Cannavaro

Trying to gauge if the UDP will be worth it for two light-moderate drinkers vs purchasing individually(no diamond club perks here).  It is vacation time and I imagine we'll go moderate but 2-3 day hangovers are very real at this age lol. It seems they have both gone up in price significantly along with everything else in life so want to know how that plays out. Current UDP offering is $78pp with the 18% tip included.

Another question is... Is the UDP allowed in places like Vintages, Playmakers, and the Irish Pub or do we expect to pay an upcharge? Also, are all wines by the glass included in the UDP. 

Also for example, I see that Bulleit Rye and Hendricks aren't listed on the UDP but offered in the bars so are those an additional upcharge or they purposely don't advertise that in the UDP? 

Please and thank you for all the tips and advice ahead of time! 

7 hours ago, gaylemh said:

I'm not sure if you are aware, but if you go to your offers page and put in your canceled December reservation number, instead of your C & A number, there are offers to take it's place.  

Offers are still the new shortened ones on older smaller ships; cant say I blame them as its anyones guess on when a 7+, TA, TP will ever sail again. Yet they have some liberty and independence 7 day Itineraries. 

3 hours ago, Wedgeh said:

Italy's cases per 100,000 is around a tenth that of Florida.

4 hours ago, livingonthebeach said:

 

Creditors, shareholders, ticket holders, cruise partners, suppliers will all be in line to recoup their interests, that is a sure thing if the ban continues for an inordinate amount of time. 

 

Of course Asia and Europe are not NA.  It's a different market with different laws, but if it can be successfully done there, it follows that if we relax some of our requirements and follow proven effective protocols, safe sailing could conceivably resume. 

The thing about stats is it can always be pointed in a favorable direction of one's choosing.

Florida does have double the cases of Italy, but Italy has had more than double the deaths of Florida. Technically Florida has been more successful(if you value less deaths over positive tests) against the disease than Italy but Italy is already sailing. 

Disney opened up in July with mass hysteria and pending doom from everyone yet that has failed to occur from what we understand; once again depending on how you value what is successful these days. 

8 minutes ago, Merion_Mom said:

 

You should not have to call.

 

You should be able to do both the cancellation and the new purchase in your Cruise Planner.

Tried that. Unfortunately, the deluxe beverage package automatically includes both when purchasing online. Every other package I am allowed to select individually. I'm sure the cancellations I can do on my own.

28 minutes ago, ptod said:

 

You can call Royal and buy the deluxe package for you and the refreshment package for your wife.  She can then buy drinks a la carte if/when she would like something.  Only pain is that if there is a price drop you have to call back to cancel/repurchase.

UMMMMMMMMMMMMMM, you just may have made my day! Thank you!! I may still wait for the black friday deal all things considered right now and Royal may be making an announcement this week or next regarding the future of cruises yet again.

27 minutes ago, Iamcruzin said:

Just out of curiosity how much is the refreshment package?

Refreshment is $19.99

Clasic Soda is $7.49

14 hours ago, bigrednole said:

My thoughts are you need to stay hydrated. Not only does the Deluxe Drink Package include alcohol, it includes bottled water and many other drinks as well. 2 $12 drinks with tip is almost $30. I don't know what they charge for bottled water, but in other captive audience places it is about $4-$5. Assuming that is the price, 2 drinks and 2 bottled waters per day is $43. I can have that done before breakfast time is over. The other part of it is that I hate having to concern myself with money while on vacation. If everything is paid for upfront, I only have to worry about souvenirs.

 

As others have said, I doubt it will go lower. However, the benefit is if it does you can cancel and rebook it at the lower price.

2 hours ago, drsel said:

Regarding the drinks package --how many drinks would you and your husband (combined) normally drink on

1. A sea day

2. A port day.

 

On a port day, (for most people), when you have to rush for a shore excursion early morning, soon after breakfast and come back late evening (after shopping) it is very difficult to consume more than two or three drinks per person.

