Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Cruise Compass
MDR Menu: A Taste of Italy
Today’s Weather: High 70s, wind only about 2mph out of ENE.
Internet Speed: 8.86 Mbps down, 3.71 Mbps up, connecting via Mexico City
Location at Start of Day
Location at End of Day: about 8:30P
Another tough night for me sleep-wise, with the NyQuil not helping, so not sure how much sleep I got…but it wasn’t a lot. We dragged out of bed at 9:30A, having lost another hour due to time zone change this time, and had a small WJ breakfast before wandering over to Schooner for this morning’s general trivia (14 of 20, with the winner at 16). I grabbed a bunch of napkins from Café Prom to serve as today’s kleenix, as I’d been limited to toilet tissue up until now. We then spent some time on a random outside deck chair on Deck 4 before I decided to try to get a small nap pre-lunch. Made arrangements to meet E in the Solarium when I was ready and was back in the room at 11:00A for about a 45 minute nap. While we had been out they’d power-washed the balcony. I spent about 15 minutes catching up with these notes and then left the room just after noon to go find E.
It being a nice day on the pool deck and the ship being pretty quiet due to everyone being onshore, we followed the lead of several of the crew members and ate at Johnny Rocket’s, following which we made our mandatory circuit of Navigator Dunes and then returned to our balcony for quiet time. We were about to head off to 3:00P trivia when we both decided a nap sounded much more inviting, so that’s what we did!
Went down for the 5:00P general trivia, and the staffer running it (Edena) has been making the afternoon quiz progressively more difficult each day, and today’s was a good workout. We got 12/20 and were pretty happy. The winner had 15/20.
Tonight was a WJ dinner. The MDR menu was Italian night and looked poor (and, coming right after our night at Jamie’s, repetitive). Sadly, the WJ was basically serving exactly the same stuff, including all the same entrees and desserts. There were additional choices, but, again, not the variety we’d hoped to find. We took our time lounging at the table before finally heading over for the 7:30P headliner show with a comedy juggler (Jason Garfield) who, interestingly enough, has developed several shows for ESPN Ocho (such as Combat Juggling and Dodge Juggling, among others). He was a pretty low-key guy – we had a good time but, again, not appointment TV.
Although it was only 8:30P we were both ready to call it a night and benefit from the extra hour of sleep available to us as we’ll be setting the clocks BACK an hour tonight due to once again changing time zones. So, after a quick stop of Café Prom to pickup more napkins (i.e. “kleenix”) for me we came back to the room to put up our feet, read, relax, and eventually sleep.
Monday, March 10, 2025
Cruise Compass
MDR Menu: A Taste of the Caribbean
Today’s Weather: about 72, winds 10mph from the NE
Internet Speed: 8.88 Mbps down, 3.37 Mpbs up, connected via Mexico City
Location at Start of Day: About 8:00A
Thanks to the magic of NyQuil tabs I passed the night in oblivion. Work up dopey and a bit congested, but the sore throat is mostly gone so I’ll take that tradeoff! We were already docked when we woke up a 8:00A. The Mazatlan cityscape isn’t much to look at – and unless we breakdown and decide to buy some cold medication we’re staying on the ship today,
Very quick breakfast at WJ, where I tried the cinnamon sugar donuts. I think I have a new “go to” for breakfast! We cooled our heels at Schooner before doing the 10:00A general trivia. Our 18/20 was actually good to tie for first, but as we always sit in the aisles next to Schooner instead of inside the actual seating area the staffer never saw our raised hands and, of course, I’m not going to push for a “valuable prize”, so our talent were recognized only by the women sitting next to us. We stuck around for tri-bonds and then came back upstairs at 11:30A so I could catch up with this diary and we figured we’d balcony sit for while before lunch. It was a bit too toasty on the balcony, however, so we relaxed in the room for about 45 minutes before grabbing WJ lunch.
Today’s lunch was Honey Stung Chicken + Pork Belly w/BBQ sauce + mashed potatoes + salad for me, and sausage + salad for E. All was fine. We tested out their carrot cake and blueberry tart for dessert. The carrot cake is a poor excuse for carrot cake, but was actually a decent cake. The blueberry thing was a very gelatinous filling, but E said it tasted more like blueberries than last night’s dessert tasted like cherries. We each grabbed 2 cookies for the cabin and then went back to nap. I got in about a 45 minute snooze and felt a bit more refreshed upon awakening. We spent the next hour out on the balcony reading.
Pre-dinner we enjoyed a couple of drinks at Schooner while doing riddles, Cher music (not out 0 out of 15, but not even a single GUESS), and then general trivia before dinner at Jamie’s Italian, where we ate a TON of food. We shared garlic buns, fried calamari, and their antipasti platter, then E had their carbonora (which she liked but said was more like an alfredo) while I had the penna arrabiata – which was pretty good. We were too stuffed to even bother with dessert.
From dinner we headed off to the ice show, which started off with a cool drone show before going into the high energy skating. Fun stuff! Then we trekked over to the theater for….MO5IAC. Yes, the same group we saw on the Oasis in 2014…doing the same show we saw in 2014. Nevertheless, still a crowd pleaser and time passed quickly. A quick stop at Café Prom for some cookies and a chocolate bar and then back to the cabin to eat, read, and hit the pillows.
Sunday, March 9, 2025
Cruise Compass
MDR Menu: A Taste of Mexico
Today’s Weather: about 64, winds 17 mph from the north, waves about 2’
Internet Speed: 9.44 Mbps down, 1.96 Mbps up, connected to Los Angeles
Location at Start of Day: 9:00A
We work up around 8:30A DST, having both slept pretty well. Unfortunately, I had a sore throat which I’d felt creeping up on me at the end of last night. At least, as I write this around 9:00A, it is JUST a sore throat. Hoping it doesn’t get worse!
