Smokey79

I’m on a b2b on Utopia in October and noticed the dining options are now available in the cruise planner. However, there’s no immersive dining experience and it’s showing chef’s table as being available. Which is strange as I’ve been told by a couple agents at RC that chefs table isn’t going to be on Utopia. I just figured that’s it’s been added back since those conversations occurred and it’s not that much of a big deal for us overall. But and it’s a big one, gaining chefs table because they removed the dining experience would be awful imo. Hopefully they just don’t have all the details worked out yet.

It’s our first cruise after Covid and we’re bringing the in-laws and daughter along for the ride. It’s her first cruise and our first on an Oasis class ship and in Star Class. We’ve looking forward to this for the past 18 months. If you’re traveling with us feel free to say hi.

I don’t think anything will show until they get closer to completion so I’m thinking early or mid June. If anyone knows when Icon offering became available for the inaugural sailing, that would probably be a good indicator of time frame.

I may be alone with this observation but in my opinion the service was better overall when there wasn’t mandatory gratuities. The personnel that fall under the mandatory fees more seem more distant and not as personable as they used to be. I’m not saying they don’t do a good job but it’s like the passion? is gone? I’ve never minded the envelopes and I do still do it but I’m not giving what I used to as I don’t think the service is warranting.

Has OP contacted the travel insurance company or in some cases the credit card company to see about coverage?

Anyone else having issues with the RC website showing accurate balances due today? Any chance of RC honoring a screen shot of a no balance due? lol Seriously though, I get different amounts due every time I refresh the page and all 8 invoices change randomly so I can’t figure out the pattern if there is one.

Oh I’m booking. Oasis and Freedom class. Icon class is going to have to age like a bottle of fine wine before I partake at those rates.

I spoke with Royal last night on an unrelated subject but brought this up. Chefs table is not an option that they could see either so it may truly have been removed. My thought is that the IDE would provide a good replacement if they offer food and wine pairing from each region as you “travel” through it in the train. Just my thoughts though. Pricing is still TBD.

Maybe I’m just missing it or maybe there’s an IT glitch with my app but I do not see Chefs Table being listed under dining on UoS. Did it get replaced?

I had this happen with a March 24 sailing booking direct with RC. Somehow there was a glitch that double charged port fees and taxes to each person. I have a spreadsheet set up to track these things and I had logged in to make a payment and went “nope” and got on the phone. Took a couple days for the code to get corrected as the agent tried to fix it but it kept reverting back to double charges. I left my number and he called a couple days later letting me know it was fixed.

In the past, I ran into the issue of normally self pouring drinks vs measured so I understand where the earlier poster is coming from. I try hard the first day to find “my guy” for the cruise. Shout out to Fernando on IOS in 17. He set a high standard to follow. Now once I find him/her, I feel like I’m weird for doing so but I still use tip envelopes onboard. One is for the selected bartender. He’ll get $40 or $50 when selected. Nothing the next day to see how he’s going to be if he thinks the money is gone. Double tip the next day and then $40/50 each day for the remainder. I’ll only go to him regardless of where or what I’m doing. Started doing it five cruises ago and it’s not failed yet. Now getting the same results with a room steward has been harder to come by. I was ruined by mints on the pillow, towel animals, and the friendliness of the crew growing up I guess. It just doesn’t seem the same anymore. As you can probably tell I’m not a fan of the current gratuity system but I understand why it might have been implemented. On a related note, we’re doing our first Star class cruise next year and have no idea what’s reasonable to tip the genie. I’m leaning towards $50/person/day? if they’re awesome and working down from there. In our case, that gives them $250 a day to make it memorable and most likely that’s what they’ll get as long as they don’t mess something up. It’s a double anniversary (in-laws 50th and our 20th) cruise and my kids first cruise so I’m hoping for special.

At least they haven’t figured out that some schools have a fall break.

Regarding your kids ordering mocktails, did anyone ever question if they were drinking a non alcoholic drink?

The cup also has a hidden bonus I found a couple cruises ago. I went down to the machine pretty late at night to grab us some refills. It was surrounded by intoxicated people trying to get drinks with every random type of cup imaginable with the expected result. I waited my time, walked up, and got our refills with no issue. I turned around and noticed that I was being looked at like I was some wizard or magician. I explained the situation to those who asked but many were determined that the cup in their hand was going to work.

I’m noticing that the website still has the wrong cabin size listed for owner suites 1 br on Utopia. I was originally booked in one of those but when talking to the rep I asked about cabin size since I thought it was strange that it listed as being bigger than AQ 2br suite. He said it was slightly under 600sq ft not 861 and was putting in a ticket to get the website corrected. Unless he was incorrect, that’s substantial mistake imo.

I thought the prices were a bit high overall but considering the hype of anything new enough people will pay it. That being said, I’m booked for one of the solarium suites in early fall 24 so I admittedly bit hard. However, it’s our 20th anniversary so I wanted to make it a bit more special than a normal trip. It’s hard to almost impossible to plan for much of anything longer than 5 days due to my wife’s ability to take PTO so seeing them launch a new ship on what I call sample cruises was wonderful.