cruisin from florida

No idea, but our JS guarantee is a total of 7075 for two people, including port taxes and gratuities. Plus we got some OBC from a nextcruise booking, and more stockholder OBC. I think the suites go fastest on these longer, more unique itineraries.

I know, right? We got our junior suites for a song.

No, before.... Arrives in Lisbon on 11/6, departs Barcelona 11/24. We're on both sailings soI may do a before and after thread. 😁

Agree. I am following that thread. With the lack of much new deployment news, the thread sometimes drifts. Also sometimes the older ships get buried. The prices of the TA jumped during the very first day it was open, so I'm hoping to get in early on the subsequent itinerary. 😁

We booked the TA that will bring Brilliance to Boston in September 2025. I'd love to make it a b2b (or b2b2b), depending on where she goes next. If you're interested in the same, this is the thread for any deployment news and gossip. 😁

My guess is that people who are satisfied with the compensation don't post as much. If only Royal had considered starting out with satisfactory compensation and/or asked for volunteers, this would have been a non-event.

We leave on Tuesday for a 4 night. Hoping for comfy beds. It will be interesting to see what final touches they work on next week. Speaking of dry docks, we're doing the two TAs on Adventure next fall, with a dry dock in-between. I hope the drydock disruptions (before and after) will be interesting, but not in the curse sense if the word.

Yikes! We're going to be there in September! I may revisit our excursions with a thought to the heat.

Conversation full circle.... the contract says they don't have to take you anywhere. Marketing promises very differently. They would rather that customers believe the marketing than read the contract. If enough "you're stuck with it because of the contract" experiences make it into the news and social media, bookings will drop off. That's probably why compensation is so hit and miss. They can't make it policy if it contradicts the contract. So all compensation for a mess of whatever kind is always tagged as a "good will gesture." But it's in their interest that the marketing be the perception, rather than the contract language, so the "goodwill gestures" are usually satisfactory. Not this time.

Cruise contracts are not available until closer to check in. There are no cruise documents available for either of my 2025 guarantee bookings. They took my deposit, though. Based on the website description, they WILL (emphasis added) assign a cabin in the selected category. I skimmed the contract for an upcoming cruise (also guarantee, cabin assigned). Nothing about guarantees not being guaranteed.

No use of the conditional tense:

Agree 100%!

They have cut back on service/staff since the pandemic. I wonder what happened to the excess crew quarters... Hopefully they are using it for enhancements of some kind for the crew.

I'm doing a girls' cruise next week. I'd happily rebook for another date for a good offer. My guess is that something unexpected (insert theory here) happened at the very last minute, and in addition to whatever havoc the initial issue was causing, they had to deal with not enough cabins literally as folks were arriving. Given the usual poor communication between the ship and land-based staff, this is what they came up with in a hurry. I can't imagine how long it takes Royal IT to generate a standard email to passengers, much less deal with something like this.

Exactly!!!!

If they want to monetize no-shows (e.g., the onboard spending - they're keeping the cruise fare anyway) they could create some kind of stand-by system for local travelers. That said, it seems that in this case they didn't overbook... they needed the cabins to isolate sick crew and potentially sick passengers.

One other thought. Some on this thread have been a bit critical of the person who went wide (reddit, cruise critic, FB, etc.) when this happened. If Royal is going to engage at this level of customer disservice, they better saddle up. Going forward, this may be the only way customers can get the attention necessary to force Royal to do the right thing.

My guess is that at the current executive compensation rates, they already spent far more than your suggested compensation in damage control. Here's my total guess at some of the dynamics that were at at play: it's been made CRYSTAL CLEAR to everyone in the company that cost-cutting/return to profitablity is the most important priority right now. Who knows how the ship-board folks are getting graded on their penny-pinching? Maybe the person who came up with the first offer has recently been beaten up for being too generous on customer good-will gestures. Anyway, the low-level decision maker followed the $$$ at the cost of customer satisfaction (which is done by corporate mandate every day in a zillion ways - increasing gratuities while cutting service comes to mind) and this time they went too far. But ultimately it's the corporate leadership and the culture they have created that is to blame.

I would love to hear about the shore excursions. We're going next fall.

Daily Mail has a quote from Royal. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12807561/Aussie-couple-fume-bumped-overbooked-Royal-Caribbean-cruise-dream-holiday-ruined-wont-believe-told.html

Anyone want to guess where Brilliance is going to go after she arrives in Boston in September of 2025? I'd love to turn our TA into a b2b.

This thread and the ones in other spaces would have been entirely different if RCCL had been smart enough to do that in the first place. I guess saving a few thousand bucks was worth the bad publicity and lost customers. As a customer and stockholder, I'm not impressed with the decision making here.

Smart travel companies sweeten the deal until they get volunteers.

That was our logic for our two recent suite guarantee bookings.

LOL .. no worries! I wasn't trying to contradict you. 🙂 Interesting that having had those open so long, the late April cruises haven't shown up yet. I guess I need to get active on the X deployment thread. I'm wondering what Brilliance is going to do once it gets to Boston in early September '25. It would be cool to do a b2b with the Transatlantic, if they have an interesting itinerary. Here's what they are showing as the X deployment now. OK, X hijack over. 🙂