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Thanksgiving Side to Side: Brilliance to Oasis


WAAAYTOOO

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Just now, Lovetocruise2002 said:

You are letting your bags go to the terminal without you...? kidding, I’m sure it will be fine. Terminal A seems pretty efficient.

I know. I’m not real happy about it but I trust Joyce that they will be ok.  I’m keeping my carry-on with me, though. I have my valuables in that one and it doesn’t leave my sight.  Period. 

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Disembarkation day was waaay more manic than I expected.  B’fast in CK was ungodly slow.
 

As a matter of fact, since I am on the topic of CK, I will take this opportunity to mention that my skepticism about the CK was reaffirmed on this cruise.  The menu is just not that interesting to me.  I repeatedly had trouble finding something that even sounded appealing (b’fast excluded here).  We ate dinner there 3 times (twice more than I had intended) b/c we kept getting bad intel on which night was lamb shank.  I am partially responsible here, as Joyce sent me the entire menu lineup well ahead of time and had I referred to it, I would have avoided these errors. So I am now firmly in Club #CKonlyonfiletnight.  Not only were the menus unappealing, but the service was truly slow every time. This morning was the final straw.  Yes, I realize that b’fast on turn-around day is manic by nature but there were just too few servers. It was as simple as that.

Back to disembarkation.  We got out of our suite right on time (0700) and went to the CK for b’fast (already discussed). Joyce met us on the Lounge side a bit after 8:00, as pre-arranged.  She escorted us, and another family, off together.  Her big blunder was to put us into an elevator that did not recognize her Genie badge (which provides exclusive access and will not stop on any other decks).  Apparently there is one elevator bank that is exempt from her badge, for use in case of emergency, and of course, she managed to put us on it.  So, consequently, the elevator proceeded to stop every freakin deck and fill up with non-SC riff raff (just kidding !).  Oh, the inhumanity ! ??. Then Joyce lead us all the way out and halfway down the gangway, where we said our goodbyes and she turned us over to a Terminal escort who’s job was to take us to get our luggage and then escort us all the way to the taxi line.  During this trek, we cut lines and bypassed the CBP lineup (which was much longer than I would have thought).  We went straight to the face recognition queue which is where my good luck ran out.  I guess I must have won the immigration lottery as I was chosen to go chat with a Customs Officer.  Oh, happy day !  Of course, our Terminal escort never even turned around. She just high-tailed it outta there and left my a** behind. Ok.  Now in a long line waiting for a CBP Officer to let me out, I suddenly realized that Dan had my passport.  The line agents had rushed Dan away, saying he would have to wait for me, outside.  Panic.  In the most unladylike-like and quasi-hysterical squawk I could muster, I SCREAMED for Dan to stop.  Somehow he heard me....as did everyone else in the Terminal...  He handed me my passport and after a fairly uncomfortable zig zag through the CBP line, I was finally hustled out of the line, free from retention.

We proceeded to where the taxi line was and realized it was LONG (Joyce has warned us it would be).  Happy Dan transformed into Resourceful Dan and hijacked a cab that had just pulled up in front of us and let out some lucky cruisers who were just arriving to go ON their cruise.  (Mother-scratchers were probably the villains taking our Suite !).  We never looked back. We just jumped in and told him to take us to MIA.  Yes, it was wrong. Too bad.

 

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8 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Happy Dan transformed into Resourceful Dan and hijacked a cab that had just pulled up in front of us and let out some lucky cruisers who were just arriving to go ON their cruise.  (Mother-scratchers were probably the villains taking our Suite !).  We never looked back. We just jumped in and told him to take us to MIA.  Yes, it was wrong. Too bad.

That was my cab!  I wanted to dash into the city to find some chocolate covered strawberries...

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3 hours ago, JLMoran said:

@WAAAYTOOO, did you happen to find / meet @CHRIS WONG while in the casino?

Yes, I did.  The casino was such a madhouse on this cruise...I felt bad for the whole casino staff.  Chris was overwhelmed....and the early closing of the casino last night didn’t help.  He was trying to close out everyone’s points count all at one time.  I hope to get a second chance for him to make a first impression.

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6 hours ago, MadamG2U said:

WAAAYTOO just wanted to thank you again.  Everything has been confirmed and its perfect.  We will have Israel as our Genie

Yes, Sabrina is right !  Izzy has incredible reviews.  That means you WOULD have had Joyce (Izzy is taking her schedule)...you couldn't have lost, either way !

