ARandomTraveler

Is this there first breakup? If so, leave her on the reservation. First breakups rarely stick. Have your son find a good friend whose willing to be called off the bench at the last minute as a backup plan.

I was in Italy last month and flew there on Air France which I thought was good. Prices weren't outrageous, flight was comfortable and on time. Their customer service isn't the best if you have to call (you'll be on hold for a looooooong time), but other than that I have no complaints. They're a Delta Airlines partner, so if you have status on Delta they'll recognize it (early boarding and flight upgrades).

I hadn't updated mine and had the same issue. After I went online to check if both my cruises were listed (they were), I went back to the app and they were both suddenly there. But today the second sailing was missing again. So I updated the app, figuring that would probably fix it. It didn't. Second sailing still missing. My activity calendar for my upcoming cruise had more stuff in it though (but still can't book anything, and doubt I'll be able to given my cruise is next week).

I wouldn't say "many," but in the healthy, non-co-dependent ones

Just checked my app and only 1 of my 2 cruises shows up. Both show up online though.

I tried to check in for my cruise right at midnight (ET) and there was something going on with the IT dept. and I couldn't do it online or via the app. I continued trying until 2:55am (ET) and gave up. Tried again at 10:30am (ET) and it still didn't work. I forgot about it until the end of the day, and I checked in around 10pm (ET) and still got an 11am boarding position. My ability to get an early boarding time that late on check-in day may be due to others also having the same IT issue with check-in, or it could be that for a Thanksgiving cruise, there aren't as many frequent cruisers and so they don't know all the tips about checking in early. Or, they may not want to board early because they're traveling with a lot of children. I'd suggest staying up late to check in if you really want the early boarding time, but I wouldn't stress about it if you don't mind boarding a little later. I wanted the early boarding time so I can make dining and show reservations. A lot of people are starting to be able to book shows again online though so the necessity for early boarding might go away. And as for the dining times, there was really only one restaurant that I was worried we wouldn't get to visit (the Hibachi), so I just paid for it out of pocket in order to secure our day and time. If I could book my shows before boarding then I wouldn't care about boarding early anymore (my cruise isn't eligible).

These are the 2 prices I've seen for the Symphony as well. I've looked at least once a day (often more than once) for the last 7 months and it's only been these 2 prices, depending on the current "sale."

That's fair and reasonable. I would do the same if I were you. I was just pointing out that it doesn't boost Royal's bottom line to make an accommodation for a couple to sail together in order to get the double points and reach Diamond faster. But the loyalty aspect of it certainly keeps frequent cruisers spending their money at RC vs going to another cruiseline, which makes good business sense.

It's slang for "go ahead and try and see what happens"

I appreciate the post because I don't read the NCL board and would have missed the gossip and subsequent amusing commentary.

I've done a couple cruises from San Juan and they do pretty much everything in both languages. They would sometimes say things in Spanish first and then translate to English, and other times they'd say it in English and then translate to Spanish. If you go on a cruise that doesn't have a large majority of Spanish speakers on board, you'll easily find crew members who speak Spanish, which will make ordering food and getting other assistance pretty easy, but the shows and Trivia will be in English.

Except that the whole reason they're trying to make Diamond is so they don't have to pay for drinks, so my guess is royal isn't making much profit on this couple for those extra items, which is totally fine, just saying that it wouldn't benefit Royal to help them get double points AND sail on this cruise together. Plus, once you've been to an island 50 times or however many times you have to go to the same place to get Diamond, are you really gonna keep taking excursions? Probably not. The loyalty gets extra bodies on the ship, helps pay the cruise fare and the port fees, which is an important part of their business structure and I get it, but the additional expenditures are probably inversely proportional to the number of times one cruises (on average - I know there are outliers who pay for dining and drink packages even after they've hit Diamond, but based on reading cruise critic, that doesn't seem to be the norm).

