Mike Moore

As evidence from the varying opinions, no time will ever be perfect. I'm thankful to those of you that shared your stories of making reservations hours after the opening time, while still being able to secure what you were looking for. The last thing we aim to do is have you start the planning of your cruise with us by having to set an alarm, so hopefully that puts some of our west coast US guests' minds at ease. Due to operational restraints that are unlikely to change in the next year, I'm afraid it'll be at least that long before we can pick a time that is more ideal for all of our guests in Europe, the UK, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and across the time zones of North and South America. Thank you for your understanding, as the next best option is reverting back to midnight ET, but we're trying not to go back to inconveniencing our guests on the east coast of the US.

This change is not going in effect until after Sunday, so you will still be doing you reservations at 8pm ET.

That is correct - it won't be until next year, but it's coming...

Unfortunately the IT window can't move, because our UK office is too close top opening Sunday morning at that time. Regarding your other suggestion, due to other reasons beyond my control, we can't currently use any time between 8am - 6pm ET. I'm hoping that changes at some point next year, but for now it isn't possible.

It most likely will, yes.

Unfortunately 8pm ET would occasionally interfer with the time that our reservations system gets taken offline for maintenance. So for those cruises, guests would log-on eagerly anticipating being able to make their reservations, only to be told that they couldn't.

Good morning CC community! Just a quick update that in the next few weeks we're going to be moving the time that reservations open for shore excursions and dining reservations from 8pm EDT to 7am EDT, 13 hours earlier than they are now. We send out an email the day before advising of this change, so look for that message and double check you booking the evening before your reservations become available to avoid disappointment, and apologies for the inconvenience.

Many thanks for the kind words - I was happy that we were able to get it straightened out, and it's my pleasure to help out where I can. We all do our best to provide exemplary customer service for our guests, from the first point of contact until long after you have returned home.

If you could please send me an email with you relevant booking information, we'll be happy to take a look at it. mmoore@rssc.com

Afraid I don't have an answer for you.

The special offer free land programs are still included in the pricing on those voyages.

Agreed that one is a bit of a challenge, and unfortunately there's not much of a way around one-off situations like that, so the best we can do at the moment is the "where applicable". Far from an ideal solution to be sure.

That is correct. All the other amenities during the cruise remain the same.

Above the fares there used to be a sentence that read "An additional savings of X is available for guests arranging their own flights, hotels and transfers." We're going to keep the new pricing as is and put that sentence back but have it read "The All-Inclusive Cruise Fare below includes credits for guests arranging their own flights, hotels and transfers."

All of that is still the same - changing the display hasn't change anything about what you could or could not do before, any of the inclusions, etc.

Correct, and those would make for some very long column names!

You can continue to do that option, it's just that the price for that specific scenario is not listed on the site. But it wasn't before, either. Prior to this change, we showed the full all-inclusive price and then an amount that you could deduct from that price if you were doing your own flights, hotel and transfer. If you wanted to know the cost just doing your own flights, but keeping the hotel and transfer, you would have had to call us or a travel agent for that price. So hypothetically speaking, if a particular sailing before showed a price of $12,500 with a credit of $2,500 for arranging your own flights, hotel and transfers - we are now showing $12,500 and $10,000. If the hotel protion of the $2,500 was $500 - you would need to add that to the $10,000, same as before. Seems like pulling the sentence from the T&Cs and displaying it above the Fares grid may be the way to go, assuming the above makes sense?

No change in the cost of that, but there was no reference to the cost the way pricing was displayed previously, so this change had no impact to that. And there is also no change to our all-inclusive offerings. Everything is the same as it was before, we are just doing the math now.

It does not, as @flossie009 refers to in the terms the price is for guests who make their own flight, hotel and transfer arrangements. We could bring that statement up to above the fares grid to make it more vsible?

They are - the only thing not included in the right column is flights, hotel and transfers.

That would I believe cause a bit of confusion, as if we sent an email promoting the offer, but then had prices on the page you landed on after clicking on a link in that email that didn't include the offer, I would be afraid someone would not understand that the right column prices do not include the land program.

The second column (labelled "cruise") includes everything in our regular list of inclusions from the moment you embark on the first day until the moment you step off the ship on the last morning. We'll continue to monitor feedback to determine if this change is causing more confusion, so appreciate you sharing your thoughts.

We used to show the amount of the credit if guests elected to arrange all of their own flights, hotels and transfers. We recently decided to do the math for visitors to the website, so the right-most column is now all-inclusive pricing for the cruise portion only, with the flight/hotel/transfer credits already removed, for the convenience of those guests.

You can make your final payment via My Account, just as you did with your deposit. Payments for bookings made through a travel agent can only be made via that travel agent, which is why anyone who always books through a travel agent would be unaware of that functionality within My Account.

The dining reservations functionality generally runs quickly and smoothly, so I've not heard before someone having this many issues with it. The good news is it is currently being redesigned, and we are targeting to have the new and improved experience live before the end of the year.