jupiter03

Thanks everybody, sent this idea to my TA, but no response yet. I thought you were only allowed to hold a room for 24 hours though. How is everybody holding for longer? OR have the rules just changed?

So June cruises were cancelled a week ago and I asked my TA to lift and shift to next year. Still waiting for her request to go through. How long does this process normally take? She said that Royal will process the requests in the order received, but I'm sure they've got a ton to go through. My first choice cruise only had one room left at my cabin category and it was taken the next day. My second choice cruise is still showing some rooms, but I'm worried they'll be gone by the time my request gets processed.

Oh, thank you for clarifying that! Hopefully my TA can do the lift and shift then.

I'm not surprised that June cruises were cancelled. Been holding out hope that my June 20, 2021 cruise would happen. I see from Matt's news that I can lift and shift to "Move to a qualifying 2022 sailing between May 18th, 2022 – June 15th, 2022 on the same itinerary, sailing length, embarkation port, stateroom category and departing within 2-weeks of the original sail date and your client's cruise fare/promotion is protected. This option is available until April 22, 2021." However, a quick search shows me that there are no cruises that meet these requirements for me to Lift and shift to. There is a June 12, 2022 cruise that has the same itinerary, but my stateroom category is no longer available. There is a June 26 cruise that has the same itinerary and my stateroom category is available, but it doesn't meet the dates allowed, even though it's almost one year of my original sale date. Anyway, just wondering if anybody on this board knows whether these "rules" are set in stone, or if there is any leeway. Most of this cruise was paid with FCC, so worst case scenario, I'll just cancel for a refund and wait for the FCC to be reissued.

@Sharla Does MEI travel have any other fees? Like change fees or booking fees? That's great that you monitor prices.

If they are still asking for the full deposit, I see no need to try to use the FCC at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up extending the data again and I'll just wait. Thanks for all the advice, everyone!

Thanks everyone! I tried using them to book a 2023 cruise and it seemed to accept them, but was still asking for my full deposit. It also only allowed me to input one FCC per person. I thought they changed to accepting more than one FCC per cruise, but maybe you need a TA to apply more than one.

When I check my FCC balance, it says the following: Valid through April 30, 2022 or 12 months from the original sail date (whichever is longer) and can be used for any open sailings at the the time of booking. I assumed that they could only be used on cruises before April 2022, but this statement leads me to think they might be able to be used for 2023 bookings. Anybody try using their FCC on a 2023 cruise?

Yes, I agree. Before the pandemic, I didn't have any problems, so no problems with my TA either and I thought she was great. Now I'm looking for someone that can handle issues and is in the know. This has jogged my memory of a few times where Matt has mentioned some new change Royal implemented and when I asked her about it, she would respond that she hadn't heard about it, but would check into it and then crickets. Then when I would push again, she'd say, no that doesn't exist. I don't know if she was talking to a customer service rep who also didn't know about it, if she wasn't checking at all, or if she just didn't know how to deal with it. I've worked customer service jobs before, so I understand that not everything can be fixed easily and some things are out of your control. As a customer, I think all everybody wants is to know that someone has your back and they care.

Thanks for the tips! I didn't realize I could book on my own and transfer later. However, my current TA always gives some sort of OBC for booking with her and I never know what that will be. Sometimes that makes the difference whether I can convince my husband to let me book another cruise or not. Do MEI travel agents ever offer any OBC for booking? Yes, I know TAs aren't always available. I always worry about bothering them too often, as I know this has been a terrible year for them and they are doing tons more work cancelling/rebooking and not getting paid.

Thank you everyone. Just wanted to make sure I didn't have the wrong expectations. Thanks for Michelle's contact info. I'll get in touch.

