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On 1/6/2022 at 9:31 AM, cruisestitch said:

Update….some cast members are in quarantine and the decision has not been made yet whether or not there might yet be a production show before the end of this cruise 

Let us know if any shows have happened (or scheduled to happen) as of yet.  Thanks for the updates.

Are the shows still happening on board?

I’ll certainly be taking a video and posting it. Hoping someone else beats me to it once it starts sailing though.



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I know the ship hasn’t been built yet so it’ll just be a guess at this point in time, but I just recently booked a J1 cabin (11722) for next March. Looking at the deck plan the cabin appears to be much larger than standard J1 cabins. It also looks like it may have two balconies (small starboard and large aft balcony). What are your thoughts on what I can expect out of this specific junior suite (in terms of size and balcony)?

Here’s the link to the RCCL deck plan:

http://www.espresso.cruisingpower.com/content/shared_assets/svg/svg_r_OY_2033/IDP-DECK11.svg

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4 minutes ago, Monthend said:

I cancelled my purchases right before cruise shutdown. I received confirmation email but so far no credit.

 

Anyone else having this problem?

It normally takes about a week to show up.  It may take longer now given the circumstances.

12 minutes ago, Ourusualbeach said:

This is direct from Manulife today.  Other policies I have heard about are the same.  Medical coverage continues as normal except in the event of Covid 19 related medical claims.  

 

My wife has Manulife for her group plan at work and they have stated that all medical attention (and costs associated with travel/accommodation/quarantine/etc) are fully covered (and they were specifically asked about COVID-19 related illnesses resulting from cruise ship travel).  Perhaps it's because the policy was in effect prior to the travel advisory being issued?  My company (Sunlife) has stated the same.

We are set to sail on March 28 and have checked with both my wife's and my own insurance carriers through work and we are both fully covered (they've even relaxed some rules with respect to documentation that needs to be submitted).  We will make the decision on whether we go or not about a week prior to cruising and it will be based on the spread of the virus and apparent risk associated with cruising at that time.  If we were set to sail this weekend, we would definitely be going.  We will see what the next two weeks brings.

I just made a request for my March 28 sailing and they’ve already confirmed it to be good.


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On ‎9‎/‎29‎/‎2019 at 7:57 PM, Artemus said:

Which holidays if I may ask❓

It's all the major US holidays.  I'm Canadian, but I'll try to come up with a list from my limited knowedge:

Easter

Memorial Day

Independance Day

Labor Day

Veteran's Day - unsure of this one

Thanksgiving

Christmas

New Year's Day

President's Day

There might be others, but that shold give you a decent idea.

16 hours ago, danacline said:

 

We parked next to the Allure last week in Cozumel. While there, we noticed some balcony cabins had hot tubs. We were on deck 11 of the Liberty, and these cabins were at about the same level. However, none of the deck plans I see mention a hot tub. Can any of you tell me what category these cabins are? And whether Oasis might have similar cabins, especially after the upcoming refurbishment? Do any other Royal ships have balconies with hot tubs? (I assume if Allure did, all Oasis-class ships will).

 

And if you know of any other lines (Carnival, Celebrity, Princess, HAL) with balcony hot tubs, please let me know. My sister-in-law has decided that's what they want on our next shared cruise.

 

Thanks!

Dana

 

MSC has several cabins with hot tubs on the balconies.  I'm looking at booking Meraviglia next fall. 

Royal Suite on a few Celebrity ships also have one. 

LMK if you find any other main lines that have them as I am also interested in this cabin type.  Thanks.

On ‎10‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 4:21 PM, Shocked91 said:

We joined in 2017 and matched our Royal Caribbean status which is diamond.We got the balck card.I have just enoled my dad who is diamond plus with Royal and today got his match back but only gold card.Shouldn't he be a black card holder as well?

I believe it's all about your timing.  They seemed to be a bit more generous handing out black cards a couple of years ago.  

Here's my Key review for the Sep 20 Ovation (Vancouver-Honolulu) sailing.

I paid $29.99/pp per day (for 10 days).

Boarding - We were at the terminal at about 11am and it was slightly faster than normal but it likely only saved us about 10 mins of boarding time.  

