A word of caution on your scheduled activities

We sail Saturday on the Anthem. We are a family of 8 and I planned all activities & shows. I checked the Calendar of Events for our trip and WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICATION, several of the shows and Character Breakfast were changed. I am so glad I looked. The 'breakfast' went from Day 5 to Day 2. We would have missed this and the 3 kids (5,7,10) would have been very disappointed. With the craziness on Day 1, I would have never rechecked on-board.

Please check your activities a few days before sailing; things get changed.

We sail Saturday on the Anthem. We are a family of 8 and I planned all activities & shows. I checked the Calendar of Events for our trip and WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICATION, several of the shows and Character Breakfast were changed. I am so glad I looked. The 'breakfast' went from Day 5 to Day 2. We would have missed this and the 3 kids (5,7,10) would have been very disappointed. With the craziness on Day 1, I would have never rechecked on-board.

 

Please check your activities a few days before sailing; things get changed.

Yep, this happens all the time and I know you put a lot of effort into planning, however things are subject to change -- even port stops. RCI isn't required to give notice, like a rule or anything so no need to get upset. Things could change 5 minutes before a scheduled activity is supposed to happen; just go with the flow and don't let it ruin your vacation ;)

Just to piggyback on to what you wrote: If a show/activity is changed to an undesirable time, when you get onboard, go to the iPads in the customer service area and you can likely change to other timeslots which were not available online beforehand.

Also, prior to your trip, download the free Royal IQ app to your smart phone. Once you are onboard, you will be able to access the Compass, your account balance, and all your reservations on your phone, and make changes if you wish, and create your personal daily calendar. You do not have to purchase an internet package.

We sail Saturday on the Anthem. We are a family of 8 and I planned all activities & shows. I checked the Calendar of Events for our trip and WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICATION, several of the shows and Character Breakfast were changed. I am so glad I looked. The 'breakfast' went from Day 5 to Day 2. We would have missed this and the 3 kids (5,7,10) would have been very disappointed. With the craziness on Day 1, I would have never rechecked on-board.

Please check your activities a few days before sailing; things get changed.

We had a whole bunch of our reservations changed on our Oasis cruise. We ended up finding emails, notifying us of the changes, in our spam folder. We ended up going to a lot of the shows standby since we weren't thrilled with the schedule we were given and couldn't get it changed.

We sail Saturday on the Anthem. We are a family of 8 and I planned all activities & shows. I checked the Calendar of Events for our trip and WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICATION, several of the shows and Character Breakfast were changed. I am so glad I looked. The 'breakfast' went from Day 5 to Day 2. We would have missed this and the 3 kids (5,7,10) would have been very disappointed. With the craziness on Day 1, I would have never rechecked on-board.

 

Please check your activities a few days before sailing; things get changed.

Yes, we are also sailing on Sat. and they rescheduled several of our reservations ... although we did receive emails indicating the changes. I was unhappy, to say the least, since their changes resulted in a scheduling conflict, so I called and was able to resolve the overlap easily.

3 days and counting down ... ENJOY!!!! [emoji847]

My word of advice is to relax, you're on vacation for a week. Skip some shows and have a drink by the pool instead.

Mussolini made the trains run on time and look what happened to him. Not worth it.

Yep, this happens all the time and I know you put a lot of effort into planning, however things are subject to change -- even port stops. RCI isn't required to give notice, like a rule or anything so no need to get upset. Things could change 5 minutes before a scheduled activity is supposed to happen; just go with the flow and don't let it ruin your vacation ;)

Not a helpful post IMO. Port stop changes happen because of weather or ship issues, I don't see the point of clumping them in with routine shows that you are required to schedule before you get on the ship. These shows can change last minute because of technical issues like the weather in the Aqua theater or other things that happen last minute, but Royal has been changing too many of these things pre cruise when people have booked them 100 days in advance, A little notice would be a nice courtesy.

My word of advice is to relax, you're on vacation for a week. Skip some shows and have a drink by the pool instead.

 

Mussolini made the trains run on time and look what happened to him. Not worth it.

I enjoy the shows and it's one of the reasons I cruise. I don't drink, and sitting by the pool isn't my thing, so this would not be relaxing to me.

