jticarruthers

Alright looks like I finally won a round of nickel and dime poker :)
 
Booked the Ultimate for my wife a couple of months ago (as part of the summer buy an Ultimate get a Replenish/Refresh debacle) and the price went up slightly on that one and elected to hold off on buying my Premium package until I get onboard and the price went down slightly on that one.
 
Between the two I saved $20 ... at current prices that means I can afford to buy about one drink for a family member in celebration ;)

Alright looks like I finally won a round of nickel and dime poker :)
 
Booked the Ultimate for my wife a couple of months ago (as part of the summer buy an Ultimate get a Replenish/Refresh debacle) and the price went up slightly on that one and elected to hold off on buying my Premium package until I get onboard and the price went down slightly on that one.
 
Between the two I saved $20 ... at current prices that means I can afford to buy about one drink for a family member in celebration ;)

Become? I was under the impression the short cruises already were booze cruises ;)
 
Honestly, free wifi is not of interest to me ... I go on vacation not to be connected to everything going on back home. One of the original things that drew me to cruising was the fact that my cellphone had to be turned off for the cruise and nobody could reach me.

Nope, not interested in staying connected with everything at home ... that's why I am on a ship out on the ocean :)
 
If we really need to post some photos or see what the latest "meme" is going around on facebook we can check for free at the next port.

Put some movies on an ipad or similar device.
Invest in a modestly priced pair of noise cancelling headphones.
 
Over the years I have traveled to/from Europe (and Asia) pretty extensively.
 
I would first recommend looking at your overall trip to determine whether you want to be trying to sleep or trying to stay awake. Europe is usually a night flight, but personally I find that if I can get to Europe tired and cranky it helps me get to sleep the first night which reboots my system for the rest of the trip.
 
If you load a handful of movies onto an ipad/tablet/laptop you can plug in your headphones which will block most of the noise and zone out for the flight.
 
I think I got a pair of Sony noise cancelling headphones off of ebay about 5-6 years ago for under $100, still use them today :)

It all depends, I believe the ship will sail unless it is unsafe to get in/out of your embarkation port at that time. Then the captain will do his best to sail safely around the weather.
 
We had friends on a cruise a few years ago that were meant to go to Cozumel. There was a hurricane parked on top of Cozumel for the duration of the cruise so I think they ended up at Jamaica for a day instead.

Put some movies on an ipad or similar device.
Invest in a modestly priced pair of noise cancelling headphones.
 
Over the years I have traveled to/from Europe (and Asia) pretty extensively.
 
I would first recommend looking at your overall trip to determine whether you want to be trying to sleep or trying to stay awake. Europe is usually a night flight, but personally I find that if I can get to Europe tired and cranky it helps me get to sleep the first night which reboots my system for the rest of the trip.
 
If you load a handful of movies onto an ipad/tablet/laptop you can plug in your headphones which will block most of the noise and zone out for the flight.
 
I think I got a pair of Sony noise cancelling headphones off of ebay about 5-6 years ago for under $100, still use them today :)

Two of our first three cruises were on the old/small Fantasy(?) class, obviously we enjoyed them enough to want to keep cruising, but swore we wouldn't do Carnival again.
 
With the newer bigger ships and the 2.0 upgrades we have allowed ourselves to be talked into giving them another try.
 
Personally I felt our problem was more older/smaller ships than necessarily Carnival vs Royal so I am looking forward to the Vista next year.

Traffic was bad for us but we just took a cab, I think it was about 30 mins and something around $20-$25. There was a line of about 50 cabs and no passengers waiting for them when we got out of baggage claim so it was an easy cab ride.
 
In regards to timezone, IIRC they stayed on eastern time the whole cruise so that 830 dinner slot is going to feel like 630 for you in terms of "stomach" time so its probably not a big deal. For the first night its always a bit less formal in the MDR so if you wanted a special first night, I would go ahead and do a specialty booking for 900 or so, shouldn't be hard to get .. Chops looked like a graveyard every night on our cruise so they will probably be happy to have you :)

We did the Jewel out of PR back at the end of March. Had a great time.
 
We flew in around 11 and were onboard and at lunch by 1230.
 
Early dining time so we were done by the time sailaway kicked off IIRC.
 
One question for you, what time zone are you flying in from ? Might make a difference with "perceived" dining time vs dining time onboard ship for example.

In my case the TA just serves as a middleman making the booking with RCI so they have always been able to pick any room that shows as available on the RCI website.
 
