dcr50usa

DBP at that price for the 7 sailings we have scheduled, it is available but 20-30 a day more

Must be ship specific as I just checked our upcoming cruises Jan-Dec 2022 and that price was not available.

That be true, BUT I have had a bad experience with RCL as mention on this blog just recently on a "computer glitch" canceling my reservation not once but TWICE in less than 10 days before sailing, the first cancel was able to be recovered by the TA (not MEI) but the second was the day before sailing of a cabin by the elevator and was not recoverable by the TA agency and RCL as a "benefit" upgraded us to a balcony cabin dead midship and away from our travel companions on another deck. My wife is mobility limited and RCL would not move the passengers they sold our bought and paid for inside cabin to the balcony they put us in, all we wanted was to be by the elevator and the cruise SEVERLY limited my wife's activities being stuck midship. This is why I am now using MEI and hope the RCL system does not create another computer glitch and if they do, MEI will be able to fix it properly.

FYI all: You mention that the travel agent gets a commission from the cruise lines bottom line, that may be true but FYI as a Fact: the travel agent receives an approx. 16% commission on what the cruise line charges your for your basic booking invoice thru RCL. This is based on direct information I received a few years ago due to booking confirmations being emailed to me directly from RCL that included this information.

Ouch, hope we hear something soon as we get on board on 17 Jan and do not get off till 5 Feb. We will have been on the ship for 15 nights (barring onboard virus issues) before stopping at Coco Cay and Nassau.

While I appreciate your time to answer my question, as a cruiser it did not completely answer my question. As a business owner I use software/programs to benefit my employees and clients too. I have been involved with them since the early 80's and whether the program is off the shelve or modified to suit my business needs, I have to know what the stated final capabilities are going to be before I invest in a new system along with its advantages to what I currently use. In this case, I believe one of the factors would be how soon your system would run after Cruise line sales are posted and TA's notified to modify the booking to the reduced rate. Pre-pandemic there were many 3-5 day sales only and sometimes they have the best price when all is said and done for that individual cruise. TA's are entitled to their personal time off just like the rest of us are, but when the sale is advantageous to the cruiser (client) and needs to be modified quickly due to the sale time limits the TA needs to know quickly. In the past I have had trouble getting in contact with my TA (not MEI) or their agency to have the booking modified before the sale price disappears and sometimes lost a substantial fare reduction for my cruises. The comments on this blog a few years ago about MEI has given me new hope (as I had been doing all the leg work for several years) and currently have 8 booked thru MEI. Since the pandemic began my MEI-TA and myself have managed to reduce my original bookings by almost 15%:) Unfortunately some of the sale reductions I found has caused me to interrupt my TA's well earned time off and has been greatly appreciated on our part but I would like to avoid doing this. Having an understanding of the timing of your program and its timely notification to my TA gives me the timing I need on when to check the sales so I can freely contact my TA during their regular working hours. Thanks

Same here, many, many times

Beci, As a cruiser using a MEI TA I was glad to see your reply to the issue:) I do have a follow up on the auto price sweep system you mentioned: Is the sweep being done automatically (on a set schedule or daily) and run based on what our TA's have entered into your system, or is it initiated by the individual MEI-TA we are using? Thanks

You bet!!! We took her for a 5N "test" sailing before we took the Serenade (same cabin) for doing the southern Caribbean and we fell in love with the Park Cafe:) Prior cruises the one thing we noticed was the lack of "salty" snacks especially potato chips lol, our first cruise we actually broke down and bought a can of pringles and slowly ate the whole thing on the promenade of the Mariner. Since then we always take some "table snacks" that are easy to pack for the pool deck where we enjoy meeting/visiting with fellow cruisers and playing cards/dominos with them or our travel companions when not busy on ship/shore activities.

