Pratique

The horse has been out of the barn for about 10 pages now.

Yes, and I think this is a natural human condition. I worked at Walt Disney World in the 90s and 2000s. Back in the 90s just before Christmas they would close the Magic Kingdom to day guests at 6:00 pm and then reopen it exclusively for employees and their families. At first they did this for three nights to accommodate everyone, then reduced it to one night, and then eventually to zero nights. Instead, they gave out passes so the employees and their families could visit the parks with the day guests. Then they started putting date restrictions on the passes so they could only be used during the "off-season." As the years went by, the perks disappeared and each time there were complaints followed by acceptance and rationalization. Win for the company, loss for the employees, but life goes on and memories are short.

I will be the first to admit to having been fooled. Once I was chasing a benefit for free burritos. I had to eat a lot of burritos. But the free ones were especially enjoyable. Until the company realized that they were giving out too much free food. It was nice while it lasted.

I appreciate what you are saying and I don't begrudge you for seeking the benefits. However, you say you are not a class envy type of person and then immediately describe yourself as a class envy type of person. I have learned through experience that chasing benefits is a fool's errand. I have spent a lot of money to achieve a benefit just to see the benefit watered down or eliminated - or granted to others who have spent less than I did under some special promotion - leaving myself to ask whether it was worth chasing the benefit in the first place. I am at a certain tier on one airline that affords me complimentary upgrades when available. But the upgrade is only available maybe once out of every eight or 10 flights, so the benefit is not worth much. It's nice when I get it but I don't choose to fly this airline over another for that benefit because it is not valuable. Not worth chasing. Royal Caribbean calls the lounge for suite guests the "suite lounge," which implies it is exclusive to suite guests, but it is not. They should call it something else. But whatever they call it, it is a watered down benefit to me. I will enjoy it if and when I can, but I don't book a suite for the lounge benefit. I book it for the suite, because that has value to me. I can stew about the overcrowding the lounge but it is not something worth wasting too much energy on. If other people are getting better benefits than me, for whatever reason, so be it. The perks are supposed to be above and beyond the core product. The core product for a suite guest includes access to the suite lounge but it is a perk for the lounge to be exclusive to suite guests. And going back to the topic, the deposits for most suites above JS will now be higher. What I get out of that deal is a big fat zero. It is not for my benefit at all. Royal will charge whatever the market will bear for the cabin, and people will still cancel at the last minute regardless of how high the deposit is. The real way to curb this practice is to make the entire fare due at booking and non-refundable. We may think that is a crazy idea but I don't think it is. When they reduced housekeeping in the main cabins to once a day, lots of people came here to rationalize that the second visit was not worth anything to them or that it somehow keeps fares lower. So if someday suites become due in full on the day of booking and non-refundable, someone will come here to rationalize how that is just fine with them too.

Putting aside that this thread has been hijacked by a discussion about "spend", a show of hands from everyone who cares what other people are spending. When I am flying, I do not care how much other passengers paid for their seats. I do get annoyed when the gold/bronze/platinum passengers get to board ahead of me, and that is not any incentive for me to spend more with the airline to earn that benefit. At the end of the day, I evaluate the value for my money. If I see my CK server doting over a Pinnacle at the cost of ignoring us (it has happened more than once), I am not happy and I do not think "well, they earned it." Instead, I think, "all things considered, is this cruise vacation worth the cost to me." And at some point, I will probably say "not any more" and move on to something else. Loyalty is absurd from a customer's viewpoint because the perks are always getting diluted. Always and without fail.

I think you are both right and wrong. Right in the sense that an on-staff meteorologist can provide another layer of guidance that is tailored to the company's needs, something that would be difficult to obtain from a third-party service or someone in house who isn't doing the job full time. Wrong in the sense that it is very difficult to quantify how much more value the meteorologist adds, so getting rid of the position has no significant impact on operations. For an analogy, a broad proposition that middle managers are useless is countered by a broad proposition that middle managers wouldn't exist if they had no value. On an individual basis it is hard to quantify the value of a given person in a middle management position. Maybe they did a good job but life goes on just fine without them. Or maybe they are bad at their job but keeping them on makes little difference. Royal did fine without a staff meteorologist, they did fine with one, and they will do fine without one again. And maybe the day will come where not having one will work a disadvantage but that will be more than offset by all the days where having one gave no advantage. For what it's worth, Royal doesn't really need any loyalty ambassadors either. We can just all line up at Guest Services for everything. And the show will go on without having a cruise director on every ship. And so on... (By the way, the title of this thread is some weird schadenfreude).

