martinpj

Some cruises are forever before they are accessible.   My June cruise was not active until about 2 weeks ago.   It really only  matters that it is available for check in and on the cruise.

I wish pricing was affecting the cruises I am booked on.  Right now both of them are $2k pp interior.

I have host a birthday party in my suite for about 20 people, and as NEVERBEENHERE states is all correct.  Had to pay for the appetizer plates.

Last time I just used Uber

2 hours ago, Sunshine3601 said:

You forgot Odyssey out of Israel.     And I suspect an announcement about some sailings out of UK or maybe Harmony out of Spain will be released soon.    

Something is better than nothing for their bottom line.

I am confident that sailings will go smoothly since everyone will be vaccinated.    They have to take it cautious and not over do it on setting up new homeports.   Baby steps is the best plan, IMO

 

Mexico announcements is what I bet is next

4 hours ago, ZoeyVictoria said:

That is a lot of money to spend four days sailing back and forth to Coco Cay.  I thought the St. Maarten  and Nassau sailings were a great idea, but not the Bermuda itinerary.

4 hours ago, RosieRoo said:

Just checked a r/t fare from Boston to Bermuda in July and it was $780. for one person. The air will likely cost more than the cruise. 

I see flights for $400 for the month of July.

Just wait and watch award fares.   They are posting awards really high right now, they will come down.

Self serve buffets are gone.  With the set up of most ships, they will end up putting up a glass where we previously grabbed the serving utensil to slap food on our plate.  Instead they will have a crew worker behind stationing it, and we point to what we want, and they slap our food on our plate or worse yet, we have a tray full of little plates and bowls of the food that we want so that they don't have to hand plates back and forth.

So the Windjammer will be more like Cafe Promenade just on a grander scale. 

When mine was canceled and I asked for refund I was told 30 days.  At 30 days I was sent an email stating it was taking a little longer.  It ended up being 45 days.   Currently Carnival is stating 60+ days so RCCL is about 2 weeks quicker.  The cruise lines have old technology and that is what is hurting processing these refunds.   All the cruise lines got enough financing to basically allow them to exist thru the end of the year without sailing so it is a process issue more than a financial one.

52 minutes ago, Lady Hudson said:

What about a closed loop that might include the Bahamas or Canada?

As long as it doesn't expire before the end of the cruise.    Otherwise you can just use your birth certificate and state ID

It has always been accurate for me, I use it to find available cabins laid out on the deck plan then go to RC with what I want.  I just booked a 2022 transatlantic cruise that was on that site that was no where to be found on the RC site.  If you see that one room available call up RC and see if they see it in their inventory 

10 minutes ago, Biker19 said:

That site is automatically blocked by CC. 

I know, such a pain.

Use sea scanner 

52 minutes ago, aca911 said:

Is there a place online where you can see what the expected occupancy is for your sailing on Royal?  I was just curious to know and then be able to watch the numbers regarding how many may be canceling due to the COVID-19.

 

We don't sail until May to Alaska but with all this hoopla, I'm afraid the cruise ships are going to cancel sailings themselves.

 

TIA!

Use sea scanner.    you can see all the available staterooms by category

We booked on a charter for the Edge.  Out Balcony was only $1400pp

Was this in my top 5 favorite cruises... no. But I really think that was attributed to so many of the excursions being sold out. We really only had one left at each port to choose from.

There was nothing from the ship experience that I was dissatisfied with.

What we did when we got on the ship was go to the main dining room and make reservations for the restaurants. There are the four of them, each one has a set menu for that restaurant plus a Chinese classic fare menu. So as an example one of the main dining rooms Chic will have the same menu every night (the Chinese fare menu will change each night). So to get a different menu you have to select on of the other main dining rooms like the Grande or American Icon.

I agree with all the poster wrote with the exception of available seating in Windjammer. Went in there numerous times for a quick snack (desserts). Every time we had to take the food to a different part of the ship to eat.

So a friend and I did the Quantum of the Seas Shanghi>Nagasaki>Bosun>Shanghi over Christmas break. So here is a quick run down of what to expect.

The boarding process is a bit chaotic. Expect to go thru immigration before you board (checking out of China). I am Emerald and the shore personnel were more interested in moving us along like cattle vs if we had status. Look for the VIP signs as if you have status at all those are the lines for you. No signage for the different status levels.

RCCL WILL collect your passports. The will get you two copies of your passport. You will use one of the copies for each of your stops in Japan and South Korea. And you go thru immigration at each stop. One of the stops was processed on land, the second they do the immigration check on the ship. Before returning to China they notify you what time to get your passports. They have a table set up on each floor for distributing them.

