Royal Caribbean... Annual Prime cruise and Open Booking question

[Nabalab]

Hi, I have already reached Prime and sometime in April, the Annual Tier (Interior) comp offer will hit my account.

 

I am cruising the last week of March.. if I buy an Open Booking (NCC), would I be able to keep the booking # and apply it to my Prime cruise – if I book it in April?

 

If so, I figure some extra OBC from the NCC can't hurt.

 

** To note - the NCC is $200 ($100 per person)... we'd upgrade from the (comped) Interior, so the balance will most likely be more.

 

Thanks!

[ZoeyVictoria]

This is not exactly what you asked about, but I think it is related.  I wanted to book a cruise in advance and convert it to my Prime cruise once it becomes available. I was told that I had to use another casino offer to book the cruise initially, then switch offers to the Prime offer once it becomes available.  A booking with no casino offer could not be converted.  

[RoperDK]

On 3/11/2023 at 5:18 PM, ZoeyVictoria said:

This is not exactly what you asked about, but I think it is related.  I wanted to book a cruise in advance and convert it to my Prime cruise once it becomes available. I was told that I had to use another casino offer to book the cruise initially, then switch offers to the Prime offer once it becomes available.  A booking with no casino offer could not be converted.  

How confusing.  We just called and booked a refundable cabin on the Wonder for next January.  There were limited cabins in our category.  I asked every conceivable version of the question of whether we would be able to convert this booking to our prime free certificate (it would involve an upgrade fee).  The representative confirmed that all would be okay. I guess we will see how it works out, but I have been a victim of the fine print recently.  During the early COVID cruises there were no restrictions. Now it seems they change the rules all the time. We will see.....

[ZoeyVictoria]

I agree, it is very confusing.   I also asked many questions to make sure the rep understood exactly what I was asking.  Her name was May, and she sounded very patient, competent, and caring. She was probably the best rep I have ever spoken to.  I just read the notes I took during the call, but I don’t see anything I hadn’t already mentioned.
 

In early December, I booked a refundable rate for the Wonder on 11/12/23.  The only casino offer I had that could be used for a date that far in advance was a $100 certificate earned on a previous cruise (Liberty, 11/1/22).  It had expired a few days earlier but was still on my list of offers, so they made a “one time exception” and used that offer.  May was very clear that the only way to convert an existing booking was to use an existing casino offer so they could just change the offer code to the free Prime cruise while keeping the same booking number. I repeated that back to her because it seemed to be the key to the issue. 
 

If I were you, I would do what is so often recommended on Cruise Critic - call back and speak to another rep to see if you get the same answer. You did the right thing by booking a refundable rate. If all else fails, that could be very helpful. Where I got lucky was that $100 certificate could be used on cruise dates later in the year than my other offers, and that might what causes a problem for you if May turns out to be right. 

 

And FWIW, I have ten offers at this time and every single one of them is $100 off a cruise during a certain time period 🙄.  I am not a huge gambler who gets any type of special treatment. 

[AllAboardatSea]

I don’t think that’s entirely correct, in that it doesn’t have to be a cruise listed under a current casino offer you have. I have done refundable Next Cruise bookings in the past in which it gets assigned to Club Royale automatically (since the cruise I booked it on, CR was the ‘agency’ of record for that comp). Then when the Signature offer (or Prime) annual comes out, they can add it and zero out the booking. This is because the annual one applies to any sailing 7 days or less that’s not holidays, which is probably not going to be under what you currently have offer wise. You just have to be careful when booking with Next Cruise that you are booking a vanilla, no frills cabin category. With balconies it can be tricky because they have a ridiculous number of them, and most are considered ‘upgrades’ from CRs point of view.

[Nabalab]

Circling back on this (as the OP, I thought I was following the thread... but I guess I wasn't!) - 

 

The people at Next Cruise couldn't give a definitive answer either.  To be "safe", we didn't get any NCC's this time around.