twangster

If this is how cruisers are approaching it these days, we will know why some future change to the drink package rules is implemented.   

Sigh... I feel like this is another sign I am out growing Royal.  
It's not Royal so much, just some of the clientele leaves me thinking it's time to move on.
Let's start a tread on how to steal those awesome towels!  

Sigh... I feel like this is another sign I am out growing Royal.  
It's not Royal so much, just some of the clientele leaves me thinking it's time to move on.
Let's start a tread on how to steal those awesome towels!  

Sigh... I feel like this is another sign I am out growing Royal.  
It's not Royal so much, just some of the clientele leaves me thinking it's time to move on.
Let's start a tread on how to steal those awesome towels!  

The more all inclusive a cruise line is, the less that a loyalty program has tangible benefits.
Sail Silversea for example and there is nothing on board to differentiate a newbie to a seasoned Silversea loyalist.  
Celebrity is pushing their Always Included fares.  If you buy into that then what are you seeking from Captain's Club?  Free laundry?  
Once X went "all in" the loyalty program became much less relevant. 

The more all inclusive a cruise line is, the less that a loyalty program has tangible benefits.
Sail Silversea for example and there is nothing on board to differentiate a newbie to a seasoned Silversea loyalist.  
Celebrity is pushing their Always Included fares.  If you buy into that then what are you seeking from Captain's Club?  Free laundry?  
Once X went "all in" the loyalty program became much less relevant. 

Royal's plan is working - make MTD so dysfunctional folks will give up on it. 
I can hear the executives in Miami now... "See!  No one uses MTD so lets get rid of it".  

Staying in a cabin on the QM makes me feel like I am sailing on her across the Atlantic.  The tiny port holes open and I can imagine sitting by the window for days with the cold North Atlantic breeze coming in.  Seeing the fresh and salt water fixtures on the bathtub and even just walking the halls coming back to my cabin makes it feel like a cruise. 
Such history, the origins of cruising in many ways.  

With Always Included the perks of Captain's Circle are pretty miniscule.  
The only reason to expect Diamond like perks on X would be to avoid Always Included fares and go with NO PERKS fares, which is exactly what X doesn't want.  

Staying in a cabin on the QM makes me feel like I am sailing on her across the Atlantic.  The tiny port holes open and I can imagine sitting by the window for days with the cold North Atlantic breeze coming in.  Seeing the fresh and salt water fixtures on the bathtub and even just walking the halls coming back to my cabin makes it feel like a cruise. 
Such history, the origins of cruising in many ways.  

Some more random thoughts:
--This seems like a rash, not well thought out decision. Like someone woke up from a bad dream and said "these Diamond and above are really causing a drag on earnings"--without really understanding the Diamond and above customers.
--This same person only sees the increased numbers of the top tiers (my last sailing they composed 10% of the total pax onboard--impressive!). This same person is blind to see the growth of Crown and Anchor to 25 million members. Yeah, 25 million members...so imagine getting 400-500 of the top ones any given sailing.
--How much does it really cost Royal to have a Diamond and above onboard? Well, not very much if you think about it. You might chose to multiply your daily free drinks by $14, re-do the math on what the core cost per drink is, let's guess high at $2 a drink. Have you ever looked at your local liquor store for the cost of that wine in your stateroom on embarkation day? Boy, they are good at writing copy for wine. Is it the coffee machine? Of the four of those machines onboard, yes it's the DL machine is the one that has leg day 7 days a week but man-oh-man; could it possibly cost that much??? The appetizers and the Ranger cookies, all ya' alls know you can get them in the Windjammer too, no?
--If you were to interview and ask every top tier member aboard your next sailing; you will find near 100% have a pending upcoming cruise. A better question might be just how many future cruises do they have booked? No doubt these are the best and most loyal customers. These are the people who kept faith and supported Royal when times were the worst. 
--The top tier folks consistently tip the crew the best. They also have the least problems and the most knowledge of how to have a cruise vacation. Relative low maintenance and give the crew benefits Royal doesn't have to pay for.
 
At the end of the day, Royal is going to do what they are going to do. Our small voices will have no input. But if you are concerned about what changes may/may not be coming, I'll tell you I am finding increased solace in the recent wise words of our good friend @twangster "Royal Caribbean and I have a business relationship" As much as I might not like it; Twangster is very, very correct. Thanks bro!
 

Satellite internet at sea is never guaranteed.  This is real opportunity for poor performance or outages due to weather and other issues on all ships and all cruise lines regardless of the satellite provider.
If you need a guaranteed internet connection stay home.  

With Always Included the perks of Captain's Circle are pretty miniscule.  
The only reason to expect Diamond like perks on X would be to avoid Always Included fares and go with NO PERKS fares, which is exactly what X doesn't want.  

Now that the Queen Mary has reopened I'm back on board with staying on her every chance I get.  
15-20 minute Uber ride to Navigator from the QM.

The price difference between GTY and pick your cabin is not a fixed amount.  Celebrity does it too.
GTY isn't always offered.  Sometimes you have no choice but to pay the normal rate for a cabin.  

Now that the Queen Mary has reopened I'm back on board with staying on her every chance I get.  
15-20 minute Uber ride to Navigator from the QM.

