Andrew72681
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Posts posted by Andrew72681
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I’d go with Oasis as no one knows when Allure will be amplified.
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1 hour ago, Mark B said:
Apart from the excursions offered by RC, what else is available to do? So far, none of them really interest me. Is a walk to the Straw Market from the ship doable?
@Matt recently did the Jetline excursion which is an easy walk from the terminal. It's no longer on the RC site, but can be easily booked through them.
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56 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:
Royal may be planning to push back the first sailing because they anticipate those last minute preparations may not be completed and that's why they are alluding to the delays already. We won't know for sure until they tell us, so all we can do is speculate.
Or they may not be ready to click the transfer button and deposit almost a billion dollars so they've already told MW not to rush and that they wouldn't enforce any penalties for late delivery (which would probably already have been nullified in the contract by a force majeure clause)
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2 minutes ago, Dad2Cue said:
That's what I hear but they aren't an option for me. My brother raves about them. No baggage fees also I hear. Just like the good old days.
Sounds like you just need to move closer to Des Moines.
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13 minutes ago, Dad2Cue said:
It's a gamble no matter what you do... especially now with the pandemic. The advantage of booking refundable goes away after the final payment date anyway. That's when the stakes are higher because they have all the money then.
When I called Royal the other day about a reprice, I saved some money. I'm pleased that Royal still does that because airlines certainly don't. I asked the customer representative if he had any inside information about cruising starting Aug 1st ---he wasn't optimistic.
One correction, most airlines don’t. At any point during the process you can reprice a Southwest Airlines flight.
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Just now, KathyC said:
I can still see posts with dates?
I think only the RC dates were hidden. The NCL/Regent post is still there.
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1 hour ago, SteveinSC said:
If @twangster is pissed (justifiable id say)....its bad. You have always been as level headed, calm, cool, and collected, as anyone.
Im gonna go cry in a bottle of Captain Morgan.
I was thinking the same thing, if the @twangster bot is becoming sentient and attacking we’re going to be really screwed when Lulubot @Lovetocruise2002 goes after the programmers. It’s clearly the first step to Skynet.
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14 minutes ago, Matt said:
Yes, forgot about that issue. Point taken.
Don’t worry, even the agents forget it sometimes. When I called the casino line last week, the agent kept trying to sell me on a NRD for our grand suite on Quantum.
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3 minutes ago, twangster said:
Meyer Werft is a private company that doesn't have to issue public guidance.
Royal did cover it for their investors all but saying it is delayed, instead they stated they expect it to be delayed.
Wasn’t even thinking about them being a private company. There’s so few left.
So maybe we just need a mole in the board meetings
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1 hour ago, twangster said:
I pretty confident that any announcements that Meyer Werft makes are made after checking with their customers - the cruise lines. Meyer Werft won't make a major announcement declaring a delay that will cause massive disruption and grief for their customer, the cruise line. If Meyer Werft were to boldly state the actual date any given ship is estimated to now complete it would send guests scrambling to make changes while the cruise line wouldn't be ready for the onslaught and media reaction never mind investor speculation.
There is one situation where they could not be the case. Often times when issuing guidance for a future quarter a company will reference something happening later than expected that would cause a material decrease in expected revenue in that following quarter. So for a ship that would probably be transferred late Q3/ early Q4 if it were going to cause an adverse change to the balance sheet we might hear of it.
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7 minutes ago, twangster said:
The UP on Oasis is Star and was bookable at refundable - at 3x the price. Sometimes a Sky Class suite appears refundable but that is more rare.
Interesting, I wonder if that was on purpose or someone messed up and coded it wrong.
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3 minutes ago, twangster said:
The A2 Star Class suite was only available NRD.
It does occur to me that in Royal's mind Star Class is worthless. In moving me to Liberty and removing Star Class features but offering nothing at all for that downgrade they are acknowledging there is no value in the Star Class program otherwise they surely would have recognized the different product that was booked versus what they were willing to provide in its place.
In the end you are correct, if the refundable rate on Royal is too high, look elsewhere, avoid non-refundable at all cost.
All suites are NRD aren’t they?
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34 minutes ago, marti314 said:
Serenade is using Vancouver so i dont think that is possible.
Would we have ever thought before yesterday taking people out of star class suites, moving them to a Junior Suite on Liberty, and telling them to either like it or lose their deposit was possible before yesterday?
it definitely seems like decisions aren’t being better before going out. -
9 hours ago, twangster said:
One word of caution about Quantum in Alaska.
The move of Quantum to Alaska was premised on Wonder sailing in China in 2021. With Spectrum and Wonder in Asia that freed up Quantum to split her time between Australia and Alaska like so many ships have over the past few years.
