twangster

MEI has been a wonderful agency to work with, proactively letting me know if my fare is still the best, sale after sale. Long before I joined this site, over years of travel I built a relationship with others and I maintain that relationship. Once booked, you are free to continue to use the cruise planner to make My Time reservation, entertain reservations, Voom purchases and so on. The only thing I've noted using a TA if if you want to change cabins. If you booked cabin 1234 and suddenly cabin 4567 becomes available, instead of calling Royal you have to call your TA. That has yet to stop me with 34 Royal cruises booked or completed. In the end, all of those 34 will have involved a TA (plus many others on other cruise lines before I came over into the light). I've yet to find a reason why not to, even when applying C&A balcony discounts.

Anything is possible on a cruise by cruise basis. I should have prefaced, "From what I am seeing..." I would advise caution though as what used to be presented as a light blue box (non-refundable) and a dark blue box (refundable), now is presented (in my experience) as "We pick the room" (light blue) and "You pick the room" (dark blue). YMMV. My TA - I have bookings with three at the moment. MEI Travel is one of those and I greatly respect and encourage their contributions to this site. If it were not for them, this site would not be what it is. For that reason and out of tremendous appreciation I recommend you contact them first.

In Summary Both are open and progressing well. Have no reservations or hesitation about visiting but when you do, remember what they have gone through. Be understanding and generous, if you can. I've been to both and live blogged, capturing my experiences here on RoyalCaribbeanblog.com as I experienced it. You will likely see some storm damage, make no mistake. I've chosen not to focus on that so much, but on the positive energy of the people as they move forward which they have in leaps and bounds. St Maarten St. Maarten got it hard but this isn't their 1st tango with a hurricane. They've rebuilt before and they are rebuilding again. I've been to St. Maarten 3 times since they started accepted ships again. On no occasion did I feel unsafe or unwelcome. In fact, they very much made me feel very, very welcome. Most recent St. Maarten visit in May 2018: https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/topic/6297-adventure-5-nights-5518-repositioning-san-juan-to-bayonne/&do=findComment&comment=67904 April 2018 St. Maarten here: https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/topic/6002-serenade-33018-10-night-eastern-caribbean/&do=findComment&comment=64798 and https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/topic/6002-serenade-33018-10-night-eastern-caribbean/&do=findComment&comment=64819 Christmas Day 2017 stop in St. Maarten: https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/topic/5195-independence-122117-9-night-christmas/&do=findComment&comment=51956 St. Thomas St. Thomas I've been twice since the storms. I used to work and live on St. Thomas so it's closer to home and I lived through it (VIA former co-workers and friends). While not as bad as St. Maarten they got hit pretty hard too. However life is very much back to normal and they are ready, willing and able to accept cruise guests. In places you would have no idea what had happened but then you turn a corner and see some damage. St. Thomas in April 2018 here: https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/topic/6002-serenade-33018-10-night-eastern-caribbean/&do=findComment&comment=64272 and Dec 6, 2017 here (right after they started accepting ships again): https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/topic/5068-anthem-112517-712-b2b/&do=findComment&comment=50580 from the same trip https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/topic/5068-anthem-112517-712-b2b/&do=findComment&comment=50598 It's potentially a valuable lesson for our youth. We've got it pretty good here in the US.

Interesting experience tonight booking Radiance. (YOLO moment). It's a 2019 cruise and I wanted something refundable so I emailed my usual TA. I received a bounce saying she is out of the office and I was interested in a specific cabin so I called Royal direct, given that the website doesn't offer refundable anymore. I booked direct it, refundable and paid the $450 deposit. Had I fully read the bounce email from my usual TA I would have seen she was actually working tonight which I learned when she called me. For the same refundable cabin, she was $200 cheaper, I get $50 in OBC, a spa treatment, one specialty dinner, plus 15,000 miles on my favorite airline. Oh, and no deposit. I cancelled my direct booking and booked it through my normal TA. Same cabin. I added the prepaid gratuities and I'm still less than RCI direct without prepaid gratuity. Other observation - I first called the RCI 866 number and listened to MOH (Music on Hold) for about 10 minutes. I hung up and called the C&A number who answered immediately. I booked it through the C&A team, then an hour later cancelled it through the C&A team. No issues cancelling the refundable booking but it will likely take a few days for $450 deposit to appear as a credit. Radiance here I come! EDIT - To be fair, I don't get spa treatments and specialty dining on every cruise booked. They are occasional perks typically on longer cruises but with double digits of cruises booked, I've yet to find a downside of using a travel agent. The airline miles are nothing to sneeze at. I'm flying on points to 3 cruises this year (so far) including Barcelona in the comfort plus cabin for Symphony and will likely get a 1 or 2 more cruise flights for free before 2018 is done.

