Yillup

So they should also have a rule that doctors practising within Australia on Australian Citizens/Residents including cruise ships should be Medicare registered and thus unable to charge such high prices!

They'd still be charging the exact same prices, it's just the government would be footing the bill...

Makes you realise just how darned lucky we have it in Australia. And people are complaining about a proposal to charge $5 to visit a doctor...

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Sorry - I don't know what a powerboard is - can someone please advise me? Many thanks!

 

 

 

Is it a power strip?

I'm not entirely sure what a power strip is, but I'm guessing it's the same... :)

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It sounds like out of all the current Royal Caribbean cruise ships in Australia, powerboards are confiscated on Rhapsody OTS but not on Radiance or Voyager OTS. This is not a fact, but just an observation.

Well, my brand new (still in packaging) power board was removed from my carryon luggage on my February cruising of Radiance from Sydney. I had to go pick it up at the end of the cruise. My mum on the other hand had her power board (exact same brand, still in packaging) in her checked luggage and it was delivered to her room fine. I guess you can't really generalise from only your own personal experience. :)

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You do seem to be asking a lot if you expect a travel agent to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the things you mentioned. You have a vested interest in those specific details and because they are important to you, you feel they should be known. They on the other hand would need to have a detailed photographic memory in order to keep track of all the information anyone coming into the agency might possibly need. Even if they are a cruise specialist, they would need to have information not just about rock walls and nurseries, but about specialty restaurants, dining times on each ship, configurations of disabled rooms, check in processes for disabled passengers, smoking policies, alcohol policies, information about drinks packages, pool and hot tub information, spa services, ATMs, deposits, loyalty programmes, included toiletries in the room, television channels, food provided for dietary restrictions, gym services, etc. etc. etc. and that's just for ONE ship or one line. Multiply that by the number of cruise providers there are, the dozens of different ships per line, and the variations between different ships in the same class. It's impossible! Add in that most travel agents aren't cruise specialists and book holidays for people doing all kinds of things, and yes, you certainly are asking too much.

Now, if you had a travel agent who was not willing to look things up for you, then that is a problem. But if they don't have precise details about minuscule things that are of interest to you specifically, I'd cut them a little slack... Lol

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I don't have any personal experience with the family suites myself, but on my recent sailing I remember talking to someone on the night we sailed through a cyclone, that the rooms had a LOT of movement in rough weather. To the point people were falling out of bed! Ok, we WERE sailing through a cyclone, but the poor woman was quite sad because it was some people in her family's first cruise and she'd sung the praises of cruising and now they were all sick...

Not to put you off the rooms, but on the Radiance the family suites seem to be all right at the front and so therefore very susceptible to movement. Something to keep in mind...

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I'm looking forward to seeing what will happen with the Rhapsody, particularly seeing I'm booked on it for February 2015 and the Rhapsody has a very different floor plan in comparison to other ships in the same class... Hope my cabin still exists if they do change!

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Thank you for the link. A great review. I got goosebumps again reading it and looking at all the pictures. I miss being on the Radiance...

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sorry Yillup! I tried to put the link in the main body and couldn't make it work. I need to learn how to do that. If you google my user name dot com, then that is the web page. I think actually when I go onto tapatalk on my tablet the same thing will happen. There is no info on the signatures there also.

 

 

 

Appreciate you taking the time to let me know!

Thanks for that! You don't need to make it all fancy with clickable words, just copy and paste the link and it'll automatically become clickable... At least I'm pretty sure of it...

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Congratulations on your first cruise. I'm sure you'll have a ball! When it comes to Cruise Critic, take almost all of it with a huge dose of a sense of humour. Most people are very full of themselves...

I don't fit the "standard" cruise profile either. I'm in my mid 30s with 2 kids. We're living on a single income and a government pension. We've just returned from our first cruise and have booked another one. We don't have a lot of money to splash around, but going for a cruise is a "real" holiday for me as a mother. Someone else cooking, cleaning, and even looking after the kids for a bit of the time! I'm also plus size and the only concession I made for cruising because of that was to go and get my legs (and other areas) waxed. Shaving in the tiny bathrooms would not be fun! Other than that my size had no bearing on my cruise at all!

We ourselves liked to get dressed up for formal nights, but that's only because we get so few opportunities to "dress up". The way everyone else in the dining room was dressed had no impact on our enjoyment of the night whatsoever.

I'd say that would be the most common feeling of your fellow cruisers. As long as you don't turn up in your swimmers wrapped in a wet towel straight from the pool, almost anything you wear will really be fine...

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I came on this hoping to get to your review. I can't get to it though as I'm on my iPad and don't see signatures. I know many people turn signatures off even on the main computer forum. Pretty please consider linking in your main post rather than referring to a signature. Thanks!

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We are doing that cruise in 17 days time lol

Hi David, say hi to my cousin Tammy for me! She's heading off on it in 17 days too! Lol

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I went on an 11 night with RCI a month or so ago with 6 ports. We are a family of 4 with 2 kids, 8 and 6. We did things in a different way to you. We prepaid expenses on the ship (drinks package) and only had one prebooked tour. Our onboard account ended up being about $450 (full photo package, a few small souvenirs and one specialty restaurant plus some duty free alcohol to take back) and we had budgeted $100 per day for each port visit. Most ports only cost about $50 for all of us (a couple of snacks or a small cheap tour), but a couple were just over $100 and Port Vila was an expensive day as we had an expensive restaurant lunch with wine and beer plus the taxi and entrance to the waterfalls.