 

 

1 hour ago, LuCruise said:

DH and I purchased it for the first time last Dec for about $44 USD.  I came out even on some days and other days I didn't drink enough for the cost.  However, what I really liked was being able to order what I wanted without worrying about "will I like this drink?" or "don't think I can finish it".  It let me try new wines and fun drinks I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.  To me, that is part of the "worth" of the package.  Also really enjoyed the fancy coffees, and with a little Baley's, even better.

 

 

All very good points!

Its $49 pp for 12/12 Symphony Eastern for me... Comes out to $809.48 with gratuity. Wife barely drinks so that's a big yikes for me. I tried my last time to get my money's worth to cover the cost of us two and yea..... that was an ugly scene every morning so really not worth it to us. I think I'll have better piece of mind just knowing I can spend that much for alcohol which is a lot of booze. $15 per drink with gratuity, that's about 50+ drinks for 7 days for me lol. I'm hoping it dips to that $39 price point because we do drink a lot of bottled water and coffee but at $809 that's more than the price of our balcony room for 1 so I'll be waiting for the Black Friday deals if they happen. 

3 night specialty package for $99 gives 20-40% discount off bottles of wine so that could bring some value, plus with the two bottles onboard that may be all you need. 

Does anyone have recent drink menus available they can post by any chance to add some insight?

25 minutes ago, Sunshine3601 said:

I think All of us clubroyale members with comped cruises just hope that they will continue with some nice offers as soon as they successfully start sailing again.   They are going to want All of us back in the casino!    The offer I received yesterday for a JS was for 3 and 4 night sailings on Mariner and Navigator, which sounds like that will be their first ships out the gate.     I am from PA and not about to fly to FL for a 3 or 4 night cruise.    But I did have a decent offer the other day for next fall and was able to turn one of my other comped cruises into a b2b (hopefully we can do b2b's next fall).     

Wish I was as optimistic as you as when the offers first came out I jumped all over them because how good they were as I've never seen them THAT good before. Some long timers in the casino thread said they've never ever seen an Alaska comp before this year. After that last promo, the offers have clearly gone downhill and I'm seeing different writing on their wall from 6 months ago till now and I believe justifiably so. I'm sure they expected to be back in business at a certain point in time and each month of missed sailings equals 250M in cash+++ gone in smoke along with our comps. From their end they know the cult cruisers will still be first in line to get back on and most of the comp cruisers stocked up hard(4-6 7+nite sailings) so those loyalists have technically been taken care of but they will be playing with fire with this strategy if those comps continue to get cancelled. My hope is that with enough anger/disappointment from us they'll change course and bring back the one of a kind pandemic specials but I'm not holding my breath. 

At this point I'm more curious how has everyone else's offers been on other cruises? I've received a few from Princess since the shutdown but nothing near what Casino Royale has offered within the past 6 months. May need to take this portion to the general casino thread but maybe we can use it as firepower in our calls.

Do you all think these sweet offers will continue? I doubt it. The last 6 months the offers were amazing as they were begging to get us back on cruise ships but I feel like with the latest cancellation the options were meh at best. My option to switch my 11/1 Harmony comp was between older ships and smaller itineraries; none in the oasis class 7 nite+ like the one that I used for the Harmony comp.  I think corporate and the casino finally realized the new state of cruising with 50% capacity and increased overhead left and right. 

3 minutes ago, Sunshine3601 said:

I completely understand. My next casino comped cruise I know will be cancelled is 12 nights on anthem on dec 7th.   I am 99.99 sure they wont replace that with another 12 nighter.

I'm thinking those offers aren't coming back again. 6 months ago when those offers were all over the place the main objective was to get people back on ships, now they'll only be able to operate at 50% capacity among a ton of other overhead in uncharted waters I have a feeling the objective is slightly different now. 

