ParisHilton

Water (from a dispenser) will be free. As will basic tea and coffee. Latte's etc will cost extra.

Thanks Megabear, you've no idea how helpful your input has been. Cruise prices are truly fascinating things, especially the way they move. They are probably a really good model for someone learning about how to maximise profits. I can see why an agent (third party or cruise) is better than just booking on the internet. Knowing what's next to a room even with a deck plan is really helpful (crew access in my instance is an unnamed white blob!). Also sneaky offering the kids go cheap \ free but needing outside cabins with higher adult prices is particularly smart. Right off now to convince the family I need to be on a repositioning cruise for two weeks....

Just want to say thanks for all the advice. We've taken the plunge and booked rci for next year😀 Nice to see there might be some discount when I hit 55 though at this rate I'll be a platinum member of whatever by then. Would have been a cracking price but we got scared at the thought of getting sick in the bay of biscay and triggering migraines , so paid a bit extra to get midships .

Good point about the dark. That can help if the migranes strike. We're more concerned that the motion sickness could trigger it. We've only cruised once before (Iona to Norweigian Fjords) and pretty much felt nothing, but were also very much midships. Inside cabin would be fine . Virtual Balcony sounds amazing, but not sure if all inside cabins have them.

Is that a cruise line classification with little bearing on movement of the ship? I know I sound like I'm worrying too much!

That's a great suggestion. Thank you. paul

Hi, we are looking to do a cruise next year which takes us "through" the Bay of Biscay next year. My wife gets really bad migranes (are there any other sort) and we want to avoid triggering those. We've been offered some midships cabins, but looking on the map, they look pretty near the front of the boat. Where do most people consider midships and the relative stability this brings to be. We need to pay quite a bit extra for these cabins, which we probably will do, but it'd be good to know if we might be better off saving our money and taking the lottery.

I must admit I thought Dishoom was one of the most overhypped meals I've ever had. Haven't been to Sindhu though 🙂

Also, and not casting any aspertions. I assume cash in an envelope doesn't always go via the taxman, whereas paid via the company does. And goes toward minimum wage requirements. Hard to know if it's fairer as there must be 'unseen' staff that benefit from these tips. I had a conversation with the laundry manager at one point on our cruise, really helpful chap, but couldn't tip him (though I confess I could have tried harder). There are jokes in my family about how well I know the guest services team too.....

Ratings seem to drive a lot of things these days. It's the dangerous game of setting targets. It works for management as they can lazily see who is hitting the targets. But when it becomes more 'profitable' for staff to hit targets than do a good job then you have problems. Obviously good management have targets that can only be hit by doing a good job, not sure how often those are there. Anecdotal story from one of my first jobs. My boss said he used to run a call centre and the metric was on how many rings before they picked up. They realised that NOT picking up was better than picking up late. Thus driving bad customer experience!

That's a whole other story!

My wife is on the phone to an agent at a cruise agency and they are very forcefully saying you don't have to pay for gratuities. I'm not liking her.

Thanks, for the replies. It's real penny pinching to not pay them. I'm sure shine won't and will feel guilty free but I guess that's just life.

Hi Winifred. They seem to charge a daily rate, but I'm told it's optional.

Ok, so after lots of dilly dallying I think we will be defecting to royal Caribbean. I guess American lines assume 90%+ of passengers pay tips. Whereas Brit centric ones find a much lower tip rate . Optional tips seems madness. I think it's cultural, it might be generational. That said I've been to America a couple of times with people that work with Americans so tipping isn't completely alien to me. I also appreciate that the crew work really hard for very little and I happily give them something. Seems unlikely they see it though if it's collected by the cruise line .