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Changes with suite concierge benefits?


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Fellow suite addicts 😉

We are scheduled to sail on Symphony next week in a Crown Loft. We have sailed only in the RCCL suites and love them; the best perk of a suite for us isn’t the suite itself but the help available from the concierges. From our first sailing to our last (2 post shutdown), there has never been any problem with sending the concierge a list of our preferred dining and entertainment schedule and having that completed before the sailing. It is sincerely a large part of what made the suites worth the price for us.

But the email that we received today from Nadja & Jennie for our next sailing indicates, at least to my reading, that we have to wait to schedule the entertainment once we are onboard (although the entertainment schedule was attached). I went ahead and sent in our preferences to them as we have always done, but I am confused about this seeming change. We have never had a sailing where the concierge failed to do this for us, certainly never one where they specified we needed to do so only onboard. 

I am wondering about what others have experiences with this on any of the ships before and/or after the shut down. I don’t know if this is a sudden change for this ship, a very recent change for all the ships, or if these particular concierges decided to opt out of this task. Thanks!

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We were told the same thing, only the comedy show would be pre scheduled.  Everything else was “wait until you board”.  The SC’s on Harmony  were very nice but i found them very difficult to contact unless I wanted to trek up to the lounge, could never get them from my room phone using the numbers they provided.  I let them know we would be celebrating my daughters birthday on night 1 at CK, not looking for a huge deal but a candle in her dessert?  A “happy birthday” from the waitstaff?  Nope, nothing.  I tried to make alternate arrangements for the Izumi Sushi prepaid dinner as brother & nephew didn’t make the cruise, subbing me for one of them & said I would just forgo the cost of the third guest.  Couldn’t get an answer if this was ok. “I’ve emailed the restaurants manager.  I don’t know what he’ll do”   Then, when my son got sick, they could not reschedule the meal.  Again, they were very nice but certainly not the fairy godmothers I expected.

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10 minutes ago, Pooch said:

We were told the same thing, only the comedy show would be pre scheduled.  Everything else was “wait until you board”.  The SC’s on Harmony  were very nice but i found them very difficult to contact unless I wanted to trek up to the lounge, could never get them from my room phone using the numbers they provided.  I let them know we would be celebrating my daughters birthday on night 1 at CK, not looking for a huge deal but a candle in her dessert?  A “happy birthday” from the waitstaff?  Nope, nothing.  I tried to make alternate arrangements for the Izumi Sushi prepaid dinner as brother & nephew didn’t make the cruise, subbing me for one of them & said I would just forgo the cost of the third guest.  Couldn’t get an answer if this was ok. “I’ve emailed the restaurants manager.  I don’t know what he’ll do”   Then, when my son got sick, they could not reschedule the meal.  Again, they were very nice but certainly not the fairy godmothers I expected.

 Yikes, that doesn’t sound positive. I know the birthday issue had to be particularly disappointing to you 😞 I have not had many go over and above, but I’ve had a few, but the making the reservations ahead of time has always been a basic (and as a person in the family that tries to set up everything so the vacation smooth, super important to me). 
 

@TeresaMc good to know! I am sure that she is happier if she’s able to be near her husband. Do you remember where there was any problem having your reservations for entertainment taken care of?

 

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9 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

We've found CK communication to be lacking at best. It's entirely possible the concierge passed along your request and CK just dropped the ball.

That was just this morning, I don’t think there’s going to be a problem with the CK reservations, I was just confused about where they were standing now in terms of entertainment reservations. They have always done them for us and then suddenly there was an email suggesting they would not. I was just wondering what other peoples experiences were recently with this issue. 
 

I did contact one of the concierge is the whom we’ve become close who used to be on the symphony in his now on another ship. I was really wanting to know from him if this was a new change, but instead of confirming to me whether this perk had now changed he instead asked me to send him the CK and entertainment schedule. While that’s great, I would still like to know what’s happening on this issue fleet wide.

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We sailed Symphony in February and Nadja did all our booking pre cruise via email. It was much lower capacity then, with only around 2900 on the first leg and 3200 on the second leg. As the capacity may now be higher perhaps protocols are different, but I would not have thought so as the concierge and pre-booking everything is the reason why I would choose a suite.     

