Ret MP

I am really straining to stay out of this Disney discussion. I have nothing good to offer!

I'm guessing that it didn't matter if you wanted to take a bath as soon as you entered the cabin for the first time. I know that after a busy morning of packing in the hotel, dragging luggage down to the car, parking, dragging luggage to the porter, processing/checking-in, fighting the stampede of people that think the ship is going to leave in 5 minutes at 10:30 AM and going to the restaurants of choice, that closes in 5 minutes or all the food will be gone, on the ship, and nervously sweating throughout, I get into the shower as soon as I can to start the cruise fresh.

Yes, I've been correct earlier. Thanks though! I was thinking that the normal, current, deposit was $500 per person but it's actually $500 per stateroom and the Next Cruise Desk gave us a deal of $500 for both of us, I thought we got the $250 per person reduction. DON'T GET OLD!

Yep, opposite extremes as kids. Both environments made us healthy adults. <my belief, anyway. However, I wish I could say that I haven't had COVID 3 times (none any worse than a mild cold, and I was jabbed 3 times). BUT, I, like you, can't remember the last time I was sick with anything else.

Yep, that's me!

Yep, it's like a Divining Rod, except that it points up when it detects a Pinnacle cruiser that is cruising on the cheap and is within arm's length of the user. I must be totally transparent though, it's not too accurate. It will point up in the most unexpected places.

I retract what I posted, it's $500.00 per stateroom, not per person! My bad.

As much as I'm loyal to Royal, I think it's time for me to reconsider any future booking on a cruise line. I hate that thought as I love cruising. But they are nickel and diming me to death, and I mean nickel and dime not just prices but nickel and dime services and now deposits. It's like we are being steamrolled with price increases, reduced services, reduced quantity, and reduced quality <(although I haven't seen hard proof of that) of food services, and discontinued activities/venues. AND, it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all. When will it stop? <not really a question. I think we are getting very close to finding that straw......

Just another revenue stream. Or should I say, a loan we provide to the cruise lines but don't make any interest from the loan. Question though, not really, just an observation: RCCL's usual sale is 30% off the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th passenger in the same stateroom. Or whatever the sale is at the time, sometimes even better. So, the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th passengers aren't required to pay as much deposit as the 1st passenger. I liked the set rate better, obviously. I wonder what they are going to do with the "Next Cruise Desk"? Isn't one of the benefits of the "Next Cruise Desk" a lowered deposit rate?

Well, this was actually back during the time that a crew member would wheel a bar cart from Suite to Suite and pour everyone a drink from the cart. But, it wasn't dependable and fast enough LOL. Yes, I don't doubt that, depending on the ship and/or who you talk to, you may be able to get more than one drink per person. That's why I really enjoyed Marla, on the Allure, as our Genie, our first Genie and one who knew how to treat a customer. Our Genie on the Symphony wasn't the best, good, but not the best. I'll not name names though.

Exactly! I worked at FLL on 9-11. All air travel was stopped and all aircraft were directed to the closest airport and the aircraft grounded until further notice. Man, you should have seen people scrambling to get the Car Rental Companies. FLL is a destination airport and not really considered a "HUB" but there are some continuation flights that go through. At least not when I worked there. Man were people pissed and complaining about not being reimbursed for the flights. I was the General Manager of the parking facilities and those people that made it back to Ft. Lauderdale area came to the airport to retrieve their vehicles. The county only gave them credit for a week after the airport was open again for people to come and get their vehicles. But, they still had to pay for the original time frame of the trip, had to show ticket(s), and any days parked after the week after the airport was open again. We actually didn't have much of a problem with that, MOST people understood and complied. Some had valid reasons for being beyond the time frame and they were considered.

My experience, and my experience only: On Symphony a few years ago, in the 4 bedroom family villa, we could only order one drink/cocktail, at a time, via the Genie or Room Service, per SC, of age, people in the Suite. I couldn't even get a bottle of wine. As explained by the Genie, I could order a glass of wine, one at a time. If I wanted a bottle delivered, I'd have to order it from the wine menu and pay full price or whatever the deal was at the time. However, with a little drunken whining, he did send "ONE" bottle gratis, the Genie was involved and explained that for Star Class the only courtesy Alcohol was the Champaign or Wine bottle that was in our Suite when we embarked on the first day, everything else, by the bottle was extra. But, because I said I didn't know that, I really didn't, he had a bottle sent up, gratis, except for the tip. I switched to drinking an unlimited supply of beer in the Suite after that. I wasn't going to order a glass of wine or cocktail, one at a time, and wait.

