JLMoran

@twangster, thanks for the review of Meraviglia and Ocean Cay! Might have missed it, but did you see any of the on-board shows during the sailing? You had mentioned the one theater that had a show happening later that night, which you took pics of but I guess you didn't attend the show? Just wondering how they compare with show reviews I've read for Seaside and Divina; opera-heavy and/or very... eclectic? Is that the right word here? I know MSC is working to cater better to US audiences for their US ships and still learning what works and what doesn't, curious to see if this ship marks a step forward in that process.

I think Billy himself said that if you're sailing MSC you pretty much have to get the Fantastica upgrade. Otherwise you're really sailing bottom-of-the-ladder steerage rate, with absolutely nothing at all included.

Thanks for the review. Was fun to see Larissa (hope I spelled that with the right numbers of s'es) taking part and giving her commentary; she's been in so many of your live blog photos and other posts that it was great to finally "meet" her through the video. Now if I can just convince the wife to do an extended stay in Cancun vs. in addition to another cruise to Bermuda... 😁

@Jedi Jason, I'm actually now booked on a slightly different 14-night Med sailing with Princess. Instead of Rome to Barcelona, we're sailing from Athens to Rome. Princess offers three different 7-night "legs" for the Med on a 3-week rotation: Athens to Barcelona Barcelona to Rome Rome to Athens Originally I was thinking the family would most want to do the 3rd and 1st leg B2B, because that gave the doubled stops I had mentioned. But they actually wanted the combination of legs 1 and 2, so I was outvoted. ? The good part about this is that now we will fly in to Athens a couple of days early, and have time to explore there without rushing. And instead of doing our Rome touring before the cruise, we'll just fly out the day after we disembark and get our touring in that Saturday (and hopefully have some time Sunday before flying home, since we can leverage the time change to fly out later in the day).

I had read the same over on CruiseDeckPlans.com, along with these interesting bits that make getting our aft balconies even better yet (emphasis added): Now, this was very recently updated because I was reading the above just a couple of weeks ago when I booked; when I went back to the site to get this quote, I saw the following had been amended to #5: "(UPDATE: MIDSHIP CREW STAIRS HAVE BEEN CONVERTED TO PASSENGER STAIRS)" I'll leave it to you to decide whether this will ultimately be acceptable or not. Since crew stairs are typically bare metal and completely interior / enclosed by the metal superstructure, I'm hoping this "conversion" was more than just leaving the door unlocked and included making the stairs more comfortable for lots of people to walk on, and hopefully giving that stair corridor some visual improvements. Either way, I'll be happily taking the aft stairwell that's right near to our cabins, and the elevators when I need to go more than a few decks up or down.

Did you also get the Princess Plus fare? Seems like a no-brainer for the price and what's included, especially with the current "Best. Sail. Ever." offer that tacks on a room location upgrade and one specialty dining reservation. Since one of my kids is pescatarian now, and my wife doesn't eat any kind of seafood, I'm guessing we'll be using ours in the Italian restaurant. (want to say Alfredo's?)

My TA advised the same to me when I booked our 2022 sailing to the Mediterranean. I was looking at all of the lines, and had mentioned to her that I wanted to see what HAL had given the typically nice itineraries they seem to offer, plus the large number of music venues on board (at least with some of the more recent ships) that would appeal to us. She said even with those, and our kids both being adults by the time we sail, they'd prefer Princess over HAL. That said, if this is a Caribbean itinerary you're looking to replace, my TA also said that if she was doing a Caribbean sailing that Princess would be far from top of her list for first choice of cruise line; but no comment about HAL for that kind of trip. Seemed that was purely based on itinerary options and on-board activities & amenities for the numerous sea days when compared with other lines. Billy had good things to say about HAL on his Caribbean sailing, so I'd still keep them in the running here.

