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OK, I know this is WAAAY in the future, but these sorts of things have to planned out WAAAY in advance! On April 8, 2024, the Great North American Total Solar Eclipse will sweep across the continent, with one of the best potential viewing spots being a strip on the ocean in between New Brunswick and Newfoundland / Labrador. There will also be viewing spots running from central New Brunswick WSW down through Maine, Montreal, and northern New York state. We know that Royal did an Eclipse sailing for the last North American total eclipse in 2017; so even though this is further north and they don't normally sail that way so early in the year, I could see them making an exception. Especially if cruising is finally back to normal travel levels by then (and lord help us if it isn't!); they will probably see something like that as a HUGE draw for folks looking to see the eclipse without fighting for hotel space or a spot to view it. So what do y'all think? Should we start pressuring @Matt now to keep an eye out for such a cruise and get it on the GC board as soon as it appears? ? Could be on Empress out of Montreal, or maybe they'll do an early NE sailing out of Boston or NJ. Cape Liberty already has 7-night Bahamas sailings in April, so I'm betting they'll have at least one sailing for this last major total eclipse in North America for the next... I think 20 years or more?

Would be nice if they were rewarding those of us who have stuck it out and even scheduled and paid for additional cruises. Would put them on par with Norwegian who give drink packages, internet and other goodies to their loyal passengers.?? Realistically they will probably remove the "glitch" in their software soon and we can talk about the gimme that almost was. Geez I can't wait until we cruise again.

Joe, Thank you for your service! It takes a special person to service in the silent service!! Beat Army! This is something my wife and I have talked about doing. Take a transatlantic from Florida to Europe in March/April. Spend the 6 months or so traveling in Europe with a Euro rail pass and AIR B&B’s Then catch a transatlantic back to Florida in October/November. What a great way to travel.

Was never interested in the concept of cruising. Then my in-laws, who had taken the entire extended family on a couple trips to all-inclusives of their choosing let their four daughters select the next big family trip. They chose a cruise to Bermuda. Based on that experience, I went from "not interested" to "this is a great way to travel" rather quickly.

And here I tough we were special.

I hope this works for all of you. I think I was one of the last to be able to enjoy the "intern special" at $18. We sailed March 1 on Oasis. I don't currently have anything booked, but I am looking and dreaming. I need something to anticipate.

We have an upcoming cruise on Grandeur of the Seas at the end of March. I have been checking my cruise planner for the last week or so for different sales. It has been showing for the last week that we have purchased the DBP which we haven't. I am sure this will work itself out in the end, but who knows because only time will tell.

Depending on Cunard's timing, it is also possible that your return trip could connect with one of Cunard's "Around the World" cruises, and purchase a segment from London to Ft. Lauderdale (which usually stops in NYC on the way). Your travel agent could do some quick research or your could check Cunard's web site.

It won't get back to Florida but if Cunard still runs their weekly trans-atlantic, you could at least get back to NYC.

During my time in Royal Navy, I spent a lot of time in the Caribbean. So when my wife started suggesting a Caribbean Cruise, I was rather resistant. However, over the years I rather mellowed to the idea and when we approached a big birthday for her, I had an opportunity to book a 5 day western caribbean on Brilliance out of Tampa, so I took it. I also arranged for a suite at the Sheraton the night before boarding, all good. So we held Sheryls birthday partty on Saturday, and I presented her with luggage tags for her bags. This was it, happy days, I got it right... Err no... Remember this was Saturday, and boarding day was on Monday morning, apparently it takes more than 36 hours to pack for a cruise. Fortunately, not only am I the master packer, I had been insisting on shopping trips for a few weeks ahead of time or I would have been in deep doo doo. Suffice to say, we boarded Brilliance in Tampa and had a fantastic time. I was hooked. I had forgotten how amazing it is to be a sailor at sea. I could feel the ship coming alive, was able to second guess the manouvers, even to the point of knowing when speed could change. Heaven for me. Of course, despite being in an outboard cabin on Deck 3 amidships (I wanted the most stable part of the ship to avoid the potential for seasickness) the accomodations were rather impressive compared to the last time I had been at sea. We booked our next trip onboard and have never looked back. I am a convert.

Aren't you still teaching your narwhal students in April?

@coneyraven just reminded me of this classic. Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine.

This is my power, this is my curse

DS will be finishing first yr of college by then, heck yeh, DH and I would be in!

Count me in!!! I love that idea. We were on board Harmony in 2017 during the last eclipse and it was a memorable experience.

Outstanding idea ... we would be in

Star Class already can drink twice as much.

Yeah...due to Covid...drinks are on us!!! Woot!!

My 5/9/21 (hope) Oasis DBP dropped from $61 to $46 per day, which is the best I've seen in a long while. I cancelled and re-purchased and today it's back to $61. Strike while the iron's hot ?

