Anyone Else Leaving or Considering Leaving RCL Over Prices?

[Thisguylikestocruise]

Yes, after the next two cruises that are already booked. Looking at the prices it’s not worth it anymore. There’s so many options out there for vacations. 

[steveru621]

1 hour ago, Another_Critic said:

You forgot free Voom.

 

D+ gets one less drink, but the same laundry and BOGO specialty dining.  The main difference is 2 days vs free Voom.  And no P pin.  😄

 

 

+ $300 Voom, Pinnacle lunch, free photos.  Just about $2,000 for a 7-day cruise.

[Hoopster95]

1 hour ago, crazyfrazee said:

Anyone else looking at other cruiselines until the prices come back down with Royal?

 

As a 500+ point D+ ..... unfortunately yes

Just did Celebrity in January. Also just had Virgin cancel my Dubai-Singapore cruise in November... we're looking to replace that with Angkor Wat + Vietnam land tour.

 

2022 Thailand land tour with Gate1 (14 nights $3200 total for two people), Trafalgar Prague-Budapest 10 nights $2200 which incl. a solo supplement, and coming up in one week Morocco with Gate1 18 nights $5000 for 2 which includes an extra night hotel at 5* Sofitel Casablanca.

 

I have found many all inclusive land tours less expensive than cruises on many occasions post covid. When comparing prices be sure to include all the excursion costs & associated transfers as the land companies normally include 50-70% of all excursions in the cost. Guess what?? Internet is free. Also no "Pre paid" gratuities or fake wages.

 

I am now focusing mostly on bucket list locales or one of a kind itineraries (ie. I'm on Jewel in May for her final Arctic Circle & Norway cruise with an incredible itinerary likely never again to be repeated). 

[klfrodo]

Was recently looking to book a quick getaway for my wife's birthday in May. Flying to Cabo and staying at an AI instead of a cruise.

 We've got cruises booked in December this year and August of next year.

[Cruising89143]

24 minutes ago, Babblespeak said:

We thought so too, but they let us book 7 and 8 day cruises on the Celebration and an 8 day on the Panorama out of LA (which we’ve never done before).  Seemed worth it versus some 3 or 4 day booze cruise on a rust bucket like the Conquest or Liberty.  

We’re not willing to fly for a Carnival cruise. 🙂 That leaves us the Radiance, Panorama and Firenze. I have read about the nightmare embarkation/debarkation out of Long Beach. Terminal and area seems to small for the ships and large amount of passengers. We would rather just do a B2B on the Navigator before this if we want an easy drive to cruise. 

[birdofsong]

1 hour ago, kruzerci said:

The Radiance class ships, Allure, and Enchantment are all in very poor condition these days. 

I sailed on the Allure twice this last summer.  I saw absolutely no disrepair.

[fungirl28]

I was loyal to Royal until recently and I felt like I got tricked on my last sailing. I had an amazing time but they switched the ship after I had painstakingly pick the stateroom I wanted on a ship that was older than I liked but I could've rolled with it. The ship they switched the sailing to, I would have never voluntarily picked that ship. But it was the itinerary I wanted and I was trying to deal with it. However, the treatment from the phone agent left was it for me. I started looking at other cruise ships and I noticed that I could get better itineraries on certain ships, for less money. I won't pay top dollar for old ships. I have future cruises booked on Virgin, Princess, Carnival and Royal. I will go where the best itinerary takes me. 

[OCSC Mike]

46 minutes ago, not-enough-cruising said:

Hmm, went on Allure for 4 different weeks when she was in Galveston, I guess i don't pay close enough attention because I thought she was in pretty good shape

Looked fine to me in October on her 1st cruise out of PC.

[kruzerci]

4 minutes ago, birdofsong said:

I sailed on the Allure twice this last summer.  I saw absolutely no disrepair.

Seriously? The hallways. The cabins. The Champagne Bar. The common areas and cabins are threadbare and musty. Needs serious TLC. 

[not-enough-cruising]

7 minutes ago, kruzerci said:

Seriously? The hallways. The cabins. The Champagne Bar. The common areas and cabins are threadbare and musty. Needs serious TLC. 

Sorry, didn’t see or smell anything of the sort. 

[birdofsong]

9 minutes ago, not-enough-cruising said:

Sorry, didn’t see or smell anything of the sort. 

