Bluemymind

In your 39 years with Royal I'm sure this isn't the first time that a cruise has dropped in price after final payment its just the first time you have caught it. Royal's old policy about 10 years ago was to give OBC for price reductions close to sail date. I once walked off a Alaska cruise with Royal with an I.O.U. from Royal because of a price drop I caught a week before the sailing for $2800. Boy those were the days. Now a days I search for lower prices up until Final Payment and request repricing but AFTER final payment I'll still watch for lower price but its for higher categories. I too have never been given an upgrade in 21 years of sailing with Royal and Celebrity cruises but I have PAID for some amazing upgrades for pennies on the dollar. As for Good Business for Royal to refund, its really not good business for them to refund money to everyone every time the price drops because they are trying to fill every cabin before a sailing at some point they have to say Stop and they have decided that that point is at Final Payment. 

You can all get free drinks in the Suite lounge.

You might want to search on "why not to ever use a debit card" for anything ever, never ever. Your money is not protected by using debit cards where as your credit card will protect you from yourself and others. 

50 minutes ago, Ashland said:

Following this info too.

Yes its the same on Celebrity. 

12 hours ago, Ourusualbeach said:

Thanks!  I have bartenders to train.

Can you teach them how to make an Old Fashion. Every time I get one I have to tell me "do not stir with ice".

Best you can do is upgrade to a bette cabin. We book a cabin at a certain price point that we can live with and then hope to upgrade when prices drop. Back in the day like 3 plus years ago Celebrity would drop their prices last minute and we could always upgrade to a suite for free. Now they are holding pretty firm on their pricing for suites after final payment. Good luck upgrading. 

Thanks for the reviews. We are doing the crossing next summer on the Jewel. Looking forward to seeing more. 

Sadly my wife got the offer and I didn't. I could squeeze another cruise into my schedule of 8 in the next 6 months but she can't. 

I did the new online renew option on Aug 3rd and received my new passport Aug 12th. I hope this option is available again in 10 years when I need it again. 

We have never had to pay in Jamaica, but we do buy food and drinks too. 

8 minutes ago, Another_Critic said:

First at 140 C&A points, then every 70 C&A points.  Block is based on which ship you are on when you reach the prospective number of points.

 

140, 210, 280, 350, 420, 490, 560, 630, 700, etc.

Thanks for the info. The wife and I both received blocks on the Freedom back in November 2019 on a b2b cruise but we had no idea why. 

So how are these "crystal blocks" earned? 

What's that saying "nothing is free" so true. It only took me waiting on hold 2 hours yesterday to get my free cruise. So I think I still came out ahead on the deal. Don't give up the fight. 

Happy holding!!!!

My question is if I get enough points to say get Prime does my wife get Prime statues too. 

Welcome to travel hacking. If your good with credit and pay your bill in full every month then Yes your can get a lot of free travel if you play the system. We haven't paid for a cruise with points but it can be done. We use our points for flights and hotels before and after cruises. Our main card that we use is the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, I got a pretty good point bonus when I signed up for it. The next card I use is Chase Hyatt card. I received 70,000 points when I signed up 4 years ago. The annual fee is $95 and you get 1 free night a year. With the Chase Sapphire care you can transfer those points to United airlines, Hyatt, Southwest Airlines and a couple of other company's at a value of 1 to 1. 

There are a ton of people online offering advice but the one I found the most useful is 10Xtravel.com they have a free online course you can read that is very helpful plus they have a Facebook group too. 

How much is the internet discount???

We never heard anything, even when we went into Dazzles to grab a drink. Place was always dead. We did like having our cabin on the 8th floor with Central Park.

I'm going to say sorry first. If the cruise line wanted you there at 10 am they would have told you. They are asking you to be there at noon so they can get everyone onboard in a some what controlled manner. Why is so hard for people to understand this. You are NOT special. Your special time is at noon. Be a good traveler and do right by your fellow travelers. 

Again I'm sorry but now that that is over some advise on what to do the morning of. We book our hotel downtown so that we can wake up, clean up, then head over to Pike Place and watch as the market is opening up and coming alive for the day. We'll grab some coffee from the Starbucks there and maybe find some breakfast too. I'll even buy my wife some fresh flowers from the market to put in our cabin for the week. You'll have to carry them on board but everyone will be envious and ask where you got them. Around 10:00 - 10:30 we'll make our way back to hotel, grab our bags and head to the pier about 11:30.

we like to stay at Hyatt House for the following reasons. Its the closest hotel to the port and there is a Longhorn steak house and Olive Garden behind the hotel that you can walk to for dinner. There is also a Hyatt Place hotel across the street, both hotels are fairly new. If you get a bay front room you'll be able to see your ship in the morning from your room. You could walk to the port but its at least a half mile if not further, its just easier to take a cab with luggage. 

Intercontinental, we booked it back in April of this year by using Hotwire.com.  I booked it as I think a 4 star not knowing what hotel we would get for $160 bucks. They guarantee you’ll get 1 of 3 hotels listed within a area of the map. Then all I did was see which hotel was within the map area and the only that was was the Intercontinental. The hotel listed rate for our room was $390 for the same room.  You can walk to the bay front mall for dinner and CVS and Walgreens are within walking distance too.  

I book the cabin I want at a price I can live with then check back everyday for price drops. I've had to call back twice in one day once to get price drops. The first call saved me $700 the next call in the afternoon saved me another $650. 

I would just try again tomorrow. 

Last year we were on RCL Harmony of the seas and were about to watch games 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the World Series. They showed them in one of the bars and in our cabin. I would bet that Celebrity does the same.

Go Astro’s.

So 48 hours before boarding we received our "NO" upgrade for you email. Which is no big deal, we knew with about 99% that we wouldn't be getting a upgrade to a Royal Suite which is the only cabin we bid on. The bidding option was between $900-$4000 per person. We put in a bid for $2000 per person I don't think it mattered on bit what we bid since I haven't seen a Royal available for sale in 3 or 4 months.

The only think I didn't like about the bidding process is I couldn't place bids on both my cabins at the same time. We have 2 Aqua cabins together so it didn't make sence to us to bid on only one Sky or Celebrity Suite. I think if they told us in their email that they had so many of such and such cabins and would have let me bid on say 2 Sky suites I would have placed strong bids on them.

Good luck to everyone and Happy Sailing.

So 13 days ago we received the move up option to bid on one of our cabins then today we got the move up option to bid for our other cabin. I’m pretty sure we will get the official “nope” this week since we board on Friday.