ARandomTraveler

Did you run out of the room and scream "fire" afterwards?

I bought Internet (surf and stream) for my upcoming symphony cruise and it cost $20.99/day ($147 for the week). It was an extra $84 total for the second device. Cheapest I've seen it so far.

I've never bought the cruise line's insurance but from what I've read, there's a cancel for any reason clause in it that allows you to cancel for no reason at all, and you get 90% of your money back in the form of a future cruise credit. Given your reservations are linked, if there does happen to be a clause in the policy that lets you cancel in the event that someone in your party is injured and can't travel, then you could probably make a claim. The question would be: does the cruiseline consider the injury to be one that makes it so a person can't travel. If not, use the cancel for any reason clause. You'll have to do some reading of the policy. Personally - I'd still go without them 😂

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Depends on which policy they bought. I buy private travel insurance (not through the cruiseline) and there's almost always a clause in the policies I buy that gives your money back if someone in your travel party gets sick or injured and can't go. You have to be able to show they were part of your reservation though, through paperwork that that shows you were traveling together and links your reservations somehow. I also always add the cancel-for-any-reason rider, which gives you 75% of your money back if you cancel for any reason at all. That way if you can't come up with a reason that is covered by the insurance which gives 100% of your money back, you can at least get most of it back. If their policy doesn't have either of these things or their reservations aren't linked, then I doubt they'd get their money back just because their friends canceled. I think the cruiseline insurance has a cancel for any reason clause that gives you a future cruise credit if you cancel. Not cash though.

Thanks everyone, all good perspectives. I'm glad to see the difference prices people have gotten. $133 must be the Thanksgiving price, assuming lots of demand with all the families with kids on board.

Probably not thanking me as much as they're thanking the people who pay for those $10,000 and $20,000/week suites. I'm fine with stimulating the economy and being in a company's target market for profitability, and I'm happy they're offering me a good/service that I'm excited to pay for. It makes the world go 'round.

With all due respect, neither of these places are quality places to eat. They're basically just the steakhouse version of chilis and Applebees. Where I live, Outback and Texas Road House are lower quality dining options (in fact, both Outback and Applebees closed down in my town because they couldn't get enough business here). A good steakhouse here costs about $75/person for a steak and one side, no drink, no dessert. Heck, even our salad "chain" restaurant (Sweetgreen) costs $18 for a salad by the time you add an egg or an avocado. I understand the point you're trying to make about there already being free food that in your opinion is basically the same quality, but I agree with @baelor in that cost is relative to what you're used to paying for a restaurant at home. $35/person for the specialty restaurants is a deal compared to what I pay to eat out at home. I'm usually totally fine with the free food on the ship, but for $208 + 18% per person, it seemed like a very inexpensive add-on to our upcoming cruise in exchange for opening up access to all dining venues on the ship, rather than just the free ones. It was more about the option to eat everywhere vs the quality of the food to me, since the price for 2 people for the entire week was just slightly more than what I paid for 2 of us to eat one Omakase sushi meal last time we went.

How big is this water park? Are there lots of inner tube rides or is it just a few inner tube rides and a bunch of slides and pools? Are the rides/slides fun for "older" kids and middle aged adults, or is it more fun for families who have kids under the age of 15? Are the lines long like Disney where you may only be able to try 4 or 5 things in a day, or can a person expect to access all the rides/slides they want to ride during their stay? At $133/person, the price has never gone up or down during any of my cruise planner sales, so I assume that price is what it is. Is it worth it? How does it compare to the Disney World water parks in terms of size and rides? We've been to Blizzard Beach and had fun but weren't that impressed and wouldn't go again, so if it's similar to that, I'll avoid. But if it's better, I might try it because my kid mentioned it in a way that made me realize I may have written it off without fully considering that she might find it fun.

Is Italy allowing US residents to fly into Italy without testing? I'm flying there in a couple weeks and was told last week that I still needed a covid test. I've been looking online for the last 15 min trying to figure out the most updated info through my airline and it keeps sending me to a site written in Italian. Edit: Finally found the info. Not sure why I was told I needed a covid test last week because it appears covid testing hasn't been required since the end of June. https://www.esteri.it/en/ministero/normativaonline/focus-cittadini-italiani-in-rientro-dall-estero-e-cittadini-stranieri-in-italia/

Can you get independent travel insurance (meaning, not through Royal Caribbean) for everyone except your mom, and then get the royal Caribbean insurance for your mom only? I always buy independent insurance, but from what I hear, royal's insurance doesn't discriminate based on age like independent insurance does.

That would have been the first thing I thought of, and it would have immediately nixed the idea of sharing a room, or even a wall. But that's just me. I realize a lot of people don't share those activities with their significant others very often, and could go a week without worrying about it.