Today’s Cabo stop turns out to be little more than a whistle stop. Tendering isn’t expected to start until around 1:00P and the last returning tender is at 7:15P. Given that we have a 5:30P dinner at Hooked, plus my sore throat, we doubt we’ll go ashore at all.
Quick breakfast at WJ with just basic eggs and side meat for both of us before heading over to Schooner for General Trivia. We got 18/21 – which put us in a group for 4th place. We popped to the outside deck to see if it was good reading weather, but it was a bit too windy for us so we instead had our first trip to the Solarium, where we stretched out on a couple of window-side loungers and read. We then made a quick stop at the cabin to refresh drugs, then back down to Schooner for Dingbats. It was non-competitive, but we managed to get 22 of 24 of the puzzles.
Next we walked back out on the pool deck and decided to get our lunch at the (new to us) El Loco Fresh. We both built our own tortilla-based snack, plus I got a beef burrito (too dry) while E had a cheese quesadilla (which she liked). We both liked our tortilla “thing” and also shared a bowl of nachos. I added a couple of Lava Flows and we had quite a nice lunch outdoors while the tenders started departing for shore beneath our pool-side table. Another quick cabin stop (this time for E’s drugs) and then back down to Schooner, this time for Classic Rock trivia – where we got 9 of 20. Pathetic!
Back to the cabin for balcony time on a lovely afternoon, with boats and jet skis passing underneath us, and then at 4:00P we once again head back to Schooner for movie charades and then stick around for the 5:00P general trivia before our 5:30P dinner at Hooked.
Dinner was better than we were expecting. Our appetizers (clam chowder for me, crab cake for E) were both particularly good. E had the grilled catch of the day (salmon) while I had the Fisherman’s Plate (or the non-deep fried version of that if I remembered the name wrong) with fish (halibut), grilled shrimp, and lobster tail. The grilled shrimp was particularly good. Our desserts were fine, but nothing special (brownie for me, cherry pie for E).
From there, we went up to the Star Lounge for Rock-a-Oke, which is essentially karaoke but with the live band. That was fun – and the band’s usual lead singer was really great at helping out the (many) clueless folks who got lost in the music. We then stayed for Majority Rules (which MAYBE we did on the Alaska cruise, although I don’t think we paid a lot of attention since we had so much family present and there was a lot of talking). Glad we did it, but certainly NOT appointment TV.
We ended the night with The Love and Marriage Show in the theater. We had 9-day newlyweds (although they looked to be in their 40s) along with 24-year and 48-year couple. As expected, the oldest couple were charming and took away the top prize.
Saturday, March 8, 2025
Cruise Compass
MDR Menu: A Taste of France
Today’s Weather: About 60, w/16 mph winds from the N, waves of 8-9’
Internet Speed: 9.74 Mbps down, 0.08 Mbps up, 24 ms, connection out of Los Angeles
Location at Start of Day: around 8:00A
Slept really well overnight. Although we’d started with the bathroom light on a nightlight, it turned out there was a motion-sensitive light just outside the bathroom door that would glow nicely when you got close to it, so was able to turn off the bathroom light and keep the cabin in darkness.
Breakfast at WJ. The variety here was much better than yesterday’s lunch. I had a couple of Eggs Benedicts (which were pre-prepped and available at the cooking station), bacon, and a hash brown. E had the challah-like bread with some fruit. Post breakfast we walked out to the pool deck to locate the various food and drink places, passed through the Solarium (that already had several people in the hot tub at 8:45A) and then wandered over to Schooner – but our first even wasn’t until 9:30A, so realizing we had more time we went back to the room to grab our tablets so we could return and do our morning games. We’ll likely bring our tablets with us to breakfast from now on so we can find a quiet place to sit post-food before morning trivia.
Back down to the Schooner to get in our tablet games before doing the morning Schooner puzzles (a word search and crossword puzzle used as an excuse to give everyone keychains), followed by cartoon music trivia (16 of 26, which seemed to place us in the top 25% - winner had 20), and finally movie quote trivia (19 of 20, winner with 20). LOTS of folks playing at all events. It was like Harry Potter trivia for everything. Speaking (obliquely) about kids, there’s a ton of them onboard. Clearly must be Spring Break in a lot of places, because the ~3200 pax include roughly 700 kids.
Post-trivia it was noon and time to head to WJ for lunch. This confirms the whole new approach to reducing variety to reduce costs and food waste. I ended up having a thin (and tough) pork chop with BBQ sauce plus potatoes and gravy, while E, not finding much to her liking, constructed a small sandwich to go with a bean and corn salad she built. We polished off with a sampling of chocolate bar (OK, but the chocolate cream portion was quite gelatinous), red velvet cake (pretty good), and an oatmeal raisin cook that I thought was excellent.
We decided to head back for our balcony for some post-lunch reading with the thought our returning to Deck 11’s pool at 1:00P for the belly flop competition. We first poked out head out to the pool area and walked by the now bustling El Loco Fresh, which frankly looked really tasty. We’re DEFINITELY going to be trying that, probably tomorrow. Once at the room we decided that the belly flop wasn’t a “must see”, however, so we spent about 15 on the balcony before deciding it was just a touch too chilly, even in our fleeces, so we came back inside to read and naps. Around 2:30P we headed down to Deck 5’s Star Lounge, catching the end of Next Cruise’s trivia re: Royal’s fleet. We grabbed a couple of drinks (today’s drink of the day: Blue Wave) and then settled in for The Yes No Game….which is stupid. Pairs of players face off for timed conversations and try to avoid saying “yes” or “no”. Probably better when everyone is drunk, but mostly a snoozefest.
