Royal Caribbean's Thanks & Thrills Sale starts today, which offers bonus instant savings.

Guests can save up to $100 instantly when they book Royal Caribbean cruises between November 16 - 20, 2017 11:59 p.m. EST on sailings departing on or after December 16, 2017.

The Thanks & Thrills sale offers

• 50% off cruise fare of second guest who must be booked in the same stateroom as a first guest who books at full fare
• 25% cruise fare savings for 3rd guests and higher booked in the same stateroom as the first two qualifying guests
• Thanks and Thrills sale provides instant savings determined by category booked and sailing length:
  • $25 savings for Interior and Ocean View on sailings 5 nights or less
  • $50 savings for Balconies and $75 savings for Suites on sailings 5 nights and less
  • $50 savings for Interior and Ocean View on sailings 6 nights and longer
  • $75 savings for Balconies
  • $100 savings for Suites on sailings 6 nights or longer

Deck the Holidays and Thanks and Thrills offer exclude China departures.

BOGO offer is combinable with NRDB OBC, promotional OBCs and instant savings, NextCruise offers, restricted discounts (for example, Senior, Resident, Military), Crown and Anchor discounts and Shareholder Benefits. Deck the Holidays and Thanks and Thrills are combinable with each other, NextCruise offers, NRDB OBC, and restricted discounts (for example, Senior, Resident, Military) but is not combinable with Shareholder benefits and Crown and Anchor discounts. BOGO50 bookings made for China departures are combinable with NextCruise offers and Crown and Anchor balcony/suites discounts only. All offers are not combinable with any other offer or promotion, including, but not limited to, Standard Group, Interline, Travel Agent, Travel Agent Friends and Family, Weekly Sales Events, Net Rates.

Offer available to residents of United States and Canada.

Royal Caribbean cruise ships offer a variety of specialty restaurant choices, and guests have the option of making a reservation in advance before embarkation day. Regardless of when your cruise is, it is always a good idea to book ahead to secure a day and time for your meal. 

If you wait until you board, you will find that you have less options when it comes to day and time, especially if you are booking or a large group!

Here is an overview of how to book a specialty restaurant meal for your upcoming Royal Caribbean cruise.

How to make a reservation online

Guests can make specialty restaurant reservations prior to their cruise up until two days before your sailing date. 

Keep in mind that Royal Caribbean does not allow specialty dining reservations to be made until you reach amount of days that are left until your cruise. If you do not see the option to reserve specialty restaurants, check back later.

In order to make specialty restaurant reservations online, you will need to pay any cover charges that may exist at the time of booking, meaning that if the cover charge is $50 per person, this will have to be paid in full in order to confirm the booking. If you decide to cancel before embarkation, you will receive a refund.

Booking specialty restaurants in advance offers you the opportunity to lock in exact day and times for meals as well as being able to space out the total cost of the cruise.

Log in to your online account

The first step in booking a Royal Caribbean specialty restaurant is to go to RoyalCaribbean.com and click sign in from the top right navigation. 

Log in with your Royal Caribbean username and password

You will need to have an account with Royal Caribbean (they are free to create) and have linked your upcoming cruise with your account. We will not cover how to do this in this article, but I will assume you have done this earlier.

Once logged in, click on "plan my cruise" for the cruise you want book a specialty restaurant during

This will open up the Cruise Planner, which is where you will be able to browse the specialty restaurants and other cruise add-ons for your sailing. 

From the top navigation, click on "dining"

When you select the "dining" tab, you then see all of the specialty restaurants onboard your ship. After selecting the restaurant of your choice, you will be able to read more about the restaurant, see a sample menu, and get pricing details. This is also where you can book specialty dining packages if you want to bundle meals together for less than paying for each individually. 

We keep an archive of Royal Caribbean specialty restaurant menus for your reference.

Read the description of the restaurant, menu and more and when you are ready, click the "reserve" button

Once you have added the reservation to the cart, you will select which guests in your booking will be joining you. Just click on each guest's name to add them to the reservation.  

Optionally, you can add other guests from another reservation.  For this feature, you just need their last name and reservation number.

This is also where you will select the date and time you want your reservation to be. To help you keep track of what is going on each day, each day will say either "cruising" or the port of call that you will be docked in. 

When you are satisfied with the date you picked, click "add to cart." 

Check out or continue shopping

At this point, you have successfully added your reservation to your shopping cart and can either continue shopping and add other items to your shopping cart, or click "continue checkout" and enter your payment information to finish your purchase.

How to make a reservation onboard your Royal Caribbean cruise

If you are on your cruise or have less than two days until you go on your Royal Caribbean cruise, then you will need to make a reservation for the specialty restaurants onboard your cruise. Before getting excited about everything else, this should be one of the first things that you do once onboard, if you have yet to do so. 

