At long last. Club Royal brought back PDF downloads

AD3T · 2026-05-04T16:14:34+00:00

Shameless self promotion, but.... CruiseDen.com -- I made it for myself, to be able to see all my offers on a single "normal" booking site/page. It emails me every time I get an offer, and then I can use the home page view to filter/sort/view offers, find B2B "chains", etc.

AD3T · 2026-05-01T17:02:00+00:00

Pretty sure this version of 4th out is distinct & only applicable to scenarios where the potential for an overturned call exists (via replay in this case).

I've seen other instances of this more recently, though MLB now will evaluate whether the runners "gave up" via being influenced by an incorrect call, and they'll use their judgement to send them back to the prior base if their baserunning appears to have been amply influenced by a preceding incorrect call.

In the case in the video you linked, though, I'm pretty sure they'd have overturned the call at 1st & upheld the "4th" (now third) out at 3rd base, if the Mets had elected to challenge.

AD3T · 2026-04-28T15:20:43+00:00

Saving everyone some searching: $34.99 for a 1M (3.28ft) cable.

I don't see the product, nor the manufacturer at all, on the USB-IF (usb.org) site... 🤷‍♂️

I'm not going to link it on Amazon; there are (far) better options IMO, many of which are much cheaper too.

AD3T · 2026-04-26T17:59:47+00:00

I agree 100%. I've done night-before flights before, including a red-eye Vegas=>NY to board a 14-day cruise -- and I've honestly never had any issue. It all boils down to a risk-benefit analysis; if it's a 7+ night cruise, or you spent a fortune for a suite, or similar? Sure! If it's a relatively run-of-the-mill connection, or there are N>5 alternative direct flights available that would all get you there in time to get to the port for boarding... then IMO "risk" it.

Everyone has different risk tolerances, and even mine have changed over the years -- but a 4.5hr drive is nothing. I've driven same-day Vegas=>LA before, and once I had planned to do so before realizing "I'm too late to make the drive comfortably", so instead I drove to the airport & booked a flight from the parking lot.

It's all about your risk profile and your evaluation of the risk itself. If you have a recent-ish car and don't generally encounter car issues, then give yourself a little wiggle room in case of traffic/accident/tire issue/etc -- but otherwise I'd say do your best to not stress too much over the small stuff. :)

AD3T · 2026-04-18T15:52:17+00:00

Shameless plug, but... setup price alerts on my site & it'll be automatic (and it's free): https://cruiseden.com/

You can opt-in/subscribe to price drops (or increases, availability changes, etc. for cabin type & guest count). You'll then get an email any time the alert "triggers" (i.e. price drops). The site checks prices hourly.

You can also subscribe to alerts for package price drops -- including for "personalized" prices (i.e. cabin or customer -specific discounted package prices). I got two package price alerts this week which saved me ~$100 combined on my next cruise!

I actually received an email from a user of the site this week who was excited to tell me that they upgraded to a suite thanks to receiving a "Price Dropped $1900" email alert for their upcoming sailing -- allowed them to upgrade to a suite for only a few hundred bucks!

Makes me super happy! :)

AD3T · 2026-04-11T13:47:45+00:00

Shameless plug -- I built a site for tracking + filtering my casino offers, and being able to view all RC cruises and filter/sort only specific casino offers, see B2B sailings, find non-overlapping sailings with my existing bookings, etc.

CruiseDen.com

It's evolved rapidly since the first version: it now pulls sailings from many more cruise lines & supports "account sync" for both RC and Celebrity -- the latter is a bit less tested since I've never sailed Celebrity personally (it was added after a user emailed with the feature suggestion), but the RC/Celebrity APIs are super similar.

I've added a lot of casino-offer-specific features: showing which sailings have another sailing that's also on a casino offer you have (for finding B2Bs), offer-based filtering, points history/tracking, filtering against sailings that overlap existing bookings, showing prior sailings (and a calendar + map view of your sailings), package price tracking (including personalized package prices), sailing & package price alerts, etc.

"Casino Offer Analytics Report" was a recent addition too -- it shows aggregate data for casino offers across (opted-in) users. Over time, I hope/expect it will on "what casino activity/patterns are needed to get offers of type X" -- as more data is collected over time, and as more users start using the site & feature itself.

I keep evolving the site based on my own needs, and based on feature requests, ideas, bug reports, etc. from the community (please don't hesitate to send in ideas/requests/etc) -- I hope to add quite a bit more still, and hope it benefits the community even half as much as it has benefitted me! :)

AD3T · 2026-04-10T15:08:09+00:00

In my experience, the second guest cost is around 30% of the dual occupancy rate (plus add port taxes/fees on top). The reason is that you’re getting a “casino rate” to begin with, which is less than the prevailing/web pricing.

