Expressing gratitude, lots of blessings in my life

We booked the Royal Carribean cruise months ago in late February, we chose balcony stateroom at a price of $750 per pax and days after that, I kind of regretted not going to suites as there'll be access to lounges and certain privileges on board and so on. I waited till early May, which was a month before we set sail and placed my bid to get our room bumped up. Weeks after I placed the bid, Phase 2 (HA) happened in mid may and most people started canceling their cruise trip, so I figured out it'll be much easier to get bumped up in this case. Of course, I also pondered if its worth topping up or even if we should go ahead with the cruise as many people were canceling their trips since it's not worth the price without all the restaurant experiences. RC also canceled off trips of those in big groups as they have to operate at a 25% capacity during Phase 2 HA as opposed to 50% capacity when they took in the bookings.

Anyway, as mentioned in my previous post, we decided to go ahead as we like good food but food experiences is not everything to us. I also adjusted my bid in the RoyalUp accordingly, as I would not want to top up that much anymore since we cant be sipping wine in the lounge whole day long during our trip. Maybe the lounge is also non existent now. In fact, I'm also not sure if Suite dining is any difference from other staterooms, we'll only find out next week.  

We got bumped up! 

As mentioned earlier, there is a higher chance of getting bumped up as families originally occupying the suite will not be going for the trip anymore (not more than 2 pax rule). I was still pleasantly surprised and excited to receive the SMS that my card was already charged for the bid I've placed and after checking my email, I realised we got bumped up to the Sky level kind of Grand Suite and there'll even be 2 bedrooms for us. We are paying extra $500 per pax for the extra space for the 4 nights and I felt it's still quite worth it as there'll be free wifi package for us in this case, and of course I guess this is the one and only time we'll be able to book such a big room on cruise. The room is more than twice the size of our original stateroom and I guess we'll appreciate the extra space since we'll be spending a lot of time in the room nuahing.

Complimentary fruits and food

Super big and spacious bedroom with city view

It's so big with sparse furnishing that the sofa looked lonely

View from the room

The living room area for us

Garden view from the living room area

Even the complimentary bottled water was branded

Spacious toilet with bathtub 

Speaking of suites, we actually stayed in MBS Orchid Suite during our staycation in March and April. and it was also another very blessed experience for us. P had been getting those MBS free stays and so far we had been getting 2 nights stay per month since August 2020. They even gave us 6 free nights stay this month and we happily utilised all of it. The only time we paid for MBS staycation was in September 2020 when we did not get the offer and we had no idea the following months we'll have lots of it, so we bought over one night stay from P's friend. With P's connection, we were upgrade to Orchid Suite for 4 nights this year. It was a nice surprise as March was my birthday month and there were even staff waiting for us and we were brought right up the room once we arrived.

Living room and bedroom together

Spacious bathroom again

Only city view

We preferred this layout as everything was together

We tried two different room configuration of Orchid Suite for the two months and I guess we were very lucky as we did not pay a single cent for that. I've stopped trying out different restaurants for our MBS staycations after January as we also found our favourite steak restaurant somewhere in Robertson Quay. P first brought me to the restaurant on my birthday and the steak was really good and juicy although it was not wagyu grade. The price is also reasonable so we've been back almost monthly.

Menu outside the restaurant