On the phone with them now, had a comp for 11/1 Harmony and they gave me 125% FCC for the upgrade portion and refunded the tax/fees. Only allowed me to book current offers(which are a bunch of older ships/shorter trips and only two Allure sailings/1 oasis class) because they wouldn't let me move the sailing on the Harmony to another date. Bummer because they had a ton of 2021 7-10 day oasis options from the same club royale offer earlier this year but after 6 months of  learning from covid I have a feeling they may not go back to those old offers as they are bleeding cash a lot longer than they predicted. 

8 hours ago, molly361 said:

Are you going to be able to get a COVID test if needed, get results back AND drive over all within the 5 day time frame?

I'll make it happen but that's exactly my point with the whole situation right now lol

7 hours ago, Iamcruzin said:

Take your time driving.

Will do, thank you!

4 hours ago, molly361 said:

I feel bad for those sailing or think they are sailing on Nov 1 cutting down to only 3 weeks notice soon

Yeeeeee and we are driving from Palm Springs for that Nov 1 sailing >.>

20 minutes ago, mo&fran said:

I see three Carnival ships in port at St Martin, and three more RCI ships. That's a lot of activity, with flights arriving from AMS, CDG, and MIA.

You actually have four Royal ships down there by you. Lot of activity for Royal between St Martin and Barbados. The rest of the fleet it seems is parked just outside of the bahamas. My Harmony for Nov 1 is in Barbados so I'll be tracking it's movement. Royal has 10 ships scheduled for Nov sailings out of Florida so should be interesting how they all move in the next few days/weeks. 

https://www.cruisemapper.com/?imo=9682875 

Im scheduled on the Harmony 11/1/20. Half excitement/anxiety right now LOL. I wouldn't mind moving my sail date if it was a normal purchase but its a Casino Royale offer so if I want to cancel/move I lose my comp which I don't want to do.  I live in Florida so I can deal with the last minute aspect of it but it's cutting it really close to being rude/disrespectful for people who have to plan ahead. Carnival CFO said a ship can be ready within 30 days so I imagine their absolute moment to cancel from their end would be this week. At the end of the day, they are at the mercy of the CDC so that is their 'out' but I imagine that is why cruises like Princess cancelled for the year entirely so they don't diminish their reputation anymore by the last second cancellations to the faithful that want to get on. 

We just finished a month long road trip in 10 states on the west coast and by the way we saw some of the social distancing followed / enforced in certain restaurants, hotels, casinos... I feel better off in a cruise bubble where they have all the control. 

28 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

Yes ate Giovanni's on Adventure and did not care for it. I know others love it. When we were on Harmony I had read that Jamie's generally  has always got a lot of criticism so we ate there first of our specialty reservations figuring if we hated it we would have the others that we knew we would love. I thought it was very good. Read  my experience here from my cruise review.

 

Those lamb chops and pastas looked delicious. Im a sucker for both!

24 minutes ago, katiel53 said:

My preference is Jamie's which we have done on Harmony.  My favorite thing there is the pasta with truffle cream sauce.  It is soooo delicious.  The only thing I didn't like was the garlic roll.  I am used to having either garlic bread or Italian bread with pasta.  What is served at Jamie is almost like a Parkerhouse roll with garlic butter on it.  I also totally enjoy their burgers, although they are huge, hence the not wanting to have dinner after having one for lunch. I also like that Jamie's has lasagna, which was not an option at Giovanni's.

 

The pasta with Bolognese sauce at Giovanni's is good and if you get a meatball,  it's very large, so it can easily be shared.  I made the mistake one time of ordering the pasta and I wanted a meatball, and when I saw the size of it at another table , I nearly died, so I ended up canceling that part of my order.  Another thing I didn't like at Giovanni's was the pasta Carbonara.  I have had it at other restaurants and the egg was mixed in the pasta along with the cheese.  At Giovanni's the egg sits on top of the pasta.  I know it is one of my idiosyncrasies  that eggs go on breakfast foods, but not on steak, pasta, burgers etc.  Our first couple of times on Allure, Giovanni's had a steak that was better than the ones at Chops, but that has left the menu.

