publicpersona

Ditto. I’ve never been able to register a credit card during online check-in. It would be nice if it worked, but it doesn’t.

Delta doesn’t have anything to do with FBC’s $200 change fee. With a drastic schedule change, the airline has no choice but to offer a change/refund. But FBC is a travel agency and has a change fee inside final payment, no matter what. This is just part of the risk booking through FBC. Sometimes you can get a great deal with the consolidator fares on international flights, but you give up a lot .. including being able to control your booking directly with the airline.

It has been voluntary for cruises out of Florida since July 2021. I am well aware that the cruise lines voluntarily followed the guidelines anyway. I'm just pointing out that it isn't quite correct to say that it is now up to the cruise lines, as if that were not already the case to a significant degree.

Your second sentence here is the pertinent one. Regarding requirements being up to the cruise lines instead of the CDC, that has been true for sailings out of Florida for quite some time.

It says nothing about any of the protocols. It says those will be coming in the next few a days as guidance. I’d opine that there is an elevated chance of some changes to come, but by no means anything certain as yet.

I’ll take your word for it. I was going by a recent YouTube review of Seashore where they made special mention of it. But I’ll know for sure in a couple weeks when I am on it.

I’ve only done 3 cruises so far on MSC (one coming up end of the month), so admittedly a rookie. But I’ve never had any charges processed from a French bank, or any such issue. I heartily agree with everything else you said in your post. Re entertainment .. MSC always uses canned music for their production shows. Royal and Celebrity occasionally do. MSC says this allows them to pay more for their singers and dancers, and they do seem to be one notch up in talent. Re Ocean Cay .. my favorite cruise line private “island”. It reminds me of Labadee and CocoCay before they got turned into gaudy amusement parks.

This may be changing, or they are just trying it out on Seashore. Announcements are in English only (with possibly exception of safety related ones).

It seems some of the posts here are talking about the technology used for cooling the contents of the mini-bar. For the purposes of storing milk, the more important topic is the temperature. What we think of as a refrigerator cools to about 35-40 degrees F. The mini-bars typically are much higher, in the 50-60 degree range. The plan to bring ultra-pasteurized milk is a good one.

Off-topic, but I can help with this one. It is not obvious. You can't click on months (even if it says to choose months) or just any date. You can only click on a highlighted date in white which means there is a cruise that embarks that day. Also you may need to click Reset Dates to see the dates for choosing.

I can’t say for certain, but pretty sure the marine preserve description is new. It wasn’t a pristine island and reef prior to Ocean Cay; it was a junk yard.

OP’s experience is not necessarily due to recent airline issues. A similar issue happen with me last year. I talked directly to American who said because they changed the flight times, they’d be happy to book me on a different flight at no cost .. but .. wait .. I went through Air2Sea. So they couldn’t help me. Then the days ticked away waiting for Air2Sea to fix it. After a couple weeks of Air2Sea being unable to do anything in real time (take a phone call, look at the schedule, change a flight, etc.), I gave up and cancelled the Air2Sea arrangement, for which they charged me $400. Then I booked my two $150 flights myself in seconds.

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A2S is worth checking for special consolidator fares, particularly international flights. If significant, go with A2S. Other than that, you are better off booking directly to maintain control of your booking. It is far easier to make changes directly on the airline’s website than to have to call and do this through a third party. Also, inside final payment, A2S will charge a $$$ penalty for cancellations/changes even if the airline would not charge a penalty. ”Assured arrival” is misleading marketing. Like any travel agency, they will work with you to rebook missed/cancelled flights. That’s all. If you’ve been led to believe otherwise, consult A2S’s terms and conditions.

Most of our cruises in recent years have tended towards Celebrity rather than Royal, but I've never known the "bag o' laundry" benefit to be confined to any subset of items compared to the standard laundry list that is hanging in the closet. Shirts and shorts get the scratchy tags applied so they can irritate you for the rest of the cruise. I strongly suspect items such as underwear, socks, etc. are all put into a mesh bag and washed together. Unrelated to bag o' laundry, I once sent a suit for dry cleaning. I didn't notice it until we got home, but it had obviously been through boil and bake, and thus ruined.

Just curious .. under what conditions would the captain not allow it? Rough seas causing the doors to swing open and closed perhaps?

I doubt that. I use CSR for almost all travel as well, but I've gotten the Royal (and Celebrity) offers at Amex. It is possible for Amex to have that info via Royal, but that would be an unusual data sharing arrangement. There are some that advise adding as many Amex offers to your card as possible in order to generate replacement offers quickly (up to the limit of 100), but that sounds like too much work to me.