Stopped at Café Prom at 3:30P on the way back to the room for snacks. We each had a jerk chicken wrap that was pretty good. I added a slice of cheese pizza (since the pepperoni was five minutes from completion) while E tried their turkey club (boring) and had a pear. We relaxed with our tablets until 5:00P when it was time for afternoon general trivia at Schooner followed by a cocktail and then Big Bang trivia back at Star Lounge at 6:00P for Big Bang trivia…at which we sucked.
Then over to the MDR for dinner. The Taste of France menu turned out to be kind MEH. I had the iceberg wedge salad (fine), beef tenderloin with mashed potatoes in some kind of green peppercorn sauce (the meat was flavorless and tenderized to within an inch of its life) and the apple crisp with ice cream (MEH). E had the French Onion soup (which she once again said wasn’t very oniony), the spring peas w/risotto (pretty good), and the crème brule (more like flan).
Our busy night continued by popping over to Studio B for the Battle of the Sexes game. Two teams of six men/six women competed in 5 tasks, with the women ultimately winning three to two. Boo hoo! Finally, over to the theater for their big “Showgirls: Past, Present, and Future” show. It was pretty good, with tremendously strong dancing and some many complex costume quick changes that E was getting distracted thinking through all the work they had been doing backstage.
Finally, back to the cabin at 10:00P to unwind a bit before hitting bed. Last task to take care of before lights out was changing our watches – DST was kicking in at 2:00A and we were moving ahead one hour.
Cruise Compass
MDR Menu: Welcome Aboard
Today’s Weather: A nice clear day today, with temps in the upper 50s. Should be about 60 for sail away.
I had a TERRIBLE night. Did not get a wink of sleep, so dragging a bit. Also worried a bit that this could become a flop-sweat day as a result, so packing a spare shirt (and a tee shirt to use as a sweat rag) if needed. Finger crossed I won’t need them! (Thankfully, did not!) What I WILL need, unfortunately, is new deodorant. My travel stick was on its last legs and I didn’t notice it until today. The hotel doesn’t have any, so I’ll likely have to buy overpriced stuff onboard – although I MIGHT be able to survive by careful application of what’s still left. We’ll see.
I had chosen Homewood over Hampton mostly for the breakfast, but I believe we accidentally used the Hampton breakfast section because it was pretty pathetic. We had noticed a breakfast room with a keycard entry, but assumed that it was eating space that was accessible from the section we went to – but now we think that might have been the “good” breakfast. Sigh.
Anyway, after choking down a bagel around 830A we came back to the room and repacked. We hadn’t unpacked at all upon arrival, saving that for the ship, so we were mostly pulling stuff out of packing cubes last night and then stuff things back into the bag this morning. Did conclude that, as part of our UK trip dry run, we’ve already recognized the need to pack the cubes more strategically. We both packed each cube with similar stuff (i.e. this is the “shirts cube” and that is the “underwear cube”). What we really would have benefited from was “this is the 1st night cube” or similar.
After packing up everything, we sat around my phone and watched the safety videos, which is supposed to streamline our muster drill process. At the end of the main video, which is about how to put on your life jacket, we had an opportunity to check off who had watched the video, so both E and I got credit for our shared viewing.
Just after we completed, I also got a text from Royal, reminding us NOT to show up prior to our scheduled boarding time due to limited terminal space. This is the first time we’ve gotten something like this and I guess is indicative of the state of affairs at the LGB cruise terminal. Our scheduled time is 1130A, but I still plan to call Lyft right around 1030A, figuring that should get us there right around 1105A or so – which should be fine. Our plan is to board, go to the muster station, then to a specialty restaurant to see if we can book our three specialty dinners. If there’s still time before lunch we’ll check out the MDR – but if our MDR 2-top request wasn’t honored and we don’t find out until dinner time we’re OK letting it ride for opening night. We can always go to Windjammer if we don’t want to share our table.
Around 1030A we got a Lyft to the cruise terminal. The driver arrived at the hotel in about 4 minutes, and we got to the terminal right around 11:05A. We walked about 10’ to drop our pre-tagged bags with the porter, then walked another 50’ to the pre-security checkin, where they checked our boarding docs and passport before we went through the security scanner. No one cared about our boarding time. From there, we walked to someone who confirmed we’d completed the health questionnaire and then took Eileen’s photo (deeming my selfie to be already valid), and from there we were up the escalator and boarding the ship. We were onboard before 11:15A!
We immediately went to our muster station and got checked in there (5 minutes, tops), then went to Hooked – the nearest specialty restaurant – where we made reservations for Hooked, Jamie’s and Izumi. Again, couldn’t have taken more than five minutes. Finally, we went down to the MDR intending to find our dinner table for early seating. We first stood in a line that was actually seating folks for lunch – I believe it was folks with The Key along with consecutive cruisers – before being directed to another podium a bit farther in. And here we discovered that they had us assigned to MTD, which was an unexpected shock. The podium guy suggested it was likely because they couldn’t find a 2-top during earlier dining. Not exactly what we wanted, but we rolled with the punches and setup a standing 6:45P MTD 2-top. The actual table will vary each night, depending on what’s available when we show up.