Hi all, I've been using the same travel agent since 2015 and she used to be great. I've booked several cruises with her and she was always very responsive and quick to take care of any price drops or new bookings. She would respond on nights or weekends. Her agency would always kick in some OBC to sweeten the deals. But this last year has been a mess. I've cancelled several cruises this year (rightly, since they all ended up cancelled by Royal anyway) and a myriad of issues that she has not been able to fix (such as missing FCC/refunds, refundable cruises rebooked as non-refundable, cruises not price-protected, etc.). I don't know if these problems were errors by her or errors by Royal. I want to be loyal to her because I'm sure her business has really suffered, but I just want my many issues fixed. I feel like I've been very patient and only check in once a month, but her responses are always that she's put in the request for Royal to fix things, but nothing ever gets fixed. I read all the posts by people on this board that are happy with their TA and I wonder about mine. The final straw for me is that I saw a booking for 2023 that I wanted to do on Tuesday. It was a good sale, and normally she responds back right away and books it. But I didn't hear back from her. Sale ended. I sent two more emails before I received a response that she was super busy with the latest cancellations and would help me later. It's been days and no response. I don't want to be a nag, but I feel like TAs know how fast cruise prices change and she should have gotten back to me by now. I check this cruise everyday and the price keeps changing. So big question: when should I get a new travel agent? Should I find a new TA for the 2023 cruise, or should I stick with my current TA (which I still have several 2021/2022 cruises booked through and several FCCs from all the cancelled cruises)? I know she owns the bookings, but does she own the FCCs?

Yes, this has happened to me too. I cancelled a cruise in July 2020, got FCC and taxes back for 1 out of 3 passengers. I have contacted my TA numerous times and I've also contacted royal directly on Facebook. Each time they tell me someone is working on it. I have checked in every month since then and I don't think anybody is working on it. I am so tired of nagging. It's literally been months and nobody can tell me what's going on or how to fix it. Every time I think about nagging my TA again, royal cancels another round and I feel so bad for the TAs.

I double book for spring break cruises every year, as I never know which week in March it will be. I've gotten burned on my 2022 cruises though. I had booked refundable fares on Allure when it was supposed to come to Galveston and they automatically got moved to non-refundable Liberty of the Seas cruises when the Allure got cancelled. My TA hasn't been able to fix it (yet). I keep nagging and last time I checked she said Royal was focused on all the 2020/2021 cancellations and wouldn't get to it until later. The school schedules came out a few weeks ago and I wish I could cancel the latter one and get my $ back. I don't really want any more FCC that I can't use.

Thanks Matt! You're the best!

Hi Everyone, my apologies if this has already been covered, but I find FCC rules so hard to follow and they seem to be constantly changing. I have a cruise booked for early 2021, where the deposit was paid for with FCC. I'm going to cancel under the "cruise with confidence" program and I was wondering if anybody knows if the FCC will be reissued as a new FCC -or- if it will just be added back to the original FCC. The original FCC still has a ton of $ leftover, as the FCC was applied under a different sale than what I intended to book (I was trying to book a BOGO60 deal where person 1 was ~$1600 and person 2 was ~$600 but they booked at both persons ~ $1000). I've been told that FCCs cannot be combined and I already have another smaller FCC that I will probably be unable to use, so I hope the answer isn't that I end up with multiple small FCCs. I sure wish they would let us combine FCCs or let us use FCCs for other items. Also, is anybody still waiting on FCCs? I cancelled a cruise in July and am still waiting. My TA keeps telling me to be patient, but I heard Royal was getting much better at this. It had taken me 5 months to get the FCC I used for this cruise, so I'm wondering if I'm just unlucky.

Thanks everyone. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one. I guess their computers must automatically default to non-refundable.

Has this happened to anyone else? I always book refundable cruises since I book them years ahead of time and am never sure what might happen. I had two spring break cruises booked for Mar 2021 on Liberty, but they were cancelled earlier this year for the expected drydock. Royal allowed me to move one to June 2021 on the Liberty and one to Mar2021 on Adventure, each with some OBC for my inconvenience. When the Liberty drydock was cancelled and the original cruises returned to be able to book, I cancelled the Adventure cruise and rebooked my original Mar2021 Liberty cruise. However, it turned out that both cruises had been converted to non-refundable fares, which was in very fine print of the invoices Royal provided. So instead of receiving a refund, I have received a $150 refund and $100 FCC. I have no idea what happened to the rest of deposit ($500) and nobody can tell me. This made me look through the fine print of my other invoices and this has also happened to the two Allure of the Seas cruises I booked for Mar2022, which were cancelled (so sad!) and automatically changed to analogous Liberty cruises. Both were originally refundable and now both are non-refundable. To add insult to injury, one of them was not price protected according to the invoice and is much higher than my original booking. I know that Royal is super busy with the endless cancellations, but I'm pretty annoyed with these mistakes and how long it's taking to fix. It's been several weeks since I first noticed all these errors and none have been corrected yet. My TA is always talking about how behind Royal is, but something like this seems like it should be an easy fix for something that is obviously their mistake. Did this happen to anybody else and does anybody have any advice? I don't want to keep bothering my TA so that she keeps bothering Royal, but I don't want to fall through the cracks.

