F1guynz

Fantastic!! I am so excited for you as that is an awesome itinerary. As they say "go big or go home" and you have definitely gone big. We did 3 weeks in Alaska a few years ago and loved it. By the time you have cruised NZ and Alaska you will be all sceneried out. 😀 We are booked on Ovation for the same TP so hopefully we will be able to meet up.

I did a L&S on one of our cruises where the price on the new sailing was cheaper. In this case it is much easier to get them to move the cruise rather than doing a L&S. I made the mistake of thinking it would update to the lower price but I had to spend quite a bit of time of the phone with them to sort it out. In the end I just got them to honour the lowest price guarantee.

Just imagine how many FCC's @twangster is having to keep track of 😀 The kind of stuff from which spreadsheets are made.

In this announcement I observe they have cancelled Australian cruises until 29th October which is into the period when Royal ships would be due to arrive. We originally had 2 cruises booked for November 2020 but moved to November 2021 before the mad rush of cancellations and rebooking begins.

We have always had GS on the hump as these are the most central to the lifts. We have been on both sides of the ship as well so there is no disadvantage there. We do avoid interconnecting cabins as that can effect the couch size and position. The only noise we noticed was the crew or people moving deck chairs at night but in all other ways they were great.

Thanks for the advice Raye, I have changed to one of the middle cabins on deck 10 as they are all still available at the moment. November next year feels so far away but it something to look forward to. We are going to do a B2B around NZ and the Pacific Islands. You will have to come down this way for a cruise sometime once normal service resumes 😀 Cheers, Carl

Would you go for middle GLS over a corner one? We have one booked on Ovation next year but I flip-flopping about which would be better value.

It’s funny, I was just thinking the other day how much better the website used to be a few years ago. Royal must be one of the few companies that continually takes away functionality from the website. Remember when you could View all the payment information on one tab with the timeline that showed amount paid, final payment date, amount owning etc. sort cruises by cabin class price rather than the lcheapest cabin. cancel a cruise upgrade your cabin without calling update your crown and anchor preferences And these are just the ones I remember. How I long for the good old days of not having to contact their frustrating Call Centre

Pre covid I always used to get an guest invoice email for cruise bookings and another for each cruise planner purchase. I was finding I would end up with 8-9 copies of the invoice. Post covid I find I get one when I contact Royal to book a new cruise but when I have used the best price guarantee they just update the price and do not send a new guest invoice. I can only tell they have made the changes I requested by checking the final payment amount has updated. Maybe it is a Australia/NZ thing.

I did look at this but with the exchange rate cruises are still cheaper in NZD and also include all gratuities. Last years Canaries trip on Independence seems like such a long time ago now. looking forward to getting back to cruising but I don’t think it will be until the 21/22 season starts down here.

This depends a lot on which country you live in. Here in NZ you cannot book refundable and move to non refundable at a later date. If the cruise does get cheaper and you have a refundable deposit you can cancel and rebook at the lower rate. However, the refundable fare price is quite a lot higher than non refundable so if the cruise does not get cheaper or in fact goes up you are stuck with paying the extra $ for the refundable fare. The deposit here for seven night or longer cruises is $400 NZD and the refundable cost can be up to $700 NZD so we still tend to book NRD and if the price drops significantly cancel and lose the deposit as sometimes this works out better. Our last Independence cruise was an example of this when the price of the Owners Suite dropped $2500 less than the GS we had booked at the time. Cancelled the GS and lost the deposit so save $2100 ($2500 - $400).

How many of these "new" bookings are bookings using FCC rather than additional cash? With the number of cruises being cancelled I would expect that a lot of the new bookings to actually been transferred without a great outlay of new cash. I wonder if they will open new seasons bookings earlier this year to generate an influx of new cash.

Lift and Shift works well for repetitive cruises like the 7 night Caribbean cruises but less so with ports with varied itineraries. We have a B2B cruise booked for November to NZ and the Pacific Islands respectively but now Royal have released next years cruises there is no equivalent cruise to shift to our 12 night cruise which has been replaced by an 11 night sailing. The only 12 night sailing in our window is the Christmas 2021 cruise which is specifically excluded in the terms and conditions. We will have to wait until our November cruises are cancelled by Royal and possibly take the FCC. Our final payment is August but I am not sure I want the much money tied up with Royal given the current financial climate.

I think the issue would be the crew on the ship. It is likely they would have to quarantine on arrival to Australia and NZ as they are not residents. Then how do you manage any replacement crew members. I think from a management point of view it will far easier for the government to just extend the ban.

I notice the family from America who are suing Royal Caribbean regarding the injuries they sustained while on White Island have retained MIchael Winkleman as their lawyer for the lawsuit. This lawyer is the same one who worked on behalf of the family whose baby fell from Freedom of the Seas. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12338900