With all our administrative tasks complete, we went up to WJ for lunch. Without question, the variety of food is significantly pared down from prior years. In past cruises, the 6 main stations in the back of the room were generally the grill, desserts + 4 different islands of stuff, but the 4 islands are now basically just 2 islands, duplicated port and starboard Among things I didn’t see that were previously always there: fried chicken, fried fish, more than one carved meat, and several other things. We both ended up getting DIY salad and burger/fries (me), hot dog (E). E also tried a lemon cookie at the end that was awful. At the entrance to the WJ they'd setup a table where you could buy spun-on-demand pink or blue cotton candy on your way out. I was really tempted, but the size was HUGE - like basketball sized - so I kept walking. (I think it was $3.25 for each one.)
Lunch completed, we took the stairs down, figuring we’d try to find a likely bar for our sailaway drink order. We meandered through the Library/Card Room, Next Cruise, the Star Lounge, and Theater before emerging finally on Deck 5/Royal Prom and eventually making our way forward to Schooner 12:30P and parking there for an Ultimate Mai Tai for each of us plus a nice chat with a woman named Coleen, for very pleasant D+ cruising solo (on a cruise comp’ed casino point) from Wisconsin.
Finally, right at 1:00P the staterooms opened and we made our way to Deck 9 and our very spacious room. I was hoping to snag our suitcases, some of which had already been set out in the hallway, but despite checking again at 1:30P and 2:00P ours hadn’t yet shown up in the halls, so had to wait until they officially got delivered by our stateroom attendant. I instead wrestled with the mechanics of getting internet connected. The secret was: 1) connect to the ship’s guest Wifi. 2) On the connection page, create a new login that we’d both share. 3) On the device to be used, connect to the ship’s guest Wifi. 4) Go to login.com and use the just-created login. If/when all purchased connections are in use the next device that logs in will kick out the oldest connected device.
Our stateroom attendant, Elizabeth from Brazil stopped by around 330P and introduced herself. I requested a mattress pad (for which she will return later with a 2nd person to help her) and another set of towels for the shower. She seems very pleasant. Surprisingly, she says that she’ll be in our room twice per day, just like old times. I think perhaps the once per day service must apply to cabins below Junior Suite. About 10 minutes later, Elizabeth was back with our two suitcases. Yaay!
With the time now about 3:45P we decided to hold off on unpacking and instead went down to Deck 5 to grab some snacks at Café Prom – we got a selection of small sandwiches which were mostly MEH, plus E got a couple of coconut cookies. Again, variety was very limited compared to prior experiences. We then asked one of the staff standing outside the English Pub where we could get E’s drink cup. Turns out that any bar can hand them out, and he still had some available, so we followed him into the almost empty pub and got a cup. Since we were there we decided that we’d get the Drink of the Day (Bahama Mama) right there since there was no waiting. We got chatted up by an older couple – probably late 70s? – who were on their first cruise and trying to figure out what was included and what wasn’t, so ended up pointing out Café Prom to them (since we had the plate of food with us). They were very endearing.
Returned to the cabin just in time to sit on the balcony for sail away. It was a pretty straight shot down the channel and through the breakwater. Once out on open ocean the pilot boat came up and kissed the side of the ship DIRECTLY underneath our balcony, and we watched as the pilot stepped off Navigator and onto the pilot boat before it turned back around and went back to wherever it lives. Having sat outside for about 30 minutes we were ready to come back inside and unpack all our stuff, settling in nicely. The captain had mentioned something about 1-2’ waves tonight (and MAYBE 3-4’ tomorrow?), and we definitely could feel the rolling of the ship as we relaxed in our cabin pre-dinner.
For dinner we had our first My Time Dining experience. We went downstairs around 6:20P and there was a minor madhouse – we were instructed that, since we had reservatiions already (having made them earlier in the afternoon), we should stand in the line to the right of the entry. At that time, we were third in line. Around 640P they began processing the line, and we were seated at a table for two very quickly. We had a nice window seat in a corner, so pretty private (although the neighboring table of two was only about 18” away from us. In the window seat our server team (Renee and Joseph) always came to us first, which was nice.
Lots of “first time” dishes for us. E had vegan roasted tomato soup (mostly just “red soup”), pan roasted fish filet, which she enjoyed, and vegan peanut-caramel bar (which she liked, I did not). I had dual starters of escargot and the crispy crab cake (which was not at ALL crispy and was dull w/o being bad), southern fried chicken (which I liked and is by far the biggest entrée I’ve had on Royal), and the royal cheesecake. We decided to stay at that table for future nights we’re in MDR.
If tonight’s schedule is any indication, we may find that the 6:45P dining time is all wrong for entertainment. There wasn’t any or post-dinner music playing anywhere in the hour pre- and post-dinner, and we got out of the MDR around 7:50PM, too late to take in any of the 7:30P shows. We’ll have to see how the next several days go.
We did end the evening with the 9:30-10:15P Headliner show featuring a comedian name Mike Pace in the Royal Theater. Hard to tell what he’s like, as there was a 20-year female snowflake in the front row who was determined to be the center of attention and Mike basically hated her, so things were a bit uncomfortable.
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Internet Speed: 9259 Kbps down, 9666 Kbps up, NordVPN on
Location at End of Day
Finally, we’re on our way! We packed yesterday (Wednesday) and are trying some new things this trip, including: new USB fans for the bedroom side tables; new Kylmit inflatable mats for the bad (in case our mattress is really awful and/or we can’t get a mattress pad from our stateroom attendant; magnets for the shower curtain; and compression packing cubes. With the mattress pads still boxed, it really ruled out taking our carry-on bags, so we both ended up with full-sized suitcases. Even w/o the mattress pads we probably would have been hard-pressed to fit into the smaller cases, however. As a dress rehearsal for our long UK+TA in August this is helping to give us confidence that we’ll be OK with 2 full-size cases plus our travel backpack for that trip.
