Mrs. Thomas

Agreed. Remembering back to PRE-Covid19, every time a cruise ship anywhere had a large number of infections of ANYKIND, the media was on it like a duck on a june bug. If any ship POST-Covid19 had an outbreak of anykind, especially Covid19, it will be a huge media circus.

Exactly, I rented a 2 bedroom condo through VRBO but not in St. Thomas

Deposit in proper sense isn't refunded...
Say the deposit paid was $750 total. Taxes/port fees amounted to $350 and opted out of pre-payment of gratuities.
Your cash refund would be in the amount of taxes/port fees only, $350. The remaining $400 from the deposit would go towards the FCC.
 
Now remembe once the FCC is issued it can be used towards the deposit on a future sailing (for now). Catch is taxes/port fees and prepaid gratuities still have to be paid in cash.

@Mrs. Thomas
Good point about safety.  My best friend has land down in Oklahoma.  Maybe we can talk him into us going with his family down there for hiking, camping, bike riding (we have spent enough time at home where the kids have actually learned how to ride their bikes pretty well), tending of animals (they have a small amount of cattle), and some outdoorsy stuff for a long weekend.....Would be simpler not to have to plan around unrest and outbreaks.

Everything that is 125% is in the form of an FCC so if you choose 125% cruise fare or 125% cruise planner purchase, those will come to you as FCC's.  The only "cash refund" you would get would be taxes, port fees and gratuities (if they were already prepaid).  

I am soooo ready to sail and agree about their already distressed refund / FCC system.  Plus, I think they want to see more info about how COVID-19 is spreading as it gets closer to September.  Like everyone has said, them hanging on to their money longer helps them survive.
If this cruise gets canceled, we will book something for next year and try to go somewhere fun with the kids this year.  I love being on the water, but I need a little time away.....so, I may end up with a land vacation doing some stuff down in TX.

Honestly, I don't think you're an idiot, in my opinion putting cash back in your bank account is the better option. I was on the September 20th, 2020 sailing of Oasis and while not technically cancelled I wasn't about to pay money in hopes they do cancel and I get an extra 25% of Royal's "funny money" (we weren't planning on going). If it gets cancelled and I could have turned my $726.88 drink package price (for two with 18%) into a $908.60 FCC that could have helped pay for a more expensive drink package, well ... I'll still not regret anything. The cruise is currently 25% more, at least. At this point, the less Royal has of my money the better. 
 

I'm an idiot! I completely forgot about the 125% FOC for the excursions and drink packages and cancelled my stuff on Friday in hopes of getting my money back sooner.  I should have just waited! UGH! I have decided to "roll the dice" as Matt says and rebook for October. Who knows, maybe we all have escaped a bad storm by not sailing in August.  (trying to look on the bright side) @WAAAYTOOO we may need to add a "cancelled" section to our cruises on our signatures. LOL

I don't think they are waiting for a vaccine. I think they are waiting for numbers to go down more in the US. Personally, I think we will see a big spike way before Fall due to everyone wanting to get out now and many doing it. Most believe that if the media would stop talking about it so much that people would, for the most part, stop worrying about it as bad. That's not to say we shouldn't be cautious at all, but it isn't Captain Tripps (reference from "The Stand"). Let's all just hope that this is the last postponement of sailings. I'm not sure how much more the industry can take if it isn't.

Yep, I always check that as well as over 55, C&A member # and state. Haven't received a state discount yet. I have tried the elusive FOM discount, but to no avail (FOM=Friend of Matt). I guess you have to go on an official blog group cruise to qualify for that one. 

Symphony is my favorite ship.  She's just beautiful (art work, decor, etc) and so much to do.  
We stayed in a Boardwalk Balcony so not the standard balcony.  Fun room as we like people watching and seeing outside.
I personally have doubts cruising will start up again this year, but we don't know.  It's month by month.  Hoping the cruise likes will come up with good protocol and changes until a vaccine is found.

Welcome to the message boards @loulou !

Symphony is an amazing boat. Being that the ship was put to sea in 2018, the amenities of the rooms are great. We enjoyed an Oceanview room on deck 10 forward on our sailing last September and loved it. We are doing a B2B beginning 9/19 (fingers crossed) on Symphony because we love the ship so much. This time we booked an interior balcony overlooking Central Park on deck 10 (several floors above the park). As to when cruising resumes, I think the odds are 50/50 at best that we make our late September sailing, but I'm an optimist who hopes for the best in everything. Happy Sailing! ?

