Kingdom Konsultant Travel Blog

When counting down to your Royal Caribbean Cruise Line vacation, there are several milestones you'll experience such as booking excursions, reserving dining and entertainment options, final payment date and completing online check-in. Online check-in is one of the most exciting milestones because it means you are that much closer to setting sail on your cruise! We're sharing some tips and helpful information about the online check-in process so you're fully prepared before your next Royal Caribbean cruise.  Royal Caribbean's online check-in process begins 45 days prior to your sailing date. If you aren't sure what date that is, the Royal Caribbean app and website will list the exact date for you when you're signed in to your account and have linked your upcoming cruise reservation. Check-in opens shortly after midnight ship time so set a reminder on your calendar so you can complete the process as soon as possible.  You can complete online check-in through the R

One of the things that sets Disney Cruise Line apart from the competition is their unique "rotational dining" set up.  Your party, table mates, AND service team will actually rotate through three Main Dining Rooms (MDRs) throughout your cruise.  This way you get a change of scenery and a chance to experience multiple restaurants while on board!  This differs from traditional cruising where a ship would have one Main Dining Room for you to enjoy each night unless you booked specialty dining or headed to a buffet or quick service spot for the evening.  Those are both still options on a Disney Cruise, but it's exciting to see the new restaurant each night and then see how they pull together different themes later in the cruise. The five Disney ships in the fleet have slight variations on their Main Dining Rooms.  This post will cover the specifics for the Disney Magic.  You can expect one more casual, one more formal and one more "magical" dining experience on eac

I've spent both of my Cozumel port days at Playa Mia Resort. The first time was in 2018, where I did a cooking class before spending a couple hours at the beach with my adult only fellow travelers. Most recently, I went on a beach excursion on the Disney Magic in December 2022 with my 'Ohana sister and her two girls, ages 6 and 7. In 2018, we were up bright and early and had a small group that left right on time to our excursion. It was easy to stay together and our tour guide was great at pointing out places to have drinks or shop after our excursion, and the pathway to the bus was quite clear. In 2022, our excursion started officially at 10:45 and we were miraculously 15 minutes early and one of the first in line to wait. Which we did, for about 45 minutes. We were clearly waiting for exactly one late family for our excursion to start, which was a bit of a bummer, but it does happen sometimes. Once it was our time to go, it was a bit of a cluster to keep track of who was in o

While taking a cruise in November 2022 on the Disney Fantasy, I decided to book the Ultimate St. Thomas through the DCL app while onboard. This excursion started at the bright and early time of 8:15am. The wait to meet with our group in the Walt Disney Theater was notable. When we were told where to sit, we noticed the color of our sticker did not match the others and double checked with the Cast Member. It turns out he had accidentally placed us with the wrong excursion group. I'm mentioning this so if it happens to you, you know to double check as well. Cast Members are human too. We funneled into a group of open air taxis pretty quickly once off the ship. It is not a far walk off the pier and would be challenging to lose the group. The tour was comprised of three separate parts. The first was an island tour where our driver, Perry, told us about the various buildings we drove next to, a history of the island, and some fun facts. We were fascinated to learn that graffiti has a ma

Lucky for us, the Mayans were wrong in their prediction of the end of the world in 2012.   However, they were extremely successful thousands of years ago in building amazing temples and other buildings that formed the basis for large cities throughout the Yucatan Peninsula.   For those of you lucky enough to sail on a Western Caribbean Cruise with a stop at Costa Maya, you can see for yourself just how amazing these cities were. Most stops in Costa Maya last a short 4-5 hours, which is the perfect amount of time for an excursion to the Chacchoben Mayan City.   The tour starts off with a 1 hour ride aboard an air conditioned coach bus from the port through the jungle and farmlands of the area.   For many people, this is an eye opening bus ride through very poor and rural areas of Mexico.   These villages and rural areas are much different from what we are used to seeing in the resort areas of Mexico.   During the bus ride, your tour guide does an excellent job of providing bac

Wondering what to do when your Bahamian cruise stops in Nassau? Have other cruisers told you to stay on the ship? I recently went on a 3-night cruise aboard the Royal Caribbean Liberty of the Seas that stopped in Nassau. I tried the two most popular recommended activities: visiting the free Junkanoo Public Beach and the Blue Lagoon Island excursion.  On my first cruise to Nassau, I stayed onboard the ship. Once I started venturing out and doing excursions, I realized I was missing out on so many beautiful places and memorable experiences. My favorite excursion to date was with Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas! You can read about that here . On this recent cruise, I decided to try the Blue Lagoon Island Deluxe Beach Break. This was a beautiful island paradise. It was a short 30 minute boat ride from the pier, with views of Atlantis and celebrity homes along the way. We saw mansions belonging to Oprah, Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, to name a few. On the other side we saw local fishermen