WAAAYTOOO

I never sailed on the Monarch or the Majesty so I really don't have an opinion on the ships themselves but I agree with Doc (and apparently, RCI) that these short trips on the smaller ships are the best way to get the first-time cruisers hooked ! My very first cruise was a 3-day on the Carnival Elation (old, even then !!) and I thought I was on the Queen Mary. It worked though...been cruisin' ever since and paying WAY more money for a cruise than I did back then.

Well, I sure hope you finally catch a break !! Good luck

Monctonguy, were you able to get the big discounts by going through an online agency ?

I have a specialty drink that I concocted. It is a pina colada made with amaretto instead of rum. It is SOOOO good.

Sure. If someone is offering hundreds of dollars per person OBC then you should jump on that. I would be dubious...but I cannot say that it isn't legit. All I know is that the price itself is not discounted.

Thanks for the kind words, Steve.

Is Liberty really that much bigger than Navigator ? I know they are different designs but I thought they were essentially the same chassis...or very close.

Head's up everyone who is on the blog group cruise...and everyone else too, I guess! RCI began a 72 hour cybersale this morning. I'm not sure if it is going to benefit everyone but it looks as if it is going to benefit those of us on the blog cruise. For those who have booked in my group they are showing a $25 per person reduction ($50 per cabin). It does not appear that the base price of the cruise has changed so it looks like a legitimate $50 reduction in the price of the cruise...for everyone but me and Stephanie...and anyone else who may have booked using a significantly discounted fare :( Anyway...call and see if your already-booked cruise will benefit or if you have been waiting to book, now may be the time ! Good luck everyone !

Yes, I have had some "double charge" incidents associated with pre-paying as well...but they have always been promptly corrected. Having OBC to utilize makes the situation entirely different. I would definitely NOT prebook unless they are offering some kind of awesome dining package. I believe they will probably offer you some kind of dining package onboard...so if it were me, I would wait. BTW, spellcheck on a tablet has gotten me some very interesting results...and put me in some very uncomfortable situations. Gotta love it !

You precooked your specialty dining ? That's probably going to be very stale by the time you get around to eating it, Doc ! :) Sorry...couldn't resist. I am no one to be highlighting someone else's typos...God knows... First off, WOW ! What an awesome itinerary. I am very envious. The Fjords/Iceland run is one I have ALWAYS wanted to do. Congratulations ! Wish I was going with you ! I'm sure everyone is already plenty tired of hearing my rantings regarding specialty dining so I'm not sure my advice is entirely welcome....BUT I personally don't normally partake in the specialty dining offerings. #1 I am completely HAPPY with the food in the MDR and #2 I hate being taken advantage of and I feel like specialty dining THESE days is a complete rip-off. Regarding #1, I freely admit that I am no connoisseur and so the fact that I love the food in the MDR may not really say much about my delicate and discerning palate. Too bad. I'm pretty easy to please and I think that food is JUST FINE...better than JUST FINE...I think it is GREAT. Regarding #2, while nothing is "FREE" (we have all paid for these meals as part of our base cruise fare) tell me again why I am paying for food a second time ?? I think that the concept of the specialty restaurant has morphed into something it was never supposed to be. Originally, the specialty restaurants charged a little "nominal service charge" for a novel dining experience. NOW, it's the full freakin' price of a meal in a moderately-priced restaurant for God's sake ! There is just no way I am going to reward the cruise line for ripping me off. Sorry...I went a little crazy there. So...my opinion is...enjoy your 12 nights on the Fjords. Get to know your waiters. They will love and appreciate it if you continue to come there most nights. If you HAVE to spend some OBC or something, eat at Sabor. It's the only decent specialty restaurant. Oh wait...Brilliance doesn't have Sabor. You're screwed. I see that they DO have a Rita's Cantina. Unfortuante. Steer clear of that.

Excellent point, Doc about the taxes and port fees. That is a old trick from way back....leaving out those mandatory charges in the up-front quote. It makes the price appear attractive but in the end, they have to add them in....so you end up right back where you started.

