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AspiringCruisePlanner

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Everything posted by AspiringCruisePlanner

  1. I get what you're saying. I found the deck plans and some stateroom and venue pictures today on a booking engine website and although it's awesome to see them, it'll take away from the wow factor of the big reveal tomorrow. It's like finding your Christmas presents before Christmas morning.
  2. Likely an unpopular opinion, but I get the feeling the diamond and up drink vouchers are being subsidized by increasing drink and drink package prices, in part at least. I've heard several times that xyz shouldn't be included for everyone because that would affect the price I pay for my cruise fare. The same would apply for these drink vouchers. It's a business decision and a nice perk, but it does come at a cost to everyone, including those receiving the drink vouchers.
  3. Not a bad plan. Buy the refreshment package and purchase a shot of liquor on the side with your package included mocktail. It'll save you around $6 per cocktail.
  4. I'd highly recommend comparing the list of covered events included in the trip cancellation and trip interruption portion of the policy statement and compare that with plans available via other travel insurance providers. insuremytrip.com is a nice site to compare prices and coverage from a wide selection of insurance providers. Allianz is surely the biggest provider, but based on what I've found, their covered events can be quite restrictive in comparison with other providers. For example, the list of covered events for the Royal Caribbean offered travel insurance plan is only half a page long, while the list of covered events for a WorldTrips insurance plan is nearly three pages. Also, when you purchase the travel insurance through Royal Caribbean when booking the cruise, you're only covering pre-paid cruise expenses and not other travel arrangements (flights, 3rd party excursions, hotels, etc.). When you say you have excellent health insurance, you still may not be covered for care provided onboard a cruise ship or in a foreign country. Having medical included as part of your travel insurance plan is a good way to ensure you're covered in the case of an emergency.
  5. Correction. We're now sailing on the Apex 6 night instead. Same departure date out of Fort Lauderdale so we didn't have to change our departure flight. Got an offer from the Blue Chip Club for a free balcony stateroom. They had a sunset veranda available so we jumped on it. Super excited to try the new edge class!
  6. There's been good and bad feedback on the infinite verandas on the Celebrity Edge class ships. Some will not do it again, others like the extra interior space. It'd be interesting to know what the survey results were back in 2018. https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2018/01/19/survey-reveals-possible-infinite-veranda-stateroom-royal-caribbean In the end, Royal Caribbean is likely putting these on their new ship because it significantly reduces the drag versus traditional balconies (lower fuel costs). The surveys must have had enough positive interest in this type of room for them to go forward with it. It'll be interesting to hear what Royal Caribbean customers have to say about these new oceanview *cough* I mean veranda staterooms after trying them out.
  7. Agreed, but lazy rivers can be a real strain on the resources. With so many twists and turns, the amount of lifeguards needed to watch it is significantly more than traditional pools.
  8. To start, future cruise credits can be applied to any cruise in the future in relation to today. The cruise date where the FCC came from doesn't limit how soon you could apply it. In regards to receiving a partial credit of your 2023 cruise deposit, it depends on when you booked the cruise. If you booked prior to June 1, 2022, then you can receive a $150 future cruise credit which can then be applied to your 2022 cruise (details below in italics). For cruises booked on or after June 1, 2022, non-refundable deposits are forfeited upon cancellation. However, changes to the ship and/or sail date can be made to retain the value of the deposit but are subject to a $100 change fee. If you booked the 2023 cruise after June 1st, I don't think you could retain the value of that deposit and apply it to an existing booking (the 2022 booking) because only changes to the reservation allow you to retain the value. It's worth a call to your TA or RCCL to verify what they can do for you. This is somewhat of a unique scenario. Hope this info helps! Guests who booked a non-refundable fare prior June 1, 2022 can elect to request a Future Cruise Credit in the amount of the deposit paid per guest, less the $100 fee. Non-refundable deposit FCCs will no longer be automatically issued to qualifying guests and, therefore, will require a call to Royal Caribbean’s Trade Support & Service team for issuance under the prior policy terms.
  9. It looks like the $50 free play is less restrictive than the $100 OBC and you may be able to use that reward if the OBC doesn't work out with . Also, the only timeline restriction for the free play reward is that it has to be redeemed 30 days or more prior to sailing.
  10. I'm totally with you that this is a little too involved and is a bit of a hack, but it does prove the fact that this information is ABLE to be published before booking and is not currently.
  11. I was curious myself and now I'll have to put my foot in my mouth because you CAN see current prices for cruise planner items without having to book that cruise or ask someone else. The downside is that the cruise planner packages need to be available to purchase in order to see the pricing. It just involves a little URL parameter adjusting. Here's the base URL for the beverage package page (you can navigate to any page from there as you normally would): https://www.royalcaribbean.com/account/cruise-planner/category/beverage?bookingId=0000000&shipCode={ShipCode}&sailDate={YYYYMMDD} Simply replace the {ShipCode} portion of the URL with the ship code you're looking for. You can find the ship code by doing a search with on the main "Find A Cruise" page and filter down to the ship you're looking for. The ship code will then be shown in the URL for that filtered page. Also replace the {YYYYMMDD} with the sail date of the cruise you want to look at. So, if you wanted to see the price for the beverage packages for Wonder of the Seas Aug 27, 2022 sailing, the URL is: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/account/cruise-planner/category/beverage?bookingId=0000000&shipCode=WN&sailDate=20230827 You can see the price of deluxe beverage package is $77.99 per person per day, less gratuities. As a bonus. You can also see how much that over-the-water cabana at the beach club is running prior to you booking the cruise. The price is staggering for this date. Note: I am NOT booked on these sailings but can see the prices no problem.