What about the Cruise Planner FCC?
I had $900 in Cruise Planner Credit for a sailing in August. I spent ~$700 and have ~$200 left unspent in my planner.
Do I lose the $200 I didn't spend, and they start from scratch? If they do, I would still end up with roughly $900 (I think). 
Or do I keep the unspent $200 and then I get an additional 125% toward the $700 I spent on packages? I would just like to have the original $900 back to my account, but I'm not sure if it works that way?

One more note, the 125% is from the cruise fare. Taxes, fees, gratuities get refunded back.

I am not sure what they are waiting for to open. Seeing as most of the country is opened up, unless they are waiting for a vaccine. OS at this point, I would say there wont be anything till 2021...….especially with a 2nd wave supposed to be coming this  fall(not my words nor do I care but)
 
I am seriously concerned about the cruise industry moving forward....people HAVE to fly sometimes, but cruising is totally leisure. And if somehow they get back on track by the end of the year to resume cruising.....you dont think Covid-20 or something else wont show up in the near future to shut it all down again?

Damnit, I am on the 9/19 symphony that I was hoping would be canceled. I just want my money back so I can book cancun.

Suspension now extended through 9/15/20 globally with some exceptions... ?
https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-ships/itinerary-updates
 
... and here is Matt's more detailed post!
https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2020/06/23/royal-caribbean-cancels-most-cruises-until-september-15
 

VRBO is typically full rentals, not shared spaces.  AirBNB has both.

Ummmm can I just say germs and the virus are different. Unless that bag of chips, carton of eggs and handrail is covered in spit or mucus, the odds of catching COVID from it is extremely low. Things should be kept clean in regards to other bacteria and germs. I am reminded of the stylist who cut 140 peoples hair with COVID but nobody was infected......because she washed her hands and they all kept their mask on. I see people who have gloves on the store and I laugh. They dig in their bag, adjust their mask and touch all sorts of things like their hair and face. What is the point??
My brother goes to the store 2/3 a week because he needs fresh fruit; he has incurable stomach cancer, so his immune system is compromised. He wears his mask only, does all his shopping and washes his hands when he gets home. We share a home and he hasn't been sick because we do our part. Oct was supposed to be his first RCCI cruise but we collectedly decided to wait. Not because we don't trust that RCCI will do their part and be clean. But because people will not. This is a social disease, how can you comfortably vacation knowing that its a possibility that the person next to you: at the bar, sitting by you on deck, or sitting in front of you at a show, has COVID. People are not inherently good and are always self-serving. They don't want to cancel their vacation, especially if it took some time to get there and/or cost them a decent amount of money. I don't think people or RCCI can afford to have to quarantine right now...regardless of how nice the room may be.

Seriously,  I see this is like a ski lift ticket.
It states in fine print the liabilities,.
If you don't want to sail, than OK.  However, I do want to sail.
I remember a sociology course I took in undergrad.  When does the good of 1 outweigh the means of many?
You have the inevitable right not to sail, so why don't I have the right to sail?  
FWIW, I lost my Dad (57 yo) to Adult Leukemia.  I know the difference. 
 
 
 

I wonder how realistic this is for Royal?  It certainly seems like something to explore. I could see the Bahamas as an origination point if they were open to it considering how many ships visit there already.  It would certainly bring in lots of $ for hotel nights before/after plus the food/merchant spending that would normally follow. The cruise line wouldn’t have to bend to CDC whims. 

The challenge to operating from another country in the Caribbean is resupplying the ship.  The volume of supplies that get loaded on turn around day is massive. 
For many ports of call ships won't take on potable water due to questionable standards for water treatment and limited quantities of water.  Many Caribbean nations collect rain water but they would never be able to supply a ship with potable water (not all ships have the ability to desalinate water on board).  
Food standards can be questionable in some foreign countries.  When I lived on St Thomas virtually all food was brought in on barges, transferred to trucks and shipped to grocery stores.  Often frozen foods had clearly partially thawed and been refrozen.  It was quite interesting grocery shopping and very expensive due to the additional costs of shipping food.  It was rather disappointing at times and very different compared to grocery shopping on the U.S, mainland.  The cost of living is much higher on an island.  St. Thomas is a U.S. territory, imagine the differences in standards in a foreign nation.
Supplying a ship with fresh food and perishables on a scale to feed thousands for a week on cruise would be a challenge when operating from a small Caribbean nation and super expensive. 

