jupiter03

I stayed at the Tru by Hilton in Webster before my spring break cruise a few months ago. Pros: the hotel seemed very new, clean and modern. Location was great, as it was right by the Baybrook mall and lots of restaurants. Cons: something about the room just felt very barebones, like a dorm room. Not cozy and comfy like usual hotels. We had a 2 queen room and found it very cramped, with narrow passageways around the beds, similar to a cruise ship cabin (though not as bad). I recall having a hard time every time I needed to open a hard-shell suitcase, that there was very little floor space to do so. I regretted not brining the old suitcases that didn't open like a clamshell. I love staying in Webster near I-45. Tons of hotels to choose from, target/walmart/heb nearby for things you forgot. It usually takes us ~ 35 min to drive to the port.

@need2cruz Which excursion is this? I looked through all of them on his website and I can't find one that goes to the iguana farm. This sounds fun.

Yes, you can fire a travel agent. I wrote a very similar post awhile ago about my terrible TA who started dodging my calls/emails and dropped off the face of the earth. To claw back your reservation from royal, send an email to [email protected]. You will need your: 1) Booking #2) Ship3) Sail Date4) Guests5) Reason why I want it out of the TA and back to RCCL. If you are past final payment, you will not be able to claw the reservation back. In my case, I had to pretty much beg my old TA to just cancel the reservation (This was during CWC, so I just took the FCC and booked a new cruise with a new TA).

I've found that the reps on facebook messenger are usually pretty competent. As you said, they are slow. I'll often send a message and they'll get back to me hours later, but they've been able to fix a lot of the issues I tried to get my old terrible TA to fix for months. My old TA would always say they were working on it and they were behind, but once I fired her and actually got a response on facebook, they would fix it within a few hours and email me new confirmations right away. They were able to find my missing FCCs and apply them for me. Plus I like having the written records of all my communications with them. I feel like things get miscommunicated on phone sometimes.

Thanks for the info. So I am even more confused now. I looked everywhere on Navica to see how to select my son's profile and nada. All the videos I've been watching have used the Navica app, but then I saw CruiseTipsTV's video and she goes through the emed app instead and has screenshots, which are very helpful. When I sign on on emed' s site, it asks me for my navica login, then it gives me the option of choosing my son as the tester. Whereas the Navica app does not seem to have any place to choose. So should we all be going through the emed site instead of the navica app directly?

Hi all, I've watched a lot of youtube videos for how to take the emed test, and I think I understand how this works. However, does anybody have any directions on how to do this for your child? My husband and I both have the Navica app with a log in for ourselves. I have inputted my child's info under "managed profiles" in my account. It seems like all the videos I've seen assume the person logged in is the person taking the test. What do I need to do differently to make it work for my child? Can my husband and I both have him in our account, or can he only reside in one? Just thinking it would be nice to have backup in case one of our phones has technical issues. Is it correct to assume that I will be swabbing my child and that he will only need to stick around for the swabbing portion? I'd like to get this done before he needs to go to school, but I'm not sure how long we'll need to hold before we get a proctor. Or does he need to be around for the results? We're already waking him up earlier than normal, but I have no clue how long hold times are in the morning. Thanks for any advice. This is so stressful.

Are you in a facebook group or roll call for your cruise? For my spring break cruise, somebody mentioned their successful royal up bid in one of the upper suite categories a few weeks ago. Then within the next 24-48 hours, everybody else's royal up bid trickled in like clockwork. All the suites upgraded first, then the balconies to the JS, then the outsides were upgraded and then the inside cabins were upgraded. It seemed like everybody was moving on up, possibly to the newly vacated cabins by other people on the list. We were all surprised that it happened so early.

Just checked in for my March cruise and curious for those that know, what are the "health & safety" questions that need to be answered the day before the cruise? What is the wellness check at the terminal?

Now that final payment has been extended to 30 days before a cruise, does anybody have any recommendations when I should apply my FCC to be used to make final payment? Last time I did this, my TA (who I later fired) said that I needed to do it several weeks before the actual final payment date, since it took time for Royal to apply it. I don't remember how long it actually took, but that cruise was eventually cancelled and the FCC reissued. I don't want to cut it too close and get cancelled if it doesn't come in time. Since it's been a year since I last did this, can anybody update me on the current FCC redemption rules? Last time, I think they applied the specific balances per person, so that person 2 didn't have enough FCC to pay their portion and person 3 had too much FCC and they couldn't apply person 3's balance to person 2. Has that changed now? Sorry if these have been asked before. I couldn't find it on search. Thanks!

Yep, same here. I contacted Royal a few days ago and the person checked and said I had been reassigned to...the same room number I had originally. That would be great news for me, but I think the rep was just checking what room was on file and they haven't reassigned it yet. It's been almost a month now. I know that I am several months away from my cruise, but I wish they had just kept this news to themselves if they weren't going to assign me something in a more timely manner. This kind of stress I don't need.

