Anyone been on one ? Just booked one for our 30th wedding anniversary with Royal Caribbean, couple of things I would like to know, dress code in main dinning room, plug sockets in cabins (Mrs will want to keep her i pad charged)
Going for 14 days, roughly how much spending money on board (don't drink much) and any other tips would be greatly appreciated.
We went on the RC Independence of the Seas 18 months ago and was absolutely amazing, best holiday hands down.
Windjammer – anything at all! Main restaurant dress code is smart casual every evening apart from probably 3-4 for you guys as you’re doing 14 days (we had 2 formals for 8 night cruise). I would simply take a suit and black tie and a few shirts and you'll be fine - there were people in the dining room in jeans and t-shirts, although they were seated in other parts of the room
(pikies lol)
Plug sockes are standard 2 pin.
Food/drink
You will be asked if you want to get the 'bottomless' drink cups which you pay something like $30-40 and you can refill as much coke/sprite etc as you like. One friend did this but I'm not a big fan of soda in America (watered down) but it turned out you can have as much fresh lemonade, ice tea and various fruit juices, tea/coffee/fruit tea/hot chocolate as you want in the windjammer restaurant, as well as water of course.
Alcohol is quite expensive and there isn't any way you can save money here as either you drink or not. We had on average 1 beer and 1 glass of wine each and it probably worked out at around £5 each but of course ordering a bottle is the cheapest way and you can always take it back to your room afterwards.
If you’re going out, everyone grabs fruit, bread rolls and fillings at breakfast and takes them with you (I would recommend you bring something with you to breakfast so you can take it with you). Saves a bunch of money when you’re on an excursion and again you’ve paid for it all so why on earth not!
Oh, and don’t be shy in asking for more food – you’ve paid for it! On the last night me and a friend had finished our main and we both had wished we’d ordered the steak that another friend had. We made a passing comment to the waiter when he picked up our plates and asked us if we wanted steak... which we duly had. My friend then ended up having another steak and we all had two desserts (so I had, 2 starters, 2 mains, 2 desserts – all free).
Food is excellent.
Excursions
We made the mistake of believing Thomas Cook (bunch of idiots they were) when it came to excursions. We wanted to do the turtle snorkelling in Barbados but TC said no availability. When we checked in they were announcing you could still book excursions and we managed to do that and whale watching in Antigua(?)
We were told by someone that had done this previously that you could hire a taxi for around £30 and for us we decided to go snorkelling on each island and even though the cruise offered exactly the same trip (with a glass of rum) it saved us at least 50% a person and doing exactly the same thing. The risk is if you don't get back to the boat in time it will leave without you - not so if you go on a RC excursion.
Other services
I would highly recommend laundry services to cut out having to take so much with you. I think a shirt, dry cleaned, pressed and collected/delivered was something like £4-5 which isn’t bad I thought.
Shows are a bit rubbish to be honest but we spent our evenings in the dining room. On our boat there was a lovely little bar right at the top which was always quiet and had a view over the main deck – very relaxing and was one of my favourite spots on the boat.
Photos are the most expensive part we found - if your partner is insistent on ordering some then make sure you have some money with you! I think they were not far off $70 each.
You can go and spend nothing extra or you can go crazy, we probably spent another £250 in 8 days and took around £600 spending money for excursions and refreshments when we were out, although we didn’t spend it all.
Of course costs are different depending on where you go so prices above were Caribbean prices but I would imagine touristy things in Europe would be more expensive.
You'll have a great time I'm certain!