A lot of it depends on what/where travel insurance you purchased. I can only speak to what I've experienced, so far. See post #20. I believe there are some travel insurance folks on the board who may be able to give you a much better/more complete answer than I can. BTW: I always purchase "trip insurance" either from the Cruise Line or from out TA. But, I'm aways open for other options.

During my pre-Royal days on Rustbucket Cruise Lines (nothing to do with rust), we had a cruise out of Canaveral on the Drean it Freedin. That was at the time that Hurricane Sandy, Oct 2012, skirted Florida's east coast and the ship couldn't come into port because the hurricane was there and heading north. The port closed and the debarkation/embarkation was delayed by a day. We were not notified until the late afternoon or early evening the night before as we had already checked into our hotel in Cocoa Beach. We weren't happy but we couldn't find fault, at all, with the cruise line. Because of the delay, we had to miss a port of call. The cruise line did refund, via OBC, the port charges/taxes and company-purchased excursions (that's one of a few reasons I purchase only cruise line excursions). Our trip insurance reimbursed us for the extra night in the hotel and meals. The remainder of the cruise went fine!

I was under the impression that you had to use the app to log in to access the Internet. Pre-app we just went to a webpage-looking thing. As I remember it, and I could be totally wrong, my memory isn't what it used to be, I just put "login" in the address bar or something like that and then logged in from there. And experienced the World Wide Wait.

LOL, that tablet I no longer own, it met its maker and I cremated it in my firepit like I do with all my devices that I no longer need or can use. But, it was old and I never, as far as I remember, updated anything on it as I knew that it was going bad anyway. Maybe that explains why some apps, just before it met its demise, wouldn't work or load properly.

Hummmmmm, that's too bad. The last cruise I was on that I took my tablet was last May. But, in Oct/Nov I was on a 4-nighter on the Independence of the Seas, I did not take my tablet for only a 4-nighter. But, I could swear that there were many kids, teens and younger, running around the ship with tablets. Now, what are the kids (by Kids I mean parents that want to keep their kids occupied without parenting them) going to do! <LOL I wonder why they decided to stop supporting them. Could it be too many devices for the system? Again, I'm just an IT wannabe geek.

I've used my Android tablets on many cruises and never had a problem.

Yep, for sure. It's more of a convenience and luxury than a necessity. If I wasn't so hung up on both of those (convenience and luxury), I wouldn't download the app at all. In fact, I uninstall it as soon as I get off the ship and don't upload it unless I want to use it for some reason or the other, like the safety video, muster, check-in, and set sail pass. I usually like to just throw my phone in the cabin safe until needed/wanted. But, I guess I'll be using it more now with the text/messaging system.

This is the magnet I bring. Takes up a little room but holds everything:

Didn't they take ownership of the problem and take care of the Medical Bill?

True!

I figured this was coming. You are comparing a business that has hundreds/thousands of flights a day traveling to hundreds of different locations a day and their Corp meteorologists aren't celeb window dressings vs a cruise line that has 25 or so vessels a day on the move, much more if you look at the entire industry. But, most cruise out of the same locations and go to the same locations using virtually the same routes. Cruise lines try to predict storm movements weeks out as it may take a week or more for the cruise line ship to get to the destination. The captain has to make decisions much further in advance than a pilot or it's Corp HQ has to. I'd assert that a cruise line doesn't need as much real-time corporate weather info as a pilot does that is going, say from Chicago to Hawaii. Therefore, a 3rd party forecasting entity can handle weather just fine and cheaper. For example (and yes, it is a simplification): If an airliner is going to Hawaii and a storm that could impact a safe landing, that is forecasted to be there at about the same time as the airliner is scheduled to be their the flight will probably be canceled or seriously delayed. On the other hand, a ship leaving from LA on the same scheduled time as the airliner was supposed to be leaving, will probably sail. And all that information is available on the local TV station or on NOAA or other free sites. And I haven't mentioned the vast amount of weather equipment/hardware/software that is available on today's modern ships. There are so many other variables, too. I think that cruise lines can do just fine without a Celeb Corp Weather guy. And other than the cost of a third party, that's my point. This is not about airlines but I will say that Airlines probably need a non-celeb orchestrator of all the weather entities available to them, especially the big box airlines. I have never been on an airplane that has introduced the Corp Weather guy as a celeb or anything else, for that matter. I can just hear it now, "Ladies and gentlemen we are lucky to have James Span our corporate weather meteorologist, in the forward cabin, formally from WBRC in Birmingham, AL. Let's all give him a round of applause". <that was just for the fun of it. Edited a couple of my errors

Cruise protection/insurance! My final answer!

Then he filed suit against the station. I don't know how it turned out.