The compression packing cubes certainly make for easier packing. I’m not certain whether or not they saved significant space – but the ability to move around a bunch of rectangles without accidentally unfolding/unrolling already-packed stuff in order to optimize how the suitcase is loaded was really nice. I think I’m a fan.
Our trip started later in the day than usual for a domestic trip. We chose to arrive in Long Beach in the late afternoon rather than early afternoon. Our thought was to land, get to the hotel, walk somewhere for dinner (probably in the LBX Mall), and end the day. As such, our flight didn’t leave San Jose until 3:30P, so we left the house around 12:30P and stopped to have lunch at Popeye’s before dropping our car off at Spring Park Indoor Garage just after 1PM. We first tried Spring Park at Thanksgiving, when we’d flown to Denver for family dinner. It was a new experience and turned out to be so much better than our experience with AM Airport Parking over on Martin Ave. AM was “meh” in that it was cramped, uncovered, outdoor parking and the shuttle always took at least 15 minutes to arrive after landing back at SJC. At Spring Park we got indoor self-parking, a very quick shuttle trip, and shuttle pickup was just a few minutes of waiting upon our return. After a short wait for the parking shuttle to load up, we were in the terminal by about 1:15P at at the gate by 1:30P.
We were going out of gate 25, which is one of the 4 gates just at the front of Terminal A, so no long walks – nice. I stopped to fill up our water bottles and then we grabbed a couple of seats at the gate and passed time reading and playing on our tablets. Boarding started around 3:00P, as expected. I’d checked into the flight within seconds of it opening up and we were in boarding group A (A56, A56), so we had lots of choices for a pair of seats. We tried our normal strategy of E at the window and me at the aisle, with an empty seat between us, in hopes that no one would occupy the middle. If someone does target our row then I move to the middle so E and I are next to each other…but sometimes we end up having the row to ourselves - and that was the case this time.
The flight from SJC to LGB is quick – just 55 minutes in the air. As quickly as the crew passed out snacks and drinks they were snatching them up again so they could sit down for landing. LGB is really a throwback kind of place. Feels very 1958, featuring ramps rather than jetways, art deco design, and an open palm tree court between the ramp area and baggage claim. It does run pretty efficiently, however, as our luggage was off the plane with about 10 minutes. When deplaning, they rolled ramps up to both the front and back doors of the plane. We were essentially dead center – the rows just in front of us and behind us emptied at the same time, and I was the last passenger (save one) to plane. As I came up to the front of the plane the purser asked me to tell someone that they needed one wheelchair on the plane, which I dutifully told to some dude lounging around outside the plane. He asked if I was the last passenger off and I confirmed that was the case, so I assumed he then got a wheelchair.
As soon as we got our bags I called the hotel and in less than 10 minutes their shuttle arrived. The hotel was just 3 stop lights and about 7 minutes away, so we were at the hotel in no time at all. Unusually, it was gold (about 50 degrees) with a very light drizzle when we arrived.
At the hotel, following check-in, we decided that we’d take our chances that our fleeces and travel umbrellas would be good enough to allow us to walk over to The Hangar at LGX, which is a food court that we could see from our 5th floor window. Couldn’t have been more than 0.2 miles away. The walk was easy. Having just had Popeye's at lunch it seemed like the soul food place I had been eye-balling during the planning stages would be redundant tonight. I had a sandwich from Ike’s – disappointing, as usual – while Eileen had some kind of pot roast sandwich from another place. It was crowded but we lucked into a table. Upon return to the hotel we grabbed some snacks from the small hotel shop and came back to the room to read and watch TV.
Wednesday March 6, 2025 through Thursday March 14, 2025
The germination of this trip began in very late March 2024, in the midst of planning our Aug/Sep 2025 Transatlantic on Brilliance of the Seas. By then I was back in the “let’s go on a cruise” mindset and I was starting to look at what our pathway to Diamond C&A status might be. In March 2024 we had 33 C&A points, enough for Platinum. Our next milestones would be 50 for Emerald – which qualified us for a paltry 2 bottles of free water each – and, finally, 80 for Diamond, where the real benefits would kick in. In particular, I had my eye on the “4 free drinks per day” that Diamonds get!
I began to wonder whether there was a reasonably cost-effective way to cruise sometime earlier in 2025 to generate some additional C&A points before our TA. There was no way we were going to get to Diamond before our 2025 TA, but perhaps I could find a way to collect 47 more points before a potential second TA in 2027? In other words, what would be the pathway in 2025 and 2026 that would get us to at least 80 C&A points?
One obvious way was to look into a cruise where we could generate double points via The Suite Life. However, to do this I didn’t want to break the bank, so I wanted to find a less-expensive cruise where the suite pricing wasn’t outrageous. I managed to find a cruise out of LA (further reducing expenses since flights are cheap compared to heading to the East Coast) that had suite pricing in the range of balcony prices on other sailings so pursued that. I’m jealous of Floridia-based cruisers who can drive to any of 4 ports pretty much at the drop of a hat and avoid all the airfare us West Coast cruisers have to deal with for most routes. Of course, living in San Jose we still choose to jump on a plane to get to Long Beach rather than make the 7-8 hour drive – but this is all still significantly less expensive than flying to Florida! I hope that Royal will commit more ships to the West Coast sometime soon so we’d have more options. (In fact, they are doing just that for 2025-2026. Quantum is going to be joining Navigator and running a series of YAAWWWN three and four day cruises with the occasional 6 day schedule thrown in. We’ll see if taking advantage of this new ship somehow fits into our planning for 2026 or not.)