You can book any specialty restaurant from the following locations:

• Any specialty restaurant
• Guest Services
• From your stateroom television
• Royal Caribbean mobile application

Specialty dining packages 

If you are booking a specialty dining package, you will not be able to make your reservations online. Instead, you will need to do make them on embarkation day. 

Essentially, Royal Caribbean uses the dining packages to fill up unsold reservations at their restaurants. You will save money with a package; however, you lose some of the convenience of being able to select exactly what day and time you want to eat at in advance.

Reservations for specialty dining go pretty quickly, so try to get onboard the ship as early as possible to take advantage of the greatest flexibility. As mentioned earlier, you can make reservations at any specialty restaurant onboard, so you will not have to visit each individually. 

Related: 11 reasons to get as early a check-in time as possible for your cruise

Helpful Tips

• Any dining reservations you make online via the Cruise Planner are fully refundable. If you change your mind or want to change restaurants or even dates, it is easy enough to cancel and rebook.
• Do not make specialty reservations for children. Children between the ages of 0-5 are complimentary and ages 6-12 are half the adult price.
  • Royal Caribbean recommends making a reservation for all guests who wish to dine. Adult price will be applied for all guests regardless of age; the difference between the adult price and child price will be refunded in the form of a refundable onboard credit (unless booked with non-refundable credit, in which case OBC will be non-refundable).
• If your cruise is too far out, you may not see dining reservations available.  Keep checking back closer to your sail date.  There is no set amount of days prior to a cruise when specialty restaurants appear, so check periodically.

For more Royal Caribbean dining information, such as what food is included with your cruise, drink package options, dining packages, and more, visit our Royal Caribbean food overview page.

Our newest podcast episode is out to help give you a quick "audio escape" to a Royal Caribbean cruise!

Episode 224 is available for downloading, which provides an overview of Royal Caribbean's big tech reveal that occured last week.

Matt had the opportunity to try out some of the new technology Royal Caribbean will be rolling out to its ships over the next couple of years and shares his thoughts on the implications of this next-gen tech.

Here’s the podcast page for Episode 224. And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast via RSS, Stitcher or on iTunes!

Take a listen and as always, let us know what you think! Please rate and review the podcast on iTunes and leave your comments below!

U.S. News & World Reports published its Best Cruises Lines 2018, and Royal Caribbean came away with the top honor of being the Best Cruise Line for the Money.

Royal Caribbean also came in second place for Best Cruise Lines for Families, Best Cruise Lines in the Caribbean and 8th place for Best Cruise Lines in the Mediterranean.

U.S. News & World Reports compiles its rankings based on "expert evaluations of cruise ship quality, reputation among travelers, results from health assessments conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other factors such as price class and itinerary offerings."

"There are a variety of cruise lines to consider when planning a vacation, and the Best Cruise Lines rankings offer insights to make that decision a little easier," said Gwen Shearman, travel editor at U.S. News. "By highlighting the best excursions, amenities and activities available on board for family vacations and romantic getaways alike, readers can narrow down their search based on their ideal vacation. If you're looking for a specific cruise line experience, we can help you find it."

Spark Cooperative launched a new toolset that has one simple goal: revolutionize the way cruise lines plan the onboard guest experience.

Spark's SET software suite is designed to let a cruise line utilize models and visualizations of the guest experience to cater to guest segments. Once experience plans are made, brands can run game-changing analytics to reveal a number of insights, such as where they can reduce associated resource costs, and how best to deliver experiences for all types of climates and scenarios.

"Traditionally, in the 80s, 90s, and even early 2000s, there was really kind one type of cruiser, and it was really easy to kind of plan the six o'clock, eight o'clock dinner, and the six o'clock, eight o'clock show. These early cruisers were really satisfied with the way that cruise lines planned ahead for them," said Joshua Belz, Principal, Spark Cooperative. "Then NCL introduced Freestyle cruising, which was revolutionary at the time, and has really spread through the industry. . .What SET is going to do for cruise brands, and resort and hospitality brands that compete on experience, is think through the day of all of their different segments simultaneously."

"It has gotten to a point now where everyone expects so much from these brands that rely on experience, that you really need to segment your populations," said Ronnie Farzad, Principal, Spark Cooperative. "What SET does for these brands is actually allow them to spend a significant amount of time up front planning for those processes and planning for those people who are going to show up at the pier, but it basically takes all the guess work on the adjustments they have to make on a cruise by cruise basis during rain-or-shine scenarios, or when itineraries change.  They experience design up front, and it creates all the tools for their teams to be able to actually execute that on the go."

SET offers flexible plans to span the marketplace: from international enterprises with multiple brands and properties to single-property portfolios. The software comes with responsive and reliable support, and because it’s web-based, it can be accessed from anywhere at any time.

What this software aims to do is attempt to disrupt process that has been done traditionally by historical experience, and instead infuse data and analytics into the modeling and simulation tool to give cruise lines an operational plan.