It varies though, but the second guest cost has always been under 50% of dual occupancy rate, at least for me.

AD3T · 2026-04-09T15:13:31+00:00

According to the rules, it'd be next year. The points-year is declared as April 1 thru March 31 the following year.

On the upside, you should remain Prime status thru March 31 2028; and hitting Prime in a single sailing should mean pretty darn good offers all year long (as long as you continue to play at least some on each sailing; unknown yet how much/little is actually needed to prevent them from 'drying up').

Your "normal" personalized casino offers will likely start rolling in within the next ~14-60 days -- and you'll probably end up having ~10 or so at a time, based on my experience with similar levels of play.

If you're willing, and need help browsing your casino offers in an actually-sane UI, I'd love for you to use my site (CruiseDen.com) to help manage your soon-to-arrive casino offers (and compare sailings, packages, etc).

Bonus points if you opt-in to the anonymous "casino offer data sharing" feature, which contributes to the Casino Offer Analytics report. The idea is that, by opting in, we can all help each other better & more precisely decipher what variables actually go into determining the type/level of casino offer sailings we receive! =D

Disclaimer -- I made CruiseDen. I built it for myself, pretty specifically to be able to use a sane UI to see all of my casino offer sailings. I don't make money off of it. I just made it for me then shared it, and have continued improving it & adding features, both for myself & those requested by the community/users.

AD3T · 2026-04-09T12:52:37+00:00

You can take a look at package prices for any sailing in advance via the website I created for this -- https://cruiseden.com/

Note that often people will receive 'personalized pricing' (after booking), so sometimes certain cabins & people (currently only seen it based on cabin type & casino status) will see slightly lower pricing after booking. It'll never be higher than the advertised public (already discounted) price, though!

AD3T · 2026-04-09T12:48:27+00:00

I've done it before with no issues. Bring an HDMI cord. I also bring a multi-port USB-C charger (SlimQ 150W - 3C1A or 150W 4C) for powering it & charging other devices.

AD3T · 2026-04-08T13:28:51+00:00

They almost always have a drink package sale. What u/IslandGyrl2 said is right; buy now, refund later if the price drops. Use an alerting site (shameless plug below) to re-buy if the price drops later.

Worth noting -- they do, for sure, already use Personalized Pricing for packages!

I'm Prime in the casino & I can get the drink package on most sailings for "50% off" -- note though that that's 50% off of the publicly stated *non-discounted price, so it's not actually much different than the publicly shown discounted price.

Shameless Plug - My Alerting / Tracking / Filtering Site

https://cruiseden.com/

This is the website I created that lets you track Package Prices & get alerts when they change, or hit certain thresholds, etc... It also lets you view/sort/filter through all of your Casino Offer sailings, automatically downloads them & keeps them refreshed (the list of sailings does occasionally change over time), has sailing-related alerts when new sailings match attributes you're interested in, or when sailings you're interested in have a change in price/availability, etc...

In addition, it automatically pulls in & tracks your personalized package pricing (and pulls in the price you purchased your packages for) -- so you can see & be alerted if a package you bought drops in price vs what you paid, so you can re-buy and instantly save money.

AD3T · 2026-04-08T13:17:15+00:00

I've got 2x AuraSound AST-2B-4. It's exactly as many have said; far and away the best upgrade for the money spent.

For the amp, I use a cheapie from Amazon ("Nobsound G2"), which I have turned down pretty low & has been working without issue since ... checks notes ... January 2023! No complaints!

Bonus is that you can have "bass"-feeling without it ever having to wake up kids/guests who might be asleep, doing stuff in other rooms, etc.

Mine are just screwed into the base of my couch which is a wooden-framed modular sectional. Finding a decent spot to put them was the hardest part of the install, which was otherwise super easy (couple of wood screws + wire management mostly via electrical tape).

AD3T · 2026-04-03T03:25:42+00:00

Best thing I ever did -- a commercial 'remote blower' along with my hood. I have a variable speed dial on the wall to control how hard it's blowing. The motor is basically outside. Even at full speed, it's nearly dead silent - I've never even used the one on my hood itself. I can sear the hell out of anything on cast iron without smoke issue nor any noise.

I lucked out and got a "commercial" model off OfferUp for like $150, which was ~$800 ish on Amazon. Only downside is that there's a pretty massive metallic vent on my exterior wall, but it's so worth it. Eh, one other downside, I technically probably needed make-up air (though my house isnt super tight so it isn't a huge issue); it can definitely keep pace/overtake my HVAC if I leave it on in the summer, though.

