DragonOfTheSeas

41 minutes ago, alfaeric said:

Sorry, but it’s still confusing. The discussion moved from a bridge that has no choice but to be replaced to one of additional volume in a different place that eventually will need replacement.  
 

And since cruise ships represent a very small part of the shipping traffic, I don’t see a real need to add height on all bridges as a high priority.

 

 

24 minutes ago, Ocean Boy said:

That part has had me confused also. Unless I am missing something, I don't foresee container ships going higher. Maybe longer or wider but higher would seem, in my mind anyway, to make them more unstable in storms.

While passenger vessels are not the main traffic at this port, they are still an important source of revenue for the area.  Hotels, restaurants, parking, gas, etc.

It does not make sense to build a new bridge without increasing the height. I know the other bridge is still a choke point.  However, there are already plans to replace that one. too.

Just now, Another_Critic said:

Just an FYI - You were in Sea Class (JS), not Sky class.

 

Some Tours, Top Tier, and Cheers with an Officer are C&A events, not suite related events.

Sorry--I listed the correct event, just not the correct class.  😜 My bad!

We had this same situation last week.  We just did not take access any Sky class benefits.  

We ignored the tours, top tier event and cheers with the officers. We were ok with that.  

Thank you all for reading my thread.  I find I pay more attention to the cruise when I am telling others about it.  

Here are a couple of final comments:

I was very worried about the number of children that would be on this cruise.  Someone on the FB thread said the number was 1600.  I can't confirm that--but I would believe it.  . . . and there were some children that were running amok. However, the vast majority of them were just being children.  They were occasionally taking too loud, walking/running too fast and moving in packs.   I must admit I spent all of my pool time in the solarium and had a Hideaway Beach pass on Coco Cay.  [good strategy on my part HaHaHa] However, I have seen a lot worse behavior with less children. [and from adults] Some of the credit goes to RCL for all of the activities they had planned for the children. 

Food-- We felt the food was pretty good.  Breakfast was excellent each day.  We enjoyed the brunch on sea day.  However, I felt it needed to stay open until at least 1 or 1:30 to be a true brunch. We enjoyed the stir fry station in the WJ. [so good]  My DD enjoyed the chicken dishes.  I enjoyed the lamb and the beef tenderloin.  I do not feel it is a good idea to select steak.  They seem tough and we avoid them. DD gives me grief about all of the soups I eat.  

I feel the cabin arrangement with the JS and the solo cabin worked out well for us and we would do this again on a ship that has this.  

We did not go to very many of the entertainment options so I can't really comment on those.  However, DD did and enjoyed them.  I really liked "We Will Rock You." I already gave my opinion of Spectra.

Disembark was as smooth as we have ever had.  We reported to Jaimie's for the assisted disembark at 8 am.  They took us right away. We left the ship, took a taxi and got to the train station by 9am.  I paid a fee to change our Amtrak tickets from 12:22pm to 9:23am and we were off. 🚆 It turned out to be a big plus.  There was no waiting around and the later train ended up being late. 

I hope everyone made it home safely and you enjoy your next cruise!

We just got off the Anthem today.  We had an employee anytime it was open.

They met us at breakfast this morning with complementary mimosas. Now that’s the way to end cruise.

We are back!  Currently 6:05 am. So no worries about us arriving late.

Wr kept her in good shape for the next cruise. Have a good time. 

During dinner tonight, one of the crew-members dressed up and walked through the various dining rooms, entertaining the kids while they were waiting in line and at the tables.

it appeared when he was walking that the alien was carrying him, and then he had a baby doll in his arms that moved its arms and head. It was really something. Ha ha ha.  As if the “my time dining” lines weren’t crazy enough already.😜

he was happy for me to take his picture

1 hour ago, Neosophy said:

I hope your arrival time and disembarkation time isnt affected, I read your start of cruise and the delay really seems to wreck havok with the drive/parking.

 

Live about 45m from the terminal, so driving in tomorrow.

If I hear that, it’s going to affect us in anyway even if it’s tomorrow morning, I will post so you’ll know. Have a great cruise.

34 minutes ago, teddie said:

Thanks for your review.  It's extra nice to read, as we just sailed our third time on the Anthem, the most recent time being the 03/17/2024 sailing--we prepared the ship to be ready for you :).

