karl_nj

Nice cabin! I kinda get a "NCL since Breakaway" vibe. Especially the "efficient" balcony depth.

Look what arrived for me in the mail yesterday... nice that celebrity still will physically send you luggage tags upon request. Reminds me of the "old days"!

Thanks! Always fun to look at drink menus. Looks like the beer selection is as boring as Royal Caribbean. The pub menu looks like a cut and paste clone from them, haha. But the drink prices, in general, are way more reasonable than Royal is these days. I'm glad they didn't copy that!

Wow, I had no idea. Yes, I was joking about the cargo stuff, but I had no idea that they were actually bigger then NCLH in regards to passenger numbers. I did know they have been doing passenger cruising since the 90's, but I really assumed it was just a small operation that "worked" since they are attached to a huge container shipping company. Sort of like Hapag-Lloyd and MS EUROPA (which, based on wikipedia, doesn't even seem to be associated with the container shipping company anymore). I also think NCL seems "bigger" in my mind, since 1) my first cruise was on Norwegian Caribbean Line's Skyward in the 80's and 2) my homeport is NYC, and NCL has been huge here for decades. They tend to operate two ships here, year round (at least they did pre-pandemic). My actual concerns about MSC are really just due to the fact i'm just used to sailing on ships that are either "North American centric" (basically every other line that sails out of the US), or QM2, where the onboard product is sort of a British/American hybrid with enough European bits added to keep the Germans happy enough. I've read things about MSC and having to pay for bottled water at dinner (no tap water available), as if i'm dining in Rome. I'm not sure I want to do that while sailing around the Caribbean.

I guess MSC is just used to carrying cargo that doesn't care where it is stored for the trip! I wonder when Maersk is going to start a cruse line... perhaps they can just convert some shipping containers into cabins...

Yeah, that seems to be the way things are going for August. I now need to arrange my own test 3 days (or fewer) before embarkation for my late August cruise on Edge, even though we are all vaccinated. I guess it makes some sense, with what is currently known about the delta variant. It's still a little annoying to have to get one more thing done before the cruise.

Wild. Sounds like MSC's IT department is about on par with Royal's. Though I've never lost my entire account there, I just find my cruises randomly disappear... and re-appear. I assume it has something to do with the Bermuda triangle.

Sounds like a fun little cruise. I've always been a little wary of MSC, looking forward to seeing what you think of the line.

$10.80/day. Which would have been 10% off ($9/day base + $1.80/day grat) Now i'm seeing $12/day. ($10/day base + $2/day grat) The digital photo package was also $99 and now it's $199.

Ok, thanks! And it looks like the $12/day includes the 20% grat. So I don't see my Captains Club discount in the cruise planner, I guess i need to call them about that. Not that 5% is a huge discount. I'm kicking myself because both the photo package and the drink package upgrade was at a great price until a couple of days ago. I didn't really realize it was a sale, or I would have moved faster.

How much does it cost to upgrade from the "included" Classic drink package to the Premium drink package onboard? Trying to figure out if it's any cheaper to upgrade before boarding, or if I should just wait until i'm onboard, and maybe wait a day or two before i upgrade. I'm currently at the "Select" tier in Captains Club, due to matching my Royal C&A status, but can't figure out if my "5% pre-cruise drink package upgrade" discount is showing online or not. Do I need to call in to get this discount? Also, does anyone happen to know how much the unlimited photo package costs onboard?

Looks like they are nicely finished, but exceptionally narrow: https://www.cruisecritic.com/photos/ships/regal-princess-679/hallways-stairs-and-more-100439/hallways-stairs-and-more--v5952885 CruiseCritic seems to have a nice batch of photos of the ship, btw: https://www.cruisecritic.com/photos/ships/regal-princess-679/ And if you want to read more about Regal Princess: https://beyondships.com/Princess-RE-Profile.html

How was the trip? I've never tried an all-inclusive resort, but it's something I've thought about in the past,

I haven't sailed on HAL yet, but I would totally be "on board" with checking it out if the itinerary and dates worked out for me. All things being equal, I think my travel agent would steer me more towards Princess over HAL if I was traveling with my kids. But if there aren't any children that will be traveling with you, I wouldn't have any concerns about booking it. I would encourage everyone to try out other cruise lines, and not just stick with one brand. It's fun to see the little differences.