You've seen my post - An Optimist's View of Where RCL stands -  if you hang out here. I took a couple of swings at what I consider to be the CDC's arbitrary and unjustified No-Sail-Order. There was some good back-and-forths about it being a good idea or not so good to restart cruise ship operations. I want to take another swing at the CDC.
I post on a forum of University of Michigan grads (I'm an alum). Because of my medical background I'm asked a lot of questions about what I think about C-19 and it's impact. To be clear, I've been a reopening advocate for a while and I'm not just pulling stuff out my butt to support that view. I will admit a bias towards reopening. The facts support that the social and economic costs of continuing to immobilize the US as a virus mitigation and containment measure exceed the costs of the disease burden associated with the rising number of new cases attendant to reopenings.
Today, I got asked, what are these costs and how do you do an objective cost/benefit analysis that makes sense to support one position or the other? One way to look at this is to examine hospital admissions from the Emergency Department for C-19 like symptoms in patient's that present with them and have either already tested + for C-19 or were tested in the ED and were +. 
I did this to address another posters view that we may be forced to endure additional economic pain (more shuttering and sheltering) as an off-setting  cost of reopening such reopening that will cause medical costs to rise proportionally with hospital admissions. The poster also responded to my view that declining fatalities are a good proxy measure of virus control and, indeed, that is the case. Fatalities are dropping. He also offered that there is a disease burden other than dying and Ampurp 85 would agree with this in that she asserted there are attributes of C-19 short of dying that can be significant and costly.  
I'm not sure increasing infections equates to increasing hospital admissions that increase medical costs.

I'm positive, though, that not many people who get infected get seriously ill or as my other forum poster and in this forum Ampurp 85 argued that attributes of C-19 short of dying can be significant.  

Assuming that there is a uniform disease presentation between an asymptomatic C-19 patient and one that dies is incorrect. To draw that conclusion, we can look at deaths and hospital admissions globally. We're still holding at global figures that show only 5% of C-19 infections result in death and only 0.0046% are hospitalized. I'm assuming that C-19 cases that get hospitalized would be the ones with significant symptoms. So, most infected patients have little impact in terms of a health care systems costs of dealing with C-19 patients.  

To demonstrate that increasing case numbers do not necessarily mean rising health care costs such that those costs are greater than the economic pain of moving back to sheltering and shuttering, I examined S. FL's stats through 6/20 . Here they are (includes Palm Beach, Broward and Miami Dade COs):

From 5/18 to 6/20 ED daily visits for C-19 like symptoms rose from 590 - 1210. I'd expect that with the growth rate of infections increasing like it is in FL.

In the same period admissions dropped from 7% to 6%. You'd expect that figure to rise. It fell!

My conclusion is that the hypothesis, increases in both new C-19 case numbers and ED visits for symptoms suggestive of C-19 will increase hospital admissions and therefore will increase C-19 related health care costs, is incorrect.
I also concluded from my analysis that Bar, beach and restaurant closings in S. FL., something the local media is saying needs to be done, were not indicated  Not yet. Let's see how official plans in each of the three S. Fl counties to cuing masking and social distancing along with enforcement works for two weeks.
I just demonstrated that C-19 treatment related hospital costs are probably dropping and increases in "economic pain" (mitigation and containment with a return to sheltering and shuttering) given increased case #s are unjustified.
As I wrote this post I thought, this reasoning applies to the foolishness of CDC's No-Sail-Order. I would imagine that the costs of caring for and transporting of confirmed C-19 cases that were aboard the multiple cruise ships in varying degrees is known right down to the dollar. Although I don't know what that total figure is and certainly it's safe to assume the cruise lines know a dollar figure that is associated with each passenger or crew member that received on-board care or transport, the cost of doing that can not possibly be close to the economic cost of continuing to shutter the cruise lines. Not even close. To put it another way, on a cost basis the economic pain the cruise lines are suffering because of the CDC's No-Sail-Order are likely to be greater than any costs of dealing with a single or multiple C-19 infections occurring on a cruise ship.   
End the No-Sail-Order.

Problem is there may very well never be a vaccine and even if there is it may not "eliminate the problem" ... common cold has been around a while - no vaccine ... flu has been around a while, there is a vaccine but we still get flu outbreaks and even people who get the vaccine can get the flue if they get the wrong strain ... so saying its fair to wait on a vaccine is just a way of kicking the can down the road indefinitely.