ARandomTraveler

Courtyard Marriott/Brickell is a recommendation I've seen pop up a lot. The W South Beach is nice, but similarly priced to the Intercontinental.

I hear ya. I keep an SUV strictly for skiing and camping. Too many cars is such a first world problem, haha.

Seems like $22.99 is the new lowest non-Black-Friday rate. Pre-pandemic it was common to see $19.99 for the refreshment package as the lowest non-Black-Friday price, but I haven't seen that on my cruises this year, nor have I seen anyone report that price other than those who can wait for Black Friday. If I were you I'd buy it at $23, then if the Black Friday sale is better, cancel and rebook. I wouldn't wait to purchase until Black Friday because it seems too possible that the base prices will go up again before then. It may end up that $25 becomes the new lowest price, and $23 is what you'll get for Black Friday. Who knows.

Haha, we all gotta do our part in whatever way we can. I bought an electric car to offset the pollution of my 2 gas guzzling cars. I'm pretty sure the math works out 😂. To be perfectly honest, although I like the environmental friendliness of the car, the primary reason I bought it was for the gas savings and the big tax write off, which was a very financially beneficial purchase. But hey - I'm trying.

None!?? That's disappointing to find out that there are towns that don't even offer recycling as an option. That shows how sheltered I am that my assumption is that everyone offers it but that just some of us are required to do it. I wouldn't have thought there were places in America where it's not even an option. In my town, if you go to a festival or some sort of outdoor public gathering, there's always an employee standing by the trash making sure people separate it properly, and if not, the employee has to dig in the trash and take stuff out and put it in the correct bin. The stress (sort of kidding) of taking your turn at the trash bin and being tested to see if you know which item goes in which bin is, I think, the city's inadvertent way to make us just not want to throw anything away 😂. There's of course the argument that nothing really gets recycled anymore so it's a waste of time and what not, but I think that making people aware of what they're throwing in the trash does help people be more conscious of not unnecessarily buying disposable stuff. But I digress, this isn't a thread about consuming disposable trash, it's about overconsumption of alcohol, party on! 😂

Tell me you live in a city that doesn't require you to separate your recycling and compost from your regular trash, without telling me you live in a city that doesn't require you to separate your recycling and compost from your regular trash 😂 I'm teasing - but also, realizing how differently people think about disposable "convenience" items depending on where they live. Where I live people carry reusable water bottles everywhere. Not that we don't use the throw-away ones too, but nobody would ever think twice about carrying around a reusable water bottle, or feel like it was a burden because we've just been trained to do it (and obviously, we're required to separate our recycling and compost from our regular trash 😂).

The free coffee in the cafe is just regular drip coffee, nothing special. The specialty coffee is pretty equitable to Starbucks or other coffee shop coffees. If you like specialty coffee, buy the coffee card, or just pay out of pocket.

This situation is exactly what travel insurance is for. I assume you didn't have any. That aside, that really sucks to have went through all that run-around and extra travel hassles for nothing. And I'd be infuriated to have not gotten that information about the late sail away on time. And even more angry to not be able to reach anyone on the phone the whole time you were arranging alternative travel for yourselves. Any chance you paid for the cruise with a credit card that has purchase protection? It might not work, but I'd definitely try to dispute the charge to the travel agency, since they didn't provide you the service you paid for.

I noticed when looking for price drops and perusing all the different categories last night that CP and BW view inside cabins are $150 more than an oceanview balcony (on my Thanksgiving Symphony cruise). I was wondering if that was normal or not, I guess not.

I had the same question, I had to read their post several times to try and understand what they meant by "...if you get a ticket with a reserved seat..." I think what they meant is that after paying for all the upgrades on Delta (reserved seat, baggage) the cost is the same as Southwest. I still think Southwest is better, even if the price is the same, because Southwest makes it so easy to make changes, get price drops, and cancel your flight without losing any money. You also get 2 free checked bags and 2 free carry-on bags. I'm guessing that when doing the Delta vs SW price comparison, people are often only adding the cost of 1 bag on Delta, which isn't an equitable comparison. Plus Southwest has the best points system of any airline. It's very inexpensive to purchase flights with points. I often find flights that cost anywhere from 3,500-11,000 points that would cost 30,000-50,000 on another airline.

Is $21 a decently "low" price for surf & stream? That's the lowest I've seen it in my cruise planner so far, but I feel like I've read posts from people saying they got it for $16. How low does it go? (The price I mean).

