Rewind

At 2:00am this morning we finally got the email the we did NOT get the upgrade. We board in 2 hours.

Mine still says pending this morning and we leave tomorrow. I'm guessing that means No.

My bid is in "Pending" status - whatever that means. Maybe I'll find out tomorrow.

My first guess would be if you bid on a YC interior and someone in a YC interior bid on a YC balcony, they get the balcony, you get the interior, and MSC gets all the money. Granted I am actually hoping for the same thing as I have a bid in for our Seashore cruise this Saturday and all the interior YCs are booked. Guess I will find out on Thursday what happens.

I think it is one show. There is one member of the Ice Cast on Voyager that has a YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/JordanBauth97 You should be able to get some more info there.

We did both a drop off and pickup from the Port Canaveral location. For drop off, you pull around back (to the left side of the building), they scan your car, and hand you a receipt. Then you just walk through the building and there is a small waiting area right up front with a couple restrooms where you can wait for the shuttle. For pickup, we had a good experience but that might have been because we did self disembarkation as we were going over to Kennedy for the day and wanted to get out early. While we were not the first off the ship, we were still some of the early ones. When we got to the rental car location, we were one of two couples (us at Enterprise, the other at Alamo). They don't have any of the automated kiosks like airports, but the agent was fairly quick. I will say though just after we got the keys, another shuttle pulled up and offloaded a good handful of groups. So really, I think it is all about timing.

Leaving on Seashore in just over a week.... Let me write this down. 😄

We did Enterprise but they are in the same location as National and Alamo. They are just barely outside of the port area but run a couple shuttles going to the various terminals. From the location, it is about a 5 minute shuttle ride. They will drop you off right next to the porters to take your luggage and will pick you up in designated shuttle pickup locations. Years ago we rented from Avis which also does a shuttle. At least at that time it was more of a 15-20 minute shuttle but don't know if that has changed.

So this is if you want to see what it's like being a drink made by the robotic bartenders on Royal?

I've seen packed theaters / standing room only and I've seen half full theaters. It depends on the show / sailing. My experience is the 3/4 night sailings, people are more interested in drinking / gambling than seeing a show. Longer itineraries are more relaxed and more people will go to the theater. As for charging per show - I don't think they will. They can't advertise "all entertainment is included" if they do. Now they could raise the cruise fare by a couple of dollars per Pax and could cover costs and I doubt most people would even notice. As for booking shows in advance - it's good and bad. We have had multiple shows rescheduled up to a day before they are supposed to happen. I'd hate to pre-book a show on day 6 only to find out when walking into the show that the schedule changed and it was moved to day 4. In this case, I'm for booking shows once I get on the ship's wifi (just get a seat in the terminal as close to the ship as you can).

I've been bidding on an upgrade. Once the bid is in, you can cancel, or you can adjust the amount of your bid. I keep going back and forth as to how much it is worth to us.

Yea - our guess at the time was to avoid some rain. Not a lot in the area, just a bit. We have turned South now and slowly moving. I didn't know about movie ng to produce water - I'll go with that idea.

We were just in CocoCay yesterday, today is a sea day, tomorrow we will be in Nassau. We were just sitting around about half way in-between, but then around noon the engines started up. It is now 7:30pm... I'm just wondering where we are going.

Helipad is open on Freedom, Voyager, and Radiance class ships ... as long as the weather is good. If you are sailing or if it is raining, there is a good chance it might be closed. If there is an evening that the Flowrider is not running, a spot over looking the wake of the ship would be great. I like the idea of scheming with the cruise director and have him bring both of you up on stage at a show in the main theater. Might try to send an email in advance.

I'd have to do some searching, but yes, suites changed to NRD about 5-6 years ago. The problem was that cruisers would book multiple cruise itineraries in suites that overlapped and then wouldn't make up their mind what cruise to take until final payment. Royal couldn't sell the suites to others until that time and they wouldn't be able to sell them. So now it is NRD on all suites, Royal can sell all their suites earlier, and the upgrade fairy died off.

Yes. And it is 24 hours from the time you activate it. So if you activate at Noon on Tuesday, you have until Noon on Wednesday when it shuts off. Plan your two person access for the times you might need it (save one for near the end and you can check in for your flights).

Keep in mind it is a free day of internet per Diamond Member. I think it might also be a free photo per Diamond Member as well.

I did get a response - "We are looking into addressing this issue in a future release. I am forwarding your experience on for further investigation."

The pier in Barcelona is mostly North/South. To the West is a hill with the Castle de Montjuic. When we were boarding Allure (facing North) you could really only see the city from the front of the ship. Decent views from the observation area in front of the Solarium.

Has anyone else tried to use the CBP MPC app for entering the Miami cruise port? This is supposed to submit your entire parties passports so you can breeze straight through customs. I really want to use this.... but after you select the "Cruise Ship" button and add your travelers, the option for the port of entry is "Miami International Airport". If you do try that one (thinking it was just mislabeled) you then need to select your terminal between 3, B, D, E, and J which are the terminals at the airport and not cruise port. I submitted a help request and got back a "we will forward this to our IT department".

Screen on the right is towards the forward of the ship and is the direction that the camera was pointed. Not sure how things look if the screen is towards the aft. (Navigator 9305)

We did a VB on Navigator back in 2014. We had a remote to the VB screen so steward didn't have to set it up any specific way. It was funny one day when they were making an announcement - we heard it through the speakers in the hallway and then 3 seconds later heard it through the VB. We didn't realize there was a delay in the feed until that moment, and we were at least halfway through the cruise at that point. One thing we did notice that was nice - the VB reflects into the mirror over the desk, which then reflects into the mirror on the angled wall on the outside of the bathroom, which then reflects to the mirror over the bed. It didn't matter where in the room you were, you could see the screen.

Was in 6654 on Anthem with the same views. I like the square setup of the cabin and the wider balcony.

Yes they are:

I'm not sure on that one myself - we have Johnny Rockets in our town (that we never go to) so it's not a place we go on the cruise ship. Maybe I'm thinking of it the other way - that you can buy milkshakes individually without having to pay the cover charge.