davidmech21

My wife and I are sailing on Allure April 7th.  We're currently booked in a boardwalk stateroom, 11329.  It's the very last room on deck 11 overlooking the aqua theater.  Because of its prime location, it was actually slightly more expensive than the other boardwalk staterooms.  Our total cost for the cruise fare without gratuities came out to $1,937.70.  Yesterday, I received my Royal Up invitation.  I can upgrade to any of the following: an ocean front balcony, a junior suite, a grand suite, a crown suite, an owner's suite, or an aqua theater suite.  I just checked a moment ago on the current pricing for the GS, CS, OS, and AS.  The total prices are as follows: GS - $4876.24, CS - $5676.24, OS - $6477.24, and AS - $7077.24 (all without gratuities).  Here are the Royal Up bid ranges that were offered: GS is $600pp to $2100pp, CS is $900pp to $3100pp, OS is $900pp to $3100pp, and AS is $1000pp to $3500pp.  If I were to bid the upper range on any of these categories, my current cost plus the upgrade cost would cause me to exceed the currently advertised price by a significant amount.  I wonder how many people get these Royal Up offers and make an immediate offer without doing their research.  It looks like around %60 of the range is a break even for RCCL.  A deal for me would have to be something less than that.

Has anyone else found themselves frustrated with the most recent Royal Caribbean website update? About three weeks ago, RCCL updated the user dashboard. This is the part of the website where one goes to manage their cruise reservations. In the past, if you booked online you could see a listing of all your current reservations there, as well as find a link to the Crown and Anchor page that showed your cruise history along with your points total and benefits. With the old system, you could click on the reservation link, and it would give you options to make a payment, cancel the cruise if you so desired, switch your room assignment, see the itinerary, adjust your dining options, change your bed arrangement, log in to the cruise planner, check in online, view the cruise invoice with a detailed pricing break down, find your payment due date, etc. Now, when you click on a reservation link, you have 4 options - 1.) Make a payment, 2.) Cruise Planner, 3.) Check-in, and 4.) See Stateroom Details, i.e. the stateroom number. It appears you can no longer cancel the cruise from the dashboard, you cannot see the itinerary, you cannot find a detailed invoice, you cannot change the room assignment, you cannot change dining times, you cannot change bed arrangements, and you cannot find your payment due date. Furthermore, if you click the make a payment link, it prompts you for your reservation number, your name, your ship, and your sail date. In the past, none of this was necessary. Making a payment from within a reservation auto-populated all of this for you and applied the payment directly to the reservation number. Not only that, I have a reservation that is paid off, and the hyperlink for 'make a payment' is still active on that reservation. So had I not received an email earlier with an invoice showing a zero balance, I would have thought this reservation still had a balance remaining. In short, the new design is really pretty, but the usability of the site has gone to almost zero. I don't know what they were thinking. You had a site that was very user friendly, but you decide to change it to a site that requires a call to the 800 number for every minor change. I asked a Royal Caribbean rep why this was done, and she told me that they wanted to have a loyalty system where they could manage the accounts from all of their cruise lines in one place. So if this answer was true, they did it to make it easier on them, while making it much more difficult on us. I am very frustrated by this. :mad:

Adidas4fun and BytheBay, I'm sorry. I must have missed the emails. I get dozens a day that go into my spam folder. I tried to look through it most days, but I never saw anything. It was my mistake. I appreciate you taking the time to reach out to me. If anyone will be on the Jewel again soon, please let me know. If anyone does send me an email, please let me know after you do so I won't miss it. BytheBay, if you still don't mind helping me, I can wait until next year. There's no hurry. Again, thanks in advance!

David

I also never heard back from anyone. If there is anyone out there willing to help, I would really appreacite it. Thanks in advance.

David Murphy

davidmech21@hotmail.com

My email address is davidmech21@hotmail.com. Thank you for the offer to help, both of you. Please email me By the Bay, and we can talk about the details.

David

I hope this won't be considered solicitation. If an admin sees this and says that it is, I apologize in advance...

I sailed on my very first cruise in 1998 on the Crown Princess. Since then, I've gone on 12 other cruises. Each time, I've bought one of the cruise ship models as a keep sake. The only one I missed was the very first one, the Crown Princess. Fast forward 16 years, and the Crown Princess is now called the Pacific Jewel, sailing out of Australia. I'm looking for someone who would be willing to help me get one of the Pacific Jewel's ship models.

Since these are only sold on the ship, it will have to be someone scheduled to sail on the Pacific Jewel. I live in Cleveland, TN, USA, so that probably will never be me. If I can find someone who is going to be on the Pacific Jewel, I would pay you for the model, the shipping, and whatever you felt was reasonable for your help. If you are going to be on the Pacific Jewel in the near future and want to help me out, please let me know. Thanks! :)

David