ksg

Thanks Beach.

Believe it or not, in 14 cruises I have NEVER, not once, on any of five different cruise lines, ordered room service. I was wondering what kinds of offerings are available for room service for dinner. It is that night's menu, or is there a dedicated, pared down menu?

Thanks!

Kim

Just checked my calendar. ALL reservations are gone. I was told by the rep that the original emails of reservations would be honored. We'll see. I've been trying and trying to make our Day 2 dinner reservation a bit earlier so as not to be rushed for Mama Mia. And now I can't get anything around 6:15, I don't even see my original 6:45 reservation at Grande.

Still don't see Star Water as an option.

The rep couldn't get into my account, even though I had logged out, in order to see the screen.

So much annoyance just to hang over an air plume for 60 seconds.

It would be nice to know where the Schooner Bar is located since about 90 of us are planning to meet there on November 21. We'll be watching the "Live" threads for clues...

 

Jonathan

We also have an interest in knowing where the Schooner Bar will be. We love them on the Radiance and Voyager classes, but on Oasis class the fact that they are wide open to the promenade, and all that noise, makes them a no-go for us. (But we're probably in the minority of RCL cruisers because we can't really stand the promenade).

Looks good for a cafe or to enjoy pizza watching the sunset

 

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Forums mobile app

I believe this is outside of Jamie Oliver's restaurant. Perhaps you need to be $$ eating there to access this area.

Can you just imagine the stampede of people asking for their money back/OBC/free cruise etc. because they had to pay for entertainment that wasn't entertaining?!!

I saw the actual press release too. My guess is that RCCL purposely leaked the upcharge language in an exclusive to Sea Trade to see what kind of reaction it might get.

We're booked on Quantum. After being spoiled by all the fantastic "free" entertainment on Oasis and Allure, and given the price of this cruise to begin with, my husband will probably insist we cancel and go back to Windstar, which has absolutely no entertainment, but a lot better ports and food for the same price, since there's NO WAY he would pay for entertainment on a cruise.

The best excursion we ever did - bar none - was to take the train up. Then we took a bus for a bit (not sure if it continued up or not, or went down). And then we rode bikes down, stopping to show passports at the border crossing. It was magnificent and exhilarating, and pretty easy biking since it's all down hill. The tour operator said they replace the hand breaks every two weeks on those bikes! They put the slowest person in front, so everyone has to go at that pace.

Yesterday I spent one hour and 37 minutes on the phone - including 24 minutes of waiting for a representative. I had been trying to change dinner reservations, and it seemed as if it was all going through until the very end. So I finally broke down and called. Apparently our friends' reservation was locked by someone so I waited on hold for around 45 minutes for IT to "unlock" it.

I finally, with the help of customer service, managed to change a show to allow a normal dinner time on one night. The other 9:00 p.m. reservations got moved to 8:45. She said to call back in a week or two to move those dinner times earlier little by little.

She also told me that they will be adding more shows - we have a number of nights where there isn't anything to do. So once those shows get added, we'll have to redo the dining process again.

Also, as a point of interest, and not particularly scientific, this customer service rep told me that American Icon seemed to be the most popular of the venues, and Silk the least popular.

Still trying to get good times...times the way the IT department seems to keep messing up the reservations so badly. At this point I'm not even sure 3 of my nights have reservations anymore. I won't know for sure for another 14-38 hours and even then I doubt IT is going to bother notifying me of what they've messed up next. I doubt the result will be that they properly fixed what they broke.

Yes, still trying. Wheel goes round and round. Nothing listed for nights 9 and 10.

Exactly how we felt after reading all the posts and reading all the information (?) on the RCCL website.

 

After 30+ years of employee schedules, payrolls, budget estimates and the like we solved all the problems associated with dining times and entertainment venues with a single email.

 

One email to our agent and our reservation was cancelled and we booked a less "Dynamic" cruise with almost the same itinerary, at a much better price.

 

Maybe not a desired choice for others, but it just seems to give us what we are looking for.

Sorry RCCL, but we'll see how all this works out for a while before we take the hook.

 

bosco

Bosco - can you share what you booked instead? I would cancel this in a heartbeat, but our friends are so excited for this cruise. Then again, the reservation task fell to me. Maybe I should give them the job to revise and augment our times, and then we'll see how excited they are.

I am only seeing 8 nights of our 10 night 1/23 sailing. I just tried to make dinner reservations for day 8 - we have the sonic something or other show that night - and the circle went round and round and round for at least a half hour. I gave up and x'd it out.

