harlekuin

May be semantics, but that sounds like re-selling rooms. To me, at least.

 

Book 500 to a company as a "group", and sell them later to individuals.

 

Either way, I wonder if most of the BOGOHO cabins were purchased like that.

Well, in order to re-sell something you have to own something. The TA does not give any money to the line to create the groups, but they do have to produce results. If the line does not see sales, the cruise line can take back all the cabins any time they want.

It does seem as if more cabins are actually booked- whether they are real, a re-seller, or someone who does not intend to sail. We looked at alternate cabins, but none are available (for example, there are NO suites available on a Majesty cruise in Feb :eek:- it's so rare for one of those to sell out prior to final payment).

 

I still don't understand why someone would book a cruise with no intention to sail on it. Especially since that promotion is not transferrable what so ever.

 

The re-sellers- don't understand how they can do this- seems as if when the name changes, the booking changes, and the BOGOHO sale goes away. Although, I could be wrong- and this could also have been a big carrot to travel agents. dunno.

There are no re-sellers. The cruise companies hold "title" to all the bookings. What happens with mostly large travel agencies is they book groups. They tell RCCL for example, that on a particular cruise they can book 200 balconies, 300 OVs and 300 insides. With that commitment, they get the GAP points (group amenity points). Each cruise has it's own number of points, if any. This is where some of the OBC, wine, strawberries etc come from.

A couple of months prior to final payment RCCL calls the agency and asks how many cabins they have left and how many to they want to give back. The large TAs have analysts that follow the trends and know how many to let go and how many to keep. This continues intermittently until final payment when the cruise line takes back all of the unsold cabins.

If the cruise line gets a lot of cabins back, this is when some lower prices might be seen.

I explained it above. No one can see them. The link is 7 years old and Webshots as it was, is dead. No one could have seen the pics recently.

Your photo's are great, thanks for sharing them with us.

Could you share how you saw the pics? Webshots, as it was in 2007 doesn't exist. It was sold, renamed to Smile, which went under and now is back as Webshots but a merged version of the old and the new. I had a premium subscription and all the photos I had before had to be removed or they would be lost.

The buy one get one half off sale ended today. This thread discusses the price jumps that were seen today.

To me, Royal is far superior when it comes to shows, ship decor, entertainment, overall ship design. My last Carnival cruise was in 2009, (traumatized by the decor of the Carnival Freedom :eek:), I don't think I could ever go back.

Traumatized? Seriously? 14 Carnival cruises; the only ship where the decor was really kind of crazy is the pink zebra circles on Splendor.

Enjoyed Oasis and have Jewel and Allure booked. Not because we love Royal now or dislike Carnival, just something different.

All cruises and ships have their pluses and minuses but I really am disgusted by the people that say, "never been on Carnival but I heard.........." There are drunks, unruly kids, door slamming and misses on menus on every ship. Try them for yourself, with an open mind if you can (doubtful), then make an informed, intelligent decision.

4 votes for deck 8. Very convenient to Central Park, pretty much mid ship height wise, never waited for an elevator. Liked it so much we booked a GS on Allure just a couple of doors down from our JS on Oasis this year.

This thread is almost 6 years old........... Stop already

i board a panama cruise at miami and the ships time is 1500..we arrive in Mazatla and the ship leaves at 6pm, i need to be back on the ship at 230PM local time because the ships time says 530pm i dont think so

This is so ..... The ship will change times as you move around. Sailing west coast to Mexico many times, the ship time may change but still may not match local time. The Compass or Fun Times or whatever the name is on the ship you're on, will tell you to turn your clock ahead or back as they see fit. We almost missed a massage when we thought it was 12 ship time and it was 1 local time. This applies to excursions too. Even though the trip may say 8:30 AM, the trip people know what time the ship gets in a leaves.

As LA_CA_Girl says, keep it on ship time.

Since this is an RCI forum, I can also share that I would have preferred an RCI ship for both the Coastal trips. RCI, are you listening? We are here, we are here.

We are here too! It's a 5 hour drive to SoCal which is faster than a flight once you factor in the parking, check in, fly, get luggage, etc.... Cheaper too even with our gas prices.

The machines use little cartridges that look like ink cartridges for the different flavors. We saw one of the machines being serviced on one of our cruises, they just pop out an empty cartridge and snap in a new one. They must have larger ones for the base flavors but we didn't stick around too much to see those.

That's interesting to know. Thanks. I still think that you have to have the right spot for people to stand in line, the electricity and water still need to be there and someone to maintain the mess that is made and change the cartridges. On Oasis the floors around the machine were constantly having to be taken care of because, well, people spill, a lot.

All that said, we enjoyed using the machines very much. My husband is addicted to lime-ginger ale.