Yea that pasta with truffle @Sea Dog posted in his review looked amazing.

3 hours ago, jalves said:

We will be on that Nov 1 Harmony sailing with you...if it goes!

 

We are in a suite so I can't comment about the MDR but we do enjoy the specialty restaurants on some of the nights.  Normally though we eat at Coastal Kitchen.  On the Harmony (which we were on in January) we especially enjoy 150 Central Park and Jamie's Italian.  We did Wonderland and it was one and done for us.  A very different experience but a bit too pretentious to repeat.  We aren't fans of Chops because of several bad service/food experiences there on other Oasis Class ships.

 

Of course those are just our opinions and your taste may vary. 

Is the excitement/anxiety getting to you yet that we will be the first as of right now? LOL

3 hours ago, Ride-The-Waves said:

The MDR on Oasis Class is a horrific place to eat a meal.  Noisy, horrible service, cold meals, etc.  Stay away.

Never tried but can see this being issue at max capacity. Hopefully with the 50-60% capacity this experience may be better?

2 hours ago, katiel53 said:

We get the UDP on all our cruises because we don't feel the MDR food is good.  We also feel the UDP is a great value.

 

We have been to Samba several times and  it has been good.  When we initially started sailing on Allure, Samba was not good at all in either service or food.  It has improved greatly and each of our 5 times on Allure, we had dinner there at least once a cruise.

 

The only drawback, to us, with the UDP is that we are not able to eat a big lunch at a specialty restaurant on sea days and then have dinner.  We have tried burgers or salads for lunch on those days, and without having breakfast,  having lunch at noon, we were still too full to enjoy the dinner at 7PM.

 

We decided after the 2nd day, that we would eat breakfast and no lunch and then enjoy dinner.  We enjoy the food, service and the less noisy atmosphere of the specialty restaurants.

 

If you do get the UDP, and enjoy Hibachi food, you will probably enjoy the experience on Allure.  It is important to make reservations for that restaurant as soon as you are onboard as the seating is limited.  We made the mistake of going there for lunch and the same exact food and portions served at lunch as dinner and we were unable yo have dinner that night as we were too full.

The Hibachi and Samba would most likely be my first two choices on the Allure as I don't think I'll make it it to either of those on the two cruises before. Any experience with Jamies VS Giovannis? I know this is preference/opinion but curious on experiences as Jamies menu looks more modern and Giovannis looks more family style.

28 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

We do 3 nights in MDR usually first and formal nights and then the other 4 nights in specialty or 3 in specialty and a Chef's Table. We were on Harmony last October and went to specialty restaurants Jamie's, CP 150, Chops and Chef's Table. Loved all the meals and restaurants. MDR is just fine and went on nights that they had prime rib and steak and lobster. 

I've taken this approach for MDR on other cruises on Princess and NCL for formal nights as they are usually 'elevated' meals. Any experience with Jamies VS Giovannis? I know this is preference/opinion but curious on experiences as Jamies menu looks more modern and Giovannis looks more family style.

7 minutes ago, Zach1213 said:

Yeah this is definitely going to be something you will need to figure out for yourself based on your own preferences. There are people who eat every meal in the MDR. I do everything I can to avoid a meal in the MDR - specialty dining is best to us, followed by the buffet, with MDR a very distant third and we usually never step food inside it.

 

We are definitely foodies, but adjust your expectations - even specialty dining won't wow you in 90% of the cases. But to us it's a nicer experience, better food, and worth the expense on our vacation.

Understandable. I'm a foodie as well and by design I just want to try everything but at the same time need to be realistic and plan accordingly.