Same here.  Allure is my favorite ship.

 

[Ozzie26]

I am very loyal to the price not  brand. With that said, I haven’t paid for a cruise since 2019. (Lots of casino) Very happy with Royal. I know exactly what to expect so I am rarely disappointed. We have sailed a large variety of ships, new and old, and always  have a good time. In 2022 we did sail the Mardi Gras. First time was excellent, second time I couldn’t get off fast enough and the final time was fine because I lowered my expectations. We are D+ on Royal and Platinum on Carnival. 14 days from Diamond on Carnival and I doubt we will get there but I do see Pinnacle in my future. Boarding the Radiance on Saturday and the Allure next Friday. After that we have 10 booked. 8 on Royal and 2 on celebrity. What works for us doesn’t work for everyone. Enjoy life , it’s a gift. 

[mugtech]

29 minutes ago, fungirl28 said:

I was loyal to Royal until recently and I felt like I got tricked on my last sailing. I had an amazing time but they switched the ship after I had painstakingly pick the stateroom I wanted on a ship that was older than I liked but I could've rolled with it. The ship they switched the sailing to, I would have never voluntarily picked that ship. But it was the itinerary I wanted and I was trying to deal with it. However, the treatment from the phone agent left was it for me. I started looking at other cruise ships and I noticed that I could get better itineraries on certain ships, for less money. I won't pay top dollar for old ships. I have future cruises booked on Virgin, Princess, Carnival and Royal. I will go where the best itinerary takes me. 

Same here, booked in 2025 on NCL 12 days out of Taiwan, including 4 stops in the Philippines,  getting off in Singapore.   Better price than Anthem, do not really need to hear We Will Rock You again.

[Engineroom Snipe]

2 hours ago, kruzerci said:

The Radiance class ships, Allure, and Enchantment are all in very poor condition these days. 

I sailed the Enchantment out of Baltimore in April, 2023. The condition was satisfactory. I saw the crews sanding and oiling the teak on Deck 5 everyday. I saw the crew sanding and varnishing the pool deck ares on individual days. My dishes were taken away in the Windjammer so fast that I actually complained that they could wait at least three minutes before they cleared my table before other passengers were in my seat when I came back with another plate.

 

The food was not the best I have had with Royal but it was acceptable.

 

In my interior cabin, everything worked and it was clean. Were things a bit worn, yes, but I did not pay a high price point sailing from Baltimore. I knew there were trade-offs.

 

While I might want certain things to be better, I would disagree that the ship was in a very poor condition.

 

I would cruise on the Enchantment again. I do not think the food was at its best but that varies from sailing to sailing and ship to ship. Food is SO subjective.

[cruisegirl1]

2 hours ago, Another_Critic said:

You forgot free Voom.

 

D+ gets one less drink, but the same laundry and BOGO specialty dining.  The main difference is 2 days vs free Voom.  And no P pin.  😄

 

What about a free cruise at 700 points and every 350 points  after?  

M

[cruisegirl1]

We sometimes sail Celebrity and are looking at other lines.   We have to factor in additional costs on other lines  to get the benefits we get on RCCL .

 

M  

[barbeyg]

We are sailing the occasional other line now.  RCI is still our preference, but we are booked up till Feb 2026 with decent group pricing.  We do have a ceiling of what we are willing to pay. We don’t max out our benefits for D+, but do factor that in.

Jason Liberty still thinks RCI is priced too low compared to land trips. 🙄 Guess he is comparing them to Disney…we don’t travel there because of the ridiculous pricing. 
 

If we can’t get decent group prices going into 2026, we will travel more on land. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Which is less expensive for us, contrary to what Jason thinks. We cruise because we enjoy it, but we do enjoy land travel as well.

Edited March 1 by barbeyg

[SG65CB]

I don't know enough about ships on other cruise lines to know what ships are comparable. It would be interesting to know if anyone has done an apples-to-apples comparison of prices for similar ships, same stateroom category and size, same home port and similar itinerary to see if Royal is higher compared to others or if the others have gone up too. 

[JamesEM]

Yes, I usually cruise 6 to 8 weeks a year and this year 0, looking to cruise on an MSC ship.

 

[PhillyFan33579]

6 hours ago, CTCruiser76 said:

Yes, we just booked Oceania for the same price as RCCL, Royal was a 5 night and O is a 7 night. Also compared O to same cruise on Celebrity which both are 7 nights and Oceania was cheaper.  

