Welcome to the Royal Caribbean blog podcast, your weekly look into the world of rural Caribbean cruising.

I'm your house, Matt Hodgeberg, and this is episode of number 511.

It's happened yet again.

The podcast's email inbox has gotten too full.

Yeah, we're starting to fall really behind on some of these questions,

and I wanted to dedicate this week's episode to you.

Here we go.

As you all know, I love when you send me emails to read on the podcast because it allows

us to touch upon a variety of topics, but I get so many questions sometimes that the queue

starts to build up, and it's okay to have a backlog. That's good, but I don't want it to get too long to the point where I'm reading questions from like three or four months ago. It's not quite that bad yet, but I would prevent us for getting there and so this week's episode is all about answering your questions. Our first email is from Josh. The right time at my lives in California, and we recently found out that we love

cruises.

We have a two and a four-year-old, and I'm looking forward to booking future cruises.

Sailing out of Galveston is significantly cheaper than Florida and closer to us, but it tends

to have older ships.

In the case I'm looking at, I'm considering sailing on Harmony of the Seas.

Are the newer ships significantly better than the older ones in the same class? And do you think it's worth it to fly to Miami and do wonder of the seas or do you think there's enough difference that my wife and I and kids won't notice the difference than ships? Josh, the answer to your question kind of depends on the ship. Harmony is not that old. I mean, it is, but it's better wonder, I suppose,

but obviously relatively speaking, but it's still a great ship. You know, if you're talking about other ships sail out of Galveston, you know, depending on the seas, it could be a grandeur, or it could be a voyager or an adventure of the seas, right? That's a different story. But when you're We're talking about the Oasis class of which Harmony is one.

I don't think it's worthwhile, especially if they are significantly right? That's a different story. But when you're talking about the Oasis class of which Harmony is one,

I know I don't think it's worthwhile, especially if they are significantly cheaper. If the price

difference were negligible, you can make a good argument that you should plot in Miami. But

if there's a significant discount for going on Harmony out of Galveston, I would definitely do Harmon,

and I love that chip. I really think the reason that you might want to consider Florida departure as opposed to Galveston is the it because if you're selling it to Galveston, you're doing Western Caribbean and that's it. Now listen, you've ever done that a lot or don't mind it? That's fine. But a lot of people usually kind of get sick of it after a while. They prefer to do something else and there isn't really any variation with those itineries. So whether or not it's important to you is a different story. But when you're comparing Harmony to Wonder in this situation, no, I don't think it's worthwhile for you to spend the extra money to go. Certainly I would recommend you do wonder at some point because there are some really neat upgrades and features they've added to the ship that you won't fight on harmony but I would recommend you do wonder at some point because there are some really neat upgrades and features they've added to the ship that you won't fight in harmony, but I wouldn't characterize it as a negative or something to the point where you really need to reconsider your option. Now if we're talking again about an older ship, like a, you know, a vision class ship or a radiance class ship or a voyager there's more of an argument there

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