Thanks:) we will be on a B2B (lift & shift frm 2021) 81N and then consecutive B2B. Will be on the Brilliance from 17 Jan 22 to 5 Feb 22 with another 29N scheduled thru Feb 2023 waiting for the Fall 2023 schedule to chose possible cruises for on board bookings when we get to the ships (if not earlier lol)

Thank-you so much we have been looking for a copy of emerald as that's what we will be when we start but will move to diamond before we get off

Thanks for the help,

All, we appreciate the posts on this subject as we are emerald and will be moving to diamond on our B4B cruise on the Brilliance in Jan-Feb 22. The link to C&A benefit page is great but the on board letter in the cabin is more direct. I appreciate the one posted for platinum as i will be sending it to our traveling companions as they are platinum. We would appreciate anyone posting the current onboard letter for emerald (we lost/misplaced ours from our last cruise in 2019) and the one for diamond. Thanks for your help and safe cruising:)

FYI, I had not heard much about this designer, but besides being available at Saks and Macys, they are available at amazon & walmart.com

Thanks for the referral, I will reach out to her this morning My prior agent/agency had been making travel arrangements for over 30yrs for our travel companions parents and had always had good service that why we went with that agency, but when the stuff hit the fan they restored it, like yours did but 4 days later RCCL cancelled it the second time, sold the cabin and the agency could not get it fixed will let you know how things go, thanks again for the help

Back then people would book cruises they had no intention to taking just to secure OBC or other perks and benefits. Then just before 90 days they would call in and move the booking to another ship. Some people did this for years with one booking. The problem the company faced was a surplus of cabins all coming available just before the 90 day mark. At that point many people have already made plans so they had a difficult time selling the ship. I was not aware of this, Thanks. I have only moved a booking due to critical family issues (medical and the like) as we usually book as far in advance as possible to avoid issues. My wife and i sort of follow the same cruise pattern, and as far as ships go the biggest we have been on are freedom class, and go on the smaller class ships. We are not interested in the new mega ships at all and will probably never go on one.

I agree with most of your post, but the way corporate america has gone over the past 40+yrs, the shareholders do not see much from these actions, only corporate management. I am pretty sure when this concept was approached the actuaries identified the mobility impaired group (mainly senior cruisers) as willing to pay the higher rates to get the cabin they want. That is fine if you want to accept that, but I feel that they are taking advantage of this group and as a consumer I am voicing my opinion and will probably back it up by using other companies (and advising others to do the same) if they charge what i consider a fair and equatable price for the goods & services i am purchasing. I believe in free enterprise but i do not believe in going to the extremes.

Thank-you for the update on the disabilities act, but still that group is now being targeted by RCCL's pricing and sales gimmicks and since i started cruising i feel that this should be made aware to all cruisers young and old. I know if i don't like it, I can lv RCCL, I do not want to as we have at least 20 more yrs of cruising left, but all folks should be made aware of this so they can make their own decision as one day they may be in my shoes. Yes, All companies can set their price for a service or goods, but the Consumer drives the price on whether or not they feel the price is reasonable for the service or goods provided and buy it or pass and find another company that is charging a more reasonable price for the same service or goods.

we have not ever tried to "GAME" the system, if you will remember before you became pinnacle, the system was straight forward , you booked your selected cabin at the sale price put your deposit down (which was always refundable) and paid the rest 90 days prior to sailing. It does not work that way anymore. We started cruising as my wife ended up enjoying it, she is retired and i still work but have plenty of vacation time and in a job that allows me to take 2-3 wks off at a time even with short notice. Since my wife has limited mobility we are limited in what ports we can get to,the time of year and itinerary is not factor in choosing our cruise. Price is the main factor along the ship and we try not repeating the last cruise we went on. We enjoy the atmosphere and meeting people. We have never tried to game the system, we just expect to be treated fairly like we used to by the company when we first started.

