DaKahuna

@lizsoars As others have said, there are activities for people of all ages. They even have meetings for single cruisers, although I have never been to one. If your sons get bored I think it would be their own fault for not trying hard enough to find something to do.

We have sailed multiple times on both Royal Caribbean and Celebrity. Our preference is really Celebrity mainly because it fits our demographic better. We are in our early 70's, mobile, and able to take one or two cruises, or sometimes more, a year. Celebrity offers better quality in the way of service and food, in our opinion, than Royal Caribbean. That is not to say Royal Caribbean is poor in either categroy, it's just that Celebrity seems to us to be better. One of the things we like most about Celebrity is that they have a lot of 'longer than 7 day' cruises. Our next two Celebrity cruises are for 15 and 12 days respectively. Our next Royal Caribbean cruise is 8 days, and we just finished a B2B of 7-days each. As other have said, if you are looking for a quieter atmosphere, fewer young children (under 21), and great service and food, Celebrity is a better choice, in our opinion, than Royal Caribbean. P.S sailing in a Suite on Celebrity is a much different, and I would say better, experience than Sky Class on RCL. Celebrity really takes care of their Suite class passengers.

I believe this is referred to as "check the box' mentality. Is a test required? Yes; Did they show evidence of a test? Yes; Check the boxes and move on.

Don't you mean step into your office suite?

We just spent two weeks on Quantum of the Seas and we set foot in the Diamond lounge once. We were returning from being ashore and had to use the forward gangway. I told the wife that since we were close by, why not take a look. We walked to where I thought it was, did not see it, went somewhere else looking and came back and finally found the entrance tucked away near the theater entrance. It was nicely appointed but there was no view to speak of and I did not see anything at all to compel us to return when it was open. The Suite Lounge was much nicer.

Forgive me, but don't you sleep on sheets and pillow cases (changed every few days by your room steward), use tablecloths and napkins in the restaurants placed there by your wait staff, etc... I see the laundry the same as cooks and dishwashers. in fact, I would be hard pressed to name a service that included in the behind the scenes tip pool that does not provide a service or support of a face to face service.

@Tulsacoker You will be happy to know that we did in fact get double cruise points for both cruises and we now happily set at 352 points !! I am going to contact C&A and ask for my crystal block !!

That is news to me but seems to follow a pattern of a lot of recent cruises.

Our most amusing experience was when I transferred to Hawaii after being stationed in Japan for seven and a half years. When we arrived from Tokyo at Honolulu International and were going through customs the agent, who was new to the job apparently, asked us if we had anything to declare and I told him "no." He then asked if we had made any purchases while overseas and I told him "yes, everything we owned was purchased overseas." He then started trying to explain to me that I should have declared all these items on my customs declaration and that we would have to pay taxes on it. Luckily about that time a supervisor came by to see what the hold up was. The guy explained to him what had transpired and the supervisor looked at me, my Japanese wife and two small children and asked if I was in the military. I informed him yes, and we were being stationed in Hawaii after living in Japan for the last seven and a half years. He then laughed, told me to go ahead and repack my belonging and to have a good day. As I was packing I heard him explain that active duty military were not like tourist and did not have to pay import taxes on personal items while purchased overseas.

No, if you are thinking like a bar dedicated to martinis like Celebrity has. You can get a martini at most bars on Harmony.

Agree 100%. The first time I tried it at a luau it reminded me of paste. If you do want to try it for the experience, I hear that mixing small cubes of tuna (ahi) into it helps improves the flavor. Did not work for me but YMMV.

We saw Sonic Odyssey on our first cruise. They did a special performance that was unannounced, until the day before. We enjoyed it but would not say it was something that we would watch again. Goddess was wonderful as well. We also saw that on our first cruise along with "Starwater". All of those were well done. Yours is the first that I have heard of. I would not be surprised if there were more cases but no one saying anything about it. We saw whales on both of our sailings. Mainly from the Suite Lounge (all the way aft on deck 12) and from Coastal Kitchen. I overheard one person comment about how much they had paid for a whale watching trip and although they had seen lots of wildlife they did not see whales. Oh, how i wish i could have seen that. Our worse was a lady on one of those scooters who kept nudging forward around on between people when she saw the smallest gap. No one confronter her though.

My experience was that it did work on Celebrity but heard reports that it did not on some ships, just not the one I was on.

