ukintheus
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2009
Welcome to anyone that might follow along. This is our first RCI cruise after 14 DCL cruises and I enjoy doing trip reports (mainly as a reminder to myself of our vacation) and luckily enough the DIS has a Royal Board so here goes!
A little background on us - skip this if you already know us. We are DINKS (double income no kids) and have precious few vacation days to use each year. We typically cruise when kids are in school, and we typically don’t utilize many of the things available on the cruise other than our cabin, the pool, the dining rooms and the various bars. We had been mulling around the thought of a RCI cruise out of Galveston and originally booked one in April 2017 but an offer came out for this sailing and so we booked it. Liberty of the Seas is a Freedom Class ship on RCI and had gone through a fairly extensive dry dock at the beginning of 2016 adding several features, such as water slides and FlowRider as well as other things that I didn’t really pay attention to. For $400 more than a typical 7 night for the two of us on DCL out of Galveston in a 5B verandah, we got a Junior Suite, all inclusive premium drink package (Ultimate Package which includes beer, wine, cocktails, bottled water (still and sparkling), specialty coffee and juices), and 4 nights of specialty dining. Trip insurance was also included but that's a wash as we also do trip insurance on DCL. A Jr. Suite doesn't have any real suite perks other than priority boarding and double points. There is no concierge included with it unlike all the other suites, but it was $1,000 cheaper than the concierge suites. So, with background over, it's time to sail and here's a bonus picture of us so you know who you are looking at. We are particularly happy in this photo because we had just got back onto the Wonder as part of our first back-to-back last year.
I have to add some pre-cruise stuff in here as there were a few things that were different and I may as well get all the boring text over with. One thing that I immediately loved was that I could pre-purchase a drink package and a dining package online, and have it paid for months before our cruise. I also liked that the booking window was the same for everybody (at least it appeared that way to me) and I didn’t have that pressure of the “gotta check in and get my reservations” this time, which was nice. The other difference pre-cruise is that you don’t get a nice little packet in the mail with RCI like you do with DCL. You print your own luggage tags and your cruise packet is downloaded from the internet. It was easy and not a big deal, but the fun of finding those luggage tags in your mail box is really nice.
A little background on us - skip this if you already know us. We are DINKS (double income no kids) and have precious few vacation days to use each year. We typically cruise when kids are in school, and we typically don’t utilize many of the things available on the cruise other than our cabin, the pool, the dining rooms and the various bars. We had been mulling around the thought of a RCI cruise out of Galveston and originally booked one in April 2017 but an offer came out for this sailing and so we booked it. Liberty of the Seas is a Freedom Class ship on RCI and had gone through a fairly extensive dry dock at the beginning of 2016 adding several features, such as water slides and FlowRider as well as other things that I didn’t really pay attention to. For $400 more than a typical 7 night for the two of us on DCL out of Galveston in a 5B verandah, we got a Junior Suite, all inclusive premium drink package (Ultimate Package which includes beer, wine, cocktails, bottled water (still and sparkling), specialty coffee and juices), and 4 nights of specialty dining. Trip insurance was also included but that's a wash as we also do trip insurance on DCL. A Jr. Suite doesn't have any real suite perks other than priority boarding and double points. There is no concierge included with it unlike all the other suites, but it was $1,000 cheaper than the concierge suites. So, with background over, it's time to sail and here's a bonus picture of us so you know who you are looking at. We are particularly happy in this photo because we had just got back onto the Wonder as part of our first back-to-back last year.
I have to add some pre-cruise stuff in here as there were a few things that were different and I may as well get all the boring text over with. One thing that I immediately loved was that I could pre-purchase a drink package and a dining package online, and have it paid for months before our cruise. I also liked that the booking window was the same for everybody (at least it appeared that way to me) and I didn’t have that pressure of the “gotta check in and get my reservations” this time, which was nice. The other difference pre-cruise is that you don’t get a nice little packet in the mail with RCI like you do with DCL. You print your own luggage tags and your cruise packet is downloaded from the internet. It was easy and not a big deal, but the fun of finding those luggage tags in your mail box is really nice.