I have not sailed on Princess yet. I was supposed to sail on Princess a few years ago, for an Alaska Itinerary, but unfortunately I ended up having to cancel that sailing. So i'm not going to be that much help. Although I have sailed on Royal Caribbean very often recently, I do like to try out different lines. I've sailed on NCL, Cunard, Carnival, Disney, Celebrity, and Royal. I've enjoyed all of my sailings on all of these lines. They are all a little different, but it's fun to see what each line does better. In the end, it's a cruise and they are more alike than different. Moving away from the lines owned by the Royal Caribbean Group isn't anything to be worried about ? Princess is a line that I do want to try eventually. My travel agent has said good things about the line, and that she always gets positive feedback from her customers about Princess. So I think you've made a great choice. The itinerary looks wonderful. CruiseTipsTV tends to sail on Princess pretty often, you may want to look for some Princess info on their YouTube channel. They also have a podcast that has some episodes on Princess.

Haven't you ever been to Disney World? They love lines over there too ? But seriously, I do agree that Royal Caribbean has done quite a good job with trying to make embarkation more "frictionless". I was quite impressed with the new Miami Terminal when boarding Symphony last summer. I don't think I was stopped for any long period of time from dropping off luggage until I was on the ship. And their Bayonne terminal is way better then it used to be. You use to have to get on a bus, and they would drive you the 500 feet to the ship one busload at a time. Was a nightmare.

Yeah, I saw that too. No, I haven't gotten any official word yet. I figure perhaps tomorrow. How disappointing!

Yeah, that brunch at Palo is amazing, we've done that several times. The first time I booked it was because I wanted to try out Palo but didn't want to miss dinner in the MDR. All the other times where because it's so much fun. Lunch at Remy is also very nice. In some ways, it's the exact opposite. Set menu, no real choices (vs the infinite choice at Palo). But the food is amazing. They change the menu from time to time, but years ago when I dined there one of the courses was some sort of fish on a bed of scrambled eggs. I don't really like eggs. I never order eggs. When I looked at the menu I figured I would just eat the fish and leave the eggs. I'm on a cruise, it' s not like i'm going to starve. The dish came, tried the fish and I thought it was cooked perfectly. So then I figured, what the hell, the chef intended the two to go together, maybe I should give it a try. I put a little of the egg on my fish.... wo, it was really good.... By the end I was just eating the scrambled eggs by itself, didn't leave a bit. You know the chef knows what he is doing when they can make a food that you don't even care for taste amazing...

6:30, so you will still be 1st ?

It's too bad you aren't sailing on a line that has self service laundry, that would make things easier. Most of the Carnival brands have laundry rooms. Disney has them too.

Yeah, we tend to cruise more than once a year. If we also go on a cruise in August, that tends to open up our choices more, and I can look to visit new places and/or try new ships and/or cruise lines. Last August we finally tried an Oasis-Class ship (Symphony). This summer we will fly to Rome and spend a few days there before we go on a Western Med cruise. In previous years we've done Transatlantic sailings on Cunard's Queen Mary 2, or a cruise that went up the coast of Norway.

I guess I should have picked Pink Agave instead of also going with Razzle Dazzles. Then I would have been able to share different pictures....

Looking forward to hearing about this cruise. We were on a Marvel Day at Sea sailing on Disney Magic a few years ago, which was a lot of fun. I always wanted to try the Star Wars sailings, but the timing never worked out with the school schedule. Disney Fantasy is a great ship too. My son missed not having the Midship Detective Agency game on the Magic.

Our kids are middle/high school age, so these days we mostly need to fit trips in according to the school calendar. So we look at dates first, and then see what our possibilities are. This can limit things more then you would expect. It’s expensive to fly around Easter, so we tend to need to find a cruise from our home port if we want to take a cruise for spring break. So our choices are usually NCL or Royal, as those are the only lines that sail from NY in April. We prefer traditional dining, especially with the kids, so I’ve been sailing on Royal fairly often recently. Though when my kids were a bit younger, and I didn’t mind them missing a few days of school, Disney often had a nice one way repo cruise to San Juan that matched up with “Jersey Week” really well.

From what I recall from the “Behind the Scenes” tour on Explorer of the Seas years ago, they go through all the trash and recycle what they can. Here are some photos from the recycling room onboard. I would assume other lines have a similar process.