Moonarino

Aren't the staterooms zoned by the various colors on the luggage tags? (But maybe still a question as to whether printing in color is helpful or not.)

I'd forgotten about those, it's been so long since I had to resort to it. I was referring to the tags I had printed and brought from home and didn't staple together myself. But now that I write those actual words out, I ask myself why I left that for somebody else to do in the first place.

I highly recommend! Last cruise the baggage checkers had a nasty time with broken staplers, finding a good one that hadn't come apart. Weird, first time ever. But weird stuff happens all the time.

"Tall" for me (as in "problem") was Carnival Legend which is about 50 narrower than Oasis class. That ship would rock like crazy in just a high wind. In fact I was on Legend the day a pop-up storm pushed it into a Royal ship parked at the other pier. I do certainly understand that even a "wide" and heavy ship can rock with the best (worst) of them if there's enough sea and weather pushing it. As @Ret MPsuggested, YMMV, storms vary, ship direction and speed can vary effects, all ships vary a little or a lot in their seaworthiness, regardless of size, etc. I myself greatly prefer to be on a wide-body ship in a big storm, and the lower down I am in all that motion, the better my head is gonna like me.

I should've focused on that example earlier because this was also pretty much my point. The higher up in the arc in that motion, the more pronounced the motion is. I never notice any problem at all on decks 3 or 4, even in the worst weather. I remember a very bad storm in particular on Celebrity Eclipse back in 2011. I was fine on deck 4, but in our deck 8 balcony room I was fairly miserable most of that night. I still remember it clearly because it was the first time I had experienced the problem on a cruise. But knowing vertigo like I do -- partly because of tests I've gone through to pin down the problem, plus a little sports therapy -- as compared to seasickness which is the same general thing but not necessarily the same specific thing for everybody, it can very much depend on the person. Up-and-down motion doesn't bother me nearly as much as "rocking-n-rolling" (versus lateral/flat sway) or circular motion does. I can't turn half a circle too quickly without risking my gyros going a little wacky.

I understand. Just saying I've sailed ships ranging from 2500-3600-4500 pax up to Oasis, most if not all in some pretty bad weather, and never noticed that those huge ships are any rougher than any others.

I'll have to disagree with that. Oasis class are the heaviest out there, thus less prone to getting tossed around. Rocking side-to-side maybe (in rhythmic rough seas anything will rock), but on 3 Oasis class cruises plus one on the next-largest Independence, I never thought any of those ships were at all worse than the smaller (e.g. 3000-pax) Carnival or Celebrity Summit ships for example.

I'm gonna guess that that the kind of aft motion you (or sister) is thinking of is negligable. But to clarify, I've never experienced side-to-side swaying or even that much up-and-down. As for engine vibration, I don't know about LotS (Liberty?) but none of the Royal ships I've sailed had a much more than "noticeable" issue with that. And usually only when porting or disembarking. Again I'll stress that height is my personal worst enemy on a ship, and I've had staterooms from literally front to back of large and small-medium ships (e.g. Carnival Destiny). It's only "worst", as I described above, during side-to-side rocking (as opposed to lateral swaying or fishtailing, which again I've never noticed). But in all situations, lower is always better for me -- except maybe too low where engine vibration or noise might be severe or chronic, which can be its own kind of irritation. (I'm also prone to very mild persistent-noise-induced vertigo.)

I have random issues with mild vertigo so I'm probably more sensitive to the motion than average. I have never had any problem on lower decks, forward to aft, but have had problems even on the largest ships on higher decks. Doesn't matter which section of the ship, aft, forward or midship, if the boat starts rocking sideways you're gonna feel it from one end to the other. I've had issues with that on at least two ships, Oasis class included. Lower decks (midship or aft) are absolutely the best bet, considering all the possibilities.

And Kindle tends to get wonkier and wonkier with every "upgrade". @maggie416, I don't recall having problems downloading content on my Kindle before, but I've never tried more than once or twice (and on older Kindle versions). I usually prep up with at least 3-4 new downloads before the cruise, just to be sure I'm stocked with good reading for the duration.

@twangster, yeah, kinda sounds like it's up the air a bit. On the other hand, @artvlay, I daresay the NFL won't quickly give up the channels (or games) that other streaming services carry, meaning those Sunday/Monday/Thursday series that assure lots of revenue. In fact my own streaming subscription is showing specific "upcoming" preseason games starting very soon (next week??) so the "network" games are apparently still as normal, for now anyway. I'm betting you're fairly safe, at least for this October -- that is, if a Greek cruise would even show those game anyway? No idea myself, never sailed anything except US-based cruises.

I definitely recommend the deck 17 aft suites on Oasis class. We spent a week in a Crown Loft that overlooked the basketball court (on the starboard side) and even with that, noise was never a problem for us, even when full-on competition was going on the court. The Deck 17 suites are two (and three) decks up from all of the aft activity, so it's not really "that close". By saying this, I'm just suggesting that if you like to spectator-sport, even that corner suite 1720 might not be bad. From the corner or aft-facing suites you could watch whatever is going on down there, and you can even get a squinty view of one of the big screens in the Aqua Theater. But like I said, you can also shut all of it out as you like, the noise and the view.