Can you use the 4 free drinks that the 15 year old gets for the 21 year old, since the Diamond vouchers are shareable? Or do the 4 free drinks that the 15 year old gets have to remain non-alcoholic, even if they're buying the drink for someone whose 21? If the 15 year old can share them with the 21 year old, then you can just buy the 15 year old's drinks out of pocket because they'll be cheaper, or make the 15 year old share the 4 free drinks with one of the siblings, and then one of the parents can share their free drinks with the other sibling.

I book refundable, and I check for price drops daily (I saved around $600 getting multiple price drops). The non-refundable rate was always around $125 lower than the refundable rate until about 4 months before the cruise, at which point the refundable and non-refundable rates went much higher than the refundable rate I had locked in. I never switched mine to non-refundable because I wanted to make sure there was as little chance as possible that I would need to cancel (meaning I wanted to wait until the last minute to commit myself just in case something came up). But by the time my final payment date came, the prices were all higher than my refundable rate. At most I would have saved an additional $125-ish dollars if I had switched it to non refundable when I had the chance but honestly, it wouldn't have been worth switching so soon and giving up my flexibility to cancel for just $125. If it had been $400 or $500, I would have done it.

The number of upcharge (specialty) restaurants varies by ship. You can buy a dining package; unlimited or 3-day packages are the most common, but if you're on a longer cruise (like a 12 day cruise) then 5-day packages are also sometimes offered. You can also choose to reserve a specific restaurant for a specific night and you pay whatever the going rate is at the time you book it. If you do it this way, you get to pick your dining day and dining time. If you buy one of the packages, you have to wait until you get on the ship to make reservations for any particular restaurant or time. You can buy the dining packages for just one person, or for everyone. But only the people who have paid for the package (or who pay the individual upcharge cost) can dine with you.

Unless you're booking suites, or your travel agent has their own non-refundable deposit rule, then you can choose between a non-refundable rate (which gives you a discount on the total cruise fare), or a refundable rate (which will be more expensive, but gives you a lot more security in the flexibility of your booking). If you want independent insurance, you can buy a private insurance plan (check out insure my trip dot com for options). Check the box for "cancel for any reason" in order to be given policy options that include that option. Be aware though, you generally only receive 75% of your non-refundable expenses, so you'll still lose part of the deposit if you cancelled and then made an insurance claim.

Whenever questions like this get asked, I wonder why the person who is bailing out of the trip isn't offering to cover the penalties everyone else is having to incur due to their change of plans. If I agreed to go on a trip, and everyone agreed to pay a certain price, and then I decided not to go (or couldn't go), I would automatically assume that I would eat the cost of my portion, AND, if it caused everyone else to be moved to another room that was re-priced at the current rate, I would pay for it. And I wouldn't take a vacation with someone else who wouldn't do the same. Now if the 3rd person is your kid or your mom or something, that's another story, but if it's a friend? The friend should 100% pay.

I keep getting reminder emails to bid on Royal up. Every category they list is sold out online, so it seems like a waste of time to bid. Im happy with the category I chose (ocean view balcony) and not interested in swapping, but I did look to see what they were suggesting as a minimum bid for a crown loft suite, because that was a room I was considering booking before I booked the balcony. At the time of my booking, the crown loft suite was going to cost $9,000 for 2 people. Right now, with their suggested bid offer, they're essentially "selling" it for $4600 for 2 people, which is a good deal, and one that I would pay to upgrade to if a crown loft suite was actually available on the website and I could call and pay the extra money to upgrade my cabin for a total cost of $4600. But I'm not interested in bidding on a room that it seems unlikely I'd get (considering crown lifts sold out months ago), and I wouldn't be able to pick the room location. I'm just not into being given a randomly selected room, no matter how low the cost might appear. I also think the Royal up offers on my particular cruise are just being auto-generated by bots, since the entire suite category has shown as "sold out" online for over a month now.