Oh that's very interesting! I didn't know other sites showed different availability. Yeah, I wish I had a travel agent. This cruise was originally booked years ago with a travel agent that I ended up firing. I wasn't able to transfer it to MEI since it was past the # of days from booking. I was chatting with Royal about my options, but it sounds like the room reservations people will do their best and I'll need to accept whatever they assign me. I am very picky about my cabin and would never do a guarantee, as there are lots of cabins I would hate to have. Oh well.

I was rebooked to a new 1K cabin after Allure was cancelled. Now the 1K cabin is in jeopardy (lost). I've been checking for price drops ever since and cabins became unavailable in June, so I'm assuming sold out. There are only 10 of these kinds of cabin on the whole ship, so not surprised if they were sold out. Nobody else on my facebook group for this cruise got this email, as far as I know. Others mentioned that they have observed no social distancing in cabins on recent/current cruises, with people on all sides next to them. So this is something new. I agree, I would have rather just gotten the email saying "sorry, here is your new cabin". We spend a lot of time in our cabin, so cabin is very important for us. I suspect you may be right, but how would they know if we are vaccinated yet or not? They haven't asked yet. Also, this is a spring break cruise that is priced much higher than all the other March cruises, so I'm guessing it's already sold very well, so will they bump people that already booked to meet a lower capacity? (this is rhetorical, I know nobody knows this)

Thanks, yeah, I really have no idea what they can move me to. A regular OV cabin would be a significant downgrade, since the 1K is about 2x the size. It is much cheaper though, so if they do that to me, I would hope that they would lower my costs. I took a look at what balcony options would be available if I were lucky enough to get an upgrade. They are mostly all terrible cabins, like right above or below noisy venues, in a connected room or near elevators, which I would never have chosen. The whole reason I chose the 1K was for the space and neither upgrade/downgrade can provide that. So disappointing.

I just got an email that I've lost my cabin for my spring break 2022 cruise. The email said they would automatically move me to a like-for-like cabin, but it was a 1K cabin, which were sold out months ago, so there are no like-for-like cabins they could move me to. I booked this cabin back in Dec 2019 when it was an Allure of the Seas cruise that later got cancelled and moved to Liberty. I booked this cabin specifically for the separate bunk bed room for my kid. I took a quick look at what's currently available and all the rooms stink. I didn't book a guarantee, but I feel like that's what I'm getting. I talked to Royal Caribbean and it sounds like I'm going to get what I get and that's it. This is a cruise that I had to claw back from my terrible TA and couldn't transfer to MEI since it was booked so long ago. I feel powerless. I'm so upset.

Thanks for the advice. We discussed and we decided to book a 1Q promenade family cabin instead. Yes, it's not a balcony, but we enjoy people watching on the promenade. This cabin is huge, has a giant walk in closet, bathtub, and extra bunk room for the kid to go to bed early. It was a couple hundred dollars cheaper, so seemed like a better fit for our family.

Thanks so much for researching this for me! I've been testing lots of different dates. School is always a problem date-wise, so I have a small window of when we can sail. First week of August is usually the latest we can go since they always have "meet the teacher" the Friday before school starts on Week 3. I forgot that the prices they give you are always non-refundable and you have to go through the whole process to find the refundable prices. $3800 might be too high for my husband to go for, but I'm sure I can talk him into an OV if I fail. I'm really mad my TA dropped the ball for lifting and shifting my cancelled June cruise, as these prices are all much higher than I paid. Oh well, at least I have more flexibility as far as dates go.

@twangster Thanks for the reminder that taxes and fees cannot be paid with FCC. Where did you get your numbers from? That's the kind of breakdown I was expecting. Do I need to go further in the mock booking? Are you using a different website? Yes, I've been trying to get into these 5D aft cabins for my last three cruises that have been cancelled due to COVID. I hear they are amazing balconies.

Oh, are you saying that it doesn't matter whose name the FCC is under, that it can be combined for my immediate family? That was not the case last time I used a FCC for my cancelled June 2020 cruise. I ended up with extra leftover and had to pay out of pocket for person #2. I know you can combine FCCs if they are all under your name. Thanks for the tip about making a cash deposit too. I didn't realize that I could get that back later and use the FCC In one fell swoop later. Last time I checked, all FCCs from CWC were extended so you had to book by April 30, 2022 for a cruise to be sailed before Sept 30, 2022. Has that changed?

Hi everyone, I was perusing Royal's current 60% sale and I just can't figure out how they are doing their math. I have some FCC that just came in and I'm trying to find a cruise that will use up most of my FCC. My FCC came from a previous cruise that had a 60% off second person sale, so person 1 has ~$1600, person 2 has ~$600, person 3 has ~$700. But current sale seems to be taking much more than 60% off the second person so that I end up with extra FCC for person 2 and not enough for person 1. Example screenshot below of a cruise I'm interested in. Is this just some weird royal math? Am I missing something? I hate that they make it so hard to use the FCCs.

