SailingShelley

I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU GUYS!

 

How do you normally book your cruises? Do you use the Royal Caribbean website, or a third party site?

 

I would love to know, seeing as I'm a crew member and never booked a cruise before.

Previously, I used the phone exclusively direct to Royal OR do Next Cruise on board ships since you can get real time most current availability of cabins. I have recently become a travel agent and I can still call directly as my own agent for my cruises. If you use an outside agency, you cannot change anything directly but have to go through your agent.

You can also book yourself with Royal and fill out a form to submit a transfer for your booking to an outside agent but again when you do this, you can no longer Modify your booking but have to let your TA do it.

This is some great info..details! I do have one suggestion for a change in the regulations: You all know the self-centered, ignorant passengers that do not show up for muster drill? Can the ship begin to require they be the last ones to leave the ship in an emergency?

Good Point! I've experienced Muster drills where cruisers have had medical issue arise because of guests who feel these drills don't apply to them!

I think there should be another "naughty room" called the MUSTER Naughty room" where they can be held at least as long as the time they made others wait until finally showing and have them in the last life boat IF any are left! :evilsmile:

IMO the RC website is so bad I end up using other travel sites. This is also helpful to cross shop the other cruise lines

 

It's pretty bad when all that money & time was invested in making a new website that is LESS user friendly! The Reps probably spend more time on the phone with website issues than making new Reservations! :eek:

That link tells you how many are signed up.

 

But if you click the link to see the confirmed list, it takes you to Customer Service as an incorrect link.

 

I am not sure if my reservation got lost, but I just tried signing up again and it acted like I was not signed up. But the total number did not change.

It will always do that and when you click enter you will see the sign up count each time. So if you are signed up previously, the number will not change. Did you receive a confirmation email saying that the 25 required sign ups have been met?

It's almost midnight so I'm going to go ahead and say 97 days until my Halloween cruise.

That's :evilsmile: "SCARY" :eek:

A fire on board and then ship looses all power. Or the ship hits a rock at high speed and soon sinks.

No debate about that-It would be a bad cruise day! :eek:

Chuck and I love the perks for Loyalty! This summer we will receive our second Crystal on board The Indy! Only downside is that is weighs so much to take back in our luggage! :oWe always seem to be on a Freedom Class ship when we get them. I'll have to make sure to be on another class ship the next time so the ship etching on the Crystal is different! :D

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.

Not much into visualizing the ship's actual course around to get to the ports? :o

I was looking for it today as well. I was getting frustrated but it's good to know that I should stop wasting my time looking for it.

If enough cruisers call with wishes to put The itinerary maps back on the website, it may motivate Royal to put them back!

Yes, that is true.

It's 31 days until departure and I was able to print them today.

If I book pre cruise will I save the 18% gratuity and do they ever offer a BOGO.

You may find a Sale on RCCL website but that is not the norm.

We have all our cards dating back to 1991 on the Nordic Empress

J.

Oh How I wish I had that Nordic Empress one (now Empress of the Seas) We saw her in port and we could not believe how lovely she was-all 50,000 tons!!

Our very first cruise was on NCL Sunward II. We were driven up in a van and when we saw that Beautiful New ship, we asked the driver "IS that our Ship?!" The excitement was building--until he pointed to this tug boat next to it at 13,000 ton! He corrected us pointing and said " No! That's your boat-NCL Sunward II"

You could hear the sighs of disappointment! :loudcry:

But it was our first cruise The entertainment we saw from folding chairs looking at a one step up stage and the food and midnight buffets every night with marzipan and every kind of dessert imaginable beautifully decorated, more sea food than we'd ever seen, made this impressive adventure grand! It was better than any camping trip! LOL!

Next was my First Royal cruise on the Monarch and we have been cruising ever since! :D

Wild mushroom and chicken pappardelle, served in the MDR at lunch. I look for it on every cruise. Very delicious!

Thanks! Sounds delicious! I'm starting a list for my 44 nights on The Independence!

I have pleasant dreams of waking up on a Carnival cruise. Amazed that someone would think that was a nightmare. With that said, some ships I've liked better than others. Never had a bad cruise though. Looking forward to my first RCI cruise next month. But it's not because of dissatisfaction with CC.

Carnival has been upping their game but I admit, I didn't use them because of the chatter in past years..