Not to mention the sound barrier at night. Who wants to risk sharing bedroom activity sounds with your family? Yuck.

I would book it, and pay the $200 for refundable. Don't look at it as paying $200 to get back $400, look at it as paying $400 to get your cash back. You're paying for flexibility and options. I don't think of the refundable option as being more money, I look at it as the regular price, and I think of the non-refundable option as a special discount with penalties attached to it. If RC listed the refundable price as the main price, and then listed the non-refundable as the discount option you could select at the end after reading the terms and conditions, I think less people would probably book non refundable. They're smart in doing it the opposite way, because most people look at the refundable option as an up-charge and don't want to pay it, and RC is getting to keep a lot more money that way. Also, is $200 really life changing money in the scheme of things?

Here's an article about hair dryers (similar to straighteners because they're heat producing), and explains watts and volts and plugs etc. I came across it while trying to figure out if my Dyson hair dryer would function in Europe. https://www.rvandplaya.com/how-many-amps-does-a-hair-dryer-use/

I see your point, but also, people are willing to pay full price to board a full ship knowing full well they might catch covid and end up on deck 3 eating room service out of a soup cup. There used to be a policy about being refunded if that happened to you, or getting on board credit or some such things, but those concessions have slowly been whittled away, and people are still booking cruises. Personally, I bought private insurance that covers all possible scenarios that I might care about in the event covid affects my trip. I'm also willing to risk losing part of my vacation, and part of my money, for anything that isn't covered. I just don't understand going on these vacations and then being surprised that covid might alter plans and then expect to get paid money when there's no written policy saying they'd get anything for the inconvenience, and they also didn't buy insurance. That being said, I don't completely fault the OP for making an attempt to see if they can use someone else's circumstance as a way to argue their own case and get more money. However, I think it's a bit entitled and a waste of time.

I saw that they mentioned that after my post, I'm not sure why they didn't mention it in their original post as it seems pretty pertinent to the situation. In that case I would have been pretty adamant that I get very clear written documentation of who was going to be compensated, and how that would be handled, before leaving the ship. Just because an employee says one thing doesn't make it true, and there's no proof the employee even said it, since it was never put into writing. That's just common sense. I think that everyone is taking a risk cruising during covid times, knowing full well that vacations might be altered or ruined if someone catches covid. The fact that people go into it without travel insurance that will cover any disappointments and then complain about it later seems entitled to me. Why book a cruise that offered no written assurance before booking that you'd be refunded if that was going to be important? And why leave the ship with a piece of paper that wasn't clear and that didn't list names of guests it applied to? I would accept that only if I didn't care about the refund, which this poster clearly does care about. Sounds like this person probably wasn't fully prepared to take a vacation during covid times.

Why would they refund part of everyone else's cruise fare just because one person was quarantined? That doesn't even make sense. If someone told me that was the case, I guess I'd hope for some additional refund as a surprise but would never expect to actually receive it. But if I cared about making sure I did, I would get it in writing immediately. Now that you're off the ship and the only thing you have in writing appears to make sense only for the person who was quarantined and lost part of their vacation, I wouldn't even bother trying to take this up with RC, let it go, you're not owed anything and shouldn't expect it, given you got the vacation you paid for. PS - there is insurance that provides you money if you or one of your traveling party is quarantined during the vacation. If having one of your party quarantined was going to ruin the vacation for the rest of you, you probably should have bought the insurance.

This isn't true. I've gotten 5 price drops and I booked after March. My final payment date isn't until the end of this month. Call again tomorrow.

Can't you just get a price drop if you're before final payment?

I'm sorry but, a 29 year old is "young enough to sleep anywhere?" 😂 He's a grown a$$ man. If my parents invited me on a family vacation at 29 and told me I was sleeping on a couch I would have paid for myself to have my own room. That sentence made me laugh when I read it because I was expecting to see the "kids" ages be much, much younger than they were 😂.

I hope not, I love sailing out of Puerto Rico in summertime.

I paid $207.99 for 7-night thanksgiving cruise. $306 is a lot for just 2 extra nights. I would think there'd be less people booking the specialty restaurants on holiday cruises because more people are traveling in big groups who want to eat together, and that would require everyone in the group to buy the dining package. I can see that making it so less people buy UDP for holiday cruises. But who knows. I've never done either (holiday cruise or UDP)so we'll see.

My insurance policy has a section about this type of thing and I believe you just need a newspaper article showing the fires and air quality dated on the date you interrupted. You can look for that online with a local Alaska newspaper. Read through the policy to make sure, cause they're all different, but that might be all you need.

Can you make reservations at 2 places in the same day? Like a 5:30pm dinner and an 8:30pm dinner somewhere else?