I've wasted too much time on this....

For most of them I think it's the top of the life boat. There's a really great site that lets you stack decks on top of each other to see exactly what's above and below. It uses the words "cruise" and "deck" and "plans." When we booked the D-8 was something like only $25 more than the obstructive view, so it didn't really make sense to go down a category.

Too many people are saying to give RC more time. This is ridiculous. Their s41t needs to work.

Totally agree. Wonder how many dining slots will open up right after final payment? Or will the system still leave those reservations in place even after people cancel their sailings.

A couple of years ago we were on the Dawn, and we never made reservations. We just showed up when we felt like it, and with the exception of one occasion, we were seated right away. Of course the down side was that the food was pretty bad - only a couple of selections were OK, and they started to get old on a 9-night cruise. (How much grilled salmon can a person eat!?)

I want to go to the site and make reservations for the couple of days we don't have any, but I don't want to make myself upset.

Is the 2 70 show up for reservation for the 1/23 sailing? It wasn't yesterday.

I would be more than happy to eat in the Windjammer if they add tablecloths and wait service. Somehow I am booked for Sonic Odyssey via the representative. Most of the shows I booked are for 7:00, but then the dinners are at 9:00.

I started to try to redo them, didn't see 8:00 or 8:30 at all, and surrendered. Life is too short to waste time on this. Just to drive to the port? Jewel is sounding better all the time - at least you start out warm. There's also a very nice Equinox sailing around the same time as mine.

Hate to say it, but maybe Breakaway and Gem should get a second look. The price is certainly righter and we can spend the difference in the upcharge venues.

My cruise planner says I have 12 Entertainment reservations and 4 dining reservations. Neither of those is accurate. LOL.

Can't see them though as site was down.

If you added others from a different reservation, make sure the times show up on other's schedule. I added my sister and husband to all my reservations when booking, mine showed up, hers didn't. Talked to rep this morning and she was able to add my sister and her husband, but 5 out of 9 times I had reserved were not available for 4 people, only 2. Glad I had my sister ck. Glad I could help them continue to test the system....:) I think they will have more slots available once the system is fully up and I would bet they will release blocks even after that for people booking later and hold some back for on-board booking. Just my thought.

I booked for friends too, so tables for 4. They sent me emails addressed to them with the confirms. One email for me (actually several, since they left off the entertainment at first) and one for them.

Reservations lady said we could try for better times on board, that on the web the times were wanted were gone. She did not say try again in a few weeks.

I think if one is going on this ship, one must be prepared to be very very flexible with dining- or maybe I should say "dynamic." So dynamic dining means you get to eat at different times each day, half of which are either so early you're looking around for the midnight buffet at 10:00, or are so late you're sleeping on a full stomach. And no where did I see the vidalia onion tart on the menu. As long as I'm griping, can't they bring that back?!!!!

Then why have it up there? And the poor reservations lady - we were on the phone for close to an hour with this nonsense.

Not true that the 7-7:30 times were blocked out. We have 7:15 at Silk (twice - I guess it's not going to be popular), 6:45 at Grande, and a 7:30 at Chic, and a 7:30 at Icon. All the other nights are either at 9:00 or no reservation cause all they had was 9:00 and I figured we'd either be doing something in San Juan at that time, watching the Super Bowl, or booking a specialty restaurant once on board. (TA certificate so must be done on board and on a port day). And that Grande is going to be rushed with Mama Mia at 8:30.

The reservation person tried to sell me Chops and Wonderland for 7:30 times. So pay restaurants - oh yes. That they have!

But I don't get what's going on with the entertainment. Even on the old classes of ships you had a show every night - even if it wasn't Broadway caliber. Hopefully they'll add shows.

If they're not ready for prime time, maybe they shouldn't have it up there and upset people. Really, we sail on Jan. 23. They have time to get the bugs out. I guess the shareholders should be pleased that they didn't have to pay for beta testing.

I am so far from being entertained and have totally lost my appetite. I went to book, got as far as Mama Mia when the site crashed. So I call RCL, wait and wait and finally I get a lovely reservation person who basically tells me "no" for almost every restaurant and time I asked for. All booked up!! More than 250 days in advance! And the most torturous way of getting the dining times. She doesn't have the ability to see which restaurants are available at each time - she has to click on each restaurant at each time one by one. Unbelievable.

The site must be designed by the people who brought us healthcare.gov.