Carry-on bag drop-off - We brought a case of water on board with us so being able to drop that off while we waited for room access was nice.  We had entry to our room at 1pm and our carry-on awaited us inside.  The checked bags didn't show up until later that afternoon (similar time to non-Key bags).

Sea Pass card - There was no key symbol on our sea pass cards and we had to go to the customer service desk once on board to get the sticker put on.

Lunch at Chops - The "Chops" lunch took place in the MDR and it was very good.  Same menus as previously posted.

Internet - We picked up our internet codes at the MDR host stand and immediately connected without issue.  Connectivity on board wasn't great for surfing (it was very slow), but somehow streaming Netflix worked fine.  There were periodic outages throughout the cruise.  Pretty typical from what I have previously experienced with RCCL.

Reserved seating for shows - The reserved seating was the entire balcony area.  Most days we had to show our sea pass cards to gain access but there were a couple of times when they weren't checking.  Those couple of times made for a very crowded balcony as the shows were at capacity.  I wasn't pleased that we weren't able to get a seat for one of the shows when we arrived about 20 mins before start time (it was one they weren't checking for).  I reported it to the activities manager and did not experience any further issues with seating for the remainder of the cruise.

Reserved time for activities - We didn't use.

Priority tenders - In theory this was great, but we didn't find there was really any need.  They assigned 3 times for tenders, but none of the times had any waits (even without the Key) so there was no benefit for us here.

Departure/breakfast - It was a very good breakfast in the MDR with very few people in attendance which made for a nice relaxed departure day.  We just walked off the ship when we wanted to and retrieved our bags on the terminal.  Very hassle-free and saved us a lot of grief.

All-in-all, while the Key was a nice-to-have thing, I don't believe it offered enough value for our sailing.  We would have purchased internet anyway, but at an additional cost of approximately $17/pp per day (above what the internet would have been on its own) the Key just didn't add enough value for us.  We will not be purchasing it again.

17 hours ago, birdie16 said:

OMG!  I am LMAO, I just check my emails and after spending $1,000 to upgrade our cabin to the only unobstructed balcony cabin  left on the ship they are now sending me the "Royal Up"  offer to submit a bid.  Let me tell you...that is not going to happen.  Sorry...I just had to share it with you all.

I know you won't be bidding, but out of curiosity what rates/room types are available to bid on?  I'm sailing on Ovation in a few months and hope to play the bidding game (even if unsuccessful, as most are).

Why do pants need to be worn on these tours?  Just asking because the only pants I bring on board are those I wear to dinner.

I don't often use travel agents as I enjoy making my own bookings and doing my own research, but based on the information posted, I would put more blame with your TA than RCCL.  You pay the TA to provide you with a service and part of the service is providing you with pertinent information related to your booking. If you were not warned of the possibility of a GTY resulting in an obstructed view, then I don't believe they did their job.  Just my 2 cents worth and I really hope you enjoy your cruise.

I read a few of the pages here but the conversation got a bit side-tracked and so did I.

Can anyone recap as to whether there have been any successful bids (and subsequent sailings) on this program? 

Also, has anyone on a casino comp ever received an opportunity to bid on an upgrade?

Thanks.

As has already been stated, you can call and add OBC to your account and use that to take out the fee-free cash advance (assuming you have set up the cash account with guest services).

That said, unless we are talking about a large sum of money I don't think there is much risk with just carrying it on board and storing it in your safe.  I'm also reasonably certain guest services would be ok with you making a payment as soon as you get on board and then you could take the funds out from that.  And if you're speaking of a large sum, the $20 wire fee is almost irrelevant.

I, too and a bit confused by the question.

I've sailed in this cabin before and the vestibule noise is a non-issue, so don't even give it a second thought.  Enjoy your J1 - it's a very nice cabin with a great balcony.

Ok, here's the long and short of it.

We have come to an agreement that is acceptable to both parties.  RCCL acknowledged that they should have handled things differently and have since offered me a one time exception to sail on some dates not listed on the original offer.  One such date that interested me was the September 20 sailing on Ovation (Vancouver to Hawaii).  They only offered me a complimentary oceanview stateroom for this particular cruise, but I paid extra to upgrade it to a balcony cabin.

They have won me back for the moment, but if their Casino Royale customer service doesn't improve in the future, I'll be looking elsewhere going forward.  I believe the introduction of the Jamaican call center resulted in much of the grief here.  I'm not sure that part will change in the future, but hopefully as their agents gain more experience they will perform at a higher level.  Only time will tell.