I thinks it terrible that RCCI doesn't put these machines on every ship in their fleet! I hate bothering a bartender every time I want a soda that I have pre-paid dearly for. It's not fair to the staff' date=' or to the customer![/quote']

 

I don't think it's that simple. Each machine needs a water source, electric, a place for all the syrup boxes for each flavor that can be made into a combination, like Coke, Diet, lime flavor, cherry flavor, etc. A storage spot for all those syrups. Running all those lines to the machine. Easy access. Ice production. From having owned a restaurant, retrofitting is not an easy process.

We have had a beach condo, vacation home, sold that and bought a big motor coach and traveled in it for a while.

This is us. We bought a big coach last year and now we don't even go anywhere in it anymore. We rent it out to pay for our cruises and other trips! It is far more cost effective, especially with the cost of gas. At 7 mpg, not cheap to go too far.

Because Royal Caribbean re-graded their cabins to increase occupancy and at their discretion "popular" categories during certain times of the year or sailings, cabins that hold 4 will not be available to only 2 passengers. :mad:

 

Apparently suites are not included in this prohibition. :rolleyes:

Interesting. Never encountered this before when booking ppl. Only with groups has there been this issue. Thanks for the additional info.

Ok, but did I miss that the OP needs the room for 4? And why if the room is available for 4 it is not for 2? Even on the TA side, it's not allowing anything for 2 in a D level.

a. There are actually tons of D1 cabins available.

b. $914 per person for a balcony on a 7 night cruise during prime spring break time doesn't seem abnormally high to me.

The first time I did a search on the RCCL site, it changed the date from Mar 14 to April 11th. I just checked again, confirmed Mar 14 and got 0 D level balconies, just E like the OP stated.

Did a google search and found a singles cruise on that ship for those dates. Not sure if that is the cause, but it's a pretty good guess.

It is on singlescruise dot com

I have a group booked through my TA. She told me how may GAP points we had when I booked but I don't remember what she told me. We are adding more people/cabins to the group so I think the number of GAP points will increase also. I was trying to keep up so I can let the group members know where we stand.

Have never seen points increase after booking. The reason the points exist is to draw more cruisers to select cruises. Some cruises have 0 points, others can have 8.

Adding more people/rooms, only increases your possible tour conductor rates (1 for every 8 cabins, using the cabin type that has the most rooms to calculate the rate after fees/taxes are removed).

There is information and lots of suggestions on the St.Thomas port of call forum.... check it out here

We eventually just used My Time and asked to share a table. The Maitre d' told us the wait would be shortest if we came at about 6:30 pm. Hellooooo???? Why would that be, when we had consistently been told there was no room available for us one-half hour earlier?

MTD and regular seating use completely different parts of the dining room. They are not all together so it totally makes sense. Only so many seats for MTD at any one time.

First ever cruise on Carnival Pride had a side way inside. Loved it. Didn't feel like a deep tunnel. No extra noise. We have had only 2 other insides and they were the normal, long straight cabins. Too dark.

We enjoy just relaxing in the cabin so for us, it is important to have a room we feel comfortable and not squeezed in. IF we had to to an inside again, we would do the sideways.

Just interested because I feel burned by being out ~$600 for the two of us. :(

Try not to feel that way. When you booked you were happy with the price you paid. Just like car prices dropping 2 months after you buy, someone is always going to get a better deal. We think the prices we pay for our cruises are fair and IF we get anything beyond that, it's just icing on the cake.

How Can a travel agency charge a $100pp fee to change the date of a cruise I had booked with them? I did not cancel, nor did the promotion change in any way. The only thing on the reservation that would have changed was the date and the cabin number. I was actually upgrading! :confused:

That was the change. And I would believe that's what they charged on. On the terms of my latest cruise booking, it clearly said, ANY changes they could charge me $100 p/p. It's a risk we are willing to take for the perks offered.

You might be well off calling them and confirming.

When I ask RC what is the base fare they say when you look at a booking online and it shows the fare and then the taxes and port fees, that fare is the base fare. The TA says that is not the base fare. Nowhere is it just in plain English. I am not disputing the policy, whatever the policy is will be fine with me but I want to know WHAT IS THE POLICY? Does anyone know?

The fare the traveler pays is the base fare, the port fees and the NCF, non-commisioned fees. The port fees are easy to figure out, they are shown. The NCF is not. It is buried in the remainder. The NCF is "usually" about 1/4. So if the fee, without the port fees is $400, you would get about $300.

Added: the base fee is what the TA gets commission on also. So when people think the TA gets 10-16% of the fare, it is off a considerably smaller amount than traveler pays.

Thanks. Do you know when you get the credit, after the cruise?

When I booked groups, we would spread the savings out over all of the reservations so everyone's cruise was cheaper. I have never gotten a separate payout/credit on the TC so I can't completely answer your question. Sorry :(