Anyway, that’s how we found ourselves on Navigator of the Seas in March 2025 heading to the so-called Mexican Riviera. Honestly, when I booked the cruise – which I had done before March 2024 was over – I paid absolutely zero attention to the ports, since I knew we really didn’t care about WHERE we were going. We just wanted to be on board a ship where we could entertain ourselves. Whether we went ashore or not was a secondary concern as far as we were concerned. In fact, we were going to have stops in Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlán, and Puerto Vallarta, along with three full sea days.
Just as I’d done for the TA, I booked this cruise via Costco. I managed to get a J3 Junior Suite – in fact, a 9th deck HUMP cabin – for a really good price. For this one we got $400 back from Costco, so we’ve managed to get $900 in store credit between the two cruises, which is a really nice deal! As this sailing still had a lot of unsold cabins we were able to get Early dining (unlike the TA, where the only remaining choice was MTD). Later, coincidentally, I found a cabin walkthough video for our exact stateroom which revealed it to be a slightly oversize J3 with both a couch and a lounge chair. Sweet! At the time I booked I somehow overlooked that this was a connecting cabin – so we’ll see what impact the potential noise from next door impacts us. The walkthrough video seemed to intentionally avoid talking about the connecting door.
Sometime later, I learned something less sweet. When I was working on my data-scraping program I wanted to find a decent source for data. Someone on CC pointed me to CruisePlum, which turned out to be a great find. One of the things the CruisePlum site offers is graphing of cabin pricing. Upon reviewing those graphs, it because obvious that RCCL changes their prices very predictably: they raise prices EVERY Friday and Saturday before returning them to a lower Sunday-Thursday pricing. Up, down, up down, up down – week after week (until they decide to raise the whole baseline price, and then start the weekly bump cycle over again). As it happens, not knowing this behavior I had booked our cruise on a Friday night – so ended up paying about $250 more than I would have by buying on Sunday-Thursday. Lesson learned.
Right after I’d booked this cruise I finally heard back from Kim Royer, who I’d emailed at Avoya a couple of weeks earlier hoping to get some TA quotes from her. For whatever reason she was slow to reply to my original email. However, she did reply to the TA request with a “good to hear from you” and a quote on a TA cabin which she’d placed a courtesy hold on for me. Her price was $100 MORE than Costco’s, and she was only offering $100 total OBC. I thanked her and told her I’d be in touch if/when we were considering 2026 cruises – which I will follow up on. However, this made me VERY happy with our Costco deals. The only worry is that, if problems arise, I don’t have high hopes about getting much help from Costco, whereas I’m certain Kim would fight on our behalf. (If I’d had a TA to work with I’m sure I could have rebooked our cabin at the “normal” weekly price instead of the Friday/Saturday artificially increased price and saved about $250 – but c’est la vie!
When I checked our list of bookings at RCCL’s website I noted that it was possible to book both E’s soft drink package as well as VOOM internet right away. I wasn’t expecting to find those available yet as we’re still almost a year out. I took advantage of what (I assume) will likely be the best pricing that will be offered by signing her up for her drink package as well as a single-person, 2 device internet plan. The pricing on the internet is strange – I could have gotten each of us a single device plan, but that was significantly more expensive than getting one of us a two-device plan. We’ll login as the same person on two devices (and if we login on a 3rd device it will kick off the oldest previously-logged-in device), but this is fine. Upon discovering that I could make these purchases in early April 2024 I also checked on our Aug/Sep 2025 TA and discovered I could lock in similar pricing for that cruise, too, so I did so. Right around this time a new site for tracking cruise add-on packages debuted and I added all of our scheduled cruises into it to relieve myself from having to track price changes.
Looked into whether to fly into LAX or Long Beach (LGB) and determined that LGB was a better choice. Not only closer to the cruise port, located in San Pedro, but also a MUCH less busy airport. Seems to only handle about 45 or so flights per day – including a few direct from SJC. The original thought was to fly in the morning of the cruise and grab a Lyft from the airport to the port, but the most likely flight wouldn’t have us arriving in LGB until late morning and a) I wanted to board earlier, if possible, and b) there’s always the potential for flight delays causing more stress than we’d like. So decided that the best plan would be to fly into LGB late Thursday afternoon (our cruise boards on Friday) and spend the night in a hotel in/around LGB.
So WHERE in/around LGB? Did the normal survey of places as well as consulting CruiseCritic. CC folks basically all focus on one of the two hotels that are within about a mile of the port – and which carry a ridiculously high room rate of up to $500/night. I settled on the much less expensive Homewood Suites Long Beach Airport. That’s a dual-purpose Hilton property, housing Hampton Inn on one side and Homewood Suites on the other. Homewood rooms looked slightly nicer, and Homewood is reputed to have one of the better breakfasts among hotels, so went that route. They also offer a “call for pickup” free shuttle from LGB, so we’ll only need to grab a ride on Friday morning for the roughly 25 minute drive to the port. There’s a BUNCH of places to eat within a 12 minute walk, including something a lot like Boulder’s Avanti (i.e. a pavilion of food places) within just a couple of blocks of the hotel. The preliminary thinking was to try Georgia’s, a soul food restaurant at the Long Beach LBX, a short 7 minute walk from the hotel. Directly across the street is is Handel’s Homemade Ice Cream for a possible dessert. And, topping it off, the walk back to the hotel would pass directly by Whole Foods, allowing us to potentially dip inside to grab a couple of bottles of wine to bring onboard with us.