I understand there is an option where a TA can reserve a block of rooms and then try to sell you one of those specific rooms but have never experienced it to comment on how it actually works.

Its been a no brainer for me to book for the OBC everytime ... I would much prefer to manage my own reservation through RCI directly but for the money involved I have gotten comfortable with my TA being in charge.
 
Couple of data points:
 
My springbreak cruise was on Jewel, cruise price was about $2500, price was exactly what I could get through RCI (Called and had it repriced on a couple of occasions and the reprice was always to RCI advertised price), OBC was $180 from TA.
Upcoming thanksgiving cruise is on Freedom, cruise price is about $2600, originally booked through RCI, transferred to TA and knocked down on a reprice as well so again it ties to the RCI price, OBC of $180 from TA on this one as well.
Last Thanksgiving on Indy, cruise price at $2800, OBC $210.
 
The OBC is a % of commissionable cruise fare (excludes Taxes& Fees and a little bit of the cruise fare), so if you are taking 3/4 nighters only, you wont see big OBC but it adds up over a number of cruises.

Two different answers but I think the message is the same.
 
1. My TA informed me a couple of years ago that RCI does NOT allow any of their travel partners to offer a lower fare than you can get direct from RCI. On the occasions that I have checked around different sites I always come back to the exact same quote for the cruise on RCI that I get from other sites.
 
2. TA's are allowed to offer you incentives that effectively reduce the price but they cannot just reduce the price. So they can offer you OBC, Free Specialty Dinners, Free Drink Packages, Prepaid gratuities, etc. they just cant reduce the price by those amounts.
 
So ... you should always end up saving money if you give up control and book through a TA but you should never save that money directly on the price of the cruise, you save it by getting freebies added that effectively reduce the price.
 
In my case I typically plan on getting about 8% of the price back as OBC, it is actually a complex formula based on the proportion of the fare that is commissionable to the TA and then a % of that, but it typically averages about 8% of the total. I figure so far giving up the control of booking direct has saved me somewhere around $3000 or basically one of my cruises was free.

We just did the Jewel of the Seas out of San Juan at Springbreak.
 
I think the biggest takeaway for us was that you need to think about what you want to do and plan a bit, not necessarily plan out every moment of every day but think about what you want to accomplish.
 
We are morning people and not big drinkers/partiers so we settled into a pattern of getting up at a reasonably early time, doing breakfast, etc. so that we were ready to be off the ship and in the first wave of excursions. The excursions would usually have us back to the port/ship by early afternoon and we could get a couple of hours of down time at the pool (swim, read, relax, etc.) before dinner.
 
In terms of excursions I wouldn't say there were more of them offered but because you had 5 port days and 1 sea day it felt like there were more options. We sat down and went through the book figuring out what we wanted to do each day, for example we knew we wanted to snorkel at least once, were interested in kayaking, etc. so we started by looking for things that we could only do in one port and gradually narrowing down our selections that way.
 
On one of our stops we selected a late morning excursion and did not care for it, felt like we were up, ready and killing time waiting for the excursion and then racing back on to the ship after the excursion since it was all aboard time already.
 
On board activities seemed like they were a little less than usual but since we were off the ship most of every day it is hard to say.

I recall a 70s night, but don't recall what other theme nights they might have had.
 
It would seem that if you are going to have theme nights it would be nice to send out an email to the guests and let them know so they can pack appropriately.
 
All the emails on buying drinks, dinners, excursions, spa treatments, you would think it would be easy to slip in a "here is your entertainment schedule with the theme and MDR menu for each night".

I started a little self conscious but over time have come to realize that its not a big deal. I actually find I am more active on a cruise than I am at home (pool, shore excursions, stairs, walking around the ship vs. desk job) so I really don't "blimp out" on the cruise. Not saying you should order two of everything, but an extra appetizer or entrée is not a big deal.
 
As our waiter would say in response to every request on our last cruise "why not?"

I always recommend ordering multiple entrees because the portions are on the small side (and I love food).

Trying NCL for the first time next year and as a a "non-specialty" person it looks like there are enough free options where it wont be a problem for me for now, will see how it works out.
 
In general though one of the attractions for me of cruising is the MDR experience. No figuring out what we feel like eating tonight, what time, etc, etc. so continued movement towards a multi-restaurant system (aka DD on RCL) didn't interest me to start with, now if you throw on top having to pay extra for almost all the choices, I don't think I like it at all.

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.

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.

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 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 !!

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.