I was one cruise away from making it to Royal Caribbean's highest loyalty status, and I paid for an ultra-luxurious suite to celebrate the occasion.
Around a year ago, I saw a path to reach Crown and Anchor Society’s top loyalty level, Pinnacle Club, but I knew I would need a few sailings to be booked in suites. While sailing in a suite you get double points, but you can get triple points per night if you book a suite solo.
With a little bit of organization, I was able to line everything up perfectly for a 7-night Oasis of the Seas sailing. I picked this sailing because I could combine reaching the magic number of 700 cruise points and celebrating the Royal Caribbean Blog group cruise.
Originally, I booked a Grand Suite, which is an incredible cabin. However, I was looking at some rates on the Star Class cabins and came across the Star Loft Suite.
Thanks to my loyalty benefit of a reduced single supplement rate, booking the Star Class suite for just one person came out to be $11,693.
The catch with booking a Star Class suite is I was planning to sail with my family, so I came up with a strategy of booking myself solo in the Star Class suite and booking them in the cheapest inside cabin I could find for around $1,500.
While that’s certainly a lot of money for a 7-night cruise, I knew I wanted to celebrate this milestone celebration in a big way. So booking a suite like this certainly was going to check that box!
What Royal Caribbean does to celebrate reaching Pinnacle
Around two days prior to boarding, the ship's Loyalty Ambassador emailed me to congratulate me on reaching this top status and asked me to provide:
- A photo of myself
- How many years I've been sailing
- My favorite ship
- My favorite port
- My number of sailings
On the cruise you reach 700 points, there's a special event that recognizes your achievement at the Top Tier party. There were seats reserved for my family in the front row.
During the event they invited us on stage to get a photo with some officers, and I asked my Royal Genie to join us for the photo.
They hand you a few items for the photo, but our kit with all of our Pinnacle Club materials will be mailed to us in 30 days. This includes name tags, luggage tags along with a few more items.
We did get a printed photo delivered to my cabin, along with a certificate for a free 7-night Caribbean cruise!
After the top tier event was over, I went straight to the Schooner bar for a celebration toast of champagne with some friends.
Having a Genie was a great way to make this cruise extra special
Around an hour after, we went back to our suite to find the room decorated by my Genie and a fun celebration cake.
While having a Genie during this week is certainly not necessary, it provided a little extra fun with the celebration and of course the cabin was a huge perk.
Our Genie was a huge help all week: private escort off the ship, holding seats at shows, arranging dinners or just sending up afternoon Starbucks.
I closed up our week by renting the Owner’s Box at Playmakers for $200, which the Genie arranged and it came with beer and a lot of food!
Since most of us all had the ultimate dining package, we just kept ordering just about everything on the menu while watching four hours of college football.