It's showing up as already purchased for my Anthem cruise to Norway, too. Usually $72 pppd. No way we'd all get that lucky. LOL

Everything that's available in the refreshment package is available in the Unlimited Bev Package, so since if free, it wouldn't matter ?

Also shows up on my Harmony Med cruise which is not till September next year, having L&S'd from Allure this year. I have never booked a DBP and never would since I don't drink alcohol! I'd happily take a free refreshment package instead. ?

I had a few dinners with a celiac in Coastal Kitchen on Anthem in January. They were very understanding and accommodating. They identified which entrees were off limits and they were able to modify sauces or secondary items on other plates to satisfy her requirements. While not a specialty venue exactly, they do have their own small galley. Most importantly they immediately understood and were very careful to check with the chef to validate safe choices and then repeated it again for dessert. I was impressed how they handled the last minute request or special diet on the spot.

Thanks everyone for your input.

Shows up on our Jan 24 Independence sailing also. ?

True statement. My statement is also true, when you take the full context: the next total solar eclipse that crosses North America / the USA. I’m not sure about the 20-year part, but I do remember reading it’ll be a hella long time until the next such opportunity.

With jet airplanes the concept of scheduled transatlantic passenger service pretty much stopped. All that's left is when cruise ships are repositioned to spend summers in the Mediterranean and winters in the Caribbean. The Mediterranean cruise season is primarily during the summer. It isn't a popular mode of vacation travel during the colder winter months. Consequently modern cruise lines tend to get out of the Mediterranean during the winter which results in Westbound transatlantic in the fall and subsequently Eastbound transatlantic in the spring so the ships are back in the Med for the summer. Once in a while there is an exception if a ship needs to cross for maintenance or dry dock purposes but even for those most cruise lines try to match those events to occur before or after a natural repositioning to capitalize on the normal summer cruise trends. Transatlantic cruises are not as popular so the rates are often lower to fill the ship. For this reason I am drawn to transatlantic crossings and I dislike paying almost as much for transatlantic airfare as I do for the transatlantic cruise fare but unless you can spend several months exploring Europe it's very hard to find return ship service.

Hi @MuttMutt. That's really touching about your wife, very sorry that your start to cruising was on such a difficult chapter in your life. For me, cruising was also something that struck me as being in the line of luxury vacations, but I always wanted to do it and have an experience akin to what I saw on Titanic or Poseidon Adventure (well, the good parts before icebergs and rogue waves made things to pear-shaped! ?). Then I found out from a coworker maybe 15 years ago now that it had become a lot more affordable, and the fire was lit under me. Took many years to convince my wife, though. She thought cruising was just a nonstop buffet and lazing around with nothing to do, basically The Love Boat without the stops in Puerto Vallarta and the other nice places. Took having two kids and getting them to gang up on her with me with finally make our first cruise a reality. At that time, we were going through a bit of a tough patch ourselves. But we also had a lot of really big milestones approaching, like our older daughter graduating high school while the younger one was finishing middle school. A cruise just seemed like a great way to celebrate all of those big events and what we figured was going to be... maybe not the end of the tougher parts, but at least the beginning of the end. Which it does seem to have been. We did an 8-night sailing to the eastern Caribbean, visiting St. Kitts, St. Maarten, San Juan, and Labadee. It was a great time for all of us, and my wife agreed that she enjoyed it and would be good with doing something like that again. It's only been 2 years since that first cruise happened, and the big bucket-list one I had planned for this year got scrapped due to Covid-19; but now that we know how much you get with a cruise while being able to see a bunch of destinations we'd otherwise never get to without spending a ton more, it's looking like it's the preferred vacation type that we'll be taking as much as our budget and time off allows.

I don’t believe this is possible on Royal Caribbean. The Trans Atlantics are seasonal. They go one way in the spring and the opposite direction in the fall. There may be other lines that go in the opposing directions but I doubt it. It would be nice, wouldn’t it ?

It all depends on what you want to do. I have a Cannon T3i and love it for most stuff and thought about getting a case for taking it when I dive, but after hearing the horror stories about having a camera end up flooded from having a piece of hair or something like that on an O-ring I opted for a cheap off brand GoPro. The kits really are great and I got mine a couple years back at Sam's club. You can also find the kits second hand some places and honestly for a teen and family that may be a good option. A Cannon T2i is still a decent camera and can use just about any lens intended for a Cannon DSLR camera, the body by itself is about 100.00 and figure 50 per lens and you don't have a bad kit. Newer camera's get higher megapixels and such but the lenses don't change all that much unless you start getting really high end stuff. The biggest thing is get a circular polarizing filter for taking pictures outside for sure but just about any picture will benefit from it. https://photographylife.com/lens-filters-explained As far as places, I have a bad taste in my mouth over one of the big groups in NYC, LeisurePro is the name of that place I dealt with and the Electronics/Camera arm is Adorama. Had purchased a brand new item and they kept giving me the run around when on the very first dive a gauge was flooded. Ended up contacting the manufacturer directly who had no issues getting it fixed and LeisurePro said that was impossible to do as well and that I could only deal with them. After dropping nearly 1000 on stuff they could have been a lot better. So I would avoid them like the plague.

