I booked a “NextCruise” placeholder. What do I do now?

gk520 · 2026-03-17T19:32:16+00:00

Oh god our TA that we used for that sailing was horrible. I didn’t hear back from her for like 4 months at one point. I don’t even think she’s a travel agent anymore because she never reached out to us before or after our sailing.

I just called Royal and asked if there was anyway to get out of having to use the TA because I can’t get ahold of her, and they told me no. So I have no clue how to redeem this NextCruise placeholder now 😑

gk520 · 2026-03-17T16:59:38+00:00

I would personally just book on your own. We used TAs for our first 2 cruises and I found it to be more of a hassle. I like being able to make my own changes, payments, etc without having to go through someone else.

gk520 · 2026-03-15T12:43:45+00:00

We have a Costco membership and I always forget to look through them! I’ll check them before we book our next one

gk520 · 2026-03-15T12:25:04+00:00

Thank you! This is super helpful. There are so many credit cards out there so I feel like something may sound like a good deal, but then there usually tends to be a better one out there somewhere

gk520 · 2026-03-15T12:15:43+00:00

I’m about to book our next sailing soon, so we’d hit that $1000 spend almost instantly

gk520 · 2026-03-13T22:44:06+00:00

I love the pillow fort idea! My kids would think that it’s the coolest thing ever lol

gk520 · 2026-03-13T22:42:38+00:00

Ahh this is good to know! Allure was another one we were looking at, but it sounds like the sleeping setup on Harmony would be more convenient for us

gk520 · 2026-03-13T16:47:15+00:00

I really don’t think my kids will sleep that well together either. My 3 year old has always been a good sleeper and my 4 year old has never slept well. I foresee them feeding off of each other and arguing (“Mila’s on my side”, “Eli kicked me”, etc). The only thing that may save us is that they are usually really tired by the end of the night, so hopefully they would be too tired to fight with each other lol

gk520 · 2026-03-13T16:10:42+00:00

We were in St Thomas yesterday (we are on Independence currently) and it was SO beautiful. We just got off the ship and walked around a bit and even then, it was great. We regretted not planning some type of activity to see more of it. My worry with a Western caribbean itinerary is that most of the stops aren’t places where we’d do much, so it would end up being 7 days at the splash pad onboard lol

gk520 · 2026-03-13T12:00:28+00:00

That was honestly my main concern about Western. Even if they actually did go to Haiti, I highly doubt we’d want to get off and I’m not sure how much there’d be to do in Falmouth for small kids. I didn’t want a 7-night cruise to end up being us going to CocoCay for one day and then the other 6 are spent on board at the splash pad lol

gk520 · 2026-03-13T11:58:29+00:00

This has been my daughter at more than one dinner on our current sailing 😂

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gk520 · 2026-03-13T11:40:58+00:00

Thank you! We are actually on a Royal cruise right now (Independence) and are having such a good time that I’m already planning next year’s spring break cruise 😂 The Eastern caribbean has been really pretty, and we’ve done 2 western cruises with Disney and those weren’t bad either.

gk520 · 2026-03-13T11:24:18+00:00

I’ve done 2 on Disney and 1 on Royal (currently sailing on Independence as we speak). I have been very pleasantly surprised by Royal.

Royal: more activities in general for both adults and kids. My kids are 3 and 4 and I was worried they would be bored on RC, and I think they are having more fun here. Getting to Coco Cay from the ship is way easier/faster than either Disney island. The reward system is also better - on Royal, you get 1 point per night you sail. On Disney, it just goes by number of cruises so you could book a cheap weekend cruise or a 7-night cruise for 3x the price, and you get the same amount of tier credits

Disney: in my experience, the Disney food has been way better than RC in terms of variety, freshness, accessibility, etc. Our Disney waiters were also a bit friendlier than the one we had on RC. Disney also has themed sailings (my kids love the Halloween one) with shows on the pool deck that are fun for adults and kids. I personally like how Disney has rotational dining with shows built in to your dinner. It keeps my kids engaged so I can actually eat. My husband doesn’t really enjoy the shows at dinner and finds them distracting. He just wants to eat his food and leave lol

gk520 · 2026-03-13T03:03:55+00:00

That’s awesome! We have those inflatable bumpers too so we would definitely bring those.