GOOD Idea if I knew of one that would be effective, i used one agency from 2007 to after my screwed up cruise in 2015, even the President of the world wide agency was directly involved and could not get anywhere with RCCL before we sailed and my wife suffered the whole time we were on the cruise, so why pay a travel agency 16% fee when they are no help when push comes to shove when the cruise line 100% screwed up not once but TWICE in less than 10 days before my sailing, but would not fix the problem. It was simple on my 2015 cruise all they had to do was offer the people they sold my inside cabin to the free upgrade to the balcony midship were they put us. Travel agents are great for the booking part but any trouble shows up they can't get anything resolved before OR after you get on the ship even when the cruise line is 100% in the wrong. IF a respected travel agency cannot do anything for their clients in these situations, i have tried working directly with RCCL but as stated before I can not even get a response from their own APPOINTED "Senior" travel rep, I have still not heard from Terry... today after 17 days of trying patiently but know i probably will lose out on this round of sail prices like i did on the ones back on 12 Jan. If anybody out there has a GOOD travel agent that has resolved major booking issues successfully for them in the past, i would be interested in the agent's contact information as we like being on RCCL ships but do not care for the home office supervisors, managers & "their conflict resolution dept"

The bait was the "sale price" of approx $460 pp if RCCL assigned the cabin, The switch was NOT a SALE Price of $760pp if you chose your cabin, WHICH is HIGHLY Discriminatory to mobility impaired and HC people (which my wife is one) There is NO provisions in RCCL assigning a mobility impaired person a reasonable cabin to fit their disability requirements at the "Sale" Price, you HAVE TO PURCHASE AT THE GUARANTEED CABIN RATE, The cruise we took in nov was a similar sale price (7nights) and i was able to select our cabin assignment close to the elevator, NOW under this new system I can NEVER get the "Sale" price again due to THE DISCRIMINATORY SALE PRICING SCHEME THEY ARE NOW USING:( The price for the cruise in Nov 2019 was 1/2 the cost for the same in Nov 2020 if i had to pay the "guaranteed cabin price" the sale price guaranteed cabin was within $100 of what I paid in Nov 2019 THIS is a NEW gimmick that RCCL is using to increase their profit, just like when they changed the onboard reduced cabin deposits/booking from refundable/movable to non-refundable. IF this keeps up I am going to change cruise lines, I was going to use my booking to get my diamond upgrade, but now i am going to do what is cheapest so my onboard bookings i purchased in Nov will not go to waste. AND: so much for the "assigned senior cruise rep" to help you with you bookings, The guy assigned to me "Terry ...." sent me an email announcing this fact. Have sent an email back in what i was looking for on 2 Jan, did not hear anything, called main RCCL res 12 Jan, the guy made a note and sent it to "Terry" and supposedly to his supervisor and today i have not heard from "Terry" who according to his email and voice mail today is at work when i called and left a vmail at 11am EST and it is now 6+hrs later with NO CONTACT RCCL HOME OFFICE CUSTOMER SERVICE/ISSUE RESOLUTION HAS GONE DOWNHILL for me since 2015 (The home office, out of the blue, no reason given, cancelled my cruise and refunded my money 10 days before sailing, the travel agent managed to get everything put back including my cabin by the elev, but RCCL 3 days before sailing canxed it a SECOND TIME, no reason given and stuck us in a freedom class ship in direct midships which my mobility impaired wife had to use a wheelchair, did not care if they upgraded to a balcony, the location to the elev was the #1 priority for our enjoyment (Had inside 2 cabins frm elev originally) RCCL's resolution was negligible considering what we went thru and several diamond, + & Pinacle members on board agreed with us, I will miss the ship's crew personnel as they have been the only reason i have been staying with RCCL, but with this latest round of issue's I will not recommend RCCL to anybody anymore and go to another cruise line started cruising in 2007, if other lines are following RCCL's policies my last yr will be this year

NOPE, I went thru RCCL and another agency and this is the way RCCL is doing it now. I had gotten 2 open bookings when on board and was looking to get them booked and found out about this ridiculous pricing scheme bait and switch they are doing. as i am booking to complete our nights to diamond

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and the way they are doing these sale prices they get to assign you to a cabin unless you pay full price to select your cabin. My wife and i just got off a 7 day cruise in nov 2019 and now the same cruise (in 2020 on sale at 60% off second guest) and picking the same cabin would have cost us DOUBLE what we just paid unless we selected the"SALE" price and let them assign us a cabin. This "Sale" pricing gimmick is Definitely discriminating (and possibly ILLEGAL) to limited mobility and handicap people (my wife is one of those) as you have to select a HC cabin or a cabin near elevators for ease of use.