kastke

We will have one FCC that we will have to use, so we’ll have to take a cruise before it expires. Otherwise, we are going to concentrate on finishing visiting all 50 states (still have 10 to go) before doing any more cruises. We had decided to step that up anyway. 
 

The “required drs note over 70 and underlying health issues denial to board” may keep us from cruising ever again, unfortunately, if they don’t relax that rule. Hubby went thru almost 2 yrs of cancer treatments, and although he is fine now, he still has a compromised immune system... 

11 hours ago, gadaboutgal said:

Cancelled a cruise March 9 and just received refund on March 24.

This is somewhat reassuring. I cancelled our cruise on March 11, maybe I will see our refund by the end of the week. 
 

If the refund was going to take 2-3 weeks, I wish they would have just told me that. Telling me 3-5 days, and then having to check my credit card every day or two to see if the refund hit has become very irritating.  

I cancelled a refundable deposit cruise on March 11, unrelated to Coronavirus, and before RC suspended any US sailings. I still have not received my refund. I had already cancelled my cruise planner purchases and received those credits before cancelling the cruise. Simple, one transaction cancellation. At the time I cancelled, I was told 3-5 days for refund, today I was told it’s “taking longer and it should be a few more days”. 
 

9 minutes ago, WeLuvVacation said:

What I want to know is what the heck the grandfather was thinking when he decided to put the little girl out the window at that height from the ground?

People make snap poor decisions all the time, thinking nothing bad will happen. I’m sure he didn’t think he would lose his grip, or the child would squirm out of his hands. The ship was docked, so no additional wind movement as a concern.

The whole situation was an unfortunate mishap, caused by a snap poor decision by the grandfather. 

Takes me back to the first cruise we took 3 of our kids on. We left our youngest, who was 18 months old at the time, back at home with her aunt and uncle. She was a climber, a runner, and LOVED the water. Even with 4 responsible adults in our party, there was no way I was taking a chance that anything bad could happen in a split second. Never regretted that decision. 

6 hours ago, kccrzr said:

 

Radiance Vancouver to Hawaii Sept 2021 is available for booking. 

 

Nevermind!  Just saw someone else posted earlier 🙂

Radiance to Hawaii might be available to book for 2021, but prices are absurdly high  compared to when Serenade to Hawaii for 2020 was released last year. We booked Serenade’s 11 night to Hawaii in a balcony cabin for 2020 for less money than an inside cabin is going for on 2021’s 10 day sailing. Hopefully prices settle down in the next week or so! 

5 hours ago, bc cruiser said:

Hi everyone, I live in Panama City, Fl. (850-Strong).  On Oct. 10, 2018 we stayed in our home and rode out Hurricane Michael, a category 5.  It took us 5 months before we could get a roof back on our home.  We live on a cul-de-sac and when we walked out of our home, we didn't recognize our neighborhood.  I have lived here all my life and never experienced a hurricane like Michael, so folks I don't believe Coco Cay will reopen for a very long time.  We just got our Motorhome out of the repair shop, it had over $18, 000 damage from the hurricane.  We lived in it with blue tarps over the entire MH until June, 2019.  Our home is still not completely repaired, but we can live in some rooms, and we booked a cruise on Mariner for Sept. 23, 2019 last year before the storm hit us, and we probably will not be going to Coco Cay either.    RCCL does their best to keep you safe, so if you book and your cruise doesn't go as planned, just be thankful they do what they think is best for your safety.  We always buy insurance to protect us, and we had to  

use it in Sept.2017, we had to cancel our cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale, because the roads were blocked between the panhandle and there, we were going to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary, so we rebooked a cruise for October 21, 2018 and Hurricane Michael hit us on Oct. 10, 2018 and we couldn't leave our home because of all the damages, so again we are trying for Sept. 23, 2019.  Our anniversary is Sept. 9th.  

