shayelle

On 11/14/2022 at 3:58 PM, sheeng said:

I have been wondering about this also. We are booked on Silhouette in early March with our 3 young grandchildren ages almost 3, 5 and 6. Any tips from your experience? I don’t even know what questions to ask! After 50 or 60 cruises I never imagined cruising with little ones!🤗

I bet we didn't see more than 10 children.  Very few on this sailing due to length and time of year I think.

17 hours ago, eddiet19 said:

How is the quality of the onboard Wifi Internet?  Good enough for video calls?

 My daughter tried to facetime me and it did not work

So we've been on about 9 RCCL and 2 Celebrity cruises. I've booked them all myself through the RCCL or Celebrity website. I prefer it this way to keep control. Well, we're looking at booking a summer Caribbean cruise on Allure. One of the big online travel websites is offering quite a bit of OBC. What are the drawbacks of booking this way? I know I won't be able to deal with RCCL directly if there are any price drops. Do the big online sites do price drops before final payment? I am super hesitant to book this way but it's quite a bit of OBC for 2 cabins so it's so tempting! Any insight would be appreciated.

We're just off a cruise with the same wifi situation. We had 2 unlimited and 2 40 minutes packages. The 40 minutes go quick. One thing we did realize though, is that the unlimited can be used on any device, just one at a time. So I let my kids log in and do what they needed to do (gotta keep those snapchat streaks!)

Someone in our group would usually get them in the morning. About 7 of the 10 days, but the time dinner came, something on the menu had changed. I don't think you can guarantee they won't make changes, although it wouldn't be massive changes.

Just off Reflections and the Pool Butler was always scanning the pool for diapers. When he would find one, he would call someone on his walkie talkie and that person (an office of some level) would come explain why the diapered child could not be in the pool. Some got really mad. I saw at least 4 families being told their baby couldn't swim.

I have kids. Older now but I took them on a cruise when my youngest was 3 1/2 years old. Part of his motivation for becoming 100% potty trained was that he could not go in the pools on the ship unless he was. It is unsanitary to have fecal matter, even contained in a swim diaper, in a public pool.

We were a large group (14 people from 15-75 years old). My family of 4 (me, dh, dd17, ds14) shared a partially obstructed view veranda. It was cabin 6170. My parents were next door in 6168 (bed by the veranda). When were first booked (which was about 15 months before cruise date) we got this category, plus the "Go Best" for just over $9,000. We did get one price drop. It dropped us to $6,200 for the same cabin category and still "Go Best". My parents dropped from over $6000 to just over $4000. We were originally on deck 7. The day of the price drop I couldn't get through to Celebrity so I booked a new reservation (so I had to select different cabins). Then once it was confirmed I canceled the old one. I did this for my parents as well. I meant to call later and get the cabins back on deck 7 but just kept forgetting. It was not a big deal though.

Embarkation: We spent 5 days in Rome before the cruise. We arrived a day later than planned due to bad weather and a missed connection. Although this is the first time this has ever happened to us, this is why we never come in the day of a cruise! After our time in Rome, we took Rome Cabs from the Piazza Navona area to the Port. There were 8 of us with a TON of bags. It was 200 euros. We were picked up at 9:30am. We were on the ship by 10:50am. No line whatsoever. We were greeted with a Mimosa upon boarding (OJ for kids). Cabins were not ready, obviously. Way too early. We roamed the ship, ate at the OceanView Cafe, and started using our beverage plan :)

Cabins were ready around 1:30pm. We had cabin 6170 partially obstructed Veranda. The view is of the lifeboats. Ours was a little more "obstructed" than my parents who were next door in 6168. Ours had the white metal part of the lifeboat system in front of ours. We had the balcony divider opened with my parents next door. It was nice. The cabin had the king bed by the bathroom and a sofa and pull down bunk bed by the Veranda that our cabin steward took care of every morning/night for us. I was surprised by the amount of storage we had. We had A LOT of clothes and luggage. We were gone for 17 days so packing light wasn't really an option. We had plenty of storage though. There's a lot of storage over the bed, 3 deep drawers, little shelves next to each side of the bed, and a ton of closet space. This is the key. Use the closet. If you didn't bring your own hangers (we always travel with 1 garment bag with as much stuff hung up on wire hangers as possible) your cabin steward will bring you more upon request (at least ours did). I also brought one large over the door storage. We stored some under garments, bathing suits, shoes, sunglasses, belts, sunscreen. I also brought a smaller one for the bathroom. We really didn't need it though. The bathroom has a surprising amount of usable storage space. We stored makeup/hair stuff by the mirror in the cabin (again, there are little nooks and cranny's you can store stuff there too). We had 4 LARGE suitcases and 1 small case that all fit under the bed. We stored backpacks over between the couch and the sliding door to the Veranda (where we had also moved the little table to get it out of the way). I also brought magnetic hooks and hung hats, purses, and various other items to get them out of the way. We hung a mesh laundry bag on one of the big hooks on the wall. This is the 1st cruise we've taken where we didn't have 2 cabins. I was skeptical but it was a success! We did not feel cramped. Granted, we did not spend a ton of time in the room and when we did, we used the veranda a lot. But it was definitely worth the savings for us to get 1 cabin this time.

