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Star Class Royal Genie


jaullram

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1 hour ago, jaullram said:

We just booked a Grand Loft Suite on Anthem and get the Star Class suite perks.  What have others asked for from their Genie?  I heard about bar cart service daily - is that on Anthem too?  Will they stock your room with beer and hard alcohol so I don't have a long walk to get a drink?

 

29 minutes ago, jaullram said:

How about wine?

We just got off Allure last week, I'll attach a file of some base items we were thinking of asking for, this does not mean we asked for all of them or if we asked for them doesn't mean we had them waiting in the room. Do not interpret this as our Genie did a bad job, we had Charlie and he was truly amazing, he gave us 220%. What sent it over the top was things we didn't ask for that he provided. He would sit with us throughout the week and just have conversations with us, but what he did was take little tidbits of information that we provided in our conversations and surprise us with something.

An example, we told Royal and the Genie that we were not celebrating anything special on the cruise, which we weren't, but we asked for one dinner on our balcony so we could eat and watch the sun set, not to celebrate anything, in a conversation, we had mentioned that we would be married 39 years in March. So when the night came for our balcony dinner he asked us to leave the room and come back at 7, so we went down and sat in the  Suite lounge until 7, when we went back he had the entrance, the room and our table set up as celebration of out 39 year. He even hand cut out little blue butterflies out of paper. Two things that he could not have known but nailed was that my wife loves butterflies and her favorite color is blue.

To answer your question, there was a drink cart that came around, they had beer and had a menu of 8-10 mixed drinks they would fix (They had limited alcohol and mixers on the cart), I do not remember any wine. The cart was actually the biggest challenge of the week, they cannot enter your room, they do not have a pass key, so they will ring the door bell and if you do not come to the door they will move on, the thing was my wife was sitting on the balcony everyday at 3 when they were supposed to come by but she didn't hear the door bell. So to eventually resolve this issue, the Genie made a sign to hang on the door that told them to come in and then we threw the dead bolt to block the door open. Problem resolved.

We did not have any alcohol in the room but a Facebook friend of my wife's sent her pictures of their room/refrigerator and they had beer, no hard alcohol and no wine, we asked for wine on our wish list but didn't get it, you personally can carry on 2 bottles if you want. Someone gave us a bottle of champagne that was in the room but we gave it to a neighbor because nether one of us likes champagne.

Mostly it was regular drinks in the room for us and daily afternoon and evening (Before bed) snacks. Personalized meal reservations, show reservations, personally escorting us to dinner and shows. Most important escorted us off the ship.

Part of the attached list was combined off of this website, Star Class Facebook page and people I asked to send me their personal list, @Lovetocruise2002 , being one of those people. Hope this helps.

Star Class wish list_06Oct2018.xlsx

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John pretty much covered it all !  We’ve been on 4 SC cruises and have never once even SEEN the liquor cart much less get a drink from it !  You can get all of the water, soda, beer, juices and beer you want stocked in the room for the entire cruise.  If you want wine, you can purchase it at the same discount that folks with the beverage packages get.  Liquor is much more complicated. They really resist bringing liquor to the suite (except for the traveling cart) but if you insist, they will sell it to you at an exorbitant rate (you basically must purchase an entire bottle at retail price). It seems a little silly since you can get any liquor drink you want at any bar, but them’s the rules. While we never asked for it, I have heard of others getting individual drinks brought to the suite.  We never bothered with anything like that.  If we wanted a drink, we just went somewhere and got it.

From what I understand, the drinks on the cart are fairly limited but as I said, I’ve never seen it before so have no real idea what’s on it.

I love having breakfast in my suite.  It’s one of the best suites perks, IMO. That’s one reason why we prefer the Owners Suite.  There is a full-sized dining room table inside and outside so it’s easy and convenient to eat in the suite.

As far as what to ask the Genie for...honestly, we never ask for anything.  Just the usual perks like reserved seating at events, etc.  For our upcoming B2B SC cruises on Anthem, we did ask our Genie (we have Yen Lee) to please try and coordinate deliveries and services to minimize the interruptions. One thing you will find when traveling Star Class...you are very popular !  It seems as though the phone and doorbell is ringing every 5 minutes and it gets a little annoying after a while.  Honestly, this is one reasons Dan is not particularly in love with Star Class.  So we’re going to try and keep the traffic down this time. I don’t know if it will work or not but we’re going to try.