My daughter lives on the east side of Panama City Beach, Fl, just passed the bridge. She also rode out Hurricane Michael last year at home... her home repairs were finally completed and she was able to move back into her home just last month, Aug 2019.  She was “luckier” than many with her home repairs... her ex-husband works for a contractor, and since they have an amicable relationship, he was the general for her repairs/rebuild. She didn’t have to deal with the scammers, repair rip off artists, etc.  She lived in a friend’s RV which they parked in her driveway for the majority of those 9+ months.

These storms are so unpredictable... she had a neighbor behind her with minimal damage, a neighbor to the side of her lost almost everything. My thoughts go out to anyone affected by the hurricanes. 

Best of luck to you with the remainder of your repairs, and hope you get to take your next cruise with no problems! 

4 minutes ago, Judyrem said:

Is that for the ABC islands on Adventure?  If so, I am going too!

No, it’s on Vision, Southern Caribbean, second week of B2B. The package couldn’t be booked for the first week! 

23 minutes ago, BillOh said:

Hmm, I should design a shirt that says, "Forgive me, I have the $18 drink package" and sell them. It might save me from making a few apologies walking back to my cabin.

 

This is how RC can make some of their money back from this special deal. 😀Design a special t-shirt about enjoying the “messed up deal of the century” and sell them on the affected cruises! I have a cruise Feb 1, I’d buy one, it would be good for the rest of my 2020 cruises. 

I am glad RC is taking extra time to rethink things. It would be a really good PR move to honor all of the packages that were bought yesterday. RC made the situation worse by having reps on the phone telling people it was a special sale, so of course word spread like wildfire. RC should have had shut their website down as soon as the error in pricing was discovered, until it could be fixed. Instead, they not only continued to let people see the 18.00 price, people were able to buy the pkg for at least 6-8 hours after it was a known pricing error. I feel especially bad for those who cancelled previously purchased pkgs in good faith that this was a valid special sale. 

We did not know it was an error when we first booked the pkg. I thought it was a super cheap price, but I have seen super cheap prices before on occasion! Ironically, we have a B2B scheduled next Jan/Feb - yesterday both cruises showed the 18.00 price, but I couldn’t book the beverage pkg for the first week (Jan). Kept getting time out errors, so we tried booking the second week from a different computer and lo and behold, it worked!  I know what the beverage pkgs on both weeks cost before the sales, I know what they are currently running price wise, and I will be curious to see how the “special offer” for this mistake really turns out.

Hopefully RC sees the better light in this situation and just let’s the packages stay as purchased. 

2 hours ago, John&LaLa said:

 

They might have honored the original price if folks hadn't shared the glitch here and on FB

 

Loose lips sink ships

This, exactly. People shared on FB, Twitter, even called RC to see if it was a mistake. 

This is the downside of Social Media, and instant information. 

I have benefitted from pricing/human errors in the past. Waited for months expecting the errors to be caught, yet our pricing never changed. The only people that ever knew about them were myself and my husband. We also benefitted from a super low dining package sale once - it was a sale listed for one day only, and I’ve never seen the price that low again. Looking back now, that could have been a glitch also. 

I had the exact type of surgical pins under a cast in my wrist/arm as it sounds like your son has. I was going to suggest you bring a copy of the x-ray which shows the pins, but I see you already mentioned you have a photo of the x-ray. 

Also, I suggest you talk to the orthopedic surgeon about your son’s permission to go in any of the pools. When I had the pins under my cast, I absolutely was warned against getting it wet AT ALL. Too much risk of infection. In fact, my cast was changed every 10 days to 2 weeks while healing so the dr could make sure there was no infections starting. 

I hope you all all can relax and enjoy your trip! 

21 hours ago, LilBlackDress said:

Maybe I am alone in this but... not every accident results with compensation. I knew to wear long pants and long sleeves on the Abyss when Harmony came to the US.

 

I was burned pretty bad on a cruise several years ago. It was an accident, the coffee carafe had a mini explosion all over me. The staff took me to see the doctor and wouldn't let me off the ship (it was the last morning of the cruise) until they got a specialist there to check my eyes since there were burns near my eyes. 

Just a side note, the only people that ever knew about it were the people at the table with me, including my DH, DS, DBiL and my stepson... I have never told anyone on CC about it. Some on here might be shocked by this... 

