Brit-Cruiser

Wow! This site is awesome and very helpful. I have a cruise booked on the Freedom in December 2014, will be my first cruise and I am super excited :D! I've been wanting to take a cruise for a long time, but my boyfriend has absolutely zero interest in it. This past May, we took a vacation of his choice....canoe/wilderness adventure to the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota (had to canoe across many lakes carrying our gear and canoe across portages, no running water...so we didn't shower and had to drink lake water. For six days)! :eek:

 

Anyhow, after I went on that trip, I pulled the "I went to the Boundary Waters with you, so you can go on a cruise with me" card ;). We have the Ben & Jerry's sweet booked, as I learned about it through this site. But now after reading so many posts, I'm a little concerned about the noise. I'm pretty sure I will keep the room, just makes me a little nervous that he might be kept up do to noise (which might make him not enjoy the cruise at all which is what he thinks is going to happen anyhow).

Firstly, congratulations on booking your first cruise.

As I have said in previous posts, they are not going to give these perks away for no reason. The door woke me more than once every night of our Transatlantic on the Indy. My DH is a heavy sleeper & the noise woke him too. 13 nights of interrupted sleep was not ideal. There is also the fact it is a connecting cabin. We could hear the people next door having discussions about knitwear at 4am, the guy snoring & their TV. The light permeating the edges of the connecting door was also bothersome. The cabin is fun, but it's not something I would hurry to repeat.

When doing a transatlantic from Spain, which side is better port or starboard?

We were portside last month on our Transatlantic from Barcelona.

We got the sun on our balcony from sunrise to sunset. We loved it. :)

ECL has been running a weeklong "Going, Going, Gone" sale, so any price drops that you see this week are most likely for "new bookings only".

 

*Going, Going, Gone is valid for new individual bookings only. Offer is not combinable with any promotional offers or discounts with the exception of Crown & Anchor benefits and NextCruise Onboard Booking Bonus."

Also, the OP is in the UK...we do not get the going, going, gone, sales.

Booked a cruise on freedom of the seas for next August, only paid the deposit at the moment. Noticed yesterday the price had dropped by about £50 per person. Have seen previous threads saying rci will match that price ???? Rang them and rather rude lady told me I have to pay the amount that was quoted at the time of booking. Can anyone clarify ?

Call them back. I have claimed at least one price drop on every cruise I have taken. Sometimes I have needed to get past someone with no clue to get the price drop implemented. You are outside final payment & therefore able to claim the price drop. If the next person you speak to refuses to honour the drop, then go higher & keep going until you find someone that knows what they are talking about.

they rang rci in front of me they even asked if there was any cabin upgrades i could have instead, rci said there is nothing they could do.

Are you getting any freebies? Free port transport or parking or a drinks package included in your cruise fare? Sorry for the questions, just trying to work out why they won't do this for you when I have claimed a price drop on every cruise I have been on.:confused:

Redwell -- There's something missing to the situation. If your final payment is not due until July, and your fare has dropped, RCCL will lower your fare. Your TA isn't doing something right or is not giving you complete information, or you're not sharing complete information (not saying you're intentionally leaving anything out, just saying there's something missing here). No TA is going to tell you that you CAN'T get your fare lowered. I would call your TA back AGAIN and tell them to get your fare lowered, and if not, ask WHY. My husband is a TA; he deals with this all of the time. There has got to be a reason why you're not getting a credit toward the lower fare. Find out WHY, and maybe we can help here on CC. ;)

 

Nevertheless, at least you got the cow butt cabin!

I agree completely with this. Go into your travel agent and make them call RCI while you are there....Some travel agents have never heard of the price drop scenario and those that have can try to wriggle out of giving them, you need to persist! Good luck.

did you get bathrobes, what do you get in the concierge lounge. so you dont get the priority for seating in the shows or ice skating tickets . it seems different boats get different things. i hope it worth booking this room especially as the price has dropped terrifically since we booked it.