I will say that I have booked Carnival cruises a number of times through VacationsToGo and they have always been great deals. At the very least I can say that they are reputable and they deliver what they advertise. I have never used any other website or discount service. I have certainly used TAs before and as jti says, the biggest drawback there is that you lose control of your reservation...any changes that you make and any payments that you make have to be handled by the TA. If you don't mind that, they will almost always give you some kind of perk/rebate even if it is just OBC. As for why others seem to get the good deals, it is just like everything else. Seniority. If you have seniority in a loyalty program eventually you will start reaping the benefits. It takes a LONG time and LOTS of money to get there with RCI (some other other lines' programs seem to move a little more quickly but at heart, they are all the same). Also, I personally benefit GREATLY from my membership in Club Royale. Currently, Club Royale is rebating me 50% (which ends up being 46% for some reason...I'm sure it's how they calculate the reduction) off of the base, published cruise fare. That is a HUGE benefit. As with all things, the benefit you enjoy with such programs is based upon how much you benefit THEM...in other words, how much money do you risk and how much time do you spend, in the casino. Notice, I said how much you RISK, not how much you lose. Believe it or not, casinos (both land-based and sea-based) do not care whether you win or lose ! They know that over time, you will LOSE more often than you will win...so they only track what you risking, not whether or not you are winning or losing. Having said all of that about Club Royale, RCI is in the process of completely redoing their VIP program. I was told this morning that when they fully implement their new "tiered" program some of the lower level tiers will no longer qualify for ANY cruise fare discounts. Obviously I am not happy to hear that...but I figured it was coming. As with other things recently, Club Royale seems to be pushing this VIP program roll-out WAY to the right...just like Dynamic Dining, there seems to be some "issues" with implementing their plans. That's good news for me. I have received cruise fare discounts on cruises all the way through November 2016 and I will continue to book them when I can...they won't take them away from me once I'm booked but there may come a time when I no longer qualify for the BIG discounts I am now getting. There is also an element of obsession that is required. If you do not check prices and availability EVERY day then you WILL miss the mistakes, glitches, sometimes planned reductions that pop up from time-to-time. You have to catch them when they appear or you will lose out. Some people aren't that obsessed (I clearly AM) and don't want to have to check all the time.

Huntley, if I am not mistaken the cabanas are first made available to Grand Suite and above; if there are any left (which is extremely rare...I have never actually seen there be any unrented by the Suites guests) then they are made available to everyone else. I do not believe that Junior Suites qualify for the "first option" on the cabanas. You asked about any of the sweet suite perks. I do not believe that Jr. Suites qualify for any of the suite perks...HOWEVER I have heard conflicting information (from RCI CS reps not just hear-say) that Jr. Suites are eligible to go to the Coastal Kitchen and suites lounge on the Oasis and Q Class. Whether this is actually the case or not I don't know. I have been in a Jr. Suite MANY times and have never been able to utilize any of the "Suite Perks". That is why I now get at least a Grand Suite. I love Jr. Suites...they are much roomier and the ones on the aft are AWESOME but the Suite Perks are really nice and I have become accustomed to them so I am now completely and utterly spoiled and ruined for any other room ! How pathetic is that ?!

This is STILL changing daily. I JUST rebooked the Harmony TA from a GS to one of the "new" AS. Of course, on the Harmony, these suites are not add-ons, they are part of the original build. For that reason, it turns out that the one on Deck 14 is actually LARGER than the one on 12 (at least that's what the agent told me...I sure hope she's right. I will be VERY unhappy if I get there and find out that I should have booked the one on Deck 12). ALL of these AS on 11, 12 and 14 are now being advertised as A4. Originally I was told that Decks 11 and 12 would be A3 and only Deck 14 would be A4 - at least, on the Allure and Oasis. It turns out that all of them are going to be A4 on the Harmony. This actually makes sense since all of these rooms are only 1 BR, 1BA. The other AS (8, 9 and 10) are 2 BR. Anyway, it's all still messed up. The deck plans for Oasis and Allure still show those rooms as GS even though they are being sold as Aqua Suites (no idea what designation...it changes daily) after May and June of 2016. My recommendation is...if you find any available at a reasonable price, snag them. I have already done that with 2 cruises in November of this year and November of next year...plus the TA on Harmony.