If the hotel reservation hadn’t been non-refundable, I probably would have cancelled and moved us over to Best Western Plus Hotel at the Convention Center, both to get us around better restaurants as well as reduce our drive to the cruise terminal in the morning. I also think it would have been cheaper – and losing the free airport shuttle would have been totally OK. I’ll probably put us at Best Western when we return in February 2026 for our Quantum B2B cruises.
I also spent time in late March and early April 2024 extending the vacation spreadsheet template. I added automated lookup of airline seat info so the Transportation tab would now highlight which flight legs were on “comfy” airplanes. I also built a new “B2B Finder” spreadsheet that can take Royal’s slate of sailings and automatically highlight back-to-back and side-to-side candidates. It will even flag when the two sailings are “interesting”, meaning that they sail different routes. This tool will help when considering 2026 cruises – as another way to generate C&A points would be strategic booking of B2Bs.
So, back to C&A. Since this cruise is going to generate double points, we’ll get 14 points for this 7-day cruise. Combine that with the 15 points we’ll get from the T&A we’ll be at 62 points – just 18 shy of Diamond level. Therefore, the tentative goal for 2026 is to gather at least 18 points so that, by the time of a potential 2027 TA, we’ll be Diamond BEFORE the TA. There are a lot of potential ways to get 18 nights in a year, but ideally we’ll do it in 2 cruises, or a single B2B. We’ll see how things go!
Among things to look forward to on this sailing is that Navigator has a specialty restaurant we haven’t seen on other ships yet: a place called “Hooked Seafood”. Hoping we’re able to grab a lunch reservation there on one of our sea days. Pricing is too high for dinner! The ship also has a place called “El Loco Fresh” that appears to offer free B/L/D – so this might be another novelty for us to try. As the weeks progressed pre-cruise I noted that I could get us a 3-night specialty dining package for $122 each, or roughly $41 per dinner. That seemed like enough of a bargain that I decided to snap it up so we could sample some combo of Chops, Jamie’s, and/or Hooked.
The ship – like its same-class sister ship Mariner – has an escape room, too. Hopefully it is a different story than that of the Mariner, as I’m hoping we can book it at some point. Sadly, I found out later that Navigator, Independence, and Mariner have the same escape room. Someone on CC asked the question and there was a link to RCCL’s marketing info. Harmony and Symphony share a room, while Oasis, Spectrum, and Icon each have unique rooms, for a total of five different rooms across eight different ships. We’ll find out when we get there, but I think there’s a REALLY high probability that the escape room is actually gone. They have certainly replaced it on some (all?) of the Quantum-class ships. They seem to instead be substituting puzzle-based events where multiple teams compete to solve different kinds of logic puzzle. E and I had previously done that on Mariner.
I did find a couple of prior Cruise Compasses for this ship and route and looks like we will have no trouble getting our fill of trivia!
As part of the normal “let’s watch videos to learn about stuff” I found a series of videos shot in 2023 about Oasis class ships that covered all the complimentary breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner options in MDR, Windjammer, Promenade Café, and ALL other venues offering non-specialty dining. It was really just an extensive video catalog of all the foods available (often with details about which day you’d find a particular item) – but this was our first exposure to the breadth of options outside of the MDR (for dinner) as well as non-Windjammer options for breakfast, brunch, and lunch. We’ll have to wait and see how much of the variety we saw in the videos is actually available on the smaller Navigator and (even smaller) Brilliance.
More videos I obsessively watched were a few on the layout of the San Pedro cruise port. Always nice to see how you get in and around the cruise terminal, and eventually made a reasonably important discovery, which is that San Pedro is a pretty small terminal. Most notably, it has very little waiting room space for passengers who have checked in but not yet boarded. As such, it sounds like this terminal is a bit more strict on enforcing your embarkation time while the large Florida terminals really just pay lip service to embarkation times. At San Pedro, you can generally get into line to enter the terminal to perform check-in (at most) 30 minutes ahead of your scheduled boarding time. If you show up earlier you’ll likely be kept waiting outside – possibly in the hot sun or pouring rain - in a different line before being allowed to enter the line that actually goes inside the terminal building. On the other hand, once inside the building it sounds like security, check-in, and boarding are handled very efficiently (as has been the case with these processes on all of the cruises we’ve taken so far). On CC I’m seeing that folks are often onboard within 15-20 minutes of arrival – at least when using their scheduled check-in time.
I initially got excited about the possible benefits of Suite Life, which included things like boarding access within +/- 1 hour of your scheduled time, access to the Suite Lounge on Deck 14, which includes free food and drinks from 5P-8P nightly, and breakfast in Chops from 8A-930A daily! Alas, those benefits only apply to Grand Suite and up, so us peons in Junior Suites have to mix with the rest of the great unwashed. Sigh…
Of course, pre-planning isn’t complete if I don’t find the webcams for San Pedro, Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta. The latter two never actually seemed to be working but I never found better options so kept these around. In the weeks and months leading up to a cruise I enjoy the random sightings of ships in port while I’m updating myself on latest CC postings.
Another issue tackled during trip prep: how best to deal with Royal’s hard-as-rocks stateroom mattresses. We’ve tried to ignore this problem on our other cruises, but now that we’re five years older we’re that much less resilient when it comes to ignoring discomforts. So I want to be prepared this time. Research suggests that you can SOMETIMES get your stateroom attendant to put some additional comforter layer(s) under the bedsheet – but SOMETIMES they’ll run out of layers before you can get your request fulfilled. Don’t want to be bitten by this.