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Thank you @1978bucketlist and @CruisingOz  - we have never had an issue with it before (in years prior to the shutdown or sense). The email (will attach the portion here) seems to say they won’t, but there would be no more onboard than prior to the shutdown, it just wasn’t making sense to us. As you point out Cruisingoz, the ability to prebook is definitely part of the value of a suite in our opinion. 
 

I have not heard back from the Sydney concierge yet, although I did hear back from the concierge friend that I had contacted to confirm what I was wanting before he forwarded it to them. Of course it still doesn’t tell me what’s going on and why. Hopefully I will learn more before long.

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8 hours ago, 1978bucketlist said:

I was on Harmony in CLS from March 6-13. The concierges were very helpful to us. They made all of my dining reservations. There was a mix up with my reservations because I won a Royal up bid. They were able to rebook everything close to times I wanted.

And this is why I had high hopes, your experience was so positive!

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Jennie is awesome!  We had her on Symphony pre-covid.  The entertainment is not able to be booked until you get onboard.  That is a post covid change.  Even star class, the Genie cannot confirm the entertainment until about 24 hours prior or day of.  This was the case in December 2021 and March 2022.  A few weeks ago, our Genie told us that since the re-start, they don't release the entertainment schedule until the day before.

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58 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Jennie is awesome!  We had her on Symphony pre-covid.  The entertainment is not able to be booked until you get onboard.  That is a post covid change.  Even star class, the Genie cannot confirm the entertainment until about 24 hours prior or day of.  This was the case in December 2021 and March 2022.  A few weeks ago, our Genie told us that since the re-start, they don't release the entertainment schedule until the day before.

So odd, it was not the case in November on Symphony or Allure.  They did send out the entertainment flyers to guests when we were on those 2 cruises in November 2021 and even for this sailing a week prior. Perhaps it just depends on the particular concierge. I did get an email about an hour ago letting me know that everything we requested had been taken care of, so I am grateful for that 😊 I do hear that Jennie and Nadja are great, I will definitely find out for myself before too long!

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21 hours ago, AlohaLivin said:

 Yikes, that doesn’t sound positive. I know the birthday issue had to be particularly disappointing to you 😞 I have not had many go over and above, but I’ve had a few, but the making the reservations ahead of time has always been a basic (and as a person in the family that tries to set up everything so the vacation smooth, super important to me). 
 

@TeresaMc good to know! I am sure that she is happier if she’s able to be near her husband. Do you remember where there was any problem having your reservations for entertainment taken care of?

 

We were on the Independence prepandemic with Jennie, no entertainment reservations required. 

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3 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Jennie is awesome!  We had her on Symphony pre-covid.  The entertainment is not able to be booked until you get onboard.  That is a post covid change.  Even star class, the Genie cannot confirm the entertainment until about 24 hours prior or day of.  This was the case in December 2021 and March 2022.  A few weeks ago, our Genie told us that since the re-start, they don't release the entertainment schedule until the day before.

From what I've read, this policy doesn't seems to be consistent neither on all the RC ships nor Symphony on different sailings. 

What a mess...

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2 hours ago, Pooch said:

We received the entertainment schedule the Monday before our cruise but by the time we boarded, there were major changes anyway.

I was going to mention that changed are being made, a lot!  Covid is back amongst the crew.  Some items are cancelled (we will rock you hasn’t played in 3 weeks, now going on 4), substitute entertainment is being done. Very fluid situation.  Too bad they can’t just say so!

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36 minutes ago, Pattycruise said:

I was going to mention that changed are being made, a lot!  Covid is back amongst the crew.  Some items are cancelled (we will rock you hasn’t played in 3 weeks, now going on 4), substitute entertainment is being done. Very fluid situation.  Too bad they can’t just say so!

Absolutely. Om the face of it it doesn’t make sense why the concierges just can’t schedule entertainment for us the way they did before the pandemic. It truly was such a big part of why we felt it was worthwhile to us. If it’s that the entertainment is so unstable they truly don’t know until we get there, they probably need to say that. But with some doing it and others not, it it doubly difficult to understand.

 

 

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We just sailed in Loft Suite on Oasis and the Concierge did not book us entertainment ahead of time, but I think that's because we had a 3 night sailing (instead of the usual 7) so they did not have entertainment schedule beforehand.

We went to Suite Lounge onboard on day 1 and Nadia booked it for us without any problem.

They were able to pre-book all our dining ahead of time, except for Izumi Hibachi.

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