Our friends Doug and Michelle McKnight (our favorite travel agent) recently went on the Allure of the Seas. While on board, part of their family sailed in Stateroom 9660, which is a Grand Suite 1 Bedroom. The stateroom is located Deck 9 Starboard (right) side midship near the elevators. The stateroom is 396 square feet with an 89 square foot balcony. It has two twin beds that convert to a Royal King bed and a sofa that converts to a double bed. read more
Our friends Doug and Michelle McKnight (our favorite travel agent) recently went on the Allure of the Seas. While on board, part of their family sailed in Stateroom 9654, which is a Grand Suite 1 Bedroom. The stateroom is located Deck 9 Starboard (right) side midship near the elevators. The stateroom is 396 square feet with an 89 square foot balcony. It has two twin beds that convert to a Royal King bed and a sofa that converts to a double bed. read more
Our friends Doug and Michelle McKnight (our favorite travel agent) recently went on the Allure of the Seas. While on board, they were able to explore the Vitality at Sea Spa and Fitness Center as well as take a stroll on the running track! The Spa is located forward on Deck 5 (along with the running track) and the Fitness Center is located on Deck 6. There is an internal staircase to access one from the other.read more
Our friend Lauren Shields recently went on the Freedom of the Seas. While on board, she sailed in Stateroom 1264, which is a Grand Suite 1 Bedroom. The stateroom is located Deck 10 Starboard (right) side all the way forward near the forward elevators. The stateroom is 396 square feet with an 89 square foot balcony. It has two twin beds that convert to a Royal King bed an a sofa that converts to a double bed. read more
Our friend Lauren Shields recently went on the Freedom of the Seas. While on board, she was able to explore the Vitality at Sea Spa and Fitness Center. The Fitness Center is located on Deck 11 and the Spa is on Deck 12. There is an internal staircase to access one from the other.read more
Our friend Michelle McKnight (our favorite travel agent) recently went on the Wonder of the Seas, one of the newest Royal Caribbean ships. While on board, she was able to explore the Vitality at Sea Spa and Fitness Center as well as take a stroll on the running track! The Spa is located forward on Deck 4 (along with the running track) and the Fitness Center is located on Deck 5. There is an internal staircase to access one from the other.read more
Our friend Chris (@CHRIS_MAGIC_DCL) went on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas on August 3rd, 2021 and reserved the Owner’s Suite. The stateroom is located on the port side, mid ship, Deck 10. The room holds four people, has a queen size bed and a double sofa bed. He was kind enough to send us pictures!
Thank you again to Chris (@CHRIS_MAGIC_DCL) for the fabulous pictures! Make sure you follow him on twitter!
Our friend Chris (@CHRIS_MAGIC_DCL) went on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas on August 3rd, 2021 and stayed in the Royal Suite. The stateroom is located on the port side, mid ship, Deck 10. The room holds four people, has a king size bed and a double sofa bed. He was kind enough to send us pictures!
Thank you again to Chris (@CHRIS_MAGIC_DCL) for the fabulous pictures! Make sure you follow him on twitter!
Our friends Doug (from Rope Drop Radio) and Michelle McKnight (our favorite travel agent) went on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas on July 9, 2021 for a 3-Night Bahamian Cruise from Miami. They stayed in Category 4B Stateroom 7232, which is a Spacious Ocean View Balcony. The room is located forward on the Starboard (right) side of Deck 7. The room has a verandah.
You can hear about their cruise experience here!
The room has a queen size bed near the Veranda as well as a sofa placed in front of the television.
The closet is located immediately inside the stateroom entrance on the left, complete with a small safe.
The bathroom is located immediately next to the stateroom door on the right.
The verandah has opaque frosted panels to provide a level of privacy. There are two chairs as well as a small table.
More about Doug and Michelle…
You can subscribe to Rope Drop Radio via iTunes. Derek and Doug are two dads who love Disney. Their goal is help you navigate all things Disney from the parks to the cruise. They want to share tips and tricks, travel plans, and must see’s to help you have an amazing Disney trip! Make sure to follow them on Facebook and Twitter as well!
We have really enjoyed having Michelle (affiliated with Touring Plans Travel Agency) as our travel agent. It costs nothing to use her services because Disney or Royal pays her after we cruise. She was the one that got up at the crack of dawn to book reservations on our booking dates, to make requested updates to our room and dining preferences. We have booked over ten cruises with her, as well as recommending her to our friends! Contact her to see if she can help you with your vacation plans. (Note: Michelle does not sponsor Back To The Mouse, we are just satisfied customers).
One of the worst aspects of any cruise vacation is the fact that you actually have to pay your final bill! (Just kidding). If you’ve never cruised with Royal Caribbean before, I wanted to share exactly what that final Guest Account Summary will look like once you receive it. This final statement is from our Ovation of the Seas cruise that we took to Alaska. It was waiting for us the morning of disembarkation. You can also go to Guest Services at any point on the cruise to get a printed version of it (for charges up to that point).
One difference between the Disney Cruise Line final bill and the Royal Caribbean one has to do with excursions. On Royal Caribbean, anything booked before the cruise such as excursions, dining, and drink packages are paid for when they are booked. That lightens the final bill quite a bit.
On the first page of this bill are my charges followed by two of Nancy’s (which continued onto the next page). As you can see, I had a number of charges from various bars around the ship. They don’t differentiate the charges for the beverages from the gratuities that we added (in addition to the automatic 18% gratuity that is added). I also had the gratuities that we added at the specialty dining places, but not the charges for the meal itself. We paid for those up front by purchasing a four night specialty dining package. Some of the other charges for the specialty dining were from alcoholic beverages that we purchased in those restaurants. There were also charges for some shopping that we did while on board. There are a lot of shops on Ovation of the Seas.
We each had a charge for the Royal IQ App that we added while onboard that was supposed to give us messaging for the duration of the cruise. I thought it was for messages within the Royal IQ App. Once we purchased it, we discovered that we could message each other with the iMessage App on our iPhones, so we decided to just use that. The messages always got delivered and we didn’t miss any notifications. Even if it cost us each $7.95 to be able to use iMessage, it was well worth the money. It is possible that iMessage would have worked without that charge, but we didn’t test that out before we purchased the Royal IQ App onboard.
We had two credits that were placed on our account. One was from our travel agent, Michelle McKnight (michelle@touringplans.com). I have no idea where the other $150 credit came from. I don’t remember booking the room with any sort of credit associated to it, but it got re-priced to a lower price several times before we actually sailed, so one of those re-bookings could have attached a credit to our room. The final payment for the room went on a Visa card that we added at check-in to settle our final charges.
The second page of this bill continues Nancy’s charges (although likely these included my drinks as well that she put onto her card). It appears that she paid for the additional beverages and gratuities at Chops Grille when we went there. The Fish and Ships charged under communication was actually a deep fried candy bar, I have no idea why it ended up in that category (it was really good). The last two sets of charges were for our kids, who didn’t purchase very much using their cards even though they had full charging privileges.
The last page of our bill was just random notifications and small print.
You can also obtain a running version of this in the Royal IQ App.
The app also allows you to enter your email address so you can get your final onboard account balance (and all transactions) sent to you after you have left the ship.
I hope this helped explain one of the saddest aspects of cruising!
