boarding photo
As far as posing for pictures goes, cruising with my sisters is quite the opposite of cruising with my husband. When it’s just the two of us we avoid photographers like the plague, but when cruising with my sisters we always buy a photo package. With most lines the best deal is generally in whatever is the biggest package that they offer. Royal Caribbean’s biggest package is 100 photos. Purchased online pre-cruise it was less than half the price buying it onboard would have been on this cruise. This is a digital package, not printed photos. Newer ships like Quantum of the Seas (which is nowhere near Royal’s newest having launched in 2014) don’t even display printed photos like the older ships did. The walls of racks full of photos that mostly ended up in the garbage since nobody bought them have been replaced by a room full of computer monitors where you use your key card to bring up pictures of people in your cabin. The package covers anyone in that room, but if you are traveling with people in other cabins they will also be included in the photos for your cabin as long as at least one person from your cabin is in the photo and that is the cabin number that you give the photographer when they ask for it. Which was nice since my two nieces were in a different cabin from my mom, sisters, and I, but are still included in some of our photos.
standard poses
In the evenings on Quantum of the Seas there were always photo booths somewhere around the ship, even when it wasn’t formal night. Of course on formal nights there were more of them because more people want photos then. The photograpers all had the same standard poses they wanted to use each time. They generally took one with everyone standing there, some sort of hugging photo, one with hands on hips, and one where everyone was touching each other in some way. Usually they had people facing each other in a line, but sometimes they did facing away instead.
something different
After awhile we got bored of the same poses every time and asked some of the photographers to do something different. Some were happy to suggest a variety of other poses or let us do our own thing, probably as bored of the standard poses as we were. Others did not want to deviate at all. Just talking the one at the stairway into letting us each stand on a different stair instead of all bunched up on a couple of them was quite a chore. He really wasn’t happy when some of us added a little more flair to it than just standing there. The one at Wonderland really got into it, with some Queen Linda photos by herself that then morphed into Barbara and I bowing down to the queen. The one at a woodsy backdrop had fun with it too, with the pose shown one that she suggested.
same photo on two different backgrounds
Most of the backdrops are a screen with that background that you stand in front of and that’s what’s in the picture, but sometimes there’s just a green screen and they add in the background later. Most of the photos are just the photo, but things like the boarding photo and a few others during the cruise had fancy boarders added to them. There was one green screen where they put two different backgrounds on each photo taken there. These were separate pictures. I just combined them to take up less space in the blog.
dogsledding without any dogs, sled, or snow
One night there was a green screen with a box in front of it. It didn’t look like much at the time, but the photographer there said it would come out as dogsledding photos. She had each person pose with a hand in the air and both above the box, in a specific place so it would look like we were driving the dogsled. So we went dogsledding on a cruise ship with no dogs, no sled, and no snow.
the closest thing to a port photo was a bear by the buffet
Usually there’s a photographer outside the ship at each port stop, but on this cruise the closest thing was someone in a bear suit outside of the buffet at Icy Strait Point. We didn’t go to the buffet at the other ports so I don’t know if they had anything there for them. We have been on ships in the past where the photographer wanted people to stop on the actual gangway getting off the ship, which really stuffs up the disembarkation line, but when they are off to the side near the ship or somewhere within the port then people who want a photo can get one while those who don’t can easily just walk on by so that’s the best way. The other Royal Caribbean cruises we’ve taken had photographers out at the ports so I’m not sure why this one didn’t.
dining room photo
Dining room photos on the other hand are usually just annoying. They interrupt your meal to pose and the photos are rarely ever any good. Often not flattering to the people in them and the dining room is never the best setting for the background either. And really who wants a photo of themselves eating dinner? I kind of like this one though because of Barbara’s eyes and facial expression. She looks like she’s up to something other than just eating dinner.
photos from random wanderings
Barbara and I seemed to come across random photographers around the ship when it was just the two of us wandering about together so we have a few photos from that.
fake ship photo
You don’t even have to take a picture in front of the actual ship in order to get one because there’s always at least one time when the backdrop has the ship on it. This one was one of many different backdrops offered on a formal night. We did end up with quite a few photos in the same outfits since we often wandered from one backdrop to another after dinner. Since we had the photo package we wanted to make sure to get a bunch of pictures. This is the first time we actually went over the 100 and had to eliminate some. They send an email of the photos you chose, which you have a limited time to download, but I always get them on a flash drive even if I have to pay extra for it. They are better quality than the emailed ones, and all the ones selected will be there. When we were on Symphony of the Seas the email contained less than half of the photos we’d had taken. We hadn’t reached the full 100 that cruise so they gave us the flash drive for free, which was lucky since it had them all. Getting a flash drive used to be the only way to get the pictures so I suppose they went to emailing them to save themselves some money, though the price they charge for a photo package is certainly enough to include one.
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