jencruzin

I would think that this would depend on how many people are not satisfied with quality of service; it would probably occur closer to the end of the cruise if people are thinking the quality of service is lower than expected.

Not a ridiculous question at all.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm leaning toward the day you pay that final payment.

Air2Sea is, in a way, like your TA for the flights. They buy your tickets well in advance, but the part where you mentioned fully refundable now has me wanting to go back and look at our Air2Sea booking. My question is similar, I may want to change times of returning flight to a later time, same day, back from LHR to IAD.

On 2/23/2023 at 11:40 AM, 6rugrats said:

As stated, your booking belongs to your travel agent, you can't change it yourself, and the flight, as Meg pointed out, may not be available to the cruise line.  I also don't understand why you want to change anything.  Take the 7:00 bus.  

Exactly, just hoping the 0530 moored to pier happens, and they let us off as soon as possible. We yet dont know the distance from the pier to the bus terminal. If we make that bus, we'll be just fine.

On 2/22/2023 at 12:20 PM, megr1125 said:

If you booked through Air2Sea you need to ask them.  If you haven't paid final and the price is the same, MAYBE. BUT they might not have that flight to offer you.

 

Cruise lines buy these seats months ahead and the airlines give them what they give them.  Just because a carrier has a 4PM flight doesn't mean the cruise line does.

 

The airline will not change it for you, they can't as Air2Sea is your "travel agent"

I am not sure what the bus times have to do with getting a later flight, unless I missed something or maybe you left out a sentence??  

Bus times are 0700 and 0900 the day of arriving back to Southampton, but our existing flight is at 1230pm. So I'd rather take that earlier bus!

3 hours ago, Cayman1 said:

While I understand both sides to this, it seems that more and more cruise lines are raising tips overall, yet decreasing some service. I feel everyone should be tipped if they are deserving, but I also feel the cruise lines are using the customers to gain/retain employees by this, all at the customers expense, thus we are paying a portion of their increased salaries. As with everything related to inflation, it all falls back on the end consumer to absorb in some sort or way.

Yes. And it surprises me how people will still forge ahead and pay extra tips! We pay extra tips if something out of the ordinary goes down and they're on it.

2 hours ago, sixbirches said:

I’m pretty sure there is a dedicated room for Chef’s Table on Anthem. It’s inside Chops. I also saw this on the deck plans for Anthem. I’m pretty sure I recall seeing it in the past when we’ve dined in Chops. 

Yeah, I remember that! But given how things have changed (or CAN change suddenly) what happened to us on AOS was that the regular chef's table room was snatched up to accommodate either COVID ops or it was the Bermuda visa entry nightmare, where lots of people didn't fill out a form properly.

We booked via Air2Sea this time. Our ship returns to Southampton at around 0530, our prebooked bus leaves for LHR at 0700. There is, apparently another bus leaving around 9am, but our flight departs LHR on 16 June at 1230. We'd like to get that 0700 bus, we'd be self-assist debarking, unsure how long it would take though being able to leave the ship to catch that bus.

Is it possible for Air2Sea to arrange us on the next flight at 1625 from LHR to IAD without added cost? Or would I be better off attempting to get on the later flight myself by just calling Virgin Atlantic and arrange it via the airline? I have our booking reference through the airline already.

We have always done Chef's Table on a sea day and usually book before boarding.

On our previous sailing on Adventure, it was rather disappointing, they held it in the middle of the stairs in the MDR. There was no cozy private room for us, just out in the open, so we are hoping this is not the case on our upcoming Anthem sailing for a 12-night.

Overall, what a fantastic wine pairing dinner!

Good review. Gives me hope that some of your negative points are fixed by the time we sail on Anthem this June out of Southampton.

10 minutes ago, mil76 said:

 Also, if you remove tips your stateroom attendant will know this and might assume you are stiffing them for tips, and I wouldn't want my toothbrush being used as a toilet scrubber.

 

 

😵 THIS made me THINK (hide our toothbrushes)...we pre paid gratuities, I hope that our cabin attendant knows this. Might slip that person an extra $20 at the start, then another $20 when we leave. 

Agree with the OP. Tipping is OFF THE CHAIN these days, especially considering the added gratuities to the already high fees. We haven't extra tipped the dining staff the past couple of cruises because they really never went above and beyond for us. And, extra tipping the cabin steward? Only if, again, they really WOW us and do something very extraordinary.