When I moved down to Florida, close to the ports, I found a Carnival cruise worth trying on the newly refitted Sunshine (renamed-was the Destiny) that Carnival has spent $2.3 million redoing it. We figured, how bad could it be? I mean back in the day we camped! :eek: So we took a leap of faith and so glad we did! We couldn't believe what a great cruise it was! My advise is to go on a newer ship with the 2.0 dining, If you don't have kids in tow (any kids we DID see were begging to go back to Camp Carnival!), go when the kids are in school. Keep an open mind as you will be amazed at the diversity of their entertainment plus late night comedy every night and their food was excellent.

Of course, being a Diamond Plus member, I am always happy with Royal but itineraries are also considered....

Oops, I got off subject and changed it to why Royal cruisers should consider CC! :eek:

Get a price from the cruise line and then let your TA give you a better price or some obc.

There are advantages booking directly with Royal. You have full control of your booking and can call and change yourself. When you use a TA you can no longer do requests directly. You can book it yourself and in the first 45-60 days you can get it transferred to a TA but from that point the TA has to communicate with Royal. Or you can become your own Travel Agent and get the best of both worlds.

On Oasis, our lunch was in Giovanni's.

Cool! We miss the lunch sometimes since we get off early to spend the day in the port not boarding for the next cruise until past the luncheon.

We have also done B2B with different cruise lines and different Royal ships. (expanded signature shows details) We did the Southern Caribbean on the Liberty and followed it with a Central America cruise on the Jewel in Miami. We also did The Oasis followed by Caribbean Princess out of Ft Lauderdale. At the end of a cruise everyone is more serious but for us It's such an awesome feeling knowing our vacation is not complete until we finish our next cruise adventure!

With more cruises in our history, we take the longer cruises and reserve the 7 day ones for breaks in the Caribbean since they fly by so fast! Or we use them with a B2B convincing ourselves that we are saving on the one time airfare! :o

I love the curry dishes and roti in the Windjammer.

I LOVE buffet -- love having a little bit of lots of dishes.

You may be interested to know, this is not common knowledge, but there are special menus on board for Indian dishes. Make the inquiry, you may be able to have these prepared special for you as well in the MDR. One Night, the table next to ours got an entire Indian meal and said it was excellent.

We did enjoy our one Carnival experience but that being said, even with the changes, we still prefer Royal and our Diamond Plus status we have the best benefits of ALL! :*

We did the 5 day Southampton, Rotterdam, Brussels, Cherbourg & Le Havre and then remained onboard for the 15 night trip back to the states. The leg back included Southampton, St. Kitts, St. John, Barbados, Martinique, Labadee, Fort Lauderdale. Ours was in October and we were fortunate to be blessed with warm weather. It could have gone the other way, that time of the year. I would suggest spring just to be on the safe side.

We are on the Indy doing B2B but not the TA since we live so close to the Caribbean, we didn't want the local islands as part of a TA. We would rather use a TA to see parts of Europe since we are so familiar with the Caribbean. So my advise is hop on a TA with European stops.

I put it in the hallway outside the door.

Nobody ever messes with it...

Interesting :confused: Would that be a fire/safety issue in the hallway?

I've never seen a table left out there. :o

31 Days Flying to London!

35 Days cruise to Paris and Bruges

38 Days cruise to Rotterdam and Bruges

ALL on

The Independence of the Seas!

Quick quasi related question: Does anyone have a link to RECENT MDR menus? I know they’ve changed some, but im not confident I’m seeing current iterations when I search.

Chuck and I would love to get a look too! :halo:

I booked a B2B2B from Vancouver to Hawaii and Pacific Coastal 643 days in advance

That's Perfect and how we did it with these 5 on The Independence we are sailing from August-October to get the same cabin the entire time sailing! :D Only 36 days until we begin, after 3 nights in London.

I haven even thought of trying to figuring out how to cancel even I was pretty sure I wouldn't be attending. I wouldn't worry about it.

Agreed! Don't give it a second thought.

Hey there Shelley,

 

I’m not sure if you know you’re doing this or not but all 10 or so of your posts this morning have been response to people who have posted over a month ago. You might need to refresh your browser.

Thanks for letting me know. I was looking back for a news posting from Cruise Critic regarding the tech issue for the lists being dropped on Royal Meet and Mingle. Do you know where I can find it?

The Monarch was our First Royal Cruise in 1996!

(She was so beautiful and nothing like the 13,000 ton "camper" ship NCL Sunward II!)

Because of Monarch, Royal became our go to cruise line!