twangster

Still waiting on 3 Odyssey and 1 Wonder block. September 2021 for the first Odyssey block.

Sorry for everything that has happened up to this point and I hope your wife begins to feel better soon. As far as Royal's position it does appear they should work on their wording which appears to suggest you should board with whatever possible infection may be present as long as it isn't "COVID-19". There has to be a better way to handle this scenario independent of the financial impact of no refund/no FCC which clearly they should not be expected to provide. Perhaps they are hesitant to state you shouldn't board as that implies they are instructing you not to cruise which could have implications in a legal or financial sense. For example if they "deny" you boarding (by telling you not to board) then a credit card company could look at that as if Royal failed as a merchant to provide the service you purchased. Disney charges outrageous prices so they can bury losses and still be profitable. As a company that is their prerogative to take this approach. That doesn't mean every other company on the planet should follow the Disney way. As a consumer I don't want to overpay for my purchases so that others can not follow policy. I feel terrible for everything your family is going through but I don't think Royal should deviate from their policy and grant you a refund or FCC. I state this as I myself will probably walk away from a cruise in a week knowing all I'll get back is port fees and taxes. My personal situation has changed since I booked this cruise and now with a week to go I accept that's on me. No refund, no FCC, no attempt will be made to lie or fake a false positive or any other means to weasel a refund. At this point unless there is a pop up hurricane induced refund option I will lose my money and I accept that is on me.

Royal has been testing higher cabana rates at Labadee given the seemingly endless number of guests willing to pay outrageous cabana pricing at CocoCay. When they jacked the rates there were fewer suite guests buying them at the new price point so they opened BB cabanas up to non-suite guests. There was a thread about this at the time. They still enforce suite only access for non-cabanas guests. In July I saw some interlopers booted from BB.

Long been that way.

Princess may have an opening because Royal built a new terminal and is moving. Without the new terminal it may have been difficult for Princess to secure weekend berthing.

Often GGG rates require full payment since they are within final payment due date. Once a booking is paid in full it can't be transferred. For the purpose of GGG your favorite TA not getting the booking isn't the end of the world. Commission typically is very little for GGG rates. Unless the cruise ends up cancelled by Royal there typically isn't a lot of servicing that a TA can perform on a cruise booked after final payment due date. Talk to you TA about it. That's what I did. She didn't lose sleep over a few GGG direct bookings I made.

It depends. Even though there is verbiage that people hang their hats on in the end the price is the price. NextCruise in my experience provides a reduced OBC amount or nothing for GGG bookings. I've received weird amounts like $19.50 in OBC for solo GGG and for others the NextCruise OBC for GGG was $0. Since GGG is often after final payment due date there is no reduced deposit at NextCruise either. When they are offering rates like $70pp pre-tax for a cabin I would not expect to find a full CAS balcony discount available, it won't make the cruise free. Same with NextCruise OBC, I think you'll find $0 on the el cheapo rates. Yet the verbiage says "...combinable with...". At the end of the day there are some GGG rates so cheap they can't offer CAS and/or NextCruise discounts.