karli_ratte

Just a quick update: After unsuccessful phone calls and my email from Friday I received an updated booking confirmation honoring the new price today. Now that was fast! 

Dear all, 

thanks!! I'll keep trying! I sent an email with plenty of screenshots now :-) Let's see how that works out. It's only a 5-day cruise and only 100€, but still. 

I called the customer service again and received the information that best price guarantee only means, that I am allowed to keep the old price from the original booking. Really...? 

That's unfortunately exactly what I suspected and gathered from comments here on the forum. I guess I'll try again tomorrow via the hotline or send an email with the screenshot of the price drop... 

We lifted and shifted our cruise from Nov 2020 to Dec 2021. I just noticed a 100€ price drop and called the hotline for A/CH/D. The very nice lady there explained that yes, the best price guarantee is available for everyone, but the only exception is cruises that have been lifted and shifted. 

Has anybody else made that experience, mainly in Europe? I can't help the feeling that this is another of those regulations not valid for all RCCL customers... Nowhere on the website does it say that lift and shift excludes customers from the best price guarantee (if I overlooked that, please let me know). 

Looking forward to your comments.

Did the same, but have been waiting since the beginning of June. No refunds yet (oh, and I usually book in € via the cruise planner, so I expect no problem with conversions from US$). 

Sorry to hear that. While Lufthansa treats its customers despicably in regards to cancelled flight refunds (March flight cancelled, still no money), they let us re-book all flights from 2020 to 2021 without rebooking fees (some charges if booking a different class might occur, but that's still better than what the OP describes). 

On 7/31/2020 at 9:06 AM, steamboats said:

 

 

 

Here in Germany (especially in Bavaria) you can get a free test at all airports when you return since last week. They also build up test stations at two major train stations and yesterday they started at three major autobahns close to the border to Austria.

 

 

Can confirm that as we crossed the border to Germany on Thursday and returned to Austria yesterday (visiting family, wouldn't have travelled abroad otherwise). While Austria is doing well enough COVID-wise, I was very impressed how diligently people in Munich follow the rules like wearing a mask and keeping 1,5 meters (vs. 1 meter in Austria) distance 🙂

I have to agree with the OP. NEVER does any booking show the kid as free on the Kids sail Free promo. We are based in Europe, so I'm used to our "deals" looking a bit different (meaning the deal being no deal at all). I have also tried booking the same cruise under different promotions over the last 8 months and I always end up with the same total. The only thing that changes is the amount per person. The lowest I've ever seen for our 3 year old is 133€. Even on the Kids sail Free promo.

We lifted and shifted on June 5th. I cancelled everything in the cruise planner before that. Haven't received anything yet... So cancelling before L+S didn't get us our money back faster (at least not yet).

15 hours ago, steamboats said:

@Kimba_83 and @karli_ratte, no this was never officially published or on the website (anyway the website currently is just an automatic translation of the US website with some slight adjustments). They simply stopped in October charging the gratuity automatically to your onboard account. BTW I haven´t gotten envelopes for years anymore (but I have always prepaid). I haven´t cruised since October but I have many reliable reports by German cruisers (both RCI and X) that you´re not charged anymore. A lot of people were pretty confused as they didn´t check their account and didn´t see it until they got their final bill. This avoids any further law suits (Wettbewerbsrecht because of wrong advertising) here in Germany.

 

steamboats

Thank you for explaining. I wonder if that also counts for bookings directly via the Austrian RCI website (not sure if that is strictly speaking the same one as the German one). Well, only one way to find out 😉 I haven't seen an envelope in years either, but then we've mainly been on Celebrity. 

4 hours ago, steamboats said:

 

No, they simply don´t charge it anymore... They used to say it´s included in those "fixed" catalogue prices. But onboard the German bookings are not charged anymore since October. You receive an envelope by the end of the cruise and can do whatever you want.

 

steamboats

I've looked all over the website now, but can't find anything regarding gratuities being included. Do you have a link etc. confirming this? I'd rather not take them off my booking to find they put them back on during the cruise... 🙂

4 minutes ago, steamboats said:

 

It´s a matter of currency exchange rate.

 

steamboats

Still works for me 😉

2 hours ago, steamboats said:

Karli,

 

Gratuities did not go down... and actually with a German booking gratuities are included since October 2019.

 

steamboats

They are still separate on our booking and we decided to prepay them. We originally booked in the middle of November 2019.

The original prize of our booking before we lifted and shifted. Actually, it‘s 6(!) Euros cheaper now, because apparently the gratuities went down 2 Euros per person 😉

Just for informations sake: I got the revised booking confirmation with the corrected prize within 24 hours, which was really fast.