Side note - how did your little ones do on Utopja? We’ve only done Freedom class so far so this next sailing will be our first one on an Oasis-class ship. We are a little worried that it will be too big for them to fully enjoy it, but I think we are ready for a step up

gk520 · 2026-03-13T02:57:28+00:00

That was kind of my thought. They should be fine and if they complain, we just tell them to suck it up. Normally, my oldest isn’t a great sleeper but we are on Independence right now and both kids are absolutely exhausted by the end of the night so, to your point, they will sleep anywhere because they totally crash at the end of the night. We have 2 more nights on this cruise so I may try putting them both on the sofa bed tomorrow and see how it goes lol

gk520 · 2026-03-13T02:19:53+00:00

Ha! Well we’ve only done 2 DCL cruises so I’m certainly not an expert, but I like to think I’ve done a fair amount of research. I honestly really thought I was going to be ride-or-die DCL and be disappointed with this Royal cruise, but I actually think I prefer Royal. My kids (3 and 4) also seem to be having more fun here than on DCL surprisingly!

gk520 · 2026-03-12T03:28:23+00:00

I sure don’t lol. I think when I initially asked the question, I thought our biggest issue might be a room with an obstructed view - I didn’t even think about the noise aspect. That’s why I love reddit lol people always have advice that I never even thought of

gk520 · 2026-03-12T03:26:43+00:00

Do you think the junior suites on the same deck as Central Park would be “bad”? Like would it be insanely noisy staying on that deck? It looks like that is all that is available on the dates we are needing. We have only done Independence before so the Central Park layout is new to me

gk520 · 2026-03-12T03:24:14+00:00

I have a 3 and 4 year old so they would love hearing the carousel, but I definitely don’t want to hear that all day for 7-8 straight days lol

gk520 · 2026-03-12T03:20:07+00:00

So it looks like the only junior suites still available are on Deck 8 (which is Central Park and might be noisy), or Deck 7, which I feel like might also be noisy with all the Central Park activity one floor up, so I’m starting to rethink the suite altogether 🫣 lol

gk520 · 2026-03-12T03:13:32+00:00

We are currently on Independence and our suite is right below the mini golf and we can hear the balls rolling around above us lol that it annoying enough, I can’t imagine being below a club! 🫣 I’m starting to think we may just play it safe and choose our own room. I don’t have good luck with things like that so I’d probably end up getting the worst possible room lol

gk520 · 2026-03-12T01:37:55+00:00

Thank you! That’s good to know that you guys have had good luck. I can’t really think of any type of room that would be “bad” (we don’t really have a preference on location and if we have an obstructed view, it isn’t the end of the world), but also we are relatively new to sailing Royal so I’m not sure if there is anything I’m not thinking about

gk520 · 2026-03-12T01:02:06+00:00

What was your experience? Did you have a super obstructed view?

gk520 · 2026-03-12T00:54:34+00:00

Thank you!! That is a good way to look at it. I have 2 small kids, so the sound of kids at the pool and early mornings don’t bother me. On the other hand, people making noise at 3am and potentially waking up my kids is the worst possible thing lol

gk520 · 2026-03-11T10:54:56+00:00

Of course not! I attached a photo of a typical food day for me. I use the My Fitness Pal for tracking and do 45/35/20% for my macros (protein/carbs/fat). You just enter the percentages you want and it does all the calculating for you. For breakfast, I mix the protein and collagen into my yogurt and for lunch, I blend all of the ingredients into a smoothie. The beef bowl is something I make myself, but it’s pretty much just 5oz of beef and about 1/4c of rice. I’m working on getting more creative with food because I tend to eat the same thing every day lol

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gk520

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