Update: I didn't hear back from TA after a few days and asked Royal and they said she did nothing as usual, so I went ahead and requested that Royal transfer all my bookings back to me. They were surprisingly quick. They sent me an email that said they were able to transfer the bookings, except the one I was trying to lift and shift, as that was paid in full. ARRGGHH! Does anybody else have any other suggestions? Royal agreed with all your suggestions to email [email protected] , but I don't know why they suggested it if they knew it couldn't be done. What a waste of everybody's time. While 2 of our 3 isn't bad, I've hit the wall and I'm going to just give up on the lift and shift and see if I can get my TA to just cancel for a refund. Most of this cruise was paid with FCCs, so I assume those will get reissued at to me at some point.

Thanks for the link. This doesn't seem like it applies in my case, but the email definitely helps and I foresee myself going this route if I don't hear back from her next week. I'm not sure what happens here since the booking was well past final payment and was cancelled by the cruise line. I think the booking # sticks as the cruise moves around. This cruise was originally a Liberty sailing in Mar 2021 that was cancelled by royal due to drydock (which ended up not happening). I was supposed to receive a bunch of OBC for accepting the change and prices have gone up a bunch, so I'd rather L&S if possible. If not, I'd rather just get the FCC reinstated and re-book with a different TA. I've already connected with Sharla for my 2023 cruises and I'm just waiting out these last cruises I've got booked with my old agent. She does have a phone # and in the past, she was really good about picking up and answering emails. I tried calling her several times last week and it would ring several times, then go to a generic voicemail message that didn't even have her name/agency. It would just say something like "you've reached (###)-###-####. Leave a message at the tone." Maybe it's always been like that, but I've always gotten her on the phone right away in the before times. I keep thinking that she's gone out of business, or gotten a different full time job so she doesn't have time to call, but she claims she's still in business and doesn't have another job.

Thank you all so much for your advice. Thanks for the explicit directions too. I will definitely try this tactic if things don't get resolved in the next week. I often waffle between whether I'm being too demanding or being a sucker. I've been using the same TA since 2014 and we've had several successful cruises together. She was always very responsive. But ever since early 2020, it's been all downhill. So many problems, so many promises to be patient and she'll send updates. There were never any updates and I would feel like a sucker. At first I'd check every week, then every month. I understand that her business has taken a major hit with the no sail order and I don't want to punish her further, but this response was so terrible that I just give up. It's the straw the broke the camel's back. I did send her an email asking her to release the booking. She wrote back that she's just been overwhelmed by the hundreds of cruise emails she gets every day. (so..many...excuses) She then said she'll try to get to it today. By get to, I have no idea whether she means "release the booking" or "call royal for the F&S". Either would be good for me. Since it's Friday afternoon, I don't have much hope.

Thank you all for your responses. I didn't realize Royal can just release these back to me. They made it sound like they are under a contract with the TA and that's why they can't speak to me or do anything I request, as it has to go through her. I'll try and see if I can get my TA to voluntarily release this one back to me so I can take care of it.

That's a good question. I get automated emails from her every once in a while from cruise one (https://www.cruiseone.com/travel/HomePage.html) which I would guess is the parent company. From her linked in, it sounds like she owns her own business and is probably the only person working there. I did ask her to have another agent handle it if she was too busy, but she conveniently ignored that too.

I'm so frustrated with my TA that I just want to scream. She has become so unresponsive and unhelpful that I've reached my breaking point. My June 2021 cruise was cancelled on April 8. I reached out immediately and asked her to lift and shift. I checked the next day and the cruise I wanted had sold out of my rooms. Checked with her, no that wasn't ours - she made the request by form and they'll process it when done. I asked her if she could call and lift to my second choice cruise and speed it up, but she said she had to use the form. She said it would take a few days. A few days pass, no response yet. I email her, and ask her to put a hold on the cabin I want before it disappears, like everybody suggested on this board. She says it's not processed yet and she'll check on it. No mention of putting a hold. Cabins are still showing as available when I check. A week later, I check again, same begging about putting a hold and calling. No response, so I facebook messenger royal. They say that the only record they have of my lift and shift is her calling to see if it's eligible for lift and shift. Royal responded it was, but never heard back from her. Royal said that she should call them ASAP and take care of it over the phone. I immediately sent an email begging her to call them. No response. I check with Royal again about what to do. They say to ask her to call or ask another agent if she can't do it. I send several begging emails, as we've now missed the April 22 lift-and-shift deadline. She finally emails me back today, apologizes as my emails landed in her spam (which seems to always be her excuse) and tells me to just call them myself. I've already tried! They will not talk to me. I can't do anything! I contact royal again and they say they'll send her an email to call them, but then I ask about the deadline and they're like, Oh yeah. We'll have to look into this. I haven't had much luck with them ever returning with an update...I remember it took about 4 months of weekly messages about my missing FCC before I finally got a resolution. Anyway, this is a long saga, but I'm just so frustrated. I have this cancelled sailing and two more sailings in 2022 with her. Is there a process for getting your sailings back or transferring to another TA? Can anything be done with about a terrible TA?