 

The whole MTD "reservation" process is clunky as heck!  While the hostess is lovely and clearly works very hard, something is wrong with the way this goes.  The "reservation" line is slow, and I can only believe that the "without reservation" line is slower.  The checking of availability takes way too long.  It is not a smooth process by any means.  I am not sure if the software is ineffective, or if the hostess's preparation is lacking.

 

Interestingly, since we had a full suite on the 03/17 cruise, we felt again that the process was clunky for the Coastal Kitchen as well.  Again, lovely, hard working hostess.  When you arrive at the podium, if the hostess is not there, you will wait in the hall outside the closed doors of the CK until she comes out after seating the previous guest.  Then comes a somewhat longish wait for the hostess to locate a table for you,  I felt badly for those on line behind us!  This was extra tricky at breakfast on a port day prior to disembarking--even arriving early incurred at least a 10 minute wait in the hall for the hostess to emerge from the CK. (We were patient and didn't complain or ding anyone/anything on the survey.)

 

We loved the service in the MDR on previous cruises, and really loved the service and food in the CK on this most recent one.  But something has got to change for the seating process!

 

Teddie

I agree with you. The two MTD lines were huge and slow. We were so glad that we had been given the trial 6:30pm fixed seating.

28 minutes ago, DragonOfTheSeas said:

Speaking of Norfolk. We are headed back to Norfolk to meet a helicopter from the Naval Air Station.

 

Actually, it was a Coast Guard helicopter. It appeared to be Be very close to the ship. 

 

Speaking of Norfolk. We are headed back to Norfolk to meet a helicopter from the Naval Air Station. During our “we will rock you” performance we heard an alpha, alpha alpha. Just a few minutes ago the captain came on and told us that we were going to meet helicopter because of medical emergency.
 

This is our current location. 
 

10 hours ago, DragonOfTheSeas said:

Norfolk is a Navy town. They rally around when anything goes wrong.
 

I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the area around the dock. It is known as waterside, and it is a very popular section of the city. If you are able, go down a day early to enjoy, the scenery and the restaurants. Check out Nauticus on the Internet and see if you would enjoy visiting that. It’s just beside the cruise ship terminal. There’s also a small park right on the waterfront and they often have events there. You might want to check the schedule for the city.

 

if it was me, I would stay at either the Hilton or the Marriott. Each of them is only a block or two from the port.

 

If you drive down and have transportation, you might want to go to Virginia Beach for the afternoon before. It’s a very family friendly beach. Very modern and clean. There is a boardwalk and there are hotels adjacent to the boardwalk but It is less commercial than Ocean City, for example. 

I’m sorry this post was supposed to be in another thread. For people who were coming to Norfolk. I didn’t notice I was in the wrong thread soon enough to delete it.

6 hours ago, LuCruise said:

I really like that they are adding a third dining option in-between.  5pm/5:30pm is too early, but then we don't like to eat so late (and I wonder how it'll be hard to coordinate with shows).  So a 6:30pm time sounds perfect.  My only concern though...is we like to be relaxed in the MDR.  We don't want a 2hr dinner, but also don't want to feel rushed.  On our cruise on Wonder a few weeks ago, it started out perfect.  Dinner was 5pm, and we were walking out close to 6:30pm...perfect pacing.  The last two nights though I was more annoyed as felt we were rushed and we were walking out prior to 6pm...finished our appetizers and they were brining out our main course right away.  But with adding another fixed dining time, they will have to rush the 1st and 2nd dining times.

There is very little time between courses.

6 minutes ago, RocCruisers said:

So, what cruises have been notified of the change to Norfolk?  
ALL of April's?  Any in May or June?  July, August, etc feels too early to change yet - right?  (Ours is July 6). 

There are only two cruises in April. They leave on the fourth and 12 April. And then the vision goes to drydock until May. It’s too early at this point to decide what to do with those cruises.
 

Officials keep saying it’s only going to take a few weeks not months. But I don’t think anyone knows that until they actually get in there and start seeing the particulars.

19 hours ago, PGHProducer said:

really kind of hoping the new middle dining time comes to Liberty before this summer…

I am currently on the anthem. And we were randomly assigned to the 630 fixed seating. We love it. And would sign up for this all the time. I imagine a lot of people would. There are only nine waiters who are currently doing that on this ship. And it’s a pretty big ship.
 