I thought the Internet pricing looked pretty average (it matches the price of internet for my Symphony Thanksgiving cruise), but I agree that the key is priced really low. I saw the key go down to $20.99 on my thanksgiving cruise, but it only stayed that price for a few hours. Otherwise it's closer to $35 most of the time. The soda + Voom seemed high too, usually the combo packs save you some money, but in this case, at $28.99, it's basically the same $18.99 Voom you can buy on its own, which makes the soda $10, which is more money than I've ever seen the soda package listed for. It'll be interesting to see how the beverage packages get priced when they finally list them. Rumor has it that the Asian market doesn't drink much alcohol, so I wonder if that will make the non-alcohol packages more expensive than usual.

I went ahead and paid for and booked the hibachi restaurant because after looking at the available times in the cruise planner, there were only 2 days that had a 5pm slot, and the other 5 days only had 9pm or later. No availability of times in between. All other restaurants had wide open availability every day at every time slot. I figured for this one restaurant, I'd be bummed if we weren't able to try it because it was sold out. And even though I have an 11am boarding time, I'm not confident there will be spots left by the time I get on the ship. I read the terms and conditions and it does say that all cancellations must be made 48 hours before the cruise, and any cancellations made after that are subject to the cruise lines discretion for whether they give your money back or not. I was willing to take the risk for that one reservation. If they don't let me get my money back and let me use the UDP instead, I'm ok with that. But I'll certainly try.

How does the "swapping" of a pre-paid reservation work when you have the UDP? Like if I book the hibachi and pay the regular price ahead of time, will they for sure let me swap it for my UDP on board and give me my money back as on board credit? Or is there a chance they won't do that?

I stand corrected, I hadn't checked the cruise planner since last week, but I just looked again and there are a few things in there now. Classic Soda + Voom internet is $28.99/day. No alcohol or refreshment packages listed yet. Unlimited dining for 12 nights is $315.99 which is a pretty good price. 5 night dining is $174.00 and 3 night dining is $112.99. Prices for individual specialty restaurants seem pretty comparable to my cruise in 2 weeks. Voom surf + stream is $23.99/day, Voom is $18.99/day The Key $23.99. So basically everything looks the same price-wise. The cruise is 265 days away, so maybe they opened up the planner at 270?. I checked last week when it was more than 270 and nothing was in there.

I have a cruise booked for the end of next July and nothing is available to book in the planner yet. It's an Asian cruise though so may be different.

I'm booked on the 12 day Spectrum cruise from Singapore to Japan next summer. It stops in Hong along along the way. I'd be disappointed if that stop is eliminated, but it's almost a year away so hopefully that won't be the case by July. I was surprised to see the ship is already selling out, but maybe they've just blocked out some of the rooms in order to keep capacity low enough to make the Asian port stops. Suites are insane prices. Over $8,000 for 2 people in a regular Junior suite. $18,000 for A "sky" junior suite, and then you're looking at $20,000-$70,000 for grand suite through ultimate family suite for just 2 people! That can't be right. Are people really paying these prices?

I booked 2 flights to Miami for my Thanksgiving cruise, more-so because of the potential for winter storm cancellations than potential hurricanes, but now I'm glad I did. I usually fly in a day early, but this year I will either fly in 2 days early, or 3 days, depending on what the weather forecast shows for my snowy state as well as Florida's hurricane-y one. I'll make my decision the Monday before my cruise and cancel on of the flights (and one of the hotels). I figured this way, if it's a snowy week with a lot of flight cancellations then I'll take the earlier flight, and if that flight ends up canceled, I'll already have another flight booked as backup so I won't have to fly standby, or risk not being able to rebook until the following week (that happened to me last winter during a big snow storm and I missed a funeral). If the weather looks good that week then I'll cancel one of the flights on Monday, depending on what my work load looks like. Having an extra 3 days in Miami before the cruise to work on my tan sounds like a good idea, but if something comes up at work then it'll just be the 2 days. Flying southwest has really made me non-committal and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not 😂