@bobmacliberty I think you are going to have a wonderful cruise. Expect to have to deal with a lot of moisture, e.g. rain, mist, etc.. in the mornings in Alaska. We were fortunate to have great weather in Seattle and Victorica as well as most afternoons on our recent Alaska adventures. Kauai is much more laid back than Maui or Oahu. Unfortunately, I was only able to get there once in all my years of living in Hawaii and that was on a golf outing where we played 36-holes a day for two days. Some things to try in the food department in addition to Hulu pie are: Huli-huli chicken Macadamia nut pie kalua pig manapua tako poki (or salmon, ahi, etc...) loco moco spam masubi "plate lunch" - my favorite is the mixed (kalbi, bulbogi, and chicken) p.s. Please tell Romana (Suite Concierge) and Margaarette (Coastal Kitchen Ass't Maitre'd) that Toshiko and John said hello! They are both fabulous ladies.

Back when you were required to fill out the customs forms and hand in to a customs agent, I reported the purchase of some jewelry for my wife that exceeded the limit. I expected to be called aside to pay some taxes but he just looked at the form, put it with the others and waved us on. If I understand it correctly, if you make purchases that go over the customs limit, you should go to Guest Services and ask for a customs form.

As someone else said, if you want to point out poor service by an individual, the post cruise comments are the most effective way to do so. Those comments are taken seriously and are taken into consideration for things like promotions, shore leave, reupping of work contracts, etc.

Not that I have observed. During the day I have worn shorts and t-shirt but in the evenings I am usually dressed for dinner and wear long pants and a collared shirt. I have observed others similarly dressed.

I would definitely recommend that if you are interested in doing this, you make the reservation but as soon as you get on the ship you go to the restaurant and verify they can accommodate. The reason I say this is that the Sushi Lunch is a pre-set selection of menu items and as someone mentioned earlier, are prepared in advance. While when ordering of the regular menu they will ask about allergies or any food restrictions, I do not believe they do that when the menu is a fixed course.

I once again apologize for being absent for the last day or so but I did want to close out this review. All in all we had a very wonderful cruise on the Quantum of the Seas. It was our first sailing on a Quantum class ship and we thoroughly enjoyed it. The observations about drawer locations and the B2B or Consecutive Cruiser experience being the only real negatives. Service, food, and staff were absolutely wonderful. Granted sailing in suite class is different than sailing in something other than a suite but even our experience outside of Coastal Kitchen and the Suite Lounge were wonderful. From the time we left the ship until we arrived at the United Lounge was approximately one hour. That was including the time waiting in line to go through customs and immigration. There were only two agents checking passports at the terminal. One would think that the number of passengers being unloaded would warrant more than two agents, but it does not appear to be the case. It was interesting to watch people cutting in front of others, even when changing lines when they thought the other line was moving faster. One would think that after a seven-day cruise people would be more relaxed but that did not seem to be the case. We had taken advantage of the Luggage Valet service offered by the port of Seattle to have our bags delivered to the airline directly, since our flight was not until after the 1200 cut off for Luggage Valet. We did not see them from the time we set them outside our door Sunday night, until we pulled them off the conveyor belt at the airport. One note, even if you are eligible for priority bag service, if you use Luggage Valet, they do not tag your bags for priority. Also, for anyone who does not know, there are two different Clear terminals at SEA-TAC. The one in the middle of the terminal is for non-TSA Pre. The one for folks with Clear and TSA-Pre is at the far left. We went to the wrong Clear terminal the first time and when they found out we were also Pre-Check they told us it would still be faster to go to the other Clear terminal, so we did.

Don't do me any favors with regard to Wonderland. That's all on you. I stand firmly with Bob with my opinion of Wonderland. If they want to pay me to go there, then I might, just might mind you, consider going but no promises.

We just earned ours for 350 pts on the cruise that ended Monday. Should be interesting to see how long it takes for us to receive ours. We took advantage of multiple lift & shifts and ended up with 7-day B2B that gave us 28 points each!

I am pretty sure you can but I would see if you get any of the onboard booking benefits. I would recommend you ask.

I think you are going to have a wonderful time. Enjoy your cruise, I know we really enjoyed ours.

We did not even have a B2B meeting on Quantum. There was a letter delivered to our stateroom with instruction on where to go and when. Then again, no testing was required for ours so a meeting was really unnecessary.

Typically you are notified two or three days proor to sailing if your bid was accepted or denied.