All I wanted was to be OK and eventually I was. I do have a few scars from it but it was an accident... Be thankful it wasn't your life. 

Just my 2cents, sorry  

You are not alone in your feelings. A freak incident at my grandson’s daycare several years ago left me with a broken wrist, requiring surgery, pins, a couple months in a cast, and a few months of physical therapy to regain use of my hand and wrist. It was highly inconvenient as it happened right after Thanksgiving, thus affecting the holidays, and I could not drive for a good portion of that time. 

The daycare’s Corporate office reimbursed all of my out of pocket medical expenses, and probably would have covered lost wages, but I had enough sick time banked up for any time I needed off, and my employer was quite flexible with my schedule while I was not able to drive myself.  I did not ask for anything more. 

Other than that, I was grateful my injury wasn’t worse or permanent, and very grateful I was not carrying my grandson at the time of the incident. 

6 minutes ago, Cruiser24 said:

Am I reading this correctly that the June 24 Majesty sailing will not even go to Key West?

If you look at the detail of this cruise date on RC website, it still shows Key West as a stop. Whether that is accurate, I don’t know. Maybe check your cruise planner and see what the calendar now shows. 

14 minutes ago, Sun Lover said:

We booked an eight night Cuba cruise back in March for this coming October on Empress.  I just checked on the RCI site and they now have our itinerary listed as Grand Cayman, Belize, Costa Maya and Florida Keys without even notifying us.  The only reason we decided to go on Empress was solely to go to Cuba.  Our original cruise had us in Havana overnight and another day in Cienfuegos.  I would never pick a ship this size even for a short cruise anywhere else.  I read that Carnival is already offering their guests a refund or credit.  Will we have the right to demand a 100% refund?  What about being reimbursed for our flight to Florida which we have already booked?  It doesn't seem like RCI could refuse to return our deposit under these circumstances.  Does anyone know what we can do?

If you checked the RCI site to see your itinerary has changed, you should have also seen the notice posted on the RCI site for the travel update they’ve issued with the option of cancelling or a 50% credit on the revised itinerary. 

FWIW, this isn’t RCI’s fault, and, imho, your terminology of wanting to “demand” a refund is a bit harsh, and completely unnecessary. 

The last time I saw a Tax Day offer was either 2016 or 2017. 

Besides the 3 night dining package for $60, I have also gotten Chops lunch for 17.99. I don’t know yet how different the lunch menu is from dinner, but thought it was a good deal for a change up on a long cruise.

I called for a Map and the RCCL Rep actually gave me a Private travel agency website that still showed the maps:confused: to use! PRETTY sad don't you think! Who out there in the real World planning a cruise does not want to visualize the route before and after booking! :o

Guilty. I have never paid much attention to the map when planning, or booking a cruise. I care about the ports of call and sea days, but not the map.

Day 5 of trip / Day 2 of Cruise - Cruising Hubbard Glacier.

 

We found a place up on deck 12, and here is what we saw...

 

And a close up...

 

I was a little surprised at how far away we stopped. I thought we would get much, much closer - maybe not close enough that I could chip some ice into my drink, but...

 

One additional sighting - there was a piece of ice floating, and with my binoculars I could see a baby sea lion lying on it. So cute!

 

We stayed at Hubbard Glacier for a while and then backed out and to head towards Juneau.

 

 

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Hubbard Glacier was probably the only disappointment of the cruise. We went on the helipad for the viewing. There was so much ice in the water and we could see that some of the larger ice pieces went very deep. There was no way for the ship to safely get in any closer to the glacier and be able to get back out again! So, while I would very much liked to have seen some glacier calving, I understood why they had to stay so far back.

One thing about Alaska, and I heard it many times, the landscape and glaciers are ever changing!! We saw bears in Denali and a clear view of Mt Denali, while many people don’t get to see that. In exchange, I didn’t get to see glacier calving.

