gatorskin76

This was the right call and a great decision by them in my opinion. I will try not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if they did this a long time ago it would have saved a lot of frustration. Better late than never I guess.

Royal leaving it to their customer to sell or transfer their FCC to someone else is pretty mind boggling to me. I know there will be folks that would say they can do what they want read the fine print, but that is ridiculous. You would think, given the circumstances, and their desire for people to be Loyal to Royal, that they would extend the expiration date since they have been holding onto your money interest free all this time. By the end of this year they aren't likely to be back to cruising without Covid protocols still in place. They should have extended the date to 12 months after protocols (i.e. vax mandates) were lifted, or refund the money.

Well, I did say for anyone that wants it. The problem in a situation like this is you never know what the future holds, so I am not feeling the 25% I received is worth the hassle. Of course everyone should make the decision that fits their situation, but you don't know what you don't know. I took the 125% on the March and May 2020 cruises I had paid in full and many cancelled cruises later am still hoping to be able to use them. I have made the choice to not vaccinate my 13 year old daughter (the whole risk/reward thing), my wife and I are vaccinated. I am currently sitting on the phone for the last 2 hours waiting for them to fix two of our FCC's that they are showing as inactive that shouldn't be (feel free to provide the travel agent advice to others that might want that advice, but I get it, hindsight is 20-20). Using an FCC shouldn't be this difficult. There really is no excuse, in my opinion, that they couldn't have put some smart people in a room and figure out a better way. At 2 hours and 5 minutes I am beginning to wonder if this is a strategy hoping I will just hang up. I have heard their RCI news feed around 154 times at this point.

Piece of advice for anyone that wants it....never get a Future Cruise Credit. Take the refund every time.

If someone is a one and done poster, and no one ever replies then it would actually slide down the list of posts on the board and disappear. I get the point being made about it being a drive by, but doesn't the community trust that people can take a post with a grain a salt without all of the counter posts?

I don't know what your issue with the person is, or why you would call them a fool. Seems like a convoluted situation that was resolved amicably.

I’m pretty sure most of the folks that read RoyalCaribbeanBlog are probably more knowledgeable than your average NextCruise rep. They aren’t in the RCI short term or long term strategy discussions. They will know when we know.

You may realize this, so sorry for the clarification if it's not needed, but the reason for the refund is because of Royal's Covid protocols. So if you have a reason that you can't sail because of those protocols, then you could certainly attempt to get your full refund.

Once again I will have to say, if you say so. Short lived....they were cancelling cruises through June 2021. You certainly are an advocate for how well they are doing, I would suggest buying some more stock would be in order.

The interest free loan part of it was certainly beneficial for them at the time, since otherwise they would have had no revenue. However, at this point they have robbed Peter to pay Paul. If they have a cruise leaving in September 2022 and half their capacity are people using FCC's (paid out at 125% of the original value in a lot of cases), then that's not new revenue for them, that's money they have already accounted for. Also, once those FCC's run out, they will see what the true demand is for cruising from "paying" customers.

and they may not, and you may be right, but I wonder if the internal financial discussions are as rosy as you have laid out. I have two cruises worth of FCC's on hand. One booked in June and one yet to come. They aren't on cruise control from a financial perspective.

Royal will definitely keep them longer than they should, but eventually, and hopefully sooner than later, they are going to chase the dollar knowing that the risk reward curve is in their favor.

I am not sure what else I can say but..."if you say so". No doubt ships are getting fuller, but I tried to Google the data you referenced as being readily available, and....

I don’t have those figures, but if you know where to find them I’d love to take a look. It’s been a pretty small window that they have been sailing anywhere near capacity (if they have even done 100% yet), so not sure how you would really come to that conclusion. I am sure they had pent up demand from that group, but sooner or later they are going to need to expand their customer base. As long as they give me money back based on their decision to keep it in place, it’s their call after all, but just like smoking in the casino, eventually they are coming for that money.

