ARandomTraveler

When my grandparents passed away in the early '90's we found shoe boxes full of Royal Caribbean card decks and a few drinking glasses with the Royal Caribbean logo on them. I assume they got those as free gifts. I can remember when Continental Airlines used to give decks of cards to kids when they flew...I also remember Continental Airlines 😂.

Funny you mention it because I'm packing right now and pulled out an old garment bag that I'm contemplating using, but unsure if I want to risk checking it. It's too big to carry on. I love the ease of just unfolding the garment bag and hanging it up in the closet. I can even fit 3 pairs of shoes in it. Easy peasy. Now, getting the garment bag to my destination after a 14 hour flight with 1 plane change is another story.

When hurricane Maria happened in 2017, a bunch of the Caribbean ports were heavily damaged. The French side of St Maarten was almost completely destroyed. Puerto Rico lost power and water for weeks (maybe even months in some areas). If I remember correctly, Florida embarkation ports were affected as well. People with cruises booked that weekend thought their cruises would be cancelled, but they weren't. The cruise lines basically said "we can still sail, so we're sailing" and anyone that didn't make it to the embarkation port was s.o.l. It was a big controversy, with people either being unable to get to the port because of flight cancellations, or because they didn't feel safe, or didn't want to visit a bunch of islands where everything had been wiped out. Point is, the cruises didn't get canceled, and people didn't get their money back if they didn't make it to the embarkation port to leave with the ship (unless they had insurance). It was a big major mess. Chances are extremely low to nonexistent that your cruise will be cancelled because of Earl.

If you bought the insurance through the cruiseline, you can cancel and get 90% of your money back in the form of an FCC (future cruise credit). If you bought travel insurance independently from the cruiseline and your policy covers "itinerary changes" you can get some compensation (how much you get is dependent on the policy you bought). If your policy includes a "cancel-for-any-reason" clause you can cancel up to 48 hours before your cruise leaves and get 75% of your cash back.

I vote that you try a non-cruise vacation. It's definitely not going to offer as much entertainment, and obviously, no change of scenery with new port stops, but there's lots of great places to visit for land vacations. Since you'll be bringing children, I'd suggest trying a Beaches all-inclusive resort. Turks and Caicos has a good one, so does Negril Jamaica (it's on the nicest stretch of beach in Jamaica, and Negril is on the sunset-side of the island). Aruba is one of my favorite islands for doing land vacations, but they don't have good all-inclusive resorts. You're better off staying at a regular (non all-inclusive) hotel, and paying out-of-pocket for food, drinks and activities. I like staying at the Hilton on Palm Beach. Puerto Rico has some good culture to experience, and if you stay during the right time of the month, you can do the bio-bay kayaking at night and see the bioluminescence. It's one of only 7 places in the world that you can do that. But the beach water in Puerto Rico isn't as nice as the places above. I'd steer clear of anything in Mexico. They have some nice hotels for cheap, but the beaches aren't anywhere near as good as the first 3 places I mentioned above. The hotels and the activities on the island are often geared more towards the adult party crowd.

Having a refundable cruise fare doesn't have anything to do with whether you can cancel cruise planner items. No idea why the previous person couldn't cancel their Internet package for a refund, other than they might be within 2 days of their sailing?

I didn't realize they sold currants on board 🤔

Same

I don't think it's typical, but it does happen. I check my cruise prices, and the prices of the items in my cruise planner, at least twice a day (usually in the morning and evening). That's the only time I've seen it happen 3 times that close together. In the last 5 months, I've gotten 5 price drops, worth almost $600 in total, so it's worth it to check.

They can change. When I posted earlier today, my cruise planner showed $20.99/day. I just looked again and now it's $30.99/day. The "sale" countdown claims there's still 5 hours left of the current sale. I'm sure in 5 hours it'll re-set itself to say "sale extended" and it'll just be the same prices fluctuating for the next 36 hours. The other thing that can change within the same day is the price of your actual cruise. I got 3 price drops within 24 hours a couple months ago.

Thank you. I guess I had access to that description if I'd bothered to login to my cruise planner and read it 😂. Since the priority access is only into the terminal, and not onto the ship, and since the VIP seating still needs to be reserved, I'm seeing less value in The Key now. Private time at the flow rider would benefit my daughter, but not enough to pay the extra money for the key. I think my "buy" price is gonna be $18/person, and it doesn't appear that it will go that low for my cruise so I'm out.

Does The Key only get you early check in, and not early boarding? Because that definitely downgrades it's value to me if that's the case.

Hmmm, you make a good point about thinking of the extra $50 as buying all those other things. I'm in a similar spot as @blueslily, I bought internet for 1 device at $20.99/day, but am considering buying it for a second device (an extra $84, for a total of $230). The Key is currently also priced at $20.99/day. For 2 people that will be $293. So for any extra $60, I would get priority boarding, VIP show seating and Chops lunch. I have the dining package, so the chops lunch isn't worth anything to me, but the VIP seating in shows might be worth that price. The whole reason I would even want the key is so I can board early enough to make my dining and show reservation. The key would eliminate one of those problems for me (the show seating), and then I could board early and make my dining reservations. Question - does the VIP seating guarantee you a seat at every show, all showtimes?