I appreciate the feedback and hope that others are having less troublesome experiences than I encountered here.

5 minutes ago, sellwingri said:

Anytime I call and get Jamaica, I hang up and call back.  They work off a script so unless it’s a very basic straightforward question, they haven’t got a clue.  So frustrating because the casino phone staff in Oregon are so great.

The problem is is they seem to have a lot more Jamaican agents right now than US ones.   I’ve called dozens of times before only to repeatedly get Jamaican agents. They are friendly enough and all, but it definitely made this issue worse than it should have been. 

There has been some progress in dealing with the office of the president at RCCL.  I will update you once my booking is confirmed.  They know they made an error.  Their agents just weren't willing to do anything about it (even after I escalated it). 

And just fyi, I have written proof that supports my claim so those that say I have no legal recourse or think that I was sitting on the certificate are incorrect in their assumptions.  I've booked these offers before and know how they work.  The casino department recently (in the past 6 months or so) added a Jamaica call center to field some of their incoming calls and I think this is where some of the breakdown occurred in my particular case.

Anyway, I'm hoping to have a further update for you later this week.

My money will be going elsewhere in the future - that goes without saying.  I'm just getting a wee bit irritated by companies treating customers like this and this instance is where I've decided to take further action.  Whether I have legal recourse or not remains to be seen, but I'm more than happy to spend the money to find out.  I don't think my demands are at all unreasonable and why they have decided to take this approach is beyond me.  I'll update you if this goes anywhere as I suspect others will benefit from it as well if things work out in my favor.

Let me preface this by stating that my wife and I consider ourselves to be loyal RCCL clients and have sailed on approximately 10 cruises with them over the past decade.  Over the past few years, I have taken to gambling a fair bit on their casinos and as such, I frequently receive offers of free cruises from their Casino Royale department. 

On my most recent Oasis sailing on October 21, 2018 I was provided an offer for a free balcony cabin (for 2 people) on select future sailings.  On October 30, 2018, I called RCCL to book the January 28, 2019 Harmony sailing and they told me no such offer existed for me and despite giving them all the information from the offer that I had in hand, they refused to book me.  I called on several other occasions over the next month to be told the same thing.  So, given these offers typically need to be booked within 30 days of being presented to you, I was getting just a tad irritated.  As time was running tight, I ended up just booking another sailing on Celebrity for late January instead.

I emailed a copy of the offer to multiple employees that I spoke with in hopes they would update my file (as they said they would).  That didn't seem to help.  My request for call-backs from supervisors never happened.  That is, until about a week ago when Ashley W.B. finally called me to obtain more information.  I provided all the info to her and she subsequently has reached a decision to not honor the offer, as it had since expired (despite still having some sailings in the future I may have considered).  I emailed Mr Bayley (I think he's RCCL Executive Vice President) and supposedly that email was forwarded to Daniella in the Executive Offices as I received an email from her saying she would investigate the matter and get back to me.

Just today, Daniella contacted me reiterating the Company's position to stand firm on their position that the offer made to me is no longer valid (due to being expired).  She could not answer why I was never given an opportunity to book said offer, but does not dispute the fact that the offer was made to me.

So, I would like to seek legal recourse against RCCL and either have the offer extended to me (with a later expiration since the cruise I wanted has since passed) or monetary compensation equal to the prevailing retail rate for said cabin.  I don't think this is an unreasonable request given their agreement that the offer was in fact valid.  The only dispute is surrounding the timing of trying to book said offer.

I live in Canada and have no idea where to start, but figured a public forum wasn't a bad place to express my concern.  If for no other reason than to let others know that despite receiving an offer from RCCL, you may not in fact be permitted the opportunity to actually follow through with the booking.  I'm of the opinion that RCCL has been fraudulent in the way they have dealt with my situation and if others have experienced similar treatment, this may not end well for them.

Thoughts?

I'm really wishing my upcoming Europe sailing was able to be booked in Canadian dollars. The money I saved on the booking through MLife is offset by the inability to add OBC at this great rate.

On my last cruise my limit was $3000/day. Not sure if it varies or not. Cash accounts will have a smaller limit for sure.

Casino is closed at all times while in port.