Head waiters stop by and interrupt the dining table's discussion to tell us something we already knew. Tipping them is throwing cash away, IMO.

Gratuities in advance = tipping in advance. 

1 hour ago, nasa1974 said:

That's crazy.

ourusual is right though about this. I found out this without knowing beforehand and yes, it is crazy!

1 minute ago, Ourusualbeach said:

That is a different category than what you are pricing. 

Actually no, this particular hump balcony wasn't listed as a different or higher category rating for some reason. However, thanks much for pointing out earlier what I did not notice. I checked, the midship balcony cabin booking is the same as our category.

Some of the brits on our upcoming sailing managed to get a lovely deal of £43 pp each day on their drink packages. What a fantastic deal. For us right now, that would be around $1260 for the two of us. But without that cool discount, we'd be forking out something like $1861 for two drink packages. We're on a 12 night sailing but since we are Diamond, we get 4 free drinks each per day.

Just now, Jimbo said:

Might be worth trying once inside 30 days if as you say there are still a lot of cabins unbooked. 

All of the suites are booked, just checked. But....this makes the bidding more interesting because there are usually some cancellations.

Morning. But since they've cut one of the cleaning services, this'll affect any extra cabin tips, sadly. We fork out enough in the advance gratuties as it is.

7 minutes ago, Jimbo said:

forget about all this and royal up

https://www.royalcaribbean.com/booked/cruise-room-upgrade

 

Tried it, we're not within the next 30 days of sailing quite yet. Thanks though! Tempting but not certain we'd do it.

So here we go. Thanks ourusualbeach for pointing this out, I'm sobered up now from thinking I'd get the PD! THIS time I ran the mock booking center ship, like our booked cabin. Now, it's went up, so I think I'm giving this up and just pay off the remaining balance:
 

2 hours ago, Ourusualbeach said:

Did you book midship, the one you are pricing is aft.  Price difference

ahhh. UPDATE: it's now just "we book your room" and no longer "you pick your room" which I chose last night. So now I know, it's off.
update#2: NO! "You pick your room" was below, I just now noticed...

I may as well pay off the remaining balance and realize no more PD checks. Final payment is due March 6th, so....but, there's still a lot of unbooked cabins! Should I give up the ghost on this?

2 hours ago, Ourusualbeach said:

Did you book midship, the one you are pricing is aft.  Price difference

Thanks for pointing this out....about to run a mock booking again to see. We're midship, on the hump, slightly bigger balcony but didn't pay more for it. We booked this cabin on our last cruise.

1 minute ago, Ourusualbeach said:

Is it the exact same category.

 

Take for example Oceanview balcony.  There are 2 subcategories within this one category a 2D and a 4D.  This does not show on Royals booking engine or their invoices unless you use a TA.  You could be pricing the wrong category even though its the correct category.

Yes, same exact category as what we booked. But, I did not know about these two different sub categories....will investigate as the day progresses. Thanks!

6 minutes ago, jencruzin said:

 

Yes, I do all of that. Just a simple mock booking, all the way through. I leave off gratuities on purpose, of course. 

I gave up after two (lengthy) attempts on the PD's noticed. I did, however, send them an email via their portal, to explain how and why I see it. But the agents were pitching smokescreens, using excursions, air fare, gratuities into the mix. I get the feeling that they know I meant BASE pricing, including taxes/fees. I am going to see if they'll honor the difference I see since Feb 7th. They are getting tougher and more resilient to fend off honoring the PD's we see, this only makes me want to press on even more.

7 hours ago, ARandomTraveler said:

Have you gone all the way through the booking, up to the point where you put in your dining preference, and picking the room location and the non-refundable option (if you chose that option)?

 

I ask because I've noticed that sometimes the base price and taxes look the same, but when you go to pick your room, and let's say it's "mid ship," the cost to "upgrade" the room to mid-ship is different from when you booked it.

 

Same with the non-refundable deposit price. That changes often too. A price that looks different suddenly becomes the same once you check those boxes (they may drop the base price but then raise the cost of the room location and/or the non-refundable deposit cost).

7 hours ago, shof515 said:

i noticed royal uses dynamic pricing which can be very unpredictable at times with pricing changing every minute or hourly.  this could be why the call center people can not see the price you see on the website

 

i noticed it myself. i seen cruises i want to book at one price on one devices. hours later i switched to a different device and then the price increased by like 50 dollars. eventfully the pricing goes down again

That's probably it right there.