Jamie's Italian is not open for lunch on disembarkation day.

All the cruise director, video, ship announcements, compass and menus are in English for you.

The free dining rooms will have two menus. The standard one for that restaurant and a classic Asian fare menu.

If you have ever been on a Quantum class ship before and 270 was your get away from the chaos spot to go to forget it on this cruise. Busy ALL the time.

The main theatre shows tended to be in English, or they were performance that did not require vocals at all. (so very unique and cool music performances, RCCL production shows were kinda ala Cirque de Soliel'ish.

No Johnny Rockets, replaced with a noodle spot.

As to Asian "experience." Mainland Chinese do not understand the concept of personal space so be used to being "squished." (elevators, shopping)

The one huge difference you will notice is the lack of the standard RCCL game show type activities. No Quest here. There will be some Korean Pop dance off type things. But a lot of the standard activities just will not be there. They will be replaced with shopping, more shopping and even more shopping events. RCCL should just make a specific ship for this market where there is one entire deck for stores, one for gambling, and one for restaurants.

So for restaurants, the mainland Chinese eat, and I mean eat like there will be no food tomorrow. You will see a 5' 95 year old Chinese lady balancing 5 plates of food, it was incredible to see. 270 is packed anytime they are serving food, Windjammer will be 50% Asian cuisine and 50% the regular fare but you will not be able to find any seating there. If they post they are serving lunch from 11-2, folks will be there for the entire 3 hours. It is not like a normal cruise where you go to eat, then leave. They will eat and socialize that entire time. I did notice that they tended to put the English speaking guests in the back corner all together. I believe they did this so they could utilize wait staff who spoke English and not Chinese.

Book your excursions early. Everything was booked up but one or two excursions when we got on the ship.

The pool deck areas/Solarium..... devoid of human beings other than easterners which is few. Our cruise was 95% Asian, 5% easterners.

Language will be zero problem.

 

Our party arrived at the cruise terminal at 11:00 AM and we were aboard quick and easy by 11:30. The Windjammer was already crowded, so we just explored the ship and found a place to sit down and wait. The weather was frigid by central Florida standards, so no one wanted to be on the open decks and they all congregated either in the Windjammer or the Royal Promenade until the staterooms were available (about 1:30 PM).

 

In general, we enjoyed the Windjammer for breakfast and lunch, and we always found a table without much difficulty. Then again, finding a table for two is easier than finding a table for a larger group. Also, we made an effort to avoid peak times for breakfast and lunch.

When they had the SeaPass issue where they halted boarding folks, I would have thought that everyone already on the ship would have thought that the ship was pretty empty of people.

The only time my family ate as a group was at dinner. Any other time we probably ate with one or two others.

Nothing will ever be perfect. As soon as you accept that and enjoy the good things for what they are, perhaps you'll come back happy and grateful instead of critical and disappointed.

Royal Caribbean has set a standard that every other cruise I have taken on them has been fantastic. So I am only doing a comparison of my other RCCL cruises to this sailing. This one would have ranked last. I have sailed on FOS before, but I could not identify why or what was different that was causing some of the issues I encountered. (Though the long lines of getting off the ship when were were docked I did identify was a laissez a faire attitude from the ship security)

I am glad you did not encounter any of the issues that I and the rest of my group.

One of the things I do love is having breakfast in the MDR and having to "join" a table. That way I get talk to other people over breakfast of their cruising experience. Most were encountering the same issues I was, though one was on her first cruise and not enjoying herself due to the ship rocking so much the first two days. I told her I have never encountered so much rough waters before and once we are south it should calm down.

So this is my first feedback after a cruise on the boards here, but this cruise had a lot of firsts for me, even though I have been on 14 cruises so far. So let's start.

So this cruise starts with not having the RCCL paperwork printed and with you at the port.......to my fellow cruisers..... DON"T EVER DO THAT, cause it is a pain!! Because we did not have online check in paperwork we had to go thru the LONG line in security instead of the short line for crown & anchor folks go to go.

We this story gets even better because while waiting in the long line Royal Caribbean SeaPass computer systems go completely offline...... if anyone is wondering, that means all check ins come to a complete HALT! So the folks that got on by noon (when the computers crashed) got on the ship. But for the next hour & 20 minutes, no one got on the ship. I bet all those people were thinking that they probably have never seen the buffet so empty. So with the SeaPass computers down they stopped the process of checking folks in for about about 20 minutes. People were sitting down as they were holding people at the security check in. After that time, they made an announcement, let us know what was happening, and that they were going to people in, but instead of getting a SeaPass you would get a group number. When they called your group you would then come up to get your SeaPass card and then proceed onto the ship. It was a mess, but an organized mess and RCCL did keep up on the communication.