Casinos. Money money money! They do usually have segregated areas, for all the good that does. (I'm a light smoker and I can barely stand walking through some of them). My last cruise on Carnival Magic I did find a separate non-smoking casino on another deck, below the big one. (MO' money-money-money!) Maybe other cruise lines will follow. @runner2013, big thanks for posting the Q and thx to all for so many responses. I haven't sailed Celebrity since 2011, just the one on X I'm sad to say, because my aging ears just cannot take the noise anymore. Celebrity Eclipse (11 years ago, granted) was the quietest and most peaceful cruise we've ever been on. Even Royal, with whatever "haute" it's supposed to possess -- my last on Independence OTS was as loud as a cruise ship can get. Our second cruise on Oasis a couple years before wasn't any better. I'm as much looking forward to 10 days on Silhouette in November as any cruise I've ever anticipated, for all the reasons all of your responders have stated. In addition to the peace factor, pics (and a video) I've seen of the renovated Silhouette show it to be, probably, the prettiest ship I will have ever sailed. I cannot wait to get there.

That is exactly what I would do. I always travel with my choice of artificial sweetener because I've been rudely surprised too many times.

Something else I miss: Criuser reviews/comments on the cruiseline's website under each excursion. Of course that's too much to ask. Maybe one cruiseline or another still does it, but I really wish they all allowed that.

Yep, I got that, although it's different for Princess, the cruise I was gonna go on in November instead of Silhouette. It's a game trying to keep up with the differences. Nantahala. I enjoyed a long drive alongside the river once, many moons ago. Beautiful.

Matter of opinion, but I do agree that Royal's website is terrible (I say it's the absolute worst) and always has been in my experience. It's about as barebones as a website can get, but even then RCCL had a heck of time just keeping it running. As for Celebrity, it's always working (for me) and I never have a problem doing what I want to do there -- can find my order history and so forth (which I find lacking in other sites) and so on. Yes things are missing, but I've had enough bad experiences with other websites tht truly were awful that I won't complain too much about X. yes Carnival's site is "good" but for some things it's been known to be clunky, slow, and neither is it as complete as I might like it to be. I will say that the cruiselines' relatively new apps don't really help the websites at all, because development and maintenance of the apps take time and focus away from IT (as well as other levels of corporate) regarding the traditional websites. But we gotta have apps. Everybody wants an app for everything and every business out there (plus a few million individuals) think they desperately need to write an app to stay in the game. Yes there are "justifications" for apps, people who love something can always make a case for it. But I left IT enterprise management years ago when the enterprise got so big it had pretty much developed a life of its own, and it especially seemed like "the Internet" had taken control of the entire organization. I no longer had control of anything that was my responsibility. Love the Internet. But it's a Monster.

Definitely. Otherwise complain to X very loudly. And as @jelaynewrote, definitely do it before you cruise so you can get the discount. Edit to add: The best way to be sure is to cancel your basic WiFi order (see the fine print at the bottom of the email you received for that purchase) and then order the upgraded WiFi. Otherwise you could very easily end up buying a second WiFi plan.

Thanks for the tips, and I've had my experiences trying to make time-specific reservations for any-time dining. Our preferred time was available maybe one night of a seven-day cruise, because we didn't do that right away. I know this topic is speciality dining, but same thing basically.

Good mention. "Trip Interruption" and lost baggage coverage are (I'm sure) not just for mishaps at the cruise port. I always include the day we leave home to the day we return, not just the cruise dates.

IIRC, the website says we can schedule dining specifics with the restaurant maitre'd or at Guest Services. We might also be able to do some of that in the app . . . ? May not know the answer to that till after boarding. Unless somebody out there has already tried it.

BINGO. Everything is a bigger problem these days. Driving through my favorite Sonic last Saturday about 6:45 pm, I was amazed (not in a nice way) at having to sit at the speaker and wait for a full 5 minutes for the lady to essentially open the store. Crazy.

Exactly. I've used Squaremouth and two other broker sites but the policy I buy is from the actual insurance company, not squaremouth or insuremytrip or insurancestore. PS -- some deposits are nonrefundable -- as with discounted fares and even one cruise I almot booked straight from Princess that was not refundable. I had to fork over an extra $300 toward the fare for a refundable deposit -- of $800. And my last Celebrity deposit was $900. Just sayin', nothing to sneeze at. Anyway, good mention about broker versus who actually handles claims and makes payouts.

THAT's the store and salesperson I couldn't remember for my first post here. Steve has gotten a huge number of recommendations and kudos all over these boards.

Still, Celebrity's website is surely no worse than any other cruiseline site I've ever used. It is slow to load pages (probably because as @WorkerBee74mentioned, super-buggy, kills efficiency) but I see far worse every day. Not defending poor coding, just back to my original suggestion that the real problem is phone service. Not enough CS reps? Poorly trained? Buggy phone system? Got to nail the real problem before it can be solved. Fixing a problem web service, yes, but I get a LOT more frustrated from having to spend WAY too much time in a phone cue and then get absolutely nothing for it. I can't think of anything more infuriating. In probably a small few cases a website fix would do it, but I'll stick with phone services (a.k.a. "Customer-NO-Service") being the bigger problem by far.