I think it’s a real struggle for the waiter. there have been several nights that the previous people were not finished by 6:30 or they finished up right at 6:30 and it took the headwaiter and all the waiting staff to frantically bus tables that were assigned to the 6:30 session. 

They added a bunch of chairs into an anti-room for us to sit and wait until the table is ready. That works if you have a few tables but it’s not gonna work if you have the whole dining room. I think they’re still working on the specifics.

The ship is holding an Easter egg hunt in the kids club this morning. No telling how they’re going to do that with all these children. But as I passed through the indoor family pool, I noticed that there were a lot less people.🥚🐰🧺

I posted this a couple hours ago in the wrong thread. If this is a duplicate, I apologize. I thought I would move it here. I can answer many questions if you have them. Our DS lives in Virginia Beach  and used to live in Norfolk near Old Dominion University.

2 hours ago, DragonOfTheSeas said:

Norfolk is a Navy town. They rally around when anything goes wrong.
 

I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the area around the dock. It is known as waterside, and it is a very popular section of the city. If you are able, go down a day early to enjoy, the scenery and the restaurants. Check out Nauticus on the Internet and see if you would enjoy visiting that. It’s just beside the cruise ship terminal. There’s also a small park right on the waterfront and they often have events there. You might want to check the schedule for the city.

 

if it was me, I would stay at either the Hilton or the Marriott. Each of them is only a block or two from the port.

 

If you drive down and have transportation, you might want to go to Virginia Beach for the afternoon before. It’s a very family friendly beach. Very modern and clean. There is a boardwalk and there are hotels adjacent to the boardwalk but It is less commercial than Ocean City, for example. 

I’m in my happy place, the solarium. It took me a while to find a seat. They are not near each other —but that is no issue. We are like vultures looking for prey. 
 

The staff is putting notes on seats with just towels and removing them after a half an hour. But there’s certainly more people who want seats than there are seats in the solarium today.

Here are a few more random shots from around the ship
 

these are from Two70

and this was the end of a program called the house of mouse.

We got there just as it ended, and they were deciding which team won. Note the three team captain standing in the front. The team on the left captain looked to be about 12. And that team won. The interesting thing was that, the prizes were beer cuzzies. Haha

that would normally be a perfectly good prize, but you had to know that if the game was called the house of the mouse, that it was going to be a child filled audience

The bionic bar

The royal Esplanade

Norfolk is a Navy town. They rally around when anything goes wrong.
 

I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the area around the dock. It is known as waterside, and it is a very popular section of the city. If you are able, go down a day early to enjoy, the scenery and the restaurants. Check out Nauticus on the Internet and see if you would enjoy visiting that. It’s just beside the cruise ship terminal. There’s also a small park right on the waterfront and they often have events there. You might want to check the schedule for the city.

if it was me, I would stay at either the Hilton or the Marriott. Each of them is only a block or two from the port.

If you drive down and have transportation, you might want to go to Virginia Beach for the afternoon before. It’s a very family friendly beach. Very modern and clean. There is a boardwalk and there are hotels adjacent to the boardwalk but It is less commercial than Ocean City, for example. 

Here is today’s sunrise picture. Look at that beautiful flat ocean. You can’t ask for better weather on the last day of a cruise. High today is supposed to be 70 but of course it’ll feel a lot cooler than that with the wind.

6 hours ago, Merion_Mom said:

 

 

Try the Embassy Suites on International Drive in Elizabeth, NJ

Thank you we would need to do that when DD sails with us again. 

We usually cruise in the spring and the fall. Sometimes doing.B2Bs. we will have to see when we can make that work with her teaching schedule.

The Doubletree near the Penn station is not that great of a hotel but it’s very convenient and with DH mobility issues easiest is good. 

6 hours ago, perfect match said:

Thank you very much for sharing your experience with the 6:30 dining time experiment. I’m wondering what time you were usually done with dinner? I think the 6:30 time slot might work well for us, but that would depend on how well it coordinated with show times. 

We were usually done by about 7:45. Our waiter was very fast. If we ordered two appetizers, he always put them on the table at the same time. I’m not sure if that’s the new procedure or if I was just what he was doing too. Make sure dinner moved along quickly.

yes, that time works really well for us too
 

6 hours ago, Another_Critic said:

Note that Anthem is leaving Cape Liberty on Apr. 28 and will be replaced by Odyssey on Nov. 17.

Thank you I hadn’t looked into it yet.