While I prefer ships that don't require reservations, I would rather sort out the schedule and do what I like to do and what I find relaxing.

My word of advice is to relax, you're on vacation for a week. Skip some shows and have a drink by the pool instead.

 

Mussolini made the trains run on time and look what happened to him. Not worth it.

Please speak only for yourself. We have zero interest to drink by the pool. The shows are one of the main reasons we enjoy RCI, especially on the Oasis class ships. Different strokes for different folks.

Not a helpful post IMO. Port stop changes happen because of weather or ship issues, I don't see the point of clumping them in with routine shows that you are required to schedule before you get on the ship. These shows can change last minute because of technical issues like the weather in the Aqua theater or other things that happen last minute, but Royal has been changing too many of these things pre cruise when people have booked them 100 days in advance, A little notice would be a nice courtesy.

Partially agree with you but in the spirit of cruise line "fairness," if there isn't a guarantee in the passenger contract of carriage or whatever legal disclaimer RCI has when you make final payment, things can be changed. Sure, it's good customer service to notify people but as it appears, RCI doesn't have to notify people for free shows. Now the character breakfasts they paid for, yeah they should have notified them and offered a refund. And there was helpful stuff in my post. I told the OP to enjoy their cruise [emoji6]

We sail Saturday on the Anthem. We are a family of 8 and I planned all activities & shows. I checked the Calendar of Events for our trip and WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICATION, several of the shows and Character Breakfast were changed. I am so glad I looked. The 'breakfast' went from Day 5 to Day 2. We would have missed this and the 3 kids (5,7,10) would have been very disappointed. With the craziness on Day 1, I would have never rechecked on-board.

 

Please check your activities a few days before sailing; things get changed.

Glad you noticed- it would have been a bummer for the kids to miss something they were looking forward to! Thanks for the warning!

I for one miss the old days of cruising with RCI when there was no need to schedule anything ;)

Amen Ashland!

We sail Saturday on the Anthem. We are a family of 8 and I planned all activities & shows. I checked the Calendar of Events for our trip and WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICATION, several of the shows and Character Breakfast were changed. I am so glad I looked. The 'breakfast' went from Day 5 to Day 2. We would have missed this and the 3 kids (5,7,10) would have been very disappointed. With the craziness on Day 1, I would have never rechecked on-board.

Please check your activities a few days before sailing; things get changed.

Did they at least keep your reservations for the new days and times, or did you have to reserve them again?

I for one miss the old days of cruising with RCI when there was no need to schedule anything ;)

I agree. That is one reason why I like the smaller ships, because you just decide at the moment that you want to see a show or do an activity, and just go.

I agree! No children no need to plan! i also like smaller ships!

This is crazy. For those of you writing "no big deal...happens all the time just go with the flow....RCCL can do whatever they want it's in the contract..." I'd love to see it happen to you and your reaction. If RCCL changes something, they need to notify the customer of the change....period.....who cares what the reason is????....they have email addresses and the ability to do it...anything short of notification is totally unacceptable. If any land based business (restaurant, Movies, Broadway show) did this they would be out of business very quickly. And nothing is "Free" on RCCL....shows are paid for through the cruise fare.

I'm a big fan of RCCL but stuff like this is so easy to control and do the right thing.....

The new schedule that RC gave us does work into our plans but now we have 2 major shows on one day. WWRY and Spectra. I had planned many surprises for the kids first cruise. The breakfast was only one of them. With the new plans, they will only be able to 'sleep in' on the last sea day. LOL, they'll be so excited, that they will wake up happy every day.

My word of advice is to relax, you're on vacation for a week. Skip some shows and have a drink by the pool instead.

 

Mussolini made the trains run on time and look what happened to him. Not worth it.

That's pretty funny - I like that! :)

I received a show time schedule change this morning from rccl. Unfortunately the new scheduled date is the week after our cruise. I looked online and it appears ok, but thought they wanted us to stay onboard another week? [emoji1]

Last Oasis cruise about a third of the shows changed dates when we got onboard, including creating a few conflicts. Didn't help that the diving show equipment failed after the first performance, so all their shows were cancelled for the rest of the cruise - lots of folks moving to other shows where there were no reservations available (although standby seems to work fine).