WhoCruiser

There's one born every minute, or so they say...

Another vote of confidence here for Native Choice. My recurring Doctor Who Celebrity/Fan meet the stars group was on Wonder Of The Seas at Costa Maya at the end of October, and we did our own group booked online in advance directly through Native Choice. Absolutely wonderful experience, and the walk out of the cruise line owned private compound and up the street to Native Choice's location was only a few blocks. We ended up paying about half of what Royal Caribbean charges for essentially the same tour. Highly recommended.

And there I thought it was a sign on the loo door on Ryanair, LOL!

Updating this, it was apparently a shootout inside the Holiday Inn Express hotel this morning, shooter dead, 2 officers wounded, traffic back to normal after a few hours, hope no one missed their cruises.

Local TV news at noon is currently reporting that 17th Street is closed due to a police involved shooting, between Cordova Road and SE 15th Ave, which is right in the neighborhood of one of the port entrances, the Causeway to the beach, and half a dozen of the most popular pre cruise hotels, so keep this in mind if you're on your way to a Fort Lauderdale/Port Everglades departure today.

Appears so far to only be an IT glitch. Several others here have reported several months of listings disappearing too for other ships, and when I went back in and played with the search settings some more, it did show up again, as seen here 5 minutes ago, so it's an intermittent IT issue that will hopefully fully resolve soon. But I'll still keep my eye on it, as it strongly resembles the opening salvo of some serious shenanigans that went on last year that caused a LOT of confusion & problems for those booked on Liberty towards the end of the year...

Hoping it's just an IT glitch, as I've seen some things drop off the calendar for stretches of several months on some other voyages I'm following, that would be extremely troubling, if actually true...

Likewise. Posted public rates not great, waiting to see how our agent did for the group. But in my case, getting a specific departure date and departure port makes all the difference, and we got them both, which simply didn't exist on Carnival or any other line that has announced so far, so I'm happy. So, back now to keeping everything on course for THIS year's December voyage that's already planned, already being promoted, and is already booking reservations, knowing that our NEXT voyage after that is ready for planning and rollout further down the line. I hate having to reserve nearly 2 years ahead of sailing, but lately it's the only way to get a fairly decent deal before everything inevitably goes up.

LOLOLOL!

IT department still banging the keys, LOL. Refreshing every half hour to see how the port docking timing & various cabin categories shake out. Departure date & general itinerary were enough for me to know what I needed, and prices will only go up by waiting, so we pounced.

Letting my TA do the dickering over specific cabin classes, rates, and GAP points to what he thinks is a good deal for us, but we're now holding a block of 50 cabins, so Carnival will be getting some inventory back very soon, LOL. I too would have liked to see more variety in the 7+ day range, but I got the EXACT departure date that works best for my group, and I can live with a stop on the way home at tired old Ensenada as long as I have the overnight in Cabo first, and a sea day in each direction.

Thanks Smokey! So new I can't even search it by date & port on the Royal booking engine yet, but the deployment announcement links work. And I do see one itinerary that works better for my group than what we are currently holding for almost 2 months now with Carnival, so I've notified my agent to do his magic and try to grab us some Space (& Time) with Royal.

Exactly this. I need to know whether to keep the group booking I'm currently holding with Carnival for a specific date range that works for me, or to dump that if Royal puts out something that would do as well or better. Fourth year in a row that I'm in this "holding pattern" situation. It's a pain in the @$$ having to wait so long when their main competitor has had the information I need out for several months already.

My recurring celebrity/fan group with cast & crew members of BBC TV's "Doctor Who" recently did essentially the same tour directly through Native Choice at $58 per person, and filled up two smaller 15 -20 passenger tour busses. Excellent service & extremely knowledgeable local drivers & guide. Worth the few blocks additional walk to get to the Native Choice bus boarding area for the significant savings over the ship's official offering, would definitely recommend.

I'm pretty sure pigs will fly before you ever see that occur.