Genies are especially good at party planning.  If you are ever going to have a party on a ship, do it when you are Star Class. We’ve done 2 cabin crawl receptions in the past and we’re doing 1 on the second half of our B2B next month. They’re a lot of fun but waaay less work if you have a Genie coordinationating everything.

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I believe @CGTLH asked for a bloody mary to come with breakfast on our last Symphony SC experience and he got it no questions asked. 

We had Chops on the balcony for dinner one evening and it actually was an evening that Chops was closed for a special event.  We were able to order glasses of wine with the Chops order with no issue.

The genie arranged some favorite menu items to be available in the Coastal Kitchen on a night they weren't normally served. 

We asked for a shrimp dish we had missed ordering at Hooked and less than an hour later when we returned to the room it was waiting there, one for each guest in the room. 

I'm not one for being waited on hand and foot all the time, so my favorite perk was being able to order Izumi sushi to-go whenever they were open.  

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11 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

From what I understand, the drinks on the cart are fairly limited but as I said, I’ve never seen it before so have no real idea what’s on it.

There was probably 8-10 different drinks on the menu, IE., there was no Lava Flow, we asked, basically nothing frozen, everything was either neat or rocks or beer.

 

11 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

As far as what to ask the Genie for...honestly, we never ask for anything.  Just the usual perks like reserved seating at events, etc.  For our upcoming B2B SC cruises on Anthem, we did ask our Genie (we have Yen Lee) to please try and coordinate deliveries and services to minimize the interruptions. One thing you will find when traveling Star Class...you are very popular !  It seems as though the phone and doorbell is ringing every 5 minutes and it gets a little annoying after a while.  Honestly, this is one reasons Dan is not particularly in love with Star Class.  So we’re going to try and keep the traffic down this time. I don’t know if it will work or not but we’re going to try.

+1 one on this, I'm not an introvert but I'm also not an extrovert (this would be my wife), next SC I told my wife the same thing, lets cut traffic down if possible.

One thing I did notice is that once people see that purple/black card, you become their new best friend. An example, on a sea day we went to a restaurant for lunch that the Genie didn't schedule, it was spur of the moment, we didn't show the guy our card, we just told him our room number, he was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, the restaurant wasn't busy so we were immediately sat. At some point in time he had to have looked us up, saw that we were SC and came back and apologized that we had to wait to be seated, did we need anything, how can he make our stay and our visit better, told us next time to make sure we showed him our card, etc.. So to echo what @WAAAYTOOO says, you become very popular.

Very nice service level, but you pay for it, so I guess you should get it...

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On the traffic/frequent visitors thing, maybe @AshleyDillo can jog my memory, on both sailings done we were never really bothered. Only time might have been for deliveries of prearranged things we had already setup. Never got in the jive about having snacks delivered during the day due to early dinner and show times. Mixed with the fact we really don't have the ability to think of things.

Only real "snack attack" on Symphony was a hankering for onion rings, took care of that with a to-go run down to Johnny Rockets. Plus it gave me an excuse to get a Goal Post Margarita, or two, from Playmakers. 

Don't recall much on Anthem other than the previously mentioned sushi to-go. Plus plenty late snacks at the Pub.

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20 minutes ago, CGTLH said:

On the traffic/frequent visitors thing, maybe @AshleyDillo can jog my memory, on both sailings done we were never really bothered. Only time might have been for deliveries of prearranged things we had already setup. Never got in the jive about having snacks delivered during the day due to early dinner and show times. Mixed with the fact we really don't have the ability to think of things.

Only real "snack attack" on Symphony was a hankering for onion rings, took care of that with a to-go run down to Johnny Rockets. Plus it gave me an excuse to get a Goal Post Margarita, or two, from Playmakers. 

Don't recall much on Anthem other than the previously mentioned sushi to-go. Plus plenty late snacks at the Pub.

Don't get me wrong, I believe this could be adjusted with a conversation with your Genie, I didn't bother because my Wife loves the conversation, she says I don't talk enough, who would think?

I merely said we should come to a happy medium.

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30 minutes ago, tiny260 said:

Don't get me wrong, I believe this could be adjusted with a conversation with your Genie, I didn't bother because my Wife loves the conversation, she says I don't talk enough, who would think?

I merely said we should come to a happy medium.

Heck, I welcomed the lack of visitors and calls. Just saying I've always had the impression of constant deliveries and calls from the way people have described their experience. For the most part the two experiences I've had were somewhat quite. Maybe on Anthem we got a phone call every now and then. Our Genie on Symphony had established an alternative means of communication. Will say the Symphony method was so much better than phone.