Belz talked about the impetus for SET is as much a market demand today as it will be going forward, "Just looking at the roadmap of the industry, so many ships coming online in the next 10 years, so many more guest experiences, way more complex and exciting demographics coming onboard.  The industry is going to be hungry for a way to address these new cruises."

Farzad explained, “For hospitality companies, carrying forward experiences delivered to the previous properties worked for a period of time. In the experience economy, brands are asking how can we differentiate further? And that’s exactly what we want to do. We want to make it a data-driven and design-driven process.”

Royal Caribbean released new information about select 2019-2020 Caribbean sailings and when guests can expect to begin booking these adventures.

Royal Caribbean Crown & Anchor Society members can begin booking sailings on November 14, 2017, with the general public available to begin booking on November 15, 2017.

You can view each ship's sailings here:

• Allure of the Seas
• Freedom of the Seas
• Harmony of the Seas
• Liberty of the Seas
• Oasis of the Seas
• Symphony of the Seas

The opening schedule for the 2019-2020 sailings is as follows

• Short Caribbean Summer 2019 - Winter 2020: Week of November 20, 2017
• Northeast, Canada & Bermuda: Summer 2019: Week of December 4, 2017
• Europe Phase I & Alaska: Summer 2019: Week of December 11, 2017
• Remaining deployment: Spring 2018

Heavy electrical company ABB announced it will deliver its first fuel cell system to be piloted on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.  This will be the first fuel cell system to provide an energy source for a luxury cruise ship.

The pilot installation, including control, converter and transformer technology from ABB, will generate 100 kW of energy, and has been fully developed, marinized, assembled and tested by ABB Marine & Ports. ABB selected an FCvelocity® proton exchange membrane (PEM) pure hydrogen fuel cell engine from Ballard Power Systems for its pilot system.

Fuel cells generate energy by exploiting an electrochemical reaction at the interface between the anode or cathode and the electrolyte membrane. They involve no combustion, converting fuel directly to electricity and heat.

"Our goal is to take the smoke out of the smokestacks", said Harri Kulovaara, Executive Vice President of Maritime and Newbuilding, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. "We are dedicated to innovation, continuous improvement, and environmental responsibility, and using fuel cell technology gives us the opportunity to deliver against all three of these pillars."

This test installation is part of Royal Caribbean's drive to include emissions-free fuel cell technology as part of the powering for its forthcoming Icon-class ships.

Actress and avid traveler Shay Mitchell is Royal Caribbean's "Adventurist," and recently shared a number of video shorts that show off the kind of fun to be had on a Royal Caribbean cruise.

Having experiences Oasis of the Seas, Mitchell is featured in three new videos all about the kind of fun experiences onboard and onshore.

Known for her role in the TV drama, "Pretty Little Liars," Shay has made a name for herself visiting some incredible destinations around the world, from hot-air ballooning over Morocco to skydiving in Dubai.

Happy Sunday! Temperatures may be dropping, but there is plenty of Royal Caribbean news to share.  This is your weekly summary of all the Royal Caribbean news from this past week, perfectly fitted for your consumption.

It was a busy news week for Royal Caribbean, beginning with a major announcement early in the week with 2019-2020 deployments.

Royal Caribbean teased for a few days its big announcement, and then revealed a number of deployment changes coming.  This includes Ovation of the Seas offering cruises to Alaska, moving of Harmony of the Seas to Port Canaveral, and short cruises on a pair of Voyager class ships.

The newly announced itineraries will go on sale over the next few weeks, with the remaining 2019-2020 sailings to be announced sometime next year.

Royal Caribbean News

• Royal Caribbean announced new fleetwide technology innovations coming soon.
• Construction formally began this week on Spectrum of the Seas.
• Royal Caribbean released a new video of Spectrum of the Seas' keel laying ceremony.
• Royal Caribbean reported record third quarter earnings.
• We shared some interesting anecdotes from Royal Caribbean's leadership.
• We shared a list of the five most exciting Royal Caribbean cruises of 2018.

Royal Caribbean Podcast

The 223rd episode of the Royal Caribbean Blog Podcast is now available, which talks about cruising from Port Everglades.

In this episode, Matt talks about how to get to the terminal, parking, and everything you should know if you are cruising from Fort Lauderdale.

Please feel free to subscribe via iTunes or RSS, and head over to rate and review the podcast on iTunes if you can! We’d appreciate it.

Royal Caribbean Around the Internet

Cruise Radio released a new podcast that talks about Royal Caribbean's tech announcement.

Cruise Critic reported the new Port Tampa Bay terminal is open and ready to accomodate Royal Caribbean ships.

Cruise and Ferry has a look at the cruise line bartenders competing in Bacardi's cocktail competition.

TheStreet has Jim Cramer's takeaways from Royal Caribbean's third quarter earnings.

Cruise Habit covered Royal Caribbean's tech announcement.