So what happens when you shorten the window for people getting on a megaship that is the size of Freedom? Well now you have even more people attempting to get food in the Windjammer!! There were lines upon lines upon lines at every buffet. There was so many people, that you could not even find a plate to put your food on, as they could not keep up with supplying plates. Good luck finding a seat, I saw people with plates of food leaving Windjammer presumably to another part of the ship to find someplace to eat.

So after eating, we go down to the My Time Dining to arrange a table for our group of 12. Some of us were correctly keyed in on My Time Dining, some of our group was not. We really just wanted a table at a set time all week. We were told a table of 12 was available at 8pm only. So we took it..... this would become an issue later tonight.

All of the group had promenade interior staterooms and happy to say not a one heard anything from the promenade at anytime. I had an interior (stateroom 2325).... yup, that is right, bottom of the ship. The room was fine but the wait for elevators was too long for me so lots of using the stairs, go forbid I left something in my stateroom when I had to be on deck 14!

Well we are two hours on our way out of Port Canaveral and now an announcement came on and we are heading back to Port Canaveral. Apparently there was a medical emergency on board that required us to go back. I would have thought it would be cheaper to just hold there and have a helicopter pick an individual up verses a cruise ship adding 4 hours to a trip but I guess not.

The captain did a good job of playing catch up though as were were only delayed an hour into CoCo Cay.

So the dining was a huge issue on this ship. So the first night we did not have a table of 12 together, we had two tables of 6. Ok, I can live with this.

What happened on the second night I couldn't. So night two half of us saw the evening performance. After the performance we go to the main dining room where we wait in line for well over 20 minutes. Upon finally getting to the front of the line, my brother is there. He said he had been standing there since 8pm (it is now 8:20). We are told by the crew member that he doesnt think our table is ready yet (huh? it is well after 8pm) So after 5 more minutes and being told again and again just wait just wait, I go to where our tables were last night and find the rest of my family waiting there for us..... since 8pm!!!! So my brother just spent 25 minutes to be told to wait.

After we got seated I went on a hunt to find the restaurant manager, who I found and pulled a side incase I got load and vocal over what had just transpired. I have to say, I judge the service industry not by you messing up, but what you do to fix what you messed up. The restaurant manager did do a good job of fixing the situation by getting us a set table of 12 for the rest of the cruise and checking up on use during our cruise vacation.

Other things of note:

I HATE all the retail kiosks on the promenade! Not because they are in your face selling things..... I can ignore that with the best of people. What I hated is it impedes the flow of pedestrian traffic sooooo much. There is a lot of people and that deck is the one that most people use to get from one side of the ship to the other..... it was a week full of traffic jams.

The casino had a tech black out for a little bit..... all slots stopped working for about 20 minutes....

So I am Emerald level so I have done a fair share of cruising on RCCL. The food in the Windjammer was totally inedible. There was the same 10 food items on 6 different buffet warming areas. I am not a fan of buffets to begin with but I think I would rather starve than try to eat any of it. If your car looses a bumper, grab some of the "toast" from the Windjammer, it was harder than your chrome bumper. So I resorted to all meals being in the Main Dining Room, or I just went hungry other than some of the quick service options like Sorrentos or the Cafe.

The Main Dining room service was top notch. The food was either a C- or an A+. Nothing inbetween.

So out of all my cruises, I have to say that the entertainment on board was the best I have EVER had. The headliner Tony Tillman was amazing. The production shows, while I have seen at least one before, had a better caliber of singers and dancers which raised the performance value.

This was the first time in cruising that I felt so much rocking of the ship, but I guess it is better than what the Anthem had to do thru during the same week.

So while I have been on the Liberty of the Seas and had a great time, the Freedom of the Seas left me lacking. If it was not for having a great time spending with my family, I would say this would have been my first disappointing cruise on Royal.

I am sure Royal will WOW me in May as I will be on the Anthem then.

Staterooms tend to have either convertible sofas or a berth that the stateroom attendent will pull down from the ceiling during turn down service. You would need to look at the deck plan and your stateroom to see which staterooms have what.

I understand about having the two seatings to increase the quality of food in the MDR. But I have been on 12 Royal Caribbean cruises but all thru Atlantis Events which charters the entire ship. One of the unique things they implement is walk in for the MDR EVERYDAY and WITHOUT reservations. Atlantis has done this on the Oasis, Freedom and Voyager class ships and I have never encountered a hickup. It was great that when you were ready for dinner you just went. I would say 90% of the folks always asked to share a table so it flowed quite well.