IronRobi

Cruisemapper shows our scheduled stop in Nov is at Amber Cove. The Amber Cove website has a port schedule and it doesn't show any arrivals on that day. The Taino Bay website shows no arrivals at all for the month of Nov. I figure at this point it's just a coin flip

Sorry to hijack, but still related to the question at hand of cancelling excursions so figured I'd hop on instead of making a new post. On an upcoming cruise I've got roughly $450USD in OBC. I'd like to use it towards excursions, but I'd also like to pre-book the excursions to reserve a spot. I've read of people pre-paying the excursions and then going to the shore excursions desk on board and refunding/rebooking to use the OBC. Our first port is inside the 48hr window from embarkation, so it sounds like this won't be possible with this one. The next 2 ports are outside of the 48hr window, but it sounds like they'll just credit me more OBC which will put me right back to where I started. Is there any way to successfully use the OBC towards excursions without crossing our fingers and hoping they're still available when we get on board?

Great tip right here! I used the "Chat with an Agent" feature. Was #8 in line. Took about 5 minutes to get someone. I simply said there's a glitch where the site wouldn't allow me to book the same restaurant on 2 nights. They asked which bookings I'd like to make. Gave them a list of the 3 remaining night's, locations and times. Less than 5 minutes later they had booked all of it. Best of both worlds here. I got my booking done, and I didn't have to tie up the phone lines for @LGW59 so they're free to help with the luggage tags LOL

@SANDPEBBLESThanks for this review. 1 question... I see you mentioned you met in the theatre at around 7:15am. What time did the ship arrive in port? We are on the Escape in November and have a 6am arrival into Tortola with a 1pm departure. Wondering if that was the same timeline for your trip or if you arrived later? 7:15am is reasonable, but any earlier than that it may just be too early to really enjoy the day.

This is a great tip! The mini fridges in the cabins are "cool" at best, certainly not cold. Good to know they have colder ones for those in need. To OP, I've always grabbed a couple extra cartons of milk from the buffet at breakfast and bring them back to my room. I also grab a plate full of cookies from the buffet before bed. This way if I'm in the room and feel like a little snack anytime during the day, I can have milk and cookies handy LOL

I did this once. Group of 2. I think we got in within minutes once. The rest of the time we were 20-30 minutes standing around and killing time waiting for a table. I've found as a party of 2 with pre-reserved times you'll sometimes get a table that sits 4 because it's all they have available at your scheduled time. But if you go the freestyle route, they'll wait for a table of 2 to open and save those open tables of 4 for walk-ins with 4 in their group.

First, the internet access on a ship can be dodgy at times. It's satellite based and effected by position, weather, capacity during peak hours, etc. etc. But I would say #3 is your biggest hurdle. I think we've all had internet issues while on board ships, and completely understand the frustration especially when trying to schedule things like Zoom meetings. But if you stay quiet the entire week and then talk to them after and say "I used the product for an entire week without a single complaint, but now that I'm back home I want a refund because it didn't work", it's going to sound more like a story than an issue. If you went down to the internet concierge while it wasn't working, they could issue you credits right on the spot. They'd also be able to escalate your complaint right from the ship which essentially gives you proof of your issues for when you do request that full refund later. Think of ordering a peperoni pizza and when you get home it's just cheese. You decide to eat it anyways and go back to the pizza place the next day and say "the pizza I ordered yesterday was supposed to be peperoni but it's just cheese. I didn't complain, and I still ate the pizza, but now I want you to make me another one for free". I doubt you get a new pizza.

Is this true for all dining venues or just the paid ones? Been trying to book all our dining for 2 days now. Initially tried booking all 7 together and got a bunch of "no longer available" messages. So I started booking individually and got the first 4 days booked, but the last 3 days regardless of restaurant or time slot I'm booking just seem to disappear from the cart and won't let me complete. 2 are MDR's and 1 is a specialty, all 3 are already booked within the first 4 days. If you want your selection of dining time without having to wait for anytime dining, or getting stuck with a 9pm time because everybody else booked up the premium spots online, it's usually best to get them all taken care of in advance.

Our trip on the Escape for Nov 26 is also showing Bamboozled and Malevo at $269.05pp, which is the same price as the Vibe pass. Also having all kinds of issues booking MDR times, they just drop from the cart at final confirmation. Seems to be lots of website glitches.

I would fully expect cruise prices to be trending up right now and for the foreseeable future. I would guess the 2 largest expenses to operate a cruise would be fuel and food. The costs of each are climbing every week which makes every cruise more expensive to operate. So to maintain profit margins in a way that's responsible to their shareholders, they would have to raise the pricing to compensate.