jticarruthers

The luggage tags are a great investment, much more secure. Of course mine are disappearing steadily as I lend them to friends in need who forget to return them ;(

Concur with Steve on this, the disembarkation day is not counted for the packages. If you buy it up front for a seven night cruise for example you pay for 7 days. Embarkation day counts, 6 "days" of the cruise count, disembarkation day does not. I purchased the Ultimate promo you reference Steve back when it first came out ... it has been something of a PR debacle for RCL but yes if you plan to sail before the end of August and would ordinarily buy a Premium and a Soda package you basically get the Ultimate upgrade for free. It was originally advertised as Replenish package for free which was a much sweeter deal and for purchase between 6/15 and 8/31 which is why I have it reserved for my Thanksgiving cruise .... not quite sure how that is going to turn out :)

And to your original question, NO they are not always consistent on the same ship never mind from ship to ship :) They are pretty close though so the price list will probably still be good for estimating your value on the drinks packages.

Personally I think if you are going to offer benefits such as a stockholder benefit and loyalty benefits they should always be combinable with any other offers. Buy our stock, we give you this perk ... which oh yeah you can never use ... that builds goodwill. Cruise with us often, build up status in our loyalty program, we give you this perk .... which oh yeah you cant always use .... that builds loyalty. If you are offering perks, honor them.

Assuming you are looking at the Jan 11th cruise it does seem to have spiked on price for some reason, I get about $1400 USD for an inside for that one .... seems high to me but I usually book for 3 so not as familiar with pricing for singles. The other 5 nighters in January on IOTS look cheaper though so it seems like its just that cruise for some reason ?

It cant hurt to ask for the C&A discount but make sure they price it both ways. The RCI website has a nasty tendency to automatically apply the C&A balcony discount (if you are logged in to the website) even if the balcony discount is LESS than the discount/OBC being offered to everyone else at the time. On at least two occasions my net price was higher with the C&A discount applied than it was without it ;) (Balcony discount is frequently not combinable with other discounts so it takes off the "general public" discount and puts on the "C&A" discount)

Scratching my head a bit thinking about this one, but I think you are always allowed to carry your own luggage on board aren't you ? I know we always have a carryon bag or two that we take through security with us, I don't recall ever seeing a sign saying you have to leave bags of a certain size with the porters, just did it for convenience and never thought about it. I don't know if at some point they would say "hey your carrying on too much, go back outside". If it was a short cruise and you were able to pack everything in carryon style luggage I don't see how they could not let you carry it all on with you ... bigger suitcases could be a real pain going through security, lining up for seapass, etc. but I still suspect you could if you wanted to.

I don't think Navigator has any reservable entertainment ? Most of the RCL ships don't ... exceptions are Oasis and Q class for the most part.

I have met a few US Crew onboard, they tend to be in positions like the kids club or sports management. I would suspect that very few americans are willing to work the hard jobs like cabin attendant or waiter for the money offered whereas individuals from eastern Europe / Asia that tend to dominate those slots view it as a great paycheck. With that said, we had a great chat with an Aussie couple that were married and had done several contracts together onboard. They explained how they had put away almost all their money for several years and were looking forward to buying a house (for cash) on their next break back in Australia, etc. so I think the money is decent if you have the discipline to bank it instead of partying it away :) Its one of those things that I would have been interested in trying 20 years ago if I had known the opportunity existed !!

Doc, sounds like the same type of thing I received from my TA in the past (nowadays they just give me OBC instead of using some of the OBC to buy me a dinner). I used to bring it all the time and the dining room staff never looked at it or took it from me, they would just make the reservation and somehow it was free :)

Jewel is a good ship, very different from Oasis class though.

We usually received a piece of paper from our TA, in reality though the paper was always ignored by the onboard staff (it didn't have any barcodes or anything, more of a flyer) and they went by the "credit" that was loaded in the system on board.

There are waitlists and some people will change, if you keep checking you might get lucky.

I suspect it was a springbreak/Allure thing. We have sailed springbreak other times, Lauderdale other times, other ports other times and never had that come up before or after.

Matt, as usual with RCI no consistency on this issue. For most of our cruises they have just glanced at the bottles and waved us through, for Allure last year though there was a list of cabins and you had to sign a form and initial next to your cabin when you went through. Presumably if someone else from your cabin then tried to bring another two bottles they would notice and do something, we were compliant though so I don't know for sure :) Caused a major backup at security as everyone with wine then had to line up right behind security to have their bottles examined and sign off on the sheet that they had brought them on.