Looks like I'm going to be sailing on Regal Princess for our 2022 Mediterranean sailing. It's a 14-night sailing from Athens to Rome, visiting 9 ports across Greece, Italy, France, and Spain. Awesome itinerary, and their current Princess Plus package seems like a great offer. Basically, add $40 a day to the base cruise fare and you get pre-paid gratuities, unlimited wifi, and the Premium Beverage Package with tips included. Just curious for people's impressions of Princess in general, as my only experience so far is with Royal Caribbean (Freedom and Anthem of the Seas). And if anyone here has sailed Regal Princess, any insight / opinions about her venues, dining, etc. would be even more help. I see she's a pretty new ship, having started sailing in 2014. And it looks like she's comparable to a Freedom class ship in size / passenger capacity. We're booked in a pair of aft-facing Premium Deluxe Balcony cabins, on deck 9 and deck 11. Chose those because those are the decks with semi-covered balconies; read that the uncovered aft-facing balconies had reports of soot issues at times, so figured this would help cut that risk while getting those aft views of the Med during sail-away and the few sea days we have.

@KathyC, that's an interesting take on that kind of cruise. I was looking at Princess' just-released Med sailings for '22 today and talking about it with my travel agent. The one I'm most-interested in is a 14-night sailing from Rome to Barcelona, which includes a double-stop in Naples. I was saying to her how that was great, because it meant we could go to Capri one time, and Pompeii the other (or just enjoy Napoli on its own in the first or second half of the trip). And because it starts in Rome, we can arrive a couple of days early and use the time to explore / see the sights, without the rush of a standard port day. Then just board the ship late in the day after seeing whatever last-minute bits we want to catch, and be off on our adventure. I'm not sure I could sell my family on doing the kind of itinerary you planned out, but I definitely see the merits of repeat stops at ports where the main points of interest are quite a ways away from the actual port.

So with our 2020 Iceland & Greenland cruise canceled and nothing on deck for 2021, I'm waiting for the 2022 European itineraries to come out. My family has said they want go to the Mediterranean. Not Iceland. Not Norway. Not Alaska. The Med-i-ter-ran-ian, thank you. So, I have no choice. What I do have a choice about is the itinerary... or itineraries. Seems like it's really hard to find sailings longer than 7 nights on the mass-market, upscale mass-market, or even luxury lines. Every line I've checked has mostly 7-night sailings, with a smattering of 10 and 11 night. Absolutely no one seems to have a 2-week itinerary option that isn't a transatlantic. So... I'm thinking about booking a B2B, most likely out of Rome, that would cover eastern (Italy, Greek Isles, and if I'm lucky Croatia / Montenegro) and western (Italy, France, Spain). I know how port-intensive most Med itineraries are, and this may honestly be nuts to even consider. But I have some good reasons: This will most likely be our last vacation taken as a family. My older daughter will have graduated college and will almost certainly be starting a new job and living somewhere on her own; while my younger one will be starting college at the end of August that year. Only my wife has been to the Mediterranean before, and it will likely be our only trip there for many years. I have mobility issues that are only going to get worse as the years go by; I'd rather burn myself out in '22 and know I've seen as much as I could, just in case I'm unable to do that kind of trip in 15 or 20 years, when I'm retired. I won't have done any kind of big vacation in over 2 years by that point, so if I'm going to have a big trip then let's have a big trip But is this overreaching? Are the itineraries so intense and draining that going for a second week is foolish? I was figuring that any B2B we did would have at least one port overlapping both legs, so that we could use one of the overlaps as a "rest day" and just stay on the ship or do nothing more than go into town for lunch and maybe some souvenir shopping. And western itineraries do seem to typically have one sea day, sometimes two, so that will be another chance to recharge. Would you do this, or should I just find the best 10/11 night option that we all agree on and leave it at that?

I liked this video, gave some good information (and speculation ?). Good to get the understanding of the effectiveness of the new HEPA filters against the virus, as well as those electrostatic sprayer things. The final decisions on actual capacity limits, any mask use, etc. are what I think all of us are really waiting to hear. Along with how long all of this will end up lasting, and how fast or slow the transition back to standard capacity, easing of social distancing requirements, etc. will be.

Yes, thanks for making the time and effort to post all of this and give everyone a real understanding of what sailing Disney will be like. If my kids were a lot younger, I might consider it. But they're 19 and 16 and we all have basically outgrown Disney (except my wife, who I think will always love to go to WDW no matter how old we get). Just no way I can justify it now, with how much more they cost and how limited their itineraries are.