Not trying to argue the point of whether they should or not, but there is definitely incentive, especially with capacity increasing. I don't know the exact financials they have been able to achieve since the restart, but I wonder if they can actually fill the ships with the current protocols, and for how long. They have benefited greatly from the population that has returned to cruising spending more than they did before, but how long does that last? Especially with inflation and other economic strains that folks might be facing in the near future. Nothing could stop someone from suing them now. An argument could be made that their liability increases somewhat without the vax requirement, but I am sure their attorneys would swat that down pretty easily. Everyone is entitled to complain about testing requirements, but for those of that haven't been able to return to cruising yet, hard to have empathy for that aggravation, although I am sure it's not fun. I can't wait to have to worry about the testing if it's still there when they drop the mandate.

On your last part about stopping or reducing the spread, I know this is a sensitive topic so I won't get into it too much, but the devil is in the details there. Both my wife and myself were vaccinated in June 2021 and both had Omicron around Christmas. Do 2 personal experiences amount to much in the discussion, not really, but if you look at the case counts it's hard to say that vaccines have had a significant impact to spread. Certainly one could take the position that many lives were saved due to less severe disease, and who knows what that looks like, but "spread".....

No cruise line would give any indication they were going to remove the requirement until they were ready to do it, so not sure the giving of indication is really a sign. I agree with you that it's unlikely that anything changes in 2022 based on their actions to date and willingness to comply with CDC. That being said, no one really knows. I can't see the CDC changing their guidance, so I think Royal would need to unvolunteer themselves from the CDC voluntary program, which I also doubt will happen. So I agree with your conclusion, but we won't know until we know. Releasing protocols through 5/31/22 and having a Kids Sail Free promotion that started with 6/1 sailings....likely means nothing, but it will be interesting to see what happens if the virus doesn't have a significant spike in the next month or so and continues with current status. Not trying to make a political statement with these comments, but just based off what we appear to know about the vaccines and specifically the Omicron variant. I am sure there are benefits to the vaccine, but it doesn't appear to stop the spread. That was really the main argument for cruise lines when they put the vaccine requirement in place. That it was in their best interest to ensure that there were no positive cases on their ships. The majority of people are vaccinated and a lot more have natural immunity (which they currently won't take into consideration in their protocols, but surely they aren't ignoring in their risk calculations). I hope for all our cases that they surprise us and remove them sooner rather than later, because that will definitely mean that the virus is relatively under control, but not holding my breath for 2022.

Yeah, it makes sense now, sorry you had to explain it. Here is to hoping you are correct as I have a June 25th cruise booked with an unvaccinated 13 year old. interesting that Moderna is going for under 5 when I didn’t think they were even yet approved for 5-11.

I am sure the option of getting vaccinated was probably already considered. Don't you?

So what is your speculation then, that they are going to leave the voluntary program? If your speculation on 5 and under being included is correct, that wouldn't help RCI with hitting the 95% figure as I would imagine children under 5 will be vaccinated at a much lower rate than the other age groups, especially at this stage of the virus. So unless you are speculating that they drop from the CDC program, I am not sure how that would change their calculus with offering kids sail free.

Since 5 and under don't count against the 95%, not sure how that would be a factor at all.

They can certainly hope.

That’s great. Wonder if or when they might consider antibodies in lieu of vaccine.

I'm not sure I understand the significance of the financial basis, or how protocols wouldn't have a financial basis. My point was that you have a group of people that want to smoke and a group of people that don't want to, and don't want other people to smoke around them. The prevailing opinion is that smokers shouldn't have access. Insert those that aren't vaccinated, or don't want to vaccinate their kids. Yes there are a lot of differences, but both are treated as second class citizens. If you don't want smoking on cruise ships, then there is zero consideration for those that do. I don't think people should smoke, for their own health reasons, but if Royal doesn't want people to smoke they can make the casinos non-smoking, but they don't and we all know why.

Is the concern things turning "political" or personal? We could all have political conversations, the problem is they turn into personal attacks....imo