Years ago my dad was fastidious about doing this with all of our cameras and lenses (long before cell phones, laptops and tablets). Now I don't bother and I carry a significant amount of electronics with me. Of course I could eventually produce receipts and display ownership before leaving, but in pure technical terms your mother is correct. Can she most likely travel and be okay? Probably. However if a newbie customs office sticking to the books greets you upon your return, you might have a problem without talking with customs before leaving. Having said that, I don't know what proof they will demand that the piece was originally declared and imported legally 30 years ago. Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants? Show up with all the right intentions and have them seize it because she can't prove she imported it properly 30 years ago. I'd call them first and ask a bunch of questions, or visit without the piece (or leave it in the car).

From the Charter FAQs Charter pricing includes: ship accommodations ocean transportation most meals most non-alcoholic beverages most entertainment aboard the ship Charter pricing does NOT include: air transportation transfers to and/or from the vessel optional shore excursions and/or private arrangements requested for site inspection trips meals and accommodations ashore certain beverages casino gaming photographs gratuities (shipboard or shoreside porterage) telephone calls or internet services specialty restaurant charges purchases from ship stores items of a personal nature (medical services, laundry, spa or salon treatments) meeting break or special event set-up fees technical and broadcast fees when applicable expedited shipping fees for documents customization of documents

The Royal and Celebrity websites now use the same credentials. Visiting the Celebrity site earlier (when it was up) it forced me to update my password which also updated my Royal website password. It seems we have arrived at RCCL's happy place - one set of credentials for RCI and Celebrity.

Twins? One works for RCI and one works for Celebrity? Mama must be proud. The website is back up... sort of. Clicking on the Edge link yields this: i would have liked to sail Edge before they eliminated her.

Well maybe I won't be booking Celebrity soon, because... I can't. As someone who routinely works overnight because that is when most companies do work on their IT infrastructure, it's pretty bad when a website isn't available in the middle of the day.

Just be aware they sometime reverse to do maintenance like painting the hull or lowering life boats to run them. There are no guarantees which side will be against the pier.

Maybe I should start sailing Celebrity more and blogging. Lookout! Edge here I come...

Entertainment reservations are used on Oasis and Quantum class only. On the mega ships the guests count far exceeds the capacity of the venues by a significant factor so reservations are used to manage the crowds. On all other classes this isn't an issue so it's first come, first seated. On Indy they did hand out tickets for the ice shows but that is the only non-OA/QU class use of tickets/reservations I've seen.

I'd love to see RCI adopt Celebrity's pick 2 or pick 4 marketing campaigns. Hopefully with merging the two websites towards a common feel they don't Royalize the packages on Celebrity.

They have tweaked the layout on Symphony. Wonder if they'll update the suite sun deck on Oasis in her upcoming dry dock.

As far as cancel and repurchase I do that all the time. In the cruise planner at the top is "Order History". From you can cancel anything you previously purchased. April is a good bit off. I have a number of cruises booked and over Black Friday few of them dropped in price (drink package that is). Follow @Matt on twitter or facebook as he usually posts when ever sales are happening.

I think the folks who set the drink packages prices have been testing the drink packages at work. There is no consistency across the fleet or even for a particular ship. I'm not sure if they have some sort of automated revenue management script that adjusts pricing on a per cruise basis based on sales or if someone is drunk or high on something and willy nilly adjusting prices. I expect a sale July 4th, then Labor Day. Possibly some surprise sales in between.

Check out @tiny260 ! Nice round numbers 500/1000. Congrats on 1,000 posts

Indy looks great. Look forward to trying her again now with all the changes.

Yes, straight to Asia is my understanding and I suspect it will stay there.

Quantum when in China has made the Solarium suite only. Spectrum will supposedly take that up a notch with separate elevators for suites and more space dedicated to suites much like MSC has done on SeaSide.

Yep, looks identical to Royal. I had to reset my password and it didn't know my security questions properly but I was able to reset and eventually log in.

Deck Four - where the photo shop used to be.

They have but you gotta know the senior executives of Pullmantur are building a case for new ships, not hand-me-downs.

I'm sure the costs vary and this is probably a little dated (limited mention of Symphony). It does provide some insight into the revenue model for each ship in a very loose way. Off peak they are willing to take an OA class out of the rotation for $6.5M-ish (plus gratuity). That wouldn't represent the revenue floor for a typical OA class ship in service but it gives you an idea of the numbers involved.

Mariner and Navigator are different.