I saw the same thing today for our February booking. We are Star Class for that sailing ... would that mean we could drink twice as much? ??????

Three of my cruises have this:

We have that on our December cruise. I can only imagine how many people have lost out on that so far.

Sometimes the point is closed if tides are up but on this particular day it was open.

I usually like to do check out the nature walks. I see they added hand washing stations like on CocoCay. This is where I get the best pictures of the ship du jour. Continuing on... Looks like they are set up for a ceremony today.

Sharla is the absolute BEST!!! Now lets sail!!!!

Same for us. However, it doesn't show up in the purchase history. ?

There's a sidebar article there discussing the passengers and basically slamming them as a trio of nimrods: https://cruiseradio.net/meet-the-worst-cruisers-on-the-planet/ Very glad to see that MSC more or less expected to have people like that on board, had the procedures in place to keep tabs on excursion members, and were absolutely willing to enforce the rules with zero tolerance. Let the example be set right now -- you try to act like the rules don't apply to you, and you will find out how wrong you are so fast it'll make your head spin. Simultaneously, it's really depressing that they more or less expected to have people like that on board.

That's better than the $18 intern special!

In my experience you: "Don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off that ol' Lone Ranger and you don't mess around with Jim". These are the basic tenets of life. ? Oh yes ... do not flaunt a Captain's Regulation (I wish that line flowed properly into that fantastic Jim Croce song). Curt from Canada

We are sailing out of Seattle on Quantum June 28. I'm not buying flights until April (as much as it makes my teeth itch!). I figure by then, RCG will have made the decision on whether or not to scrap the entire Alaska season.

The curse of the task oriented! I TOTALLY get you!! ?

Not really sure. Different fleet size is definitely a factor but so is median age. Much of Carnival's fleet is smaller and older. With the introduction of mega sized ships Royal grew more efficient in terms of revenue per passenger carried. Smaller fleet but with bigger ships, Royal has been achieving better revenue performance on a relative basis. For every mega ship Royal has at sea, Carnival needs somewhere between two to three ships to carry the same numbers, passengers and revenue. Now remove the guests and move into a mode of maintaining and operating a fleet at reduced crew levels. That's still a Captain per ship, a senior bridge crew per ship, marine departments per ship, security teams per ship. Dock fees, fuel minimums, operating certificates, etc. all on a per ship basis. The highest paid crew positions are still required while many of the lowest paid positions have been sent home. The cost to maintain a smaller ship during these times may be slightly lower that the cost to maintain a mega sized ship but at absolute minimums there is a floor that is reached, a minimum operating cost that any ship requires regardless of size. That extra two to three ships per million in passenger revenue starts to bite them very hard. There are also fewer brands so fewer high priced executive teams running each brand. Royal Caribbean International, the flagship brand operates around the world. Carnival as in the red whale tail brand that is the flagship primarily operates only in North America. Carnival Australia is a completely different organization from a corporate structure perspective sharing only the name and whale tail, it's almost like yet another Carnival brand. For other regions Carnival operates another brand such as P&O, AIDA, Costa for example. Like ships there are floor costs to operate each brand using the corporate structure that Carnival uses. For each brand there are presidents and senior vice presidents, etc. - the highest priced positions. I also think corporate culture starts to creep in as a factor which underlie the revenue performance and revenue efficiency that was experienced during the good times in the decades leading up to this point. That's hard to quantify in exact numbers. During the good times the cost of Carnival's corporate culture and inefficiency was masked by the fists full of dollars coming in. Stripped of passenger revenue and forced to operate at minimums we see it more plainly.

Since it was all the way back in March it's probably much too late to try and change that. But If you booked with a third party for your trip insurance, it's possible to get that premium money back. See my thread about this very topic here. I don't know if they would even consider a plea this far after cancellation, as the policy has probably been marked as executed / expired. But it might not hurt to reach out them and ask, especially if you have all of your documentation showing the cancellation refunds / credits for the total of the insured amount.

Thank you very much for your explanation. I will take your advice and look into the cost and circumstances...then decide what is best. Appreciate your taking the time to answer my question.

I’ve got Sharla at MEI working on mine for May and October. I’ve got over $500 in premiums between the 2 canceled cruises. Honestly it’d be robbery if these companies kept premiums on an event that never happened.