 

Guess I need to squeeze in another Star class for further studies.

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This thread has taken an interesting turn.  I am now curious about the constant flow of traffic as I did not expect that.  Guess I will see soon.

3 hours ago, tiny260 said:

told us next time to make sure we showed him our card, etc.

I have heard this across many forums. My kids know already to wear that card on their lanyard so that it is clearly visible. ?

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Just now, Lovetocruise2002 said:

I have heard this across many forums. My kids know already to wear that card on their lanyard so that it is clearly visible. ?

The server at Starbucks ask me to do the same thing, before we order, I believe it has to do with the way they ring up the purchase.

Again I'm not saying the visits or discussions are a bad thing, But we could be out in Central Park relaxing before or after dinner and if any of the Genies saw us or one of the Officers that we had meet saw us, they would stop and visit. That is just being polite and I do not view this as a bother, but being old I would have to stop and think what our conversation topic, lol.

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42 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

This thread has taken an interesting turn.  I am now curious about the constant flow of traffic as I did not expect that.  Guess I will see soon.

Well, now I've probably negatively biased you unnecessarily.  It's not THAT bad.  It just seems like, right at the beginning especially, there are deliveries and calls and people coming and going.  Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon.

42 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

My kids know already to wear that card on their lanyard so that it is clearly visible. ?

I am not much of a badge-flasher. I am reluctant to do this unless somebody asks me for my Seapass for some reason.

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I don't like to flash the badge either.  On Anthem there is a sign near the entrance of the bumper cars that says Star Class line-up, but I preferred just having the Genie walk us up there.  Personal attention makes me uncomfortable, but both Genies we have had were good about not pushing for more than I asked for.  Of course we have one pushier one in our party, so she took up most of the attention anyways since she usually always had something she had to have ?    Since it's not really my money paying for Star Class (just my inheritance ?) I just go with the flow.  The biggest benefit for me is not having to make all the plans.  That's the thing I enjoyed the most -- anything that I wanted to do on the ship I knew I would get to do if I asked.  All the show reservations were made, dinner reservations, in-room snacks waiting on me at all times, fridge stocked and then I could walk into any bar or restaurant on the ship and get anything I wanted.  

As for deliveries, I just don't think we were in the room when deliveries came to notice any intrusion.  I know we would come back and find things waiting for us.  Our room stewards took care of replacing anything we needed and usually they waited until we left the room and then asked us on our way out if there was something we needed.  I didn't find we got a lot of deliveries outside of the things we asked for.  In fact, I think we got more deliveries when we were in a Grand Suite on Radiance just with the stuff that suites normally get.  I didn't feel we got as many of those deliveries being in Star Class, which is good because we definitely didn't need anymore food!

On Symphony our Genie had us use Facebook Messenger to communicate with her since both myself and @CGTLH are familiar with the app it made it really easy to get in touch with her at all times.  On Anthem we were always trying to reach the Genie using the phone and it just wasn't as easy or immediate.

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16 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

The biggest benefit for me is not having to make all the plans. 

SOOOO agree.  Even now...for our upcoming trip(s) on Anthem, I will start thinking to myself...do I need to make any reservations...oh wait, I don't have to worry about that !

I did ask the Genie whether or not we would need to make reservations for lunch at Chops on embark day though. In the past, we have been the only ones in the restaurant any number of times...but with the new Key program, I was concerned that maybe Chops might actually be crowded on embark day this time.  She asked me when we wanted to eat and then said not to worry, so I guess I will leave it in her very capable hands !

I don't like carrying my phone around when I am on ship so I'm not sure how useful the messenger thing will be for us.  We have always just called on the phone (from the room).  I guess we need to come into the 21st century and start carrying our phones.  NAH !

It's snowing like a MF'er outside right now <shudder>.  Only 17 more days 'til Anthem !  ....

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Using Facebook Messenger was a very smart move. In the chain of communication needs I've always felt a phone is one of the most intrusive ways.

Always felt a phone call is a sense of urgency and needs an immediate response. Email, low on the food chain and tend to take awhile for a response tends to be formal.

Instant messaging is the perfect middle ground. Not as intrusive as a phone call, can convey a message/point quickly. Think IM was why the Genie experience on Symphony was so great. Could send a brief message with a request (or picture) and it would magically appear. Sure the best part for the Genie is the request is documented and be looked back on for accuracy.