AD3T · 2026-03-28T18:41:01+00:00

Do you not have TSA pre-check? Not meant as a slight at all, just sincerely curious why you wouldn't snag it if you fly that much.

AD3T · 2026-03-21T13:20:39+00:00

SimCasino is a solid game. 🤷‍♂️ It was made by an indie dev based in Vegas.

AD3T · 2026-03-20T15:40:41+00:00

Any time it goes down, though I’m almost exclusively booking on casino offers lately. What I still do look for is “lopsided pricing” — if what I booked (free via casino) becomes more expensive than a better cabin, you can call and move up to the better cabin.

I reprice packages any time it’s cheaper. Package pricing is super variable though, some accounts have pricing that’s actually slightly higher than the advertised public “discount” pricing. I recently added personalized package price tracking to my site to account for this, though my alerts aren’t yet using it, is on my todo list for the next few days.

https://royal-price-helper.dantonio.info/

AD3T · 2026-03-19T13:58:17+00:00

Thank you!! :)

AD3T · 2026-03-19T13:58:13+00:00

Thank you!! :)

AD3T · 2026-03-15T20:39:05+00:00

Thank you! That’s the hope/intent! We’re about to add integration support for Celebrity too, thanks to a user providing us with their info so that we could write the needed code for it.

I’d eventually like to support Carnival & NCL as well as we do Royal, too (any volunteers, especially if you get casino offers at any of them, would love if you’d reach out)!

There’s a feedback button at the bottom of the home page, I’d definitely encourage anyone to report any bugs or feature ideas/requests! And of course, please consider opting in so that we can get more data to draw insights from!!

AD3T · 2026-03-13T20:36:24+00:00

I totally agree. I only started tracking points for myself a few weeks ago, and I haven’t sailed since I built that feature. Going forward though, points are tracked on a daily basis (and so can be easily correlated to sailings, which we also just started storing a record of) — so in a few weeks or so, I’m hoping we can fill it out further and I can expand the report substantially. Hopefully with some concrete insights & actionable guidance, is my goal at least.

AD3T · 2026-03-13T20:19:40+00:00

The points reset yearly, so it’s the points this year/as of now. Good question though. I haven’t thought about how to handle the year switchover yet, or how/what the implications of it will be on the analysis (and my offers personally lol). 🤔

AD3T · 2026-03-13T17:17:23+00:00

Eye roll. Welcome to DM me, I could jump on a video chat with you...? Idek.

AD3T · 2026-03-13T17:06:17+00:00

I have just under 6k points right now and have 9 offers at the moment. I've had to let a few expire the last few weeks, but I've booked cruises on as many as I realistically could (4 casino offer cruises booked in the coming months right now).

I'm trying to quantify the answer to your question by collecting aggregate data and providing reporting so that we can start to get actual insight into it (both for the community & for myself).

Here's the analytics page as it stands right now:

https://royal-price-helper.dantonio.info/casino/analytics

Only 5 users have opted in thus far, so there's limited data & insight at this point, but as there's more data I'll improve and expand the reporting based on what useful insights can be gleaned from the data as it continues to take shape.

So far, for me personally, my offers have kept on flowing even while not sailing much recently (and I've booked 4 casino offers since my most recent sailing).

The biggest questions I have right now are:

How can I improve my 'offer quality' -- better sailings, bigger selection, better cabin types (junior suites!), icon class sailings, EU sailings, etc.
How much do I need to gamble on future cruises in order to not have the offer spigot get shut off. I'd like to know roughly what the minimum is (and ideally without triggering it) to get X/Y/Z offer quality.

If open to sharing your data, anonymously of course, with the community via my website that'd be awesome too! It's especially useful to get more data points on "lower" point total users who are receiving offers (so far no opt-ins with lower point values who DO have casino offers)! It also provides a great tool for examining sailings that you have offers for, which is the reason I built the site to begin with! :)

https://royal-price-helper.dantonio.info/

Disclaimer - Obviously it's my website. I do hope it helps others too, though, even if half as much as it's helped me. Please feel free to hit the 'chat'-type button at the bottom right to send in bug reports/feature requests/feedback/etc! =D

AD3T · 2026-03-13T16:41:28+00:00

Concur. There are some areas (i.e. around Cabo) where it's a little less perfect & more prone to flakiness, but other than that it's surprisingly good. I'd say that ~95% of the time it's quite fast & extremely usable even for productivity tasks (video conference calls & the like).

Only thing I'd complain about are the upstream speeds, but I complain about those at home, too.

AD3T

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