Not sure if any of that helps, but I hope something can be of use!

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I know there are a lot of posts on this subject and tried to search but could not pull any posts that addresses my questions below.

 

When you have this package, and you order a bottled water, can you only order one at a time and do they keep it unopened when they give it to you?

 

How much is the bottled water and soda if you order separately?

What about the non- alcohol frozen drinks?

 

Trying to determine the cost I will have without it.

 

Not a coffee or tea drinker.

 

Thanks in advance!

Bottles of water are only given out one at a time. They are given to you unopened. You do not need to drink it in front of them, you can take it back to your room or take it in port if you want. Soft drinks in the dining rooms cost $2 a glass (on Australian sailings anyways), and cans cost more. Without the package you cannot use the machines. Mocktails cost around the $5 mark. The aren't too many on the list, but you can ask for almost any cocktail without the alcohol.

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It's not exactly "ethical", but I added my parents photos (in another cabin) to the photo package I purchased on our recent cruise. We had SO many photos (family of 4 with 2 kids, I love scrapbooking and photos so we took every advantage to get our photos taken). Because my parents were in some of the group photos with us, no one even looked twice at the fact I had them in there. I didn't add them to the pile as we went though, just added their photos on the last day when everything was so busy.

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Ah butt it's an oarsome place to live!

 

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Strange, I looked around a bit more on that Aussie site, and sure enough, they are specifically giving the Aussie's (and Europeans & South Americans) a better deal! :(:confused:

We're not given a better deal. Our limit for wine and cocktails under the packages IS higher, but that is because the prices for each drink is that much higher too. I've read stories from those doing B2B on a ship that is repositioning to Australia and once here the menus all get changed over and all of a sudden everything costs so much more.

We pay more for our cruises, don't get OBC or prepaid gratuities deals like you guys do, our travel agents don't give any bonuses, we have different final payment dates (meaning loss of deposit if the cruise is cancelled), and we don't get nearly as many of the specials you guys do.

Living on the butt of the world has some disadvantages sometimes...

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The prices seem to go up in March every year. They have their early bird specials in February and after that, prices start to rise...

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I've rebooked for our next cruise! I can see this becoming a bit addictive. Who needs to buy a house anyway???

We're booked for 17th February 2015 on Rhapsody of the Seas, 11 nights Tropical Queensland.

So looking forward to it!

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My husband and I attended the Chef's Table on the Radiance a few weeks ago. It was a very nice meal and we met some lovely people. The people in the room can have a very big impact on your meal I'd say. We had 15 people in our group, with half of them being from the one family who spoke Russian most of the time. They were lovely, but it did leave the other people at the table a little left out. There were also some smokers in the group who would leave a couple of times to have a smoke and that made the dinner go quite long. It wasn't a problem for me as a lot of my family smoke and I'm used to it. For others it might have been an issue. It did mean that our dinner finished at almost 11pm. I'm so glad Adventure Ocean stays open (for a charge) that late... Lol

The courses they serve are quite small (to me), but you do get 5 courses plus petit fours at the end. We left the meal having felt like we'd eaten a similar amount to what we would have eaten in the main dining room. Not stuffed or over full, but not hungry at all. The big difference is the amount of wine. They're not stingy with the pours, and you can have multiple glasses with each course of food if you'd like.

My husband and I have eaten in quite a few very high quality restaurants on land. The food at the Chef's Table wasn't of the same quality as we have received in some of those restaurants on land, but then the price wasn't anywhere near the price of some places we've visited either! To us it was worth it.

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You are talking about a Next Cruise Certificate. The OP "appears" to be talking about Crown & Anchor savings certificates.

 

 

 

:)

Aaaaahhh, thanks. Too many certificates to keep track of!

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Whoever is on the certificate is who you have to book through. The default is the travel agent you used to book the cruise you were on. You may have asked when you purchased the certificate to have it put in your own name and you'd have to book direct with Royal Caribbean. Once booked, you can transfer to a different travel agent. They may not give you as many perks when transferring a booking as when you book directly with them.

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There is a duty free shopping centre down the road from the OPT. It doesn't sell alcohol or cigarettes, but high end clothing and jewellery and possibly perfumes and stuff. Just remember that there is a limit on the amount of duty free things you can purchase per person. All purchases greater than that amount either purchased in Australia before you leave, or bought on the ship will need to be added up and anything over the limit will need to be declared. They tell you on the ship that it's duty free, but fail to tell you you may have to pay the duty on it arriving back in Australia...

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I hope they don't have an Asian section if it has Chinese food. I'm sorry but Chinese food makes me sick. Especially they say there is no MSG and they still hide the MSG. I wish there was a Mediterranean specialty restaurant with Greek, Israeli, Turkish, Moroccan food which is way more delicious and healthier than Chinese Food.

 

Enough of this Asian Fusion food. I think all ships should have a Giovannis or Portofinos. Its truly upsetting that they add an Izumis but they don't add an Italian venue. Not everyone like Chinese food.

 

Just my 2 cents.

If you eat foods with broccoli or tomato, there is MSG in these foods naturally (and plenty of other). And at a level that's often higher than Chinese food... ;)

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I've spotted on the "normal" Royal page that Americans seem to be getting a kids sail free promotion at the moment. Has anyone seen something like this in Australia?

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:( It appears that Australia isn't getting this promotion. Why oh why do Royal Caribbean think us Aussies aren't worth as much as you Americans? :(

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