I am also on the June 16 sailing and I hope this rumor is not true but I guess we'll find out when we get on board.

This.

Disputed or declined? If the charge never posted to your credit card it is likely the bank declined the charge. Sometimes they do that for no apparent reason, maybe it was flagged as suspicious. My bank is good at catching fraudulent charges but every once in a while they decline a valid charge. If it was disputed then the bank should have a record of the dispute and resolution.

That is interesting. I went back and looked at some of my receipts since 2019. Some of them have $500 deposits for 7 night suites and some have $900 deposits for 7 night suites. So far this year I only have one cruise booked (suite) and I booked it within final payment so I don't know for sure what the deposit would have been since I had to pay the entire amount immediately but I vaguely recall the RC reservations agent telling me it would have been $500 before she realized we were within the final payment window. EDIT to add: I think I figured it out, since we were rebooking so many things during the pandemic some of the bookings that were originally 10+ nights ended up being changed to 7 nights but the $900 deposit was already in. That probably explains the discrepancies.

I was paying $500 deposits on 7 night suites up through 2018. Then it went to $900.

Weather is also a factor. When sailing through the rain, forget about it.

Shore excursions always seem to turn into an anxious rush to get back to the ship on time. Once we took an "on your own" excursion from St. Thomas to St. John and although we had an awesome day at the beach, getting to and from was exhausting and DW said "never again I'm staying on the ship next time." The private islands are convenient, safe, and relaxing, which is exactly what I want on a cruise vacation.

duplicate

Oh to have been a fly on the wall during the original and subsequent planning meetings. I suspect initially they were looking at other lines selling out long-duration cruises post-Covid and thought they could get a piece of that action and make up for lost time. The first week of bookings was restricted to Diamonds and above so they must have been thinking (or projecting the image of) high demand especially for the limited number of balcony staterooms. So the lesson learned for us is never to book another long-duration cruise early with Royal unless you are willing to part with all that extra money. Actually, never book early at all and let Royal sit on that deposit. With few exceptions, such as transatlantic, I can often get the cabin I want within final payment of any given sailing.

That's the beauty of an open forum. There are closed groups to keep the interlopers out too.

You changed your post I see. I think in the past you and I have had a pleasant exchange of ideas but not sure why now you are pushing back on this one. I am glad it will be fun for you. But I didn't ask for your travel plans for the next two years either.

Please reread my post, not directed at all on the WC, only those doing the full circuit and feeling a bit disappointed in these changes to the bookings. Obviously not you. In any event, I do not understand your response. I am (sincerely!) pleased to hear that you have a lot of nice plans on your travel docket. I hope to hear about your experiences on the WC because I won't be there for the reasons stated.

Yeah that's an important distinction that hadn't occurred to me. In any event, other than for fitness tracking I have found the watch pretty useless without the phone being tethered.

I presume other cruise lines with premium sailings also have onerous booking conditions for the early takers and then relax the prices to fill any leftover inventory. Resort hotels have been known to do this for grand openings. Its the risk you take by jumping into the pool first, and the risk of missing out if nothing opens up later. The 17 segment thing seems unsurprising to me at this point, but I wasn't actively thinking that it would happen either. I just assumed they would sell out after they opened the four segments and that would be the end of it except for scraps caused by late cancelations.

My first post wasn't directed to you, not sure why you think it was.

You are free to reject my sympathy, not sure why it matters though. Enjoy your travels!

I haven't tried it, but my understanding is that if the watch is already connected to a public WiFi via your phone, then it will remain connected when you are out of Bluetooth range. So if you can connect to the ship's WiFi via your phone while on the ship, then leave your phone behind when you leave the ship, it seems that it should work since the SSID of the WiFi on the island is the same. But I'm not sure since I have not tried it.

Just received a marketing email for the "world cruise" as 17 sailings broken down by region and touting "new destinations." Quite frankly this makes a lot more sense to me than trying to sell it as a single or four segment world cruise. I feel for the folks who are doing most or all of it thinking it would be unique to bond with the same groups of guests over many months and now getting shafted on the price, but even if I had the time and money (I don't) I still don't see the appeal of spending nine months on any one ship, much less Serenade, when I could instead be sailing a variety of ships to a variety of locations or just breaking things up a bit. I look forward to hearing about the adventures of the full circle trippers though.

If you can get it to work on the ship then it should also work on the island. But I always carry my phone because the watch is really limited in what it can do on its own.