Florida_gal_50

Yeah, exactly. I don't know what is so hard to understand. I don't think people blindly book without looking at all the scenarios. Also, for Canadians, exchange comes into play. If you book HIA later on the exchange can be much higher. Plus, the advantage fare isn't much lower than the HIA.

It’s not worth it for me to add this. I bought the hia with my cruise and actually paid around the $50 equivalent (being Canadian it’s more) plus I got quite a lot of obc with it. If I would have taken the advantage fare it would have been much more to add the $50 on. I don’t do non refundable fares. I can buy my own gratuities with my obc and keep my fare.

Yeah, I thought so too 😛😉.

Just beware that a vq is a smaller balcony. It’s NOT a juliette balcony like some have posted.

Well the price of my fall cruise went up about the same amount as the gratuities. Not really a sale for me.

You should absolutely be able to pick your room.

It’s a meta upgrade meaning within the category you booked in. You do not jump from and inside to an outside, outside to a balcony etc.

I’d be hard pressed to take that upgrade unless the view is worth that much. I was on a two week cruise. For the first week I had a room with a large balcony. The second week I took an upgrade to a vista suite over the wake on the 4th floor. The room was marginally bigger but when I saw the balcony I wondered where the rest of it was. There was a ton of vibration too. I’d had a cabin on the wake before and it wasn’t like that. This was on the koningsdam. The only way I’d do that upgrade again was if it was free. You should be able to pick your cabin in the case of an upsell.

Frankly I was shocked when cruisemom first did this on another thread. I never imagined that this would be the case. While I’m positive this is not the case every single time but I bet for Caribbean, Alaska and Mexico it probably rings true pretty often.

Yup, I still hand wash a bit myself.

And they learned that suit is spelled suit not suite like the last one 😛.

So just for fun I did a calculation myself. I randomly picked a Caribbean cruise on Nov 17 for 2 weeks. I didn’t want to look forever but the veranda cabin is about 175 sq ft. Iirc the Neptune is around 500. Price is $1869 for the veranda making it $10.68 per sq foot. Price for a Neptune $4959 making it $9.19. People in verandas are paying more than suite guests per sq foot!

Thank you for the step by step. Much appreciated. Thankfully my employer provides very good coverage so until I pull the plug on this gig I’m good.

You get that you pay more because it's larger, right? If it's free I guess it doesn't matter.

That looks a bit high then. $1999 - 1399 = $600. So $600 divided by $3 is $200 per person. It probably wouldn’t hurt to wait to see what happens. If you do see a price down that road you like jump on it. They can go fast.

That sounds like a decent price but it depends on the length of the cruise. One poster has said this several times on cruise critic and I tend to agree. If the price for the upsell is 1/3 of the price then it’s a decent price. Let’s say the veranda is $1000 and signature suite is $2000 just for ease the upgrade price would be good @$333. If all categories are sold out that doesn’t work too well 😛.

I thought someone upthread said the medical insurance was only $100k. No way would that be enough for me as a Canadian. I’m speaking of myself only. I’m pretty sure mine has been at least a million no matter where I’ve gotten it from.

If people don’t bite then they will. That said, I’m pretty sure they have a price in mind and don’t go lower than that.

I always get Hal’s cancel for any reason. You never know what can come up and you don’t have to worry if it will be a covered reason. You don’t have to purchase it until the day before final UNLESS you have a non refundable fare. It’s definitely not a medical plan so you need to get that elsewhere. I used when the pandemic first started and the money was back on my credit card in around 10 days.

No, hal doesn’t have it. I don’t find the cellar master dinner on hal to be all the similar. I have sailed Princess several times and have done the chef table.

Yes if it’s very exotic, maybe. Just because it hurts the narrative doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

No, I don't know how else to explain it. Per Sq foot, both are the same price. The Neptune is just larger not more expensive per square foot.

It doesn’t look like you read what I wrote. The price is the same per sq foot. Not that they are the same price.

There was a very interesting comparison done by @cruisemom42 about the price of Neptunes and inside cabins very recently. It turns out that the price for both cabins was pretty much the same for the inside and Neptune per sq ft. There is no “extra” charge for Neptune suites other than the size. The same can’t be said for celebrity.

Yes I fully understand that. No need to explain.