I'm waiting for my email confirms. Not optimistic that it will all work out with the shows. And so many nights with no shows!! My last two cruises were Oasis and Allure. Not used to having no shows. I would think they'd add some. We'll see.

Given the price of this cruise, I'm having second thoughts about this whole thing. The whole point for me with "Dynamic Dining" is to get to eat when you want. Not at 9:00 p.m. or 5:45.

I just booked the Jan. 23 sailing and called about making reservations and was told I couldn't. I pushed back and eventually reached someone to make the reservations, but then was told I couldn't make it for 4 people - we're sailing with friends - because even though our reservation was linked to them, they weren't linked to us. So now we wait until Monday for our friends to get it squared away with the TA.

But the whole RCCL web page is so annoying - they don't have my name associated with my booking, unless I go in through the "before you board" part of the site. And the C&A number is not associated with my name - at least on the web site. Customer service is lacking, and I actually got a snide comment about how my name appears on my passport! I use given, middle, maiden and married - so the passport has 4 names. Messes up their system every time - but we digress.

But much of what we are likely to reserve will probably end up being changed when we get the show schedule, and I imagine that's the same for many of us. This whole thing is causing unnecessary stress, and it's a vacation! When we were on Allure two years ago, we basically ate whenever we wanted, but had trouble on Oasis, especially the first night when we were offered 5:15 or 9:00. We ended up in the main dining room at 7:15 using a table where the people were no-shows for early seating. But that was just a fluke.

Traditional dining was so stress free. You knew where you had to be, and what time your show was, and everything revolved around the dining times.

In looking to book, I notice that RCL is describing many of its balconies as obstructed view. Any ideas as to what the obstruction is? The website doesn't say. There are obstructions, and then there are OBSTRUCTIONS!

It would be interesting to see if it's just the lifeboats when you look down, or something more objectionable. We were once on the Summit and had this situation, but the cabin was not indicated as obstructed view, but I thought it should have been.

Thanks in advance!

Generally speaking near the stairs is fine, but not on busy decks (in my opinion).

 

Example:

 

Deck 14 forward is the kids club. Makes sense that there would be more than average traffic near the forward stairs..

 

Same for deck 6 aft stairwells (Boardwalk), Deck 8 both stairwells (Central Park), Deck 3 both stairwells (dining room, ice rink, etc), and so on.

 

I would play it safe and pick a deck that has only cabins, or at least avoid the decks I just mentioned. Odds are you'll be fine either way, but it is something to think about.

Have to disagree with Deck 3 statement. We were on Deck 3 Ocean View midship for both Allure and Oasis. You won't have any activity in the hall from the the dining room. You can hear the music in the ice rink in the hall, but not in the cabin. And the midship cabins are fairly close to both elevators/stairwells. We thought it was a great location.

10 You have memorized which Specialty and No Cover Charge Restaurants are onboard

9 You wait anxiously and tell everyone around you to be quiet so you can hear the Captain's 12 noon announcement.

8 You know that you can arrive to port at 11:00 AM and use the day you paid for wisely

7 You have the Bong they use for boarding saved on your smartphone so you can participate in the Bonging process as well.

6 You love watching the Position Map Channel and have it on in your stateroom 24/7 and ask the crew where the nearest TV turned to that channel is so you can track the progress.

 

5. You know that tonight is Pomodoro and the next one is Mojo

 

4. You have memorized the layout of the Windjammer and know what sections to head to for the first embarkation day lunch.

 

3. When you greet the captain at the Captain's party you ask him what is the Beaufort Scale, Present Position Longitude Latitude what time you will hit the next Pilot Station.

 

2. You hold down the Door Close and UP Button keeping it pressed to get the elevator into Express Mode so you can be the first for lunch.

 

1. You arrive to the port early in the morning to watch your ship come in and navigate the quickest way to the checkin lines so you won't waste precious moments when the checkin opens.

When you know that Mojo can't follow Pomodoro because Mojo is the first night's menu.

What time is OceanAria? At this rate maybe we'll get to watch it on the port webcam! :)

We were served while in the beach pool on Oasis - sitting on the ledge in the shallow end. Many people were drinking in the pool at that time as they were running a buy one/get one at the pool bar. I think they used plastic drink ware though.

Was a very nice time!

I liked the Solarium best for both breakfast and lunch any day. It was quieter, and the salad choices were even better than the Park Cafe salad. You can get the roast beef sandwich later, when it's not so packed.