Tatka

Singing and dancing waiters. We haven’t seen them before. Only started for us this year. The only other time we saw something similar was on Carnival in 2005.

Thank you for an advice. We are cruising non stop. 🙂

Sorry. On Liberty they were more dancing. Liberty though has one of THE BEST entertainment. Ice show Encore was the best. Circus de Soleil like show In the Air Brodway show: Saturday night fever are just amazing!!!

We did 14 cruises with Royal after restart and never received this message. We are always reserved for the first time slot, except for upcoming cruise as we were on the ship. Maybe it’s a reason? We will check.

Yes. On Anthem we had dancing and singing waiters on Italian, Caribbean… and on another night. On Liberty during one night too. For us who cruise now 5 a year with RCI it’s a new thing.

You can say that ventilation makes it less possible, but no guarantees. There is no 100% proof you won’t get COVID. We should not stress about it, yes. Stress makes our system weaker.

We are from MA. We would be upset, but would not cancel if ship had indoor pool. Seems like Meraviglia does. Boston is so beautiful now, we would use our time to enjoy it

We only do it on some ships.. not RCI .. and if we know all rooms in category and are OK with any. We have different idea of what is better gategory than RCI.

What date? Is this 8 night or 7 night cruise? If 7 day with 3 ports then it is not possible to arrive at 7 am. Ship is scheduled at 1pm and usually arrives at 12pm. If it is 8 nighter then yes, arrival will be in the morning. (We had about 12 cruises with this itinerary on Anthem, Adventure, Oasis, also on NCL ships) 8 nighters on Anthem arrived in the morning after 2 sea days. All others arrived midday.

100% And as I wrote above Noro in March was WAY worse. I was in and out of consciousness for a long period of time.

Not anymore just like with all diseases. You can use insurance if you have it.

They do alow access only to D+ and P on some sailings … would be weird not to allow D in D lounge.

I returned from this cruise with RSV. I think that was it as several other people reported it and symptoms matched. I would not say it was better than any of Covids I had..

Quality of appetizers varies from ship to ship greatly. Number of guests too.

So I guess you missed it? Cruise lines paid for their flights to initial port, but then they were getting very low pay in comparison to other positions even though they worked just as much or more.

How long ago you started cruising? We started in 2003. At that time there was no collected gratuities. It was all cash with recommended amounts. 3.50 to waiter, 3.50 to steward and so on. Basically gratuities were paid directly to people who served you. They were getting sometimes very large amounts (of course as they were all cash not everyone paid) even $4k+ At the same time non customer facing crew was paid very low amounts. $400-500 a months. I talked to many crew from Eastern Europe in various positions. (Customer facing and not) Some from counties which used to be parts of mine before dissolution. Since moving to autogratuities pay for lowest positions was increased to min $1200, and now it’s higher.

It’s basically a Daily Service Charge. Resort Fee. On some lines it’s even called this. Before switch people who served directly where getting a lot, while general workers who are not working less $400-500.

After losing 22 bil anyone will.

https://cruiseradio.net/fact-check-do-cruise-lines-pay-us-taxes/ How much do cruise lines pay in taxes? In 2019, Carnival Corp. paid $71 million in taxes on $3.06 billion in income. In the same year, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. paid $25.5 million in taxes on $1.8 billion in income, and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings paid $18.9 million in taxes on more than $911 million in income. That works out to a tax rate of 2.32% for Carnival Corp., 1.4% for Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. and 2.07% for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the federal tax rate for foreign corporations that are not tax-exempt is 21%; when combined with state and local taxes, that rate goes up to 25.75% for non-tax-exempt foreign corporations. They do not pay federal taxes, but they do pay taxes

I know it is registered in Liberia. They do pay taxes here, also they give lots of business to US.

It does affect our decisions... We did not cruises exclusively to achieve status, but status gives us some nice benefits. Not only status though. We cruise out of Northeast now. Royal gives us 5 good choices a year. 4 out of NJ... with various classes of ships and itineraries + 12 dayer on Vision class out of Baltimore. This + benefits... + winter ship Anthem make us very loyal. We would go out of the way for some exotic itinerary in Europe where Royal often loses to NCL or Priness. We would sail with Celebrity if price is close (at least not MUCH more).

Why do you think they do not pay decent wages? I explained above. They collect auto-gratuity and pay decent wages. Maybe not your idea of decent wages, but they usually come from countries where they get 4-5 times less for identical work. Autogratuities are collected separately to separate this amount from profit (which is declared to shareholders) and company does not pay taxes on them. This way they have MORE money to distribute.

On our second milestone (210) ship was out of blocks.. so we filled papers. Had to wait and call, but eventually received it. #1 and #3 we received on the ship. Both Anthems. Old and New.

So why are you doing this on cruises? Royal and other lines are using autogratuities to compensate crew well just like in Australia. The only reason it is not collected together with a fare ...collected money are not counted towards the profit and no taxes are paid on them.

We like both. Benefits and a lounge. We think Royal's benefits are the best, and they are achieved the earliest. We would go crazy if we instead of cruising would work on achieving this status.