I posted this in another thread the other day. I have done multiple mock bookings lately comparing Oceania to Icon. For most cruises out of Florida Oceania was cheaper than Icon for the same cabin type. There is no way I would even consider paying what people are paying to book Icon these days. I enjoyed Icon, but in my book it is just a bigger Oasis class ship. With the exception of the water park there was nothing on Icon that really impressed me. Icon not having a Boardwalk or Solarium are two big negatives in my book. 

[twangster]

Yes.

 

Already sailed twice with SilverSea for a much better suite experience and have another booked with them for the fall.  

 

I won't book suites on Royal anymore.  For the money I now know Royal delivers a lesser suite experience.  Having said that I have one Star class booking left on Utopia for my last Royal Suite experience.  However since it's a shortie I don't have a lot of deposit money at risk if I change my mind.

 

I've booked one luxury train experience that will provide more days in true luxury than Royal can provide in a Star class suite for the same money.  I have several more train trips in the planning stages were I am putting more effort right now.  These are high end trips with high end prices so my planning is going out beyond 2025, one per year.

 

Not sure I'll go back to Carnival but I have shopped them and looked at mock bookings for short Florida weekend cruises.   The dozen or so Royal bookings I have are older, booked before the price insanity.  I'm losing some of those as Royal cancels them with redeployments so my dwindling future cruise count with Royal is due to Royal canceling cruises, not me.  

[Mick B]

Hi, 

Not sure about leaving Royal or leaving cruising full stop.

We are D+ and have got there by carefully selecting the itineraries and ships we wanted to do.

We have loved them all, but are UK based so have to factor in additional costs such as flights, trains, taxis and hotels.

With the current situation worldwide where prices are higher than normal, careful selection of lower costing cruises would mean that we would have to choose a older ship (which is probably not going to be to the same standard as newer ones, and visit the same ports over and over, as travelling to newer ports with newer ships is just getting out of our reach, not only in our pocket, but also travelling time, which we do not enjoy at the best of times, but endure in order to get to our cruise, which makes it all worth while. However, if the cruise is not going to be worth while, then there is no longer any point in doing all this travel.

We have a TA on the Jewel for 15 nights this year and 12 nights next year on the Indy from Southampton to the Canaries and back just to avoid hotel and air fare costs.

My wife is screaming at m to not book any cruises for 2026 as she wants to try a land based holiday.

I have told her that firstly that nothing is out yet post April 2026 and we have to factor in all things we get as D+ members such as 5 free drinks per day which add up.

I have suggested that if I can get a cheap enough TA from New York to Southampton on a decent ship with all the D+ perks then I would like to do it, but she is really wanting a land based holiday that year.

I will have to wait and see what RCI offers, but if its too much, then that will be that.

I don't suppose for one minute that Jason Liberty will be bothered by the loss of a passenger like me as I will probably be replaced with a new cruiser who spends $$$s more than I do and that is probably what the cruise line wants.

 

Mick.

 

[aussielozzie18]

My work colleague who got me into cruising, is loyal to Royal (& won’t cruise any other cruise line).  They are Diamond+.  Their thoughts are they simply will not cruise at the current prices and are now planning a land vacation to a country they would normally cruise to.

Edited March 1 by aussielozzie18

[craig01020]

It's not a marriage. Don't think for a minute that Royal is not "seeing other people".

[Tatka]

  Upcoming in 20 days cruise will be our #62. #31 with RCI. 50:50. So we know other lines pretty well.

 

 

Before 2016 we had only 5 RCI cruises out of 26… Then gradually we started cruising more and more with Royal until we switched completely (after pandemic).

 

  We were not loyal.. and I don’t understand why would anyone be. However Royal works the best in terms of choices of ships/itineraries for our 5 cruises a year. We don’t need to fly. Ships sailing out of Bayonne are nice, and smaller ships out of Baltimore do great 12 dayers to Southern Caribbeans.  C&A benefits are enjoyable.

 

  We have 6 booked and are planning for more, but of course if they will become unaffordable we will think what is the best for us. I’m not sure we will go back to other lines as I don’t see better choices from Northeast.

 

   Maybe we will do 4 a year and camp even more from May to October as we have RV van now. 🙂 

Edited March 1 by Tatka