Many people – no doubt, mostly are those who drive to the port rather than fly – bring big foam mattress toppers with them. Many of them ALSO treat those as disposable items and leave them on the ship at the end of the cruise. I don’t really want to lug around 20 pounds of topper, however, nor potentially have to hack it up to make it fit (which some do), nor abandon it wastefully at the end. Instead, I found out that many people recommended getting two “Klymit Static V Luxe Sleeping Pad” from Amazon (https://tinyurl.com/mv3pvenm). They are reasonably light-weight – about 2.25 pounds each – and pack down to an 8” x 4.5” bag, so quite packable. The combined 60” width isn’t full mattress width, unfortunately – we’ll have about 6” per side without padding, while the length will also be 6” short, although this is unlikely to be a big issue. But this seems like a good choice for something we can easily pack and then reuse on other cruises. (It is actually possible that the JS mattresses on Navigator are OK – at least one CC poster who likes soft beds specifically called them out as being the best, most comfortable they’ve ever had on multiple Royal cruise. I suspect, however, that our mattresses on our Brilliance TA will likely be rock hard, so even if we don’t end up using this on Navigator we’ll still find use for them.)
When it came time to make final payment for the cruise (due in late November 2024) I went to Costco’s travel site and tried to make my final payment, but every attempt was rejected with a generic “there’s a problem….try later or call us”. Fortunately, I had started the process about a week before the payment was due so had a few days to “try again” before I finally called them on a Monday morning. Costco agent realized that this was a “known” problem with Royal and, unable to complete my transaction manually, had to call Royal while I waited online to work things out. On Royal’s side there’s apparently a refund of $216.93 due to me for a recent package rebooking (from 10 days ago, so SHOULD have been more than enough time for Royal to process the refund, although definitely not reflected in my CC statement) and that’s the cause of the problem. So while (correctly) Costco says I owe $X, Royal says I currently owe $X-$216.93 and the transaction is failing. All because Royal has failed to process my refund in a timely manner. (In truth, Royal posted the refund within 24 hours of my transaction, but it appears that it normally takes 10-14 days before the refund posts on my side.)
So there was 35 minutes lost to what should have been a touchless 2-minute transaction. Grrr. And the outcome was still unknown. Basically, Royal submitted the refund on 11/9/24 and it apparently takes 10-14 business days for the refund to credit back to me. (It is 11/18/24 as I write this.) So I’m supposed to plan to call Costco by no later than 11/23/24 (the final payment due date) either to:
a) Complete the payment with them because I have definitely seen a credit to my Wells Fargo credit card, or
b) Notify them I’m still waiting on the refund so they can extend my payment deadline.
I initially tried to pay off the cruise on a Monday (and went through the above with Costco on that day). I kept monitoring my WFB credit card and finally saw a large credit post on Thursday morning, so I immediately called Costco back and within a few minutes was able to get the final payment handled and received back the confirmation email from Costco showing we’d paid off the cruise, with two days to spare before the deadline. Whew! Coincidentally, that very same morning royalcaribbeanblog.com posted about this very same “nightmare issue” that travelers were facing. Thankfully we got our issue resolved without all the horrible outcomes described in the article, but talk about frustration!
Prompted by a calendar alert I’d set, at midnight 45 days before the cruise I got us checked in. Initially I’d planned to do this on the PC where I could do quick copy/paste operations, but I saw a message that I thought meant the site was down, so I instead had to use the app and manually key in passport and credit card numbers. Unexpectedly, I was able to start the login process about 5 minutes BEFORE midnight, so either I miscalculated the first day of check-in OR the process opened a few minutes early. Whatever the reason, although I was done with the first part of check-in by no later than 12:03A (or so – I forgot to look) the first available check-in time as 1130A-noon…so we’ll plan to arrive no later than 11A on boarding day with the assumption that we’ll be able to get into line. (Later, I decided that the website was indicating that the Cruise Planner was closed, but it is quite possible that there was a Check-In link that I missed. I noticed an “Edit Check-in” link on the website after I completed the app-based check-in that I probably missed the first time around.)
Now, back to pricing for a moment. Add-on package pricing changed throughout the months pre-cruise, but the obvious trend is that things are NEVER going to get cheaper. The best price is always earlier rather than later. Actually, the rule seems to be that price will debut at $X, then there will be a sale where $X will be discounted, followed by a return to $X but that’s a “fake” sale. So if you sign up early enough you can catch the first (and ONLY) true sales price, after which things just keep going up and up. Here’s an illustration, using the pricing on a 2-device internet package:
Intro price Mar 2024: $19.99/day ($217 for 2 devices): Effective price: 15.50/dev/day
First (fake) sale: $17.99/day ($217 for 2 devices): Effective price: 15.50/dev/day
REAL Sale Nov 2024: $16.99/day ($189 for 2 devices); Effective price: 13.42/dev/day
Post Nov 2024: $17.99 to $20.99/day
Royal is even sneakier with dining packages. It seems like earlier prices tend to INCLUDE pre-paid gratuities. Then stuff goes on “sale” at a lower price…but they conveniently fail to tell you that this new price does NOT include gratuities. The final price does tend to equal the original, but it is possible you’ll end up paying $1-3 MORE if you rebook at the “lower” price and then add gratuities.
Somewhere around a week prior to the cruise the ship-board activities and menus started getting posted to the app, so it was possible to get a preview of things we might want to do each day of the week.