We get bathrobes anyway because of our C&A level, so I don't know if they would have been provided regardless. We were offered priority seating for the ice show...but did not want to go.

The CL has a coffee machine, daily papers etc. you can sit in there whenever you like. They also have a nightly event between 5-8.30pm where they provide free drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Raj, the concierge was fantastic.

As for the price dropping....why on earth haven't you phoned RCI to claim the price drop? The price went down twice after we booked this cabin & both price changes were applied with no problem. As long as you are before final payment you should have no issue getting your price adjusted. :)

for those who just did the indy cow suite did you have a noise problem from the service door. did you get a gold card to get the benefits or did you have a normal seapass. what other benefits did you get. i see there is a list of suite benefits but i suppose this is for a proper suite.

To answer your questions:

Yes, there was noise from the service door, it woke me every night.

We had a our normal sea pass & were given a white card to access the CL. When this stopped working, our sea passes were reconfigured to open the CL door.

The only other benefit we had apart from CL access was the free ice cream vouchers.

Hope this helps.

Does anyone know if this a B & J "Sweets" perk? Maybe by showing gold card? This would be an awesome perk! Thanks

It wasn't a perk on the Indy transatlantic in Nov.

What the heck were they doing @ 5-6 am? My friend is not going to like this too much. Thank goodness it is only a 4 day cruise. If we did ask to be moved do you think they would let you keep the perks though?

 

Thanks,

Donna

We kind of thought the peak time was housekeeping getting ready for the day, but did not venture outside to see who was causing the noise.

If its only a 4 day, them go for it...as I recall we were still in the "novelty phase" on day 4, so were just enjoying the room etc. It was only when we got around day 9 or 10 that the broken sleep began to take its toll.

I don't think you keep the perks if you move. The perks are compensation for the disruption this room suffers. They were never going to give away free stuff for nothing.

Jane

My best friend and I are staying in this suite next week. I will come back to this thread to post my comments. I was hoping that the noise wouldn't be too much of an issue as I am a light sleeper.

 

Donna

Hi Donna,

We tended to go to bed somewhere between 1-3am. I could hear it on and off most nights, but peak time seemed to be around 5-6am. The problem is, it's not one but 2 doors....one at each end of the passage to the air bridge, so one would bang, followed about 15 secs later by the second. In the cabin, there is a "welcome pack" for the B & J sweet and it does say that if the noise disturbs you, you can ask to be "mooved" to another room - so you always have this option. :) if I were you, I would give it a try. If we had only been in it for a week, then it would have been fine...but 2 weeks of interrupted nights is a lot of missed sleep. Hope this helps.

Jane

what benefits does the concierge lounge give you, does it give you priority booking for the shows. is it snobby we dont want to feel out of place

We were offered priority tickets to the ice show, but we didn't want to go, so didn't avail ourselves of them.

The concierge lounge itself is fine. It's quite nice to chill out in there during the day and make yourself a coffee...it's good coffee!:)

There was one couple who (none too subtlety) tried to get a look at my sea pass card...but for the most part, everyone was lovely and we has some pleasant chats with people in the CL. It's not snobby in the conventional sense of the word, but a tiny minority do seem to be hung up on status.

We DID have a problem more than once at the nightly drink event. This was held in the Olive or Twist as there were too many people for the CL to hold. Seapass cards were to be shown to gain entry. If Raj, the concierge, was "on the door", then there was no problem as he knew us. If another staff member was there, they would try and turn us away and we would have to explain we were in the Ben & Jerry suite...it was a bit awkward, but not as awkward as the bartender who made it his life's work to tell us we should not be in there. We had to call Raj over in the end and the guy was told that we did indeed have the right to be in there....didn't stop him trying it again the next day tho. We did actually not go for a couple of nights after that - until Raj called our cabin to ask why we had not been in. He guaranteed we would have no further issues and to be fair we didn't..it wasn't a nice experience for the first couple of days though.