To follow up on my update about the cabin change: A whole block of the aft OV cabins with 6-foot windows on deck 3 opened up, I’m guessing a group booking canceled. Immediately called my TA and got us moved the two cabins closest to mid-ship. Even though they have huge windows and are considered “premium” by those who know about them, Celebrity actually considers them a “worse” cabin category (cat 6) than the mid-ship OV (which are cat 5), so I got a more desirable cabin while paying a little less than I was before. If anyone is feeling optimistic about August, there are lots of OV cabins still available, and there is a pretty good resident rate for NJ residents, maybe residents of other states. 2-week sailing from Aug 2 through 16, open jaw from Cape Liberty to Dublin. Stops in Canada, Greenland, and Iceland.

Just thought of an unexpected perk of the work from home thing: at 5:30 PM, the lock comes off the beer fridge and I can enjoy one while I wrap up my day. Heard an urban legend that’s standard policy in any Australian office, figured I’d make it a reality here at home. ??

We're doing OK here in northern NJ as well. I've already been working home for 5 months because of a slow-healing wound I'm dealing with, and my wife just got work-from-home setup with her employer. Both kids (one HS, one college) had their schools closed last week and are now on distance learning for the rest of the school year / semester. Actually took advantage of some people canceling their booking on my August 2 cruise to upgrade from a pair of inside cabins to a pair of OV cabins. Summit's OV have good-sized windows, about 4 feet across in the rooms we booked, so that will be a nice step up; keeping an eye for an adjoining pair of the aft deck 3 OVs to open up, will move there if possible for the 6-foot windows they have. And being on deck 3 should feel more stable than up on deck 7 if we run into any rough waters in the north Atlantic.

Only been on three cruises (one a repeat), but will say my best cruise so far was the one I took with just my wife to Bermuda. Short 5-night trip on Anthem out of our home port, but our first "just us" trip in many years and so relaxing! We absolutely loved Bermuda, and it's become a place we want to visit as much as possible.

I have to speak selfishly on this one -- Would love a group cruise that leaves out of NJ or NYC. I'm not really able to cruise from anywhere else for the time being, just because flights to FL are so darn expensive that they can easily equal the cruise fare and I'd rather have that money for a better cruise. And of course, that also means more limited choice of lines and itineraries. Between those two ports, I think we've got Royal, NCL, Celebrity, maybe HAL and I know MSC does one or two sailings a year for fall foliage. One thought I had that would distinguish a Billy Group's (gruff!) Cruise could be a deliberate focus on smaller ships and more "boutique" itineraries that go to less-frequented ports. Prime example would be the Empress open-jaw sailing from NJ to Montreal or back (and yes, that's Royal but we all know that's a ship Matt's never gonna book a GC on). I'm thinking here Billy of your lifelong experience with cruising and experience with all the various levels of service over the years, on board and maybe on excursions. Maybe the way you distinguish from Matt or other GC organizers is by finding ways to "bring back" some of the (more desirable) classic cruising elements that seem to have gone out of favor; ideally without the expense of booking a super-luxury line! ? Not really sure how something like that would be done, or if it's even feasible on today's cruise lines. But you asked, so I'm answering. ?

Seven or eight lines!?!? Disney does know they have loads of young kids with short patience thresholds going through all this, right? ?

The ship's internet that far north will be slow / spotty due to being at the edges of satellite coverage. Streaming will be difficult from the ship, if not an exercise in frustration. Not sure if you've heard of "Dr. Kris", he's done some podcast episodes with The Cruise Dudes and Royal Caribbean Blog podcasts. I follow him on Periscope, and remember him trying to stream from the ship while they were cruising a fjord in Norway. It was super choppy and the connection would often fail and reset. I'd personally recommend recording the video and then sharing it later when you are in an area with solid enough wifi to upload it to YouTube. When you upload videos, you can specify if they should be public or if only people who know the link can view it. Choosing the latter allows you to keep it from showing in general search; you can just share the link with forums like this, where people can then click through to view it, if that's all you want to do.

I know they often have a couple paragraphs of fine print at the bottom of each excursion / on-board purchase option; maybe they have it documented there? if not, I would advise calling Royal or your TA to confirm that it’s the same 90 minutes, just to be sure it’s worth booking.

I’ve used that on Royal before; the bag is very small as I recall, not good for more than a few days of clothing. If I find that Celebrity will offer it a couple times on this sailing then I might go that route. Honestly, I was just planning to budget for full laundry service for all four of us to get a full week of clothes done after day 7. I know that will cost a pretty penny, but when none of us has more than 10-12 days of “basics”, it’s not like I’ll have much choice.