Thanks, I think the new cruise should be covered by CWC. According to the website: That’s why Royal Caribbean will let you cancel any cruise that sets sail from now through April 30, 2022. Whether it’s a booking you already have or one you make right now through August 1, 2020, you’re covered. As long as you cancel at least 48 hours before your sail date, you’ll receive a Future Cruise Credit. The credit is valid to book and sail by December 31st, 2021 or 12 months after the date that you cancelled your original sailing — whichever is further. I know things have changed and the FCC can now pay for a deposit too. Does anybody have experience on how this works? Do I pay for the deposit with FCC and then they reissue the remaining FCC as a new FCC? Or do I pay it all now with the FCC so I don't need to wait for another FCC? I don't usually make final payment until we're much closer, but it too so long to get this FCC that I wonder if that's a good idea.

Hi all, I normally book refundable fares (like Matt suggests) for the flexibility. I'm looking into booking a cruise using my FCC and I'm wondering if I should book a non-refundable fare instead. It seems like if something happens, I can cancel with the cruise with confidence policy and I would be reissued the FCC, right? Am I missing any fine print? The difference between refundable and non-refundable is ~ $200.

Thanks everybody. I was reading on a different board that there is even more fine print that they didn't tell us. It sounds like if you don't use your FCC completely for the first cruise, you have to wait until the first cruise returns before they will issue the remainder as a new FCC, no exceptions. So ideally, you need to make sure the final payment for your second cruise is a few weeks later than when your first cruise returns, to give them time to re-issue it. In addition, my TA said royal also needed a few weeks before final payment to use the FCC certificate in the first place. My second cruise's final payment date will be the day my 1st cruise returns, so it sounds like I will only be able to use the FCC on one of the cruises. I'll probably have to pick the 2nd cruise since owe a lot more $. So I guess Royal gets to walk away with almost half my FCC since I can't cruise more than 2 cruises a year.

So I finally got my long awaited FCC from my cancelled March 15 cruise (I took the cruise with confidence offer a few days before they cancelled). Now I'm looking into applying it to my 2021 cruises that I've already booked and I'm running into some issues with how the credit was parsed out. Since Royal doesn't just split the FCC and divide it by the number of people, everybody has a different amount of FCC and I'm finding myself having a hard time using it based on Royal and their weird promotions. So example, I have $~1600 in FCC, my husband has $600, my son has $700 (rounded for clarity). So the promotion at the time was BOGO 60% off the second person. Both of my 2021 cruises have a bogo50% promotion, but in one case, my husband is guest #1 and in the other case I'm guest #1. Guest 1 always owes way more $ than guest 2. So according to my math, I'll owe ~$1200, my husband will owe ~$1100 and my son will owe ~$400 for final payments. However, when I thought I would be made whole with the FCC, it looks like both my son and I will each have 300-400 left over in FCC, while my husband will owe $500. Am I understanding this right? My TA says it's too late to switch my husband and I from guest 1 to 2. That's the kind of thing I would never have thought mattered. I don't want to lose the excess, but I can't possibly go on more than 2 cruises a year and the FCC must be used by 12/2021. I thought they extended it to March 2022, but my FCC is pretty clear on the dates. How are other people applying the FCC? It seems like Royal is always coming up with different promotions, so it seems like it's going to be impossible to use the credit without some loss, unless you catch the same promotion. Any one else in the same boat?

Which part isn't working? I was able to choose the cruise, room, fill in all my info, get to the window where you select the refundable option, and then I stopped there and went through my travel agent to actually book.

are now available to book (Nov 2021 to April 2022). There is a 4 night sailing, then all the itineraries are the same: 7 day cruises leaving Sundays, going to Roatan, Costa Maya and Cozumel. I'm so excited we are getting an Oasis class ship in Galveston!

Thanks for the replies. I'm glad to hear we no longer have to stalk the walls. It was always so hard to find photos. I remember finding all ours and placing them behind each other, as we didn't want to buy early ones in case future ones turned out better. And then the royal photo people would just move them around so you had to keep finding them. Looking forward to seeing how the kiosks work.