Makes you wonder if maybe the cow butts weren't the only thing taken into consideration before offering the perks?!

The cow butts are NOT an issue.

You can see fine out of the window. When the parades are on, we noticed a guy standing outside our window next to the cows filming. Did not affect us as we were not in the cabin when we saw him there, but had we been, this would have been awkward.

They are not giving these perks away for no reason & I guess a couple of nights of interrupted sleep is ok....about night 10-11, it was wearing more than a little thin. I am not a heavy sleeper, but it takes a lot to wake my DH at night. The door(s) woke both of us every night.

we booked independence this october ,what benefits are you getting now and is the noise from the door that bad

On the November transatlantic, the perks were free ice cream vouchers & concierge lounge access.

We found the door noise to be quite disturbing, not one unbroken nights sleep in 2 weeks.

Also, this is a connecting cabin & noise and light from 6307 was an issue. We could hear the guy next door snoring every night and were "lucky enough" to hear a 20 minute conversation at 4.40am regarding a cardigan purchased at House of Frazer in Glasgow.

The perks are nice, but I'm not sure if the noise trade off is worth it.

The card is actually gold to be exact. :D:D

We had a normal sea pass card and an additional card to gain access to the concierge lounge. It kept wiping, so our normal (not gold) sea pass was reconfigured by The Concierge to open the Concierge Lounge.

This is exactly what we experienced as well. Not full suite perks, just the CL and ice cream.

Exactly the same as us....apart from we were offered priority tickets for the ice show.

i have booked this room today on the independence for oct to the canaries. i asked the travel agent they said only perks was ice cream. you only get conceirge passes if you were concierge level on crown and anchor. i am a bit worried about the noise as we didnt get any noise we didnt hear anything when were in 6621.

Unless they have changed the policy VERY recently, then Concierge lounge access IS included. We disembarked on 5th December and we know the person that had the Ben & Jerry "sweet" on the cruise following ours...they got the same perks as we did. We are not Diamond Plus and therefore would not have had lounge access but for the Ben and Jerry "sweet". As I have said before is it noisy... there is a service corridor with a heavy door at either end right next to the room, which leads out onto the bridge spanning the royal promenade. The crew use it at night to get from one side of the ship to the other we did not get one unbroken nights sleep, but there was a letter in the room on specially headed Ben and Jerry paper saying if the disturbance was too much they would move us to another room. Although how this would work if the ship was full I do not know. Hope this helps.

Had this cabin on the Independence Transatlantic last month. The perks are good, but we found the cabin to be too warm...lowest the maintenance guys could get the aircon was 21 degrees. The door banging off and on all night was also bothersome, but they are not going to give the perks out for no reason. It's a trade off I guess and I'm not sure I would do it again.

All I can say about Drew is that he is our favourite CD on RCI. Very funny without being OTT and always visible around the ship.

Hi,

Can you please confirm the room number, is it 6305 on Independence? I have read posts that say the number is the same on all Freedom class ships but RCI rep we spoke to could not confirm as restricted view was not mentioned on their system.

We have held this room until tomorrow so she can check with colleagues in the morning. I would just like confirmation from someone that has 'been there, done that'

Hi, it IS cabin #6305 on the Independence. I think it depends on who you speak to at RCI. Our guy knew about it straight away, but only because he had booked it out for someone earlier that week. Have a great time. :)

We sailed on Independence in may this year and my friend stayed in the Ben & Jerry's Suite and concierge access was included plus he had robes and slippers there too and a full suite menu.... :D:D:D enjoy Mark x

 

video to link we took....

 

Thanks for the video. We are looking forward to November even more now!:)

We have it booked on the Independence for the Nov T/A. We have been told by our cruise consultant at RCI that concierge lounge access is included.

I use Dollar every year when we travel to Orlando. The rental desk is inside the airport (level 2 if my memory serves me right). We have never had any problems with picking up & dropping off at different locations.