thelion

If you book with a travel agent, and they do not pay your final payment by the end of the day on the due date, a fax goes out to them giving them 5 days grace to make the payment. However, sometimes, RCCL does not make this exception. The same is true if you book on your own. In some cases, they give a few days' grace but sometimes they don't.

Technically, if they give you the grace period and you still don't pay it and they cancel it, your deposit is in penalty. If it cancels before the grace period, your deposit should be refunded since penalty starts the day after your payment is due.

So what happens the day you show up for a cruise, and they say sorry, not profitable enough, go home?

What, exactly, do you think chartering a ship months prior to sailing is? RCI has decided that it is no longer profitable to sell that ship via traditional methods and has decided to charter it out. They do this all the time. The difference is they cannot do it the day of sailing (for obvious reasons). Making extreme examples does not make your point, it makes you look silly.

A word of advice:

When dealing with customer service one of the single worst things you can utter is "I have a business and if I ran things this way..." or "In my business I would give the customer what they wanted....." It is a quick shot to shutting down the customer service folks. It is irritating, condescending and often untrue. Try to avoid it in the future. It is almost as bad as "I work in customer service and we do things this way...." or "I pay your salary..."

You cannot apply logic or reason to Customs. They live in a world outside of logic and reason and only come to visit our world to mess up our cruise embarkation and disembarkation.

I would personally not buy any. You cannot be sure you are getting what you think you are getting. Plus, there may be laws preventing you from bringing some drugs into the country.

It is "onshore" because shoreside workers handle all requests. Then, two days before the sailing, the manifest is sent to the ship and everything is confirmed. You can *sometimes* get confirmation ahead of time but it takes pretty extraordinary circumstances to bother the dining team onboard before your sailing. After all, their job is to assist those onboard. That is why there is a shoreside team.