store bought IMO. My husband had the cheesecake and it was quite delicious! Enjoy! We did have a fabulous waiter in Chops which was nice!!

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Tried it a couple times last week on the Freedom and it reminded me of Totino's Party Pizza. It looked decent and I wanted it to be good but I t was awful. Each time I tried it, I hoped the piece was better than the last. But no. They did however have a cold case with crostini, bread, a cold cut (prosciutto, salami, etc...), mozzarella balls, and a frittata that rotated. We had snacks from those options quite a few times which were actually very good. The pizza definitely needs improvement!! If it could be as good as a "premium" frozen pizza from the grocery store that'd be a huge step in the right direction!

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I'd just take your City Mini. Even though it's not super light, it's also not super heavy. It folds up so easy too and with the handle is easy to carry. We carried ours down to and onto the tender boat and just set it up quick once we hit land. Wasn't a problem at all. And when we came back to the ship, we actually just kept our son in it and pushed him onto the tender and then the ship. Super easy.

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We just returned from our cruise on the Freedom with our 17 month old and we took our City Mini. I wouldn't hesitate to take it again. It fit in through the cabin doors and was easy to navigate down the halls even while the stateroom attendants had their carts and laundry bags in the hall. Folded up easily and we just stood it on the arm of the sofa closest to the wall. I saw a mix of strollers on the ship. Some umbrella, a few BOB, some higher end. We also have a Maclaren Quest. And after this cruise, I'm soooooooo glad we chose to bring the City Mini. The Maclaren is still bulky when folded up and we would have had to store it in the closet where we were already out of room. Plus a stroller with a large sunshade, which the City Mini has, was way more useful for us. We also ended up using it to hold our smaller bags on embarkation/disembarkation as my son doesn't handle sitting still in lines well. So one of us held him once we had to stop in a line and put our bags in the stroller. That would have been impossible with the Maclaren.

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T-minus 48 hours! Woo hoo!

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Thank you so much for all this info!! We sail in 3 days. Aaaahhh! Time to pack. I think I might just bring his favorite books and hope for the best for the toys we check out for him. He will play with anything. LOL. We are crossing our fingers our little guy does well at dinner too.

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