The price difference between GTY and pick your cabin is not a fixed amount.  Celebrity does it too.
GTY isn't always offered.  Sometimes you have no choice but to pay the normal rate for a cabin.  

The price difference between GTY and pick your cabin is not a fixed amount.  Celebrity does it too.
GTY isn't always offered.  Sometimes you have no choice but to pay the normal rate for a cabin.  

Now that the Queen Mary has reopened I'm back on board with staying on her every chance I get.  
15-20 minute Uber ride to Navigator from the QM.

I just now had the time to catch up.  Thank you again for sharing your experiences.  

Weekend cruises for sure but the weekend cruises are really for the new to cruise who want to test cruising.  
For the longest time the Oasis class operated a butterfly routine, east and west Caribbean.  They still do.  Occasionally Voyager class does a Bermuda run from here.  Southern Caribbean is usually available once you go eight or nine nights.  Occasionally there is a Cartagena stop on a cruise from Florida.  
If the 3/4 PDCC-Nassau gets old usually there is a 4 night from Tampa to Cozumel somewhere on the schedule and it's common to see a 4/5 from Canaveral going to Mexico as well sometimes with a Labdee stop.  
So yeah, the 3 night PDCC-Nassau weekend cruises would get old if all you could do is sail 3 night weekend cruises.  However the same can be said for California 3 night weekend cruises.  Ensenada over and over again, or "west-Nassau".  However back when cruises were affordable jumping on a 3 night PDCC cruise was a pretty great weekend even if you had been there a month ago.  Now with cruise fares so high it's not so tempting for a weekend getaway.  
Once you go longer than 3 and 4 nights there are tons of options from Florida that don't stop at PDCC-Nassau.
It is nice driving to the port.  Bring as much clothes as you want, get dressy for a special event, bring scuba gear, etc.  When it's time to disembark take your time, no hurry, no airport and TSA to get through, just drive home and dump the cruise clothes in the laundry.   
Once Icon arrives,  then Utopia and Icon 2 they'll be dominating PDCC so I expect we'll see then and less of them on smaller ship itineraries from FL.  

Cruise Summary
This has been hands down one of the best cruises I have experienced.  It was so worth it.  When can I come back?  I want to do the Southern Galapagos itinerary next time.
It’s hard to put into words just how incredible this experience has been.  
The Galápagos Islands have been on my bucket list for some time.  What a phenomenal way to get there.  I realize now there are mistakes I have made.  The first is that I waited too long to visit the Galápagos Islands.  The second is that I didn’t book a back to back cruise to see even more.    
There were so many nights I put my head on the pillow thinking about the amazing experience I had earlier that day.  Can it get any better I thought?  And then it did the very next day.    
Silversea made it all very easy.
As far as food goes we are all unique with our preferences and tastes.   I try not to comment on food because my tastes are different than everyone else.  What I crave or dislike shouldn't matter to anyone.   Having said that I ended up eating more fish than I normally do and I found myself liking it more than I normally do.  I enjoyed the wines offered each night.
Leaving the ship for the last time yesterday was a little emotional.  Over a lot of non-expedition cruising on a variety of cruise lines I have never felt that before.  I'm really going to miss the Silver Origin and the phenomenal team that made this trip something I'll never forget.
I haven’t seen many threads about the Galápagos Islands as a destination so I hope you have found this helpful and I thank you for viewing.  

I've cruised from New Jersey.  Brisbane sounds quite nice!

Yet another DIFFERENT result in the BOGO situation....
Boarded Grandeur yesterday and wanted to do our usual - both pay full price for our first night and then get our follow-on meal later in the week would be $-0-.  We wanted to eat on nights 1 and 4 (Dan's birthday).  We were fully willing to pay full price for the more expensive meal (Chops) and get the second less expensive meal (Gios) for free.
No
So, it turns out that we had to go through WAAAY more maneuvers than was necessary, but in the end, it saved us money so - there's that !!
We went to Giovanni's Table last night and paid full price for 1 BOGO for which one of us paid, and the other got our meal "free".  Then, we were required to go to Chops (where we will be having our second meal, on night #4) on day #2 and pay for our second BOGO where we paid full price for one and received our second meal for $-0-. The Chops manager did some kind of maneuvering with reservations where she made us reservations for night #2 and then cancelled them and rescheduled for night #4 or something....I never fully understood what she was doing....but IMO it was all completely unnecessary.  If we had just paid full price on night #1 for both of us it would have been done....but we're getting what we want in the end, and since we only paid full price for Chops once and full price for Gios once, we ended up saving a few bucks, so.....whatever....
WHEW.  What a complete PITA

One thing I didn't mention...
Silver Origin has a staff photographer who joined us various on excursions.  On the last night he played a video of clips he captured during this voyage.  All of the content in the video was from this cruise.
For those of us that signed the photography waiver, we were presented with a thumbdrive that contained the video and some of the still pictures that he took.  On a couple tours he was sitting next to me on the zodiac and I recognized the angle and subject of some of his photos which are very close to some of the pictures I captured.  
He had a GoPro with him that he stuck in the water for scenes like the rays swimming in the lagoon.  That approach never occurred to me as it would eliminate any glare from the sun on the water.  Very clever.  
They said the video could be shared so I'm hoping to post it soon.