  12. I'd have to defer that to someone else. I'd start with the TA. Less hold time
  13. The OBC and free play rewards must be redeemed within 30 days of booking the cruise. Also, the reward can only be applied to a cruise that departs within one year from the redemption date. So there are some time restrictions.
  14. Yes, deluxe beverage package was what I was looking for. I must have been think ultimate or unlimited. Whoops. Thanks for the info!
  15. The gold coin (loyalty point) accumulation varies based on what device you're playing. I think all but 1 of the android games accumulate points by just having the app open. The apple versions require you to play the game to earn gold coins. Max coins per game per day is 4000 for most of the games. The RCCL cruise rewards go within a day, so you have to be checking daily to snag one and they don't come up often. The OBC and wildcard discounts are replenished daily, so much easier to get. Check out this reddit post comment that lays everything out nicely. https://www.reddit.com/r/myvegas/comments/rh8pcm/this_is_an_lp_question/hotfzir?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
  16. Fair enough. Great color. Interesting data point that only 22% of guests purchased a drink package. Was that specifically the UBP or any drink package? As a follow up that data point, one could wonder whether that percentage would go up if all included was offered assuming you counted an all included upgrade as a beverage package purchase. No way to be sure at this point one way or the other. Another thought is what impact does offering AI as an upgrade option upon booking do their revenues? Would their be a negative impact to the perceived value of these add-ons? Would there be less incentive to purchase add-ons after booking because the discount was already passed up? No one knows the answers to these questions which makes this more of a thought experiment than anything.
  17. Thanks @twangster! Appreciate the insight. Maybe shady is a little too harsh, but something is hidden under the surface when it doesn't need to be. As far as I'm aware, the only way to find out what the beverage or internet prices are for a specific cruise prior to booking is to find a roll call and ask those people what the prices are. This isn't practical when you're trying to budget a vacation and compare options. I know that there is a general price range that the drink package can fall in, but a large per person per day variance between sailings can easily add up to an extra $400 that wasn't accounted for. For others who are saying that they wouldn't use everything that comes with an all included fare, that's fine. I wouldn't imagine them offering only an all included fare without a cruise only fare as well. Certainly higher C&A folks would loose their s*** if they were only able to book all included. The cruise-only fare would be the publicly advertised price as it would have a lower sticker price. To the folks mentioning star class as the all-included option they offer. Yes, that's an all included option, but not applicable to the average customer. The desire I have is an all included rate, in addition to a cruise-only rate, for all levels of cabin categories so that the total vacation cost can be determined prior to booking. Certainly, there would have to be some sort of discount for these added perks versus adding them on separately in the cruise planner. It's also worth mentioning that if the all included fare was purchased, the money spent for that upgrade would now be part of the cruise fare and subject to the regular cancellation fee schedule. Not as desirable for the consumer, but if it comes at a discount, that's the risk that is taken. Same argument as refundable/non-refundable deposit bookings. What is comes down to is what several of you stated - if bookings are strong and onboard spend is favorable, there's no need to offer this all included pricing model. It'll be interesting to see whether they will ever adopt this strategy if booking volumes settle down. Certainly this pricing strategy is not to be desired for those people who won't utilize these perks. Thanks everyone for your thoughts! I always appreciate this sort of discussion.
  18. For sure. Nothing to fix at this point with all this pent up demand, but what about when the seas calm? Has RCCL ever offered this sort or option or deal in the past? I haven't been on the market for long enough to know.
  19. I'd like to hear people's thoughts about Royal not offering an "all included" fare option (drinks, wifi, tips) in addition to the cruise only fare that they currently offer. It's a big pain in the rear not knowing exactly how much a beverage package or internet is going to cost until after you've booked the reservation. Borderline shady. I get the idea is they've likely found they can generate more revenue by requiring the purchase after booking. I'd think that if they offered an all included rate, they'd run into less people trying to overindulge on drinks in order to get their money's worth for the drink package they purchased versus having that cost be less salient as being a part of your cruise payment. People might also be more generous tipping onboard because that daily gratuities doesn't show up on your shipboard account each day. Tell me what I'm missing. I know I'm not seeing everything clearly enough here.
  20. The TA you booked with actually does charge a processing fee and a cancellation fee separate than the cruise line. The fine print: An automatic cancellation charge of $100 per reservation will be applied to the last credit or debit card used on the account. Our (previously collected) $24.99 processing fee is non-refundable. If you choose to book different cruise while you are on the phone we will waive the $100 cancellation fee.
  21. Yup, and for RCCL the 5th person and up are assigned a different reservation number while being in the same room. This is likely why the reservations can't be made online for 5+. Super helpful.
  22. Adding or removing passengers from a reservation often, but not always, requires the reservation to be re-fared to the prevailing rates. Whether there's one person on the reservation, or two, the total cruise fare will be the same at any point in time because solo travelers have to pay a solo supplement equivalent to the cruise fare of a second passenger. Simply keep your wife on the reservation and make final payment. If she's able to go, then your reservation is all set. If she's not, then she can be a no-show at the pier and her port taxes and fees will be automatically refunded. No need to make changes to the reservation for this to happen. As far as double C&A points for you sailing solo in the event she can't make it, you may or may not get the double points. It seems to depend on what agent is managing those point allocations for your sailing.
  23. Yes Kids Sail Free applies to new bookings made between August 1 – 31, 2022 (“Offer Period”) on sailings departing on or after September 2, 2022 – May 25, 2023 (“Offer Cruise”), providing free cruise fare for third guests and higher who are 12 years old and younger as of Offer Cruise departure date on sailings 3 nights or longer booked in the same stateroom as the first two qualifying guests in a triple or quad- occupancy stateroom.
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