I don't think so. Unless things have changed in the past month, RCI does NOT permit ANYone to discount their cruises. The only thing that a TA can offer you is benefits that THEY pay for - gratuities, OBC, beverage packages, etc. I think you will find that those "half price" quotes are bogus. They are using the base price as their basis and then offering the same discount that RCI offers (BOGOHO or 30% or whatever special they are offering at the time). If you do a real comparison I think you will find that they are the same prices that RCI is offering. I conducted such an evaluation just last week. It LOOKED like they were offering a discount but in reality they were just offering the same published discount that RCI was. That is NOT true of other cruise lines. Most of the others DO allow TAs and agencies to discount their cruises, but RCI does not...unless that has VERY recently changed. If this has changed I will be very surprised.

Woohoo !

Congratulations on reaching Pinnacle ! That's quite an accomplishment. I will be on the Harmony TA. Hopefully that's where they will recognize you reaching Pinnacle.

They are still trying to get their act together on these suite changes. Yesterday I went to the Oasis sailing on 5 Nov 2016 and they were advertising the A4 (the smallest of these new GS-turned-AS) rooms as full-sized AS2 (600+ ft sq room and 600+ ft sq balcony) which of course, is completely WRONG and they had an A3 (12330) out in general inventory (GI) when these rooms are supposed to require 4 people to book. Needless to say, I snatched that A3 up before they could pull it back out of GI. Today, they have fixed the dimensions on the A4 category and no longer show any A3's available. I don't know if they had actually sold the other A3 (12730) or they had never had it out in GI where it didn't belong. So there are still some BIG issues with these changes. I paid a little less than $2K more for the GS-turned-A3 (even with my Club Royale discount) than I paid for a BIGGER GS cabin 1 deck below on the Allure in Feb 2016 so they have definitely adjusted the prices UP but not as much as they first had...so they are still figuring it all out. You would think that they would have thought all of this out FIRST before making these changes but it seems they are fumbling around making changes and more changes. It's quite humorous, actually.

I find it odd that some ships include the gratuities on their drink packages up front and some do not. I don't buy the drink packages anyway...I was checking for someone else in our group but it's very confusing and surprising that they would do it that way. You'd think they would be consistent - either charge for them up front or don't. Having 2 different prices show up when you're searching the different drink package options is unnecessarily confusing.

I believe that the layout is pretty standard for all of the ships except for the Q class (but I certainly cannot say that I have been on all of the ships - I have not !) where traditional dining will be on one floor and MTD will be on another (usually traditional downstairs and MTD upstairs, from my experience). As for whether or not you have a private table or a group table, that option is available to you up front where you can choose to have the private table option. As Doc suggests, if you choose to go "commando" and have no reservation at all, then you run the risk of having to compromise on the option for a private table OR face something of a wait until a private table becomes available. Depending upon the time that you choose to dine, that wait can be minimal or much longer if you choose to do the "walk up" option at 6PM. Going against the entire concept of MTD, I always make a reservation for the earliest possible dining time. I know that this seems to defeat the purpose of having MTD but b/c we always choose to have a private table, it seems that we have more options upstairs than downstairs. I guess I am a traditional diner at heart b/c I like having the same waiter and the same table every night BUT I want a private table, so I do MTD upstairs at 5:30 every night. Period. It's nice to have options !

I understand about the walk. It is quite a hike to get all the way aft. I completely understand ! I also think you have an excellent point about being right under the pool deck. Good choice !

Stephanie, I would like to chat with you about the cabana at Labadee. I am going to try and send you a message with my email address on it and ask you to please chat with me via email. I am not really familiar with all of this tech stuff so I hope it goes through.

Stephanie were you able to get your CR discount on the Blog cruise ? I noticed that the GS 14730 is still available.

WOOHOO !!

Re: gratuities - If you prepaid the grats in your original booking, then they remain at the old price. I was surprised by this. I thought for sure they would re-price everything and add the new, higher grats but they did not. We have 7 rooms in our group (Blog cruise, Feb 21 2016). 6 of the 7 received reduced fares as a result of the 30% promo and retained their original, lower grats and only 1 of the 7 (me, unfortunately !!) was not able to take advantage of the new promo (that's primarily b/c I booked on April 15 and did not pay any taxes or port fees. If I had repriced the booking I would have paid the taxes and port fees so the 30% sale didn't help me any).