Unfortunately, we won't be able to do this for our flight. ? I checked the Icelandair luggage requirements, and the under-seat personal item cannot be more than 5.9 inches deep! Here's the specifics: All of the under-seat bags on the eBags site and Amazon are at least 8" deep, even ones that don't have rollers and are just a regular mini-duffel or small backpack. Further complicating the issue will be the fact that my younger daughter and I will both be carrying our cameras / camcorders with us in their travel cases. I plan to put my camcorder inside my carry-on bag so that I can still use my ultra lightweight fold-up backpack as the personal item; it will hold things like the still camera and filters / accessories, headphones, iPad, etc. I'll probably advise my daughter to also pack her camera bag in the carry-on so she do the same with a satchel purse or the like. My wife and daughter will probably have their purses as their personal items; there is no way they are traveling without those! I'm starting to think it might just make sense for each of us to pack a second carry-on size suitcase (we have a few extras), or maybe we pack two extra checked-size suitcases (one for me and the wife, one for the kids; again we have some extras now), and I'll pre-pay the charge for the extra bags. Will see what others recommend before I bite that bullet. The cost for extra checked bags will still be less than buying actual new luggage for all of us. Yup, we bought one of those before our first cruise to make sure we didn't go over the limit on our United flights. Have brought it on any trip requiring flights since then.

Will note that my return flight on IcelandAir allows me to pre-purchase an extra bag for $76, vs the at-the-gate charge of $95 for an extra bag (up to 50 lbs), or $80 for a bag that's over the weight limit (up to 70 lbs).

So I'm on a 2-week Iceland & Greenland cruise on Celebrity that sets sail in August, going from NJ to Dublin; my family and I will be staying there for a few extra days to explore the area and hopefully see the Cliffs of Moher while we're at it. We're lucky in that this flight leaves from our home port, so we won't have to deal with a flight there, but we do have to fly home and keep airline luggage weight / quantity limits in mind. Last thing I want after what will already be an expensive vacation is to get raked over the coals with excess baggage / over the weight limit baggage charges. How do you all pack for trips like this? I'm thinking we pack 10 days of clothes so that at the end of a week, maybe 8 days, we just use the ship's laundry service and have enough to get us through the rest of the trip. But, we have the complication that we need to pack a decent amount of layers for the variety of ports we'll be visiting. We'll be starting off with shorts and t-shirt weather for the first couple of days, then two or three days with weather in the low- to mid-70s at day and 60s at night; then quickly into the far north where the average high is in the mid-50s and lows are down in the 40s; then finally ending in Dublin where we'll be back into that 60-70 range. We'll also need MDR-appropriate clothing, and we'll have two, maybe three formal nights; so now I've got my suit plus a couple of dress shirts and ties to pack, and my wife and daughters will be packing at least one dress if not two or even three (because heaven forbid they be seen in the same outfit ?) I feel pretty on top of the rest of the planning with this cruise, but this is the one area that I'm kind of worried about. We barely managed to fit 10 days of stuff for a Caribbean cruise into two suitcases each (one checked, one carry-on), and I would say we genuinely didn't overpack since we leveraged the laundry bags on that cruise to get a few days' of stuff washed and barely had enough to make it home. Now we have to factor in things like sweatshirts / sweaters, a couple jackets (figuring one windbreaker-type and one for colder weather), a larger supply of toiletries, etc. and I don't see how we'll manage. We'll be using packing cubes to optimize space, but that doesn't help with the weight factor. What do you all do for trips like this? Any strategies we should follow beyond maximizing re-use of outer layers / dress clothes? Should I just budget for extra / overweight luggage fees on the flight home? Any and all advice is appreciated!

I'm sailing Celebrity and have this option as well. Assuming it's the same with Royal (same parent company, after all), my Cruise Planner indicates you can stay on the ship up until 90 minutes before scheduled departure. See if your Cruise Planner has the same language in the Overview section of that offering. Assuming it's the same, you'll have to find out when the next sailing on that ship is leaving from that port, then see how that works relative to your 9:30 flight and the driving time to get to the airport.