Generally neutral, no plans to sail a Q or O class anytime soon so it wasn't likely to be an issue for me either way.

The Freedom class (as you probably know from having been on Liberty) was called the Super-Voyager class at one point in time. The layouts of the two classes are almost identical. Originally the FlowRider was not on the Voyager class but that has been fixed for Navigator in drydock as noted. The only thing that I have heard of between the two is the H20 zone being smaller/missing on the Navigator vs the Indy, that would only impact you if you have kids that would want to use the H20 zone. If not I would say you are not giving up anything by taking Navigator and with the more recent refurb should be getting a ship in great condition. If she costs less then its really a win all around.

The C&A % discount is only on very specific cruises, basically its a special discount rate like a resident rate or law enforcement rate.

The Balcony/Suite discount is not a bad perk but its heavily weighted towards longer cruises and higher status levels. There is a break point as well, if you book with less than 6 months before the cruise you get a lower discount. For platinum I believe the current program is: 3-5 Night cruise - $50 if more than 6 months out, $25 if less than 6 months out 6-9 Night cruise - $100 / $75 10+ nights - $200/$175 Discount is per cabin and may or may not be combinable with other sales that might be running. Also if you book and then try to add your discount later (IE book now and then add discount after you attain Platinum) it SHOULD trigger a reprice which would hurt you if the price has increased in between. I say SHOULD because some people still report getting the benefit added without a reprice but the rules are pretty clear that it should trigger a reprice.

Everything is inconsistent for us, except receiving the pins that we didn't know about and don't care about. Will be turning diamond on our next cruise, as long as I get the free drinks going forward all will be forgiven though. I don't think our son has received a gift since the very first cruise he went on when he got an RCI bag. Never been offered the robes in the cabin, have to politely ask every cruise, meanwhile three sets of friends we have cruised with (none of whom made Platinum yet) have all gotten robes offered to them and/or in their room when they first went in. Doesn't really bother me, but why have a loyalty program and offer "perks" if you don't bother to a) give them out and b) limit them to people who have earned them so that they are in fact "perks".

We received our platinum and emerald pins in our cabins on the ship when we reached that level (dropped off on the desk by the cabin steward I am guessing)

No interest right now, but keeping it in mind as a future option. I was more likely to book Enchantment out of PC, but maybe all the upgrades would make it worth trying Majesty at some point.

If you booked directly (via phone or internet) with Royal then you would contact them (suggest via phone) and ask whether you can take advantage of the new savings/OBC. If you booked through a travel agent then you would need to speak to your travel agent and have them contact Royal with the same question. If you are inside final payment then they will not usually honor the reprice request, but if the price for a higher level cabin has fallen below your price then they will offer you a free upgrade. If you have not yet hit final payment date then you should be able to reprice to take advantage of the new savings/OBC. (In essence you have the ability to cancel your booking, get a refund of your deposit and then rebook at the current pricing/special, so they will allow you to reprice). Be careful with this though, you are NOT able to keep your original price and just take the benefit of the current OBC/Special. They will look at your request as making a whole new booking, so if the price has gone up since you booked it may not make sense to rebook to get the OBC/Special. This is based on the US/Canada rules which means you can cancel for a full refund prior to final payment, rules for other countries are different so if you are not US/Canada the above is probably not relevant.

I think Carnival Vista is their "coming soon" ship (Booked on it for next summer), but these 4 are even further in the future. Will be interesting to see what they come up with. There is certainly a ton of dead space on Oasis class, not sure how they measure the Gross Tonnage bit I would guess the Central Park and Boardwalk spaces count somehow so if you turned those into public spaces and decked them in you would have a lot of floorspace to work with for example. We shall see :)

I haven't tried it so I cant speak from personal experience. Everything I have heard is that it is pretty similar though. In my parents case the service problem was that they thought they were on traditional dining still so they just walked in and sat down at "their" table each night at 5.30. The wait staff for that table though didn't know they were at the table since the MTD desk hadn't actually "sat" them which caused mass confusion for everyone involved I am sure. Of course no one bothered to tell them they weren't supposed to just walk in and sit, just glared at them from the host stand instead ;)