I just missed another sale for this Harmony so the UDP is $199 and the 3 night is back to $99 so I imagine I'll have another week or two before the last sale goes on again and I can make my decision! Looks like at the minimum I'll do a 3 night for all 3 to try to cover all the different restaurants(Harmony - 150 CP, Jamies, Chops)(Symphony - Wonderland, Hooked, Izumi)(Allure - Samba, Hibachi, Giovannis/Chef's Table) and leaning towards UDP for the symphony since it has the most options. Thanks for all the tips and any more incoming!

Hello All

Going on the Harmony of the Seas on 11/1, Symphony of the Seas 12/12, and Allure of the Seas 4/2/21... Got some really good deals during the lockdown LOL

Whether or not they go as scheduled, I will go on these sailings sooner or later. Thoughts on MDR VS Specialty Dining? They are all oasis class so curious on all of your thoughts on when to pay vs not to pay as I wouldn't mind trying everything all has to offer. 3 night dining packaging is hovering around $99 per person and $179 for the seven days. I'm only gold member with an oceanview balcony on all three so I won't get access to Coastal Kitchen. I'm really intrigued by the Samba Brazilian Steakhouse on the Allure but Im not even sure if that requires an extra fee. I'm quite the foodie but I need to balance the budget between the three. Interested on how  you all would play this out. Thank you ahead of time!

Introducing The Key, your premier access to exclusive experiences during your vacation....... Is this worth it for $25.99 pp for a 7 day cruise? Appreciate the thoughts & input. Thanks ahead of time. 

On 4/22/2020 at 2:16 PM, Sunshine3601 said:

In case you didn't know if you book the UDP now and the price lowers anytime from now till your a couple days before your cruise you can simply cancel and rebook online thru the cruise planner.      Right now there are alot of sales for Sept to Dec cruises but I didn't see any sales for my 2021 cruises yet.     So keep an eye out for the sales if you book now.     You will Love it!

What's the lowest you've seen the UDP special go down to per day? Debating going for the 3 day due to cost and I want to get a good few stabs at the MDR.

4 hours ago, Astro Flyer said:

 

 

This was just posted on another thread.

Can you link that thread please?

 Because as of right now still no official confirmation of the test or results on the Royal Princess crew member but they did clear the Regal today.... 

3 minutes ago, that said:

Has the crew member even been tested yet?

Its quite the multi million dollar question right now considering the Royal can't sail until they have clearance of the test by the CDC. Of course Princess was very vague about it. Not sure if they didn't have a test available or they tested and the results haven't come back, etc... But the Panaroma passenger was tested yesterday before disembark and they received the negative test results last night already.... So if they were tested yesterday, I would assume we should have the results by now... 

2 minutes ago, debsjc said:

 

I really wish they would tell us what happened with the test on the Royal crew member... or members.

 

We were disembarking next to them, on the Emerald in San Pedro last Saturday. 

So funny what a week does... Everyone on our ship(Royal) last Saturday was eyeing the Emerald princess like she had the virus since it came back to port two days early LOL

But yes.. as the op for this thread, I won't stop posting here till I find out the test results of that crew member.

6 minutes ago, CarelessAndConfused said:

 

Great question.  While I certainly have contributed to this thread going somewhat off topic, I would love to know more about the Royal situation (since I embark on 3/14) but there doesn't appear to be anyone chiming in.

Don't worry. I was on the 2/22 sailing on the Royal when the crew member from the Grand boarded. I'm still watching the web like a hawk for the test results and will update accordingly. I'm sure the 3/14 sailing will depend on that as well. 

8 minutes ago, Pstcrik said:

excuse me but I think you are off topic.  this is suppose to be about the Royal Princess.

Yea.... This was never a post about the government, covid19 facts, responses, beliefs etc...

It was a post for two situations pertaining to the Royal Princess only:

1.) The embarkation delay of Royal Princess on 3/7/20 due to the 1 transferred crew member from Grand Princess on 2/21/20

2.) The test results of said transferred crew member because if positive, that would affect close to 7,000 passengers from the 2/22/20 and 2/29/20 Royal Princess sailings.

I'll continue to scour twitter and the web for an update on the test results but have not found it yet.