If Wonder is delayed they may need to look at this with fresh eyes. It wouldn't be a stretch for Royal to take Quantum Alaska reservations and move them to Ovation. Departs on a different day with different ports but equally a great Alaskan experience. These are unprecedented times so anything is possible.
Hopefully their last several giant screw-ups and sloppily presented Mea- culpas have taught them to make better decisions, (and I may upset the old ship fans) but don’t try to move me to Serenade.
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10 minutes ago, CGTLH said:
Bionic Bar
I’m guessing you want it replaced with a self-sanitizing bionic bar?
no one touching a drink seems like a perfect fit for this current environment
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15 minutes ago, marti314 said:
I'm definitely on it, booked yesterday. I look forward to meeting you. Yea I found the prices to be very reasonable. Yes taxes are about 2.5x a Caribbean cruise but I found the actual cabin rates quite attractive. I am curious to see what they do with the menus for the specialty restaurants that were aligned to the Asian market.
With the ship also doing Australia I could see some of those restaurants being converted into something more American.
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On 6/10/2020 at 7:55 PM, DandA said:
They have umbrellas all over, it was like 1 umbrella for every two chairs when I was there in February 2020. We were at chill island and oasis lagoon both had plenty of chairs and umbrellas.
There was a story earlier about British Airways selling off Artwork from their lounges. Maybe they’ll have a yard sale to sell off some of those extra umbrellas
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2 hours ago, twangster said:
"While other cruise ships due for delivery this year have seen delays due to the pandemic, Odyssey of the Seas’ debut has not yet been affected."
That simply means they have announced the delay.
So if you can build a ship on the same schedule with 1/3 of the labor why don't they do that all the time and reduce the cost of the ship?
It’s like when analysts claim that Apple’s latest product is delayed, when it’s never been announced so technically can’t possibly be.
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12 minutes ago, marti314 said:
Awesome Information. I've never been on an Alaska cruise so this sailing with the 4 stops and the Dawes glacier looked like a decent one for first time from Seattle. Maybe a nice evening at some pubs in Victoria won't be all bad, I've spent a lot of time in Vancouver so I can't imagine it's that different. Plus it's light til 930 ish in July.
For a July Alaska cruise the pricing on that week seemed great as well. We were able to get a better than expected rate on a grand suite.
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11 minutes ago, marti314 said:
Awesome Information. I've never been on an Alaska cruise so this sailing with the 4 stops and the Dawes glacier looked like a decent one for first time from Seattle. Maybe a nice evening at some pubs in Victoria won't be all bad, I've spent a lot of time in Vancouver so I can't imagine it's that different. Plus it's light til 930 ish in July.
If you end up on it I’ll even volunteer to buy that beer in Victoria.
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As with any big program lessons are learned along the way. The pause in amplificications may give them the opportunity to adjust the program.
What are the changes you’d make to upcoming amplifications?What’s one thing that was going to be put on Allure that you hope gets nixed in the process.
Ships that were “born” Amplified (Harmony and Symphony) will be coming up for dry docks in next year and in a couple of years, what would you like added?
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6 minutes ago, twangster said:
My TA has invested several hours on this talking with various levels.
Royal "offered" to move us to another ship waiving the $100 NRD fee but there would be no price protection. We would need to pay prevailing rates for Star Class on another ship. Since we booked Allure within an hour of it opening up we had a pretty good rate. That rate isn't available on other ships and Star Class availability is pretty low in general.
They refused to grant any equivalent Star Class benefits for accepting their move of our booking to Liberty. No gratuity, no Voom, No beverage package, no dining package, etc.
Finally they offered a 100% refund of the non-refundable deposit. I jumped at this.
They said it can take up to 90 days to receive the refund. I had a talk with my credit card company and explained it all truthfully. Royal cancelled the cruise, attempted to substitute an inferior ship in a different class of service and ultimately they offered a refund in full but at 90 days away. My credit card company also found this 90 days to be unacceptable so they are disputing the transaction on the basis that it shouldn't take 90 days to receive a refund when the merchant cancelled the service and will eventually issue the refund in full.
Unfortunately I think more of us should have taken the disputed charge tactic at the beginning when they started playing the long game with refunds.
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I think the Victoria stop wouldn’t really be a port stop but more of a way to legally meet the requirement of stopping in a foreign port. We figured we’d get off and grab some dinner there.
We actually booked this exact sailing for my 40th birthday trip.
What will the Casinos look like?
in Royal Caribbean Discussion
Posted
Interesting. Looks like that variation is about a 1.8% house edge. About 3 times that of well played blackjack here at home (surrender allowed, 6 decks, double any two)