We went with the "go best' option. We got 2 premium beverage packages, 2 classic non alcohol packages, 2 unlimited internet, 2 40 minutes internet packages, 2 prepaid tips, and $300 OBC. The price of the upgrade was nowhere near what we would have paid otherwise. It was a good deal for us.

Beverage packages. We upgraded the kids to the premium package before we boarded. Not sure how it worked out price wise. I am not sure what the differences are. They both drank quite a few virgin type pina colada's/Daiquiri's. My son drinks Coke, my daughter doesn't drink soda at all. But she had some smoothies. The premium alcohol plans works well for us. We usually have a few specialty coffees, some martini's, the wine we like is over the classic price, and a lot of bottled water.

The internet is slow! Sometimes not even worth having. That being said, I was happy enough to have it since it was included but do not think I would pay the $269 price tag for it. You can use it on multiple devices, just one device at a time though. So my dd and ds would log in on their device using mine or one of the grandparents who also had unlimited. Again, not sure it's worth paying for, but as a perk it was just fine.

More later, gotta go do more laundry....

On Reflection now. We were in Mykonos a few days ago. We tendered.

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We will be boarding The Reflection after 6 day sin Rome. We will need to send laundry out once on board. Do they take laundry the day of embarkation? Or do they start the next day? Also, does anyone know how much it is? Do they do the "fill the bag" thing or is it by item? There is 4 of us and we will have quite a bit as I am not packing for 16 days!

Thanks!

The earliest you will be able to get off the ship is 07:00, that is if the port

authorities do show up by then. It will take between 55-90minutes, depending

on the day of the week and road conditions. Do self departure and private transfers.. Also, what happens

next depends on the airline that you are using. Delta, you go to Terminal One, into a special

area. You will have two stops of questioning about where you have been. Then you can check

in your cases, and go thru security. Then begins the journey ---the long walk to terminal 3.

When you get to terminal 3 there will be sign telling you your gate and how long to get to the gate.

Ours was a 30 minute walk to get to gate. Last year, we went to terminal 5 United and American,

Check outside of terminal tickets and questions. Inside cases check and cases check in. Then thru two separate securities.

Then board bus to terminal 3 and the gates. Anyway you look at it, it does take time.

We did this on the 20th of May, so information is current.

Thanks for the info. We are flying United. Do you know if you clear customs in Rome before boarding? We are Global Entry so we save some time there. Although our first stop is in Canada, not the US, which we've never done before either.

Thanks everyone! Last time we did this we didn't fly out the same day so I just wanted to be sure :)

We are getting off the Reflection on July 31 (Monday). We have a 11:50am flight. We've never done self disembark before. Wondering if we really need to or if we would be okay not doing it. We have older kids who would carry their own luggage so it would not be an issue to do self disembark (we wouldn't need to drag tired toddlers and luggage around). I would rather not do it, but obviously need to get to the airport on time!

It should be interesting but we will not be in the cabin much at all so I don't anticipate any issues :)

We have cruised several times, but this is the first time we are putting all 4 of us (2 adults and 2 teenagers) in one cabin. Due to cost of the 10 day cruise and the week in Rome before the cruise, we really can't do 2 cabins (I'm watching for price drops though, maybe there will be one before final payment!). We are ok with it, just trying to figure out space saving ideas. I am trying to see how the cabin is laid out with the sofa bed and the pullman out. Is there a website that shows cabins?

Thanks!

We are taking my parents on the Reflection next July (2017). I'm hesitant to book now, as I feel like the price will drop. When we did it a few years ago, it was about $500 less and if you book now, for THIS (2016) July, it's about $700 less.

But then I thought I would book it and just watch for price drops and adjust it. After reading the fine print though on Celebrity website it looks like you can only as for a price drop once. Does anyone know if that is true?

The majority of our cruises have been RCCL. We did a Mediterenean cruise last summer on Celebrity Equinox. It was amazing. I would cruise Celebrity again for sure.

We are a "little" older then you guys but we really enjoyed it. You will, for the most part, find fewer kids. We will always sail RCCL with the kids. The trip last summer we didn't bring them : )

Have fun whatever you decide!