3 hours ago, Kbonner said:

 

Good luck and Schaun mer mal

😉 Hat zum Glück funktioniert! 

Dear all,

THANK YOU so much! I called the RCI number located in Vienna (no 0800 number!) and was connected pretty fast (12 minutes wait) to a very efficient rep, who lifted and shifted me within minutes. He sent me a new booking confirmation right away, warning me that the price would be wrong and would be adjusted within 7-14 days, but he wanted me to have a booking confirmation without delay. 

Overall this was just about the easiest adjustment I have ever made to any RCI/Celebrity booking. Perfect!! 

FionaMG, thank you so much! I'll maybe best call the hotline. I got it from this website: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/deu/de/cruise-ships/itinerary-updates

My experience with Royal and Celebrity is, that usually whatever policy applies to Northern American customers often does not apply to Europeans. We would really like to lift and shift our cruise out of Miami in November, but I'm uncertain if this policy also works for Europeans. I can't seem to find the small print on Lift and Shift, only on Cruise with Confidence.

Are there any European cruisers on here, that have changed their cruise under this policy? I'd be very unhappy to cancel all my purchases in the cruise planner only to find out that I can't change my cruise under these conditions anyways.

Thanks in advance!! 🙂

EDIT: Please ignore: I just read that you can only lift and shift cruises already cancelled, after going over everything on the website what felt like a hundred times...

Thanks for your report. We have a 3-year old. We used to cruise with Celebrity in the past. Switched to MSC, when our daughter was 1,5 years old and did not enjoy the cruise at all (though they are very family orientated). So we switched back to Celebrity this year. The itinary was quite heavy for a not quite 3-year old, but she loved the ship (Reflection, Baltic Sea, 11 nights) and everybody (staff and guests) was amazing with her. We're doing Royal Caribbean (Explorer) next year, also stopping at Labadee, so your report has already given me some ideas on what to do, bring etc. And thanks for pointing out the pack and play situation. Not what I would have expected… 

We were in Concierge Class at the beginning of August and they still had bar soap. 

Thank you so much for this review. We returned from this exact cruise only 2 weeks ago and I still miss the ship. We had such a wonderful time! Your review lets me relive it! 🙂

Don't rely on the onboard ATM dispensing Euros. We returned 2 weeks ago and I wanted to get some extra Euros for tipping our waiter in the MDR (I'm a cashless person, so I never carry much money around with me). The ATM for US$ worked just fine, but the ATM for Euros didn't. I was not happy that I had to tip in $, when the ship would be cruising through Europe for another couple of months… I'm sure staff appreciates the local currency more for extra spending money rather than having to exchange it again. 

So do get your Euros in one of your ports of call and don't rely on the ship's ATM. Also, the ATM operator double charged me, despite me selecting for my bank to convert from $ into Euros (my home currency), which my bank did. I was very disappointed that the ATM would not be better maintained on a European cruise. 

11 hours ago, karli_ratte said:

We used SPB the week before last for our 2-day tour. For my partner, DD and myself it cost about the same as the Celebrity tour on a bus would have cost. We had our own guide and driver and paid in €, if that makes a difference depending where you come from (it saved us a bit on conversion rates to US$, which was the original quote when we booked). 

The tour was tailor made for us, included all highlights and was adjusted whenever necessary to fit in everything we wanted (we had the "relaxed tour package" due to having our DD with us. It was NOT one of the special children tours offered, but a regular tour). 

Our tour guide, Fatyma, was amazing. Great knowledge and very interesting to listen to without the sensational story telling you sometimes get from other tour guides to keep people interested. 

And yes, I can confirm what someone said further up. We entered the Hermitage before opening hours and were completely alone (!!!!) in most rooms for hours before the big groups started filtering in. What an amazing experience!!!! So stay away from the ship tours and treat yourself, it will be really worth it! 

Also, all the tour guides work together and have a very elaborate silent communication system in place to keep the crowds moving smoothly. 

 

For those with children: We booked a child seat and had one waiting for us when we started the tour. Unfortunately it was too big for our DD (she's a light weight). SPB organised a new seat while we were at the Hermitage and had it ready for us when we returned to the car. THE BEST SERVICE EVER!!! Absolutely amazing!!!!! 

 

Little fun fact: The tour booked a few days before ours with our driver Olek and our car had been with German band Rammstein and he was very excited to tell us about it. Made us feel like real celebrities 😂

Oh my god, I think I got completely confused, but can‘t edit my original post. Our tour guides were called BEST GUIDES SPB. Bestguides-spb.com! Literally the best 🙂