F1guynz

My cruise sailing today still shows up in the cruise planner even though it is cancelled.

Ruby Princess was just in New Zealand and has returned to Sydney now has 4 confirmed cases. 2700 passengers who disembarked where unaware and have gone off into the community. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/minister-says-four-people-aboard-a-cruise-ship-that-berthed-in-sydney-test-positive-20200320-p54c9n.html

The other issue I see is that when cruising does resume a lot of people will be booking/paying using FCC which won’t help with cash flow. just to be on the safe side we took the cash refund instead of 125% fcc. I don’t expect Royal to go bankrupt but I would rather have the money sitting in my bank account rather than an a FCC sitting in theirs which could become worthless in a worst case scenario, especially if it is worth thousands of dollars.

We have had an Owners Suite on Independence. You won’t get any extra suite perks over a GS but it is worth it just for the extra space. They are massive plus you will have an amazing balcony.

FCC are issued at a later date after you cancelled. Our last one took 1 month to be issued. You cannot use a FCC as a deposit for another cruise so you will have to put down another deposit and you can then use the FCC against the remaining balance of your cruise. If the FCC exceeds the total cost of the new cruise you will be issued a new FCC for the remaining amount.

Currently our cruise is not cancelled as we are sailing from Sydney. If it was cancelled I think we would opt for the full refund over the FCC. My main reason behind this thinking is if the cruise industry is impacted for an extended period bankruptcy may become a consideration (I think RCI are more than capable of weathering this storm so I think it unlikely) and if that happens an FCC could become worthless. Better to have the money in the bank at the end of day.

You won’t lose your deposit. You will either get a fcc or potentially a full refund.

The only disadvantage I can see by waiting is that if your cruise is not cancelled by Royal and you cancel using the Cruise With Confidence policy, you will be issued a FCC valid until the end of 2021. If the virus situation drags on you may not wish to cruise next year either which would mean your FFC would lapse and you would lose your money. The FCC is only issued based on the amount of money you have paid to date so if did cancel early the FCC would only be for the deposit (assuming that is all you have paid so far) and you would lose less if you elected not to use it next year.

When Royal cancelled our Hong Kong to Japan cruise they offered the following options: 1) Rebook a cruise from a short list of price protected sailings of Royal's choice 2) Rebook on any other cruise of our choice with either $100 or $200 (Suite) OBC 3) Cancel the cruise for a refund to the original purchase account.

I understand Royal has now updated their T&Cs for Cruise With Confidence so that you can longer use the FCC to book the same cruise at a lower price.

With the Cruise With Confidence programme could you not not just can Carl, wait for the FCC which I understand takes about a week to issue and then rebook at the cheaper rate?

Not all sailing are eligible for Royal upgrade bids. Our last Voyager sailing did not have any Royal Up offer but our next one at the end of the month on her does.

I’m not sure, but I have never noticed the smell of cigarettes at any table and I am usually pretty sensitive to smells like that.

Hopefully they will redeploy one of their ships to Australia over winter. They can offer cruises up to the Islands. Having brought Spectrum down to Australia for the complementary cruises it would seem odd not to use it for sailing while it is here. I am hoping this is one of the reasons they have delayed the deployment schedule while they work on new itineraries. I am thing they could offer short 3 and 4 day cruises to nowhere as the cruise planner prices per day are usually higher than longer cruises.

Come cruise Australia and New Zealand and the South Pacific There is no smoking in the casino on the ships here.

A nice photo of Ovation and Spectrum together in Sydney harbour yesterday before Spectrum left for her first complementary cruise. Photo Credit: royalcaribbean_aunz

Also this article in SMH which is a reputable news source with quotes from RCI and details of the amended itinerary. https://www.smh.com.au/national/vanuatu-denies-entry-to-cruise-ship-following-influenza-diagnoses-20200229-p545kv.html

I haven’t seen anything official from Royal but I did read this article regarding the denial of entry. https://www.cruiselawnews.com/2020/02/articles/disease/royal-caribbeans-voyager-of-the-seas-denied-permission-to-call-on-ports-during-australian-cruise/ i know the Islands have been strict on this. I have a friend travelling on Celebrity in April and currently at least two of the ports are not allowing access to cruise ships. He is worried it will turn into a cruise of just sea days.

Not sure about the US but we just completed a cruise on Voyager OTS in Australia and it was a completely normal cruise with no masks to be seen apart from boarding day with some of the embarkation staff. On the ship the only thing we noticed was increased cleaning and sanitising by the crew otherwise the cruise was completely normal.

We are currently sailing on Voyager of the Seas to Tasmania. In our diamond welcome package it says one specialty coffee will be loaded onto our sea pass card each day. I haven’t seen this as an offer previously. The Diamond lounge on the ship is on deck 5 and is pretty small now so maybe there isn’t room for a coffee machine. Scan 20-02-2020.pdf

You will be charged 120x2 even though there are four of you.

I know what you mean with it feeling enclosed, we felt that way about Ovation. I think it is having the wall instead of the open space that the older ships have. Happy to see you are now on board any ready to party. Have a great cruise.

Also known as a Waka. Glad you had a Great day at the Bay of Islands. It is a beautiful place. When we were there on Radiance we had a pod of dolphins swimming around the ship while she was anchored.

It depends what region you booked as the compensation varies. We had one booked through the Australia/NZ and got a $200 obc for rebooking on a cruise not on their original list. We also booked one cruise on the RCI Hong Kong website and we got the choice of $200obc if rebooking or 30% of the original cruise price as a FCC. We took the 30% FCC on that one.. Also the sailings we could rebook at the original rate were different from the ones offered to us from Aus/NZ. You can see by the PDF I attached to my original post the compensation offer our our market.

It’s the emotive language the media use that gets me. Our headline here is “cruise ship ravaged by virus”. It is 10 people, get a grip. When we were on Ovation over 300 people had Norovirus.