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7 minutes ago, MadamG2U said:

I was just going to see if anyone had thoiughts on him.  Now I am really doing the happy dance!

Many have thoughts on him.  They are all good.  The only one negative I have heard on him (and it's minor), is that he does not communicate as regularly pre-cruise as some other genies.  He is of the most experienced Genies, other than Reyno (who is on all the Star class ads).

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6 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Many have thoughts on him.  They are all good.  The only one negative I have heard on him (and it's minor), is that he does not communicate as regularly pre-cruise as some other genies.  He is of the most experienced Genies, other than Reyno (who is on all the Star class ads).

Yes, I think Reyno and Izzy have benefited from the fact that they were Suite Concierges before becoming Genies.

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1 hour ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Many have thoughts on him.  They are all good.  The only one negative I have heard on him (and it's minor), is that he does not communicate as regularly pre-cruise as some other genies.  He is of the most experienced Genies, other than Reyno (who is on all the Star class ads).

Our experience must have been different than others because every time I emailed him, pre cruise, I heard back from him that same day. It was always late at night but always the same day.  Since I'm not using my real name I can tell you something else about him.  He has an amazing smile, very handsome and he smells great!

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1 minute ago, Dogmom said:

Our experience must have been different than others because every time I emailed him, pre cruise, I heard back from him that same day. It was always late at night but always the same day.  Since I'm not using my real name I can tell you something else about him.  He has an amazing smile, very handsome and he smells great!

LOL.  Joyce said the same thing about him (that he is very handsome).

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13 minutes ago, Dogmom said:

Our experience must have been different than others because every time I emailed him, pre cruise, I heard back from him that same day. It was always late at night but always the same day.

You are too funny with your comment!  Again, the one minor complaint was just from one or two individuals among many great comments so I took those with a grain of salt.  Just figured I would pass the info along.  Seriously though, I would be so excited if got Izzy in March.  Fingers crossed.

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On 12/7/2019 at 6:50 PM, WAAAYTOOO said:

In other interesting news, our Genie brought us a letter indicating that we would be receiving a 20% FCC based on the price of this cruise.  

How does this work if the cruise is a casino comp? Based on what price since they fluctuate - I assume they just look at their historical archive to see what the price would have been on the day you claimed the comp/booked? I'm not at that level in the casino yet, but now you have me wanting to learn UTH so I'm curious. 

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23 minutes ago, melmar02 said:

How does this work if the cruise is a casino comp? Based on what price 

The FCC is based on the base fare only.  IOW, the taxes, fees, gratuities etc do not count towards the FCC.  I don't think the fact that it is a casino comp factors in at all....from what I understand it it based wholly on the cruise fare that you paid.  Since our cruise fare was $6255.70, I would expect our FCC to be $1251.14 but our TA told us to expect in the neighborhood of $1100 so there must be some factor included (or excluded, in this case) that I am missing.  We all know how Royal uses "fuzzy math" and it looks like this is no exception.  I know from reading others' accounts, most people are consistently disappointed that their FCC is lower than they expected.  I'll join that group, I guess.

Here's a bit of good news though....we found out that we will be able to combine this FCC with ANOTHER casino comp upgrade.  I'm using a free casino comp certificate (which I am upgrading) for a sailing on Liberty next September (Labor Day) and I will be able to apply this FCC to that casino comp upgrade.  So, you can combine a casino comp upgrade with an FCC which is great news.   As Twangster has explained to us a couple of times, the FCC can only be used to pay for base fare.  We cannot use it to cover taxes, fees, gratuities, etc.   Coincidentally, the FCC will almost exactly cover the cost of the upgraded fare, so this one will be almost "FREE".

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/1/2019 at 11:28 PM, emsff02 said:

I’ve been following along. Looks like you had a good time on your first leg, aside from the issues with your steaks, that seemed to have followed you to this leg too. That suite looks amazing. I still have more that a year until I sail on her, but we are going all out with star class in the ATS 9330. There are 6 of us, so we need the bigger room. Someday we will try the “gated community” on deck 17.

You are going to love the ATS! We took our adult kids on Harmony in May and had the 2BR ATS, with Genie Allan (who is now on Oasis)- 6 of us total. It was an awesome room, but the balcony really makes it a super special experience. 

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