That's true, it does seem like it's a lot more popular now. A couple years ago when they offered me discounted specialty dining on board I wouldn't even consider it. I felt like it was nickel-and-dime -ing. I bought the dining package for my upcoming cruise for the first time, and for whatever reason, my view on it has shifted and I now feel like it's a reasonable extra expense. I wonder if it's partly because of the rise of subscription services becoming the norm. What I would have considered a nickel-and-dime expense 4 years ago, I now feel is totally reasonable. While I feel like paying an additional $245 per person is a negligible expense for dining, and am not yet to the point where I think it's gotten outrageously high, I do agree that the cost will continue to go up if so many people keep buying it. Pretty soon it will be like the deluxe beverage package. What surprises me is that it seems like more people are willing to buy the deluxe beverage package than the dining package, even though it's almost 3 times more expensive. I guess the argument there is that there's already food options included, but the alcohol is not.

Mine is down to $20.99. That's the cheapest I've ever seen it. It's usually listed at $36.99, sometimes goes down to $30.99 when there's a sale. The lowest surf+stream price has been $20.99, which is what it's listed at right now, so Internet and the key are currently the same price. If I didn't have to buy the key for both passengers it would be worth it, but given I have to buy 2, it's not worth it. The only reason I would buy the key is to get a jump on reserving shows and dining.

$207.99 is the cheapest I've seen for my Symphony cruise. I've been checking prices every day for 5 months.

I think he programmed it himself

For my upcoming Thanksgiving cruise on Symphony, the best price in the last 5 months for Internet (surf + stream) has been $20.99/day for one device. Add an additional $84 total for second device (most often $26.99/day, not sure about the additional cost of the second device). The best refreshment package price has been $22.99/day (most often $29.99/day). Deluxe beverage package: $72.99/day (most often it's listed for $78.99/day) Unlimited dining: $207.99/person (most often $219.99/person).

That's when you make a claim on your travel insurance.

Interesting that there's no 5pm shows. If you have 8pm dinner, you have to go to the 10:30pm shows. I like eating late, but I'm tired after that and don't want to go to shows at 10:30. I guess that's why I've never really seen the shows on any of my cruises. It would be nice if they had pre-dinner show times instead of only post-dinner showtimes. I have the dining package for my next cruise so hopefully I can work around it, but that probably means I need to start being an early eater, assuming I can get an early dining time. What would that even be, 5:30pm?

Good point. There is a way to do it but it would put Royal in a really bad customer service situation I guess. With that in mind, I guess they just need to pick a certain area of chairs around the most popular "chair hog" areas and charge for them by the hour ahead of time.

I think this is a good idea. I think anyone who wants to reserve a seat for the whole day whether they're in it or not should also be willing to pay for it. On my last land vacation I visited a resort that required paid reservations for their palapas and it created such a different atmosphere on the beach. It was so nice to show up to the beach and not be greeted by a bunch of towels and empty chairs. It felt like there was a lot less "riff raff" at that resort, and I thought the trade off of having to pay $75/day to get rid of that problem was worth it. Of course, $75 is a lot less than Royal is charging for the casitas. I've never really cared if my chairs on a cruise are by the pool so I probably wouldn't pay for the casita, unless there were no chairs anywhere else to be had. What they should do is charge a per hour fee to anyone who puts their towel on a lounger and doesn't come back within a half hour. That would free up a lot of loungers, but would also give people the option to save their desired space if they're willing to pay for it.

Trikes Aruba is a great tour, really fun, I've done it twice (one on a cruise and once on a land vacation). https://trikes-aruba.com ABC tours is really popular too, the UTV tour is really popular. https://abc-aruba.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjwpKyYBhB7EiwAU2Hn2Z_KvySy3Mk6VaRw68H56HZz-_K4Z9tXrzz9MuAUQPoIhHswu4FtUBoCamwQAvD_BwE&fh-u=8fdbdad5-b48b-4b71-b5ec-228cc3bc4442 I didn't do a tour in Curacao but went to Mambo Beach which gets good reviews and is recommended a lot. I thought it SUCKED! It's a man made beach that still gets a lot of man-of-war jellyfish. It was boring and the people who sell the beach chairs come around every 30 minutes and try to make you pay again unless you can show them your receipt. Haven't been to Bonaire.

Then the least expensive option is probably to have the alcohol drinker pay out of pocket. Unless that person is going to drink $105 worth of drinks a day, it's cheaper to pay as you go.

There's a really helpful poster on cruise Critic who happens to be a travel agent (from what I gather anyway). I'm not sure if you can direct message people on here, but it seems like there's quite a few cruise Critic posters who use this travel agent, so I imagine there's a way to figure out how to reach out. If you read enough posts, you should very easily be able to figure out who it is. In fact, he seems to be answering a lot of your questions right now...perhaps you should Re-read the responses.