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booked connecting balconies - but rooms are not next to each other


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Hi all-

About 10 days ago, my friend and I booked a sailing on Navigator in December.  We each booked our own "connecting balcony" stateroom as solo travelers, since we both wanted to take advantage of the double-points promo before it expired.  We booked directly on royalcaribbean.com and picked our own staterooms (this was not a GTY), 7364 and 7362.  Or so we thought.  When the confirmations came back, my companion actually ended up on Deck 6.  I can't prove that the website booted him out of his original room, or if he fat-fingered the room selection, but either way, we aren't together.  Unfortunately it took a few days before we noticed this.

I called Royal today, and because the actual "connecting balcony" category doesn't encompass that many rooms to begin with, there weren't any left that were side by side.  I asked about changing to another balcony category (since we don't really care about the connecting door).  The next category up is "spacious balcony." 

If you price a cabin today as a solo traveler, the connecting balcony price is $461 and the "spacious balcony" is $472, so thats only 11 bucks more.  Not a big deal.  Here's the problem:  when we booked this, the "promotions" were better than they are today.  According to the phone rep, the fare difference for me (Diamond) would actually be $30, but for my companion (gold) it was closer to $80 to go to the spacious balcony category.  All this so we can get 2 rooms side by side.

So the question is:  Do I have any recourse here?  Can Royal be swayed to honor the promotions that were in effect when we made the original booking, so we just pay the fare difference?  Or the minute we change categories, is it an automatic re-pricing according to whatever promotions are in effect right now?  I feel kind of stuck but maybe there's a better department at Royal that can handle one-off requests like this.  The general reservations agent was very polite but couldn't offer any solutions beyond re-pricing the whole thing into the new category, even though its effectively the same room. 

Any advice or prior experience with this sort of thing is welcome!  thanks !

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Don’t think so and remember the double points promotion ended Sept 30.  So you have to be careful how you change your reservation so as not to lose that.  If the connecting rooms are important to you AND you retain the double points, I’d make the switch now.  Between now and final payment sales will come and go so you might find a better price on your new rooms and get it repriced.  

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Other than the ability to open up the balconies and have a larger space to share, there's no reason to book the side-by-side rooms if it costs more - you can take turns visiting each other's balcony - it's always possible that one or the other will be a better location for avoiding sun directly in your eyes in the evening.

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