Day 4 - Traveling back to Anchorage / Seward / Board the Ship :D

 

On the fourth day of our adventure, we packed up, boarded the bus, and left Talkeetna for Anchorage. The first part of our journey was about 2 hours and our destination was the Anchorage Museum. We hit some construction, which delayed us a bit - but we eventually arrived at the museum around 11am or so. The museum is very nice; however, we were not good planners - remember the stop at Fred Meyers for snacks? Well, we ran out before this last coach trip, so we headed right over to the museum restaurant for lunch. By time we finished, we only had time to see a fraction of the museum. TIP: For those that enjoy museums, I would recommend seeing this before your tour begins - when you first arrive in Anchorage.

 

Around 12:30pm we boarded the bus to head to Seward. NOTE: I have noticed people taking the train from Anchorage to Seward. I asked our tour guide about this, and she told me that normally we would take it, but with the exceptionally warm weather, they had some much snow melting that the tracks were flooded so the train was not running. I am not sure if this is true or not - would be curious to know if anyone on our cruise were able to take the train or not.

 

PS: The restaurant at the museum has exceptional food.

Since we arrived in Anchorage a day before our land tour started, we went to the Anchorage Museum on our own. We enjoyed it. A nice museum; not huge like museums I am used to, but a nice size that you can see it all in a couple of hours.

I don’t know if anyone from our cruise was able to take the train from Anchorage to Seward, but I do know the tracks were indeed flooded and the train not running the Sunday/Monday prior. We got talking to a couple at the Marriott that had disembarked in Seward and were supposed to take the train up to Marriott. They got only a short distance on the train and then were moved to a bus for the rest of their transport. The flooding made the tracks unusable. Also, this couple had rain for 5 days of their cruise. I’d say we were very fortunate with the weather we had on our trip!

I've read some negative reviews lately of food/service in Windjammer and MDR. Do you recommend dining package for some of the days? Do they have the lobster/steak night in MDR? Thanks! Glad you are having fun!

 

 

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I was on same cruise as OP. We enjoyed the food we had in the MDR and WJ. No complaints from us about quality, but food is subjective. Prime rib was served on night 1, and Lobster/prime rib night was on the second formal night, which was Day 5 of this cruise - same day as Icy Straight Point. They chose Day 5 for second formal night because we had an early all aboard time (2:30) so more people did get a bit more dressed up.

We did go to Giovanni’s one night and Samba one night. Both were excellent!!

For the person that asked about alcoholic hot drinks, the day we cruised Hubbard Glacier they were selling hot chocolate at the helipad viewing area, with an assortment of alcoholic choices to add to it. I don’t know about other times.

Cuddly was a great addition as CD also.

So glad to see this review. We will also be on Radiance SB next Friday. In Denali early next week and I hope we have as good weather as your pictures indicate you had!

LOL, that's exactly what I said to my wife when I read that (my first time on Radiance as well). She cruised as a kid and has been on older "curtain ships" before. Her advice is to lay a towel or two around the outside edge of the shower to soak up any water that may escape.

The shower curtain doesn’t thrill me either. I much prefer the door. Guess we’ll just have to struggle through. Lol.

See you onboard 6/22. Hope you are not too worn out from your land portion!

Dorothy

We will be on Radiance Southbound June 22 after 5 days pre-cruise land tour. I’d enjoy reading your comments and seeing the menus! I would also like to know who your cruise director is, if you think of it. While a cruise director doesn’t make or break my cruise, some are definitely better than others! I believe there is to be a change of CD’s for Radiance, but don’t know when exactly that will happen.

So... do you think well fitting leggings with tops long enough to cover me appropriately would be offensive to people on non-formal nights?

 

 

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You will be fine. I’ve seen LulaRoe leggings worn in MDR on other cruises. They pack easily too!

I'm all for the mobile option of check-in if people choose to use it. As for me, I print my airline boarding passes and all cruise documents.

I'm a hybrid - I pay almost all bills online and via auto-pay, but I want to receive a paper copy of the bill in the mail. I don't write checks at the grocery store anymore, but I have never used debit with my bank cards - it's cash or credit only. I have a smart phone, but have never played a game on it. My phone is my only camera and takes great pictures, so that's a huge plus. It's also my alarm clock, esp on vacations.

To each their own. More than one right way to do things.