Loop was never mentioned by the Genie in any personal pre cruise contacts.

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2 hours ago, CGTLH said:

Using Facebook Messenger was a very smart move. In the chain of communication needs I've always felt a phone is one of the most intrusive ways.

Always felt a phone call is a sense of urgency and needs an immediate response. Email, low on the food chain and tend to take awhile for a response tends to be formal.

Instant messaging is the perfect middle ground. Not as intrusive as a phone call, can convey a message/point quickly. Think IM was why the Genie experience on Symphony was so great. Could send a brief message with a request (or picture) and it would magically appear. Sure the best part for the Genie is the request is documented and be looked back on for accuracy.

Loop was never mentioned by the Genie in any personal pre cruise contacts.

Yen has not mentioned Loop either so my guess is that it is now obsolete. It was always problematic anyway as the Genie had to be at the computer to get it.  Time for us to evolve, I guess.

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32 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Time for us to evolve, I guess.

Might be one of those things to ask the Genie about, preferred or alternative means of communication. Using Messenger was a spur of the moment thing, meeting to get off in Roatan and she asked if we used Facebook Messenger. After that we added each other and she said if anything came up to send her a message. After that it somewhat became our primary means of communication. Flat out it made requests less awkward and less feeling guilty for causing an interruption with a phone call.

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  • 6 months later...

We just got off the SC on Ovation. We did see the drink cart one time. On another SC cruise, we never saw it. We also asked for shots of Jamison (for our Jamison and Ginger Ale) and they brought us glasses of indiv shots each day. By the end it was overwhelming. We didn't drink that much. We also found the coffee place was confused that we could order more than one drink on our card. It was all hit and miss on who was handling the register.

We asked for afternoon snacks each day and on our next SC cruise not til Mar 2021, I think we will ask for more room services/spec rest for lunches.

Any questions - please ask.

Sarah

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  • 1 year later...
On 1/24/2019 at 8:31 PM, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Lol @tiny260 guess I don’t need to post my list for @jaullram anymore ?

I will have you know that my list has grown a bit since I sent it to you ? Your lovely wife has a bit to do with that!

@Lovetocruise2002 I know this is a reply to an old post, but still in my LONG education phase as I try to learn about Star Class prior to my Oct 2022 cruise.  If you want to share your list (or if it is posted somewhere on the blog) I am happy to add it to my planning material.

 

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It is an old thread, but was thrilled to see it come up again!  I'm thinking about Star Class for a late 2022 cruise, and this is very helpful.

One question that keeps running in mind mind after reading the thread.  On embarkation day, are the SC room available earlier than the regular rooms?  I saw someone talk about having lunch in the room.

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11 minutes ago, steverk said:

On embarkation day, are the SC room available earlier than the regular rooms?  I saw someone talk about having lunch in the room.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  It just depends.  They try very hard to have your suite ready but sometimes it just isn't.  

While it is possible to have lunch in your suite on embarkation day, it is probably not the best time to try in-suite dining.  The rule, relating to in-suite dining, is that you can have meals delivered to your suite during that restaurant's normal operating hours.  For embarkation day, normally there are only 1 or 2 restaurants operating (usually Chops and Jamie's/Giovanni's) and the operating hours for those are usually something like 12-2.  So your window is fairly small and let's face it, turnaround day is soooo busy for everyone.  We normally do not ask for meals during the day on embarkation day.   We usually just go to Chops or Jamie's or whatever is open and do some in-suite dining another time.  Having said that, I know that some do it...so it can be done.  We have also gone to Sabor (Allure) but it seems like the hours are a little later for that one....hard to remember.

Whatever you decide to do, just let the Genie know ahead of time and he/she will make it happen !  They will know what is open and what the operating hours are.

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We had a boatload (see what I did there) of OBC that we didn't use on our cruise - we had to go to (gasp) guest services, although I suppose we could have gone to the concierge in the suite lounge, and got a form that we filled out to tip our Genie.   I'm betting you could do the same with your onboard account.

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19 hours ago, steverk said:

One other question: Tips for the concierge and genie.  Can this be charged to your ship board account or does it have to be in cash?

Steve, great question.  That is one of mine, too.  I think I am going to have a bit of on board credit and it is going to be hard to spend it.

 

Update:  I guess I should have scrolled down a bit to @DJsMrs post.  Sorry.

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