I can never find a $59 flight to anywhere except Albuquerque or some obscure place nobody wants to go when they have that sale. They should stop advertising those fares because they don't exist to anywhere good. During the pandemic I did get a lot of $79 fares to San Francisco which was cool, but I'm paying for it now with flights that are 4x the price (or more).

The bummer with that is it's costing you more points and therefore you're benefitting less from all the points. Where you normally could get 4 flights for those points, you're now only getting 2.

🤬

😠 I'd be so mad. Sorry that happened to you. I hope their extension of your final payment date doesn't cause you any trouble. I've read stories of people's reservations getting cancelled and then the room being sold to someone else. I'd actually be freakin' pissed. What a waste of time having to be on the phone and keep on top of them.

The patch works but I learned that I need to take it off after wearing it for a day. The medicine seems to stick with me and keep me from getting sick, but if I leave it on longer than a day, my vision gets blurry and I get a dry mouth and a sore throat, the whole works. My doctor prescribes me 3 at a time, that way I can put one on before I get on the ship, then re-up in the middle of the cruise if need be. The 3rd is a backup in case one falls off or something. My last couple cruises have been the southern route out of Puerto Rico and the seas down there are much more calm, no need for the patch at all.

I threw up all over my sea bands 😂

Agree on the people in deck chairs and other obstacles. I've tried multiple times to run on the track on Voyager class ships and there's constantly people just Lolly-gagging and standing in the way, or walking on the "fast" side of the track. To be fair, I'm sure those people are wondering who the heck bothers to go for runs on their vacation and aren't realizing they're in the way or even on the running track, but it's still annoying. The other thing I find hard about it is that if you are a fast runner, it's very hard to keep up speed with how small the track is, and as often as you have to jump around people or stop/slow down to wait for them to move. AND- one last thing, it's freaking hot and humid outside. Very hard to cool off when sweat doesn't evaporate because of the humidity in the air. I gave up and started running on the treadmill in the gym, which feels a little weird because you can tell the ship is moving, but you get used to it.

Symphony November $73-$78

They won't price match anything from a competitor's site.

During the pandemic (2020 and first half of 2021) I was flying all over the place for $79 on SW, plane all to myself, it was great 😂

Perfect Day Petro Bay

They justify it because they can charge whatever the market will allow. If people are willing to pay higher costs and they're still selling just as many drink packages (or at least making just as much profit) then technically, by economics principles, they were not charging enough previously. At some point the supply and demand curves will stop intersecting and they'll stop raising prices, but unless people stop buying at the higher price, they have no good business reason to lower them. As to your question regarding the "is it worth it" conundrum...well, that's a personal decision. For me, the alcohol package is way too overpriced for me to see value in it. I'm not going to drink enough alcohol (or non-alcohol) beverages 7 days in a row to get the dollar-for-dollar value out of it, and there's not enough intrinsic value in the "all inclusiveness feeling" of having it. I buy the refreshment package. It cost me $189. The alcohol package would cost me $603. I might drink $50-$100 worth of alcohol all week (if any), so if I pay out of pocket for that, I'm at $289 (refreshment package + out-of-pocket expense). It's not worth it to me to pay an additional $313 just to have the peace of mind of having the all-inclusive feeling, or "just in case" I want to drink more alcohol. I know myself, I know I won't drink an additional $313 of alcohol. People seem to forget that you're still allowed to drink alcohol on a cruise even if you don't have the package. You can pay out of pocket for drinks.

I feel like I paid an outrageous price for 2 round trip flights from the west coast to Miami for a Thanksgiving cruise (it cost me $2,550, I was expecting around $1,000). I booked the cruise before the airfare was available for purchase, and I think it's possible that if I'd seen the airfare prices before booking, I might not have booked the cruise based on principle alone. The cruise itself only cost $2,514 (ocean view balcony cabin on Symphony). The cruise was originally around $3,000 but there have been some price drops. I wonder if bookings are lower than normal due to the airfare. We're taking a land vacation to Europe in September for a couple weeks, and the round trip airfare only cost me $2,200. I expected the holiday airfare to be more than normal, but was definitely not expecting $2,550. It's not stopping me from taking the cruise but I'm annoyed by it. It's no surprise that Florida residents cruise twice as much when they can pay half the price for the same vacation. Not to mention housing and the cost of living in the south-east is extremely cheap compared to bigger west coast (or northern-east coast) cities . "Expensive" is relative I guess.

Yep I get that. Our 2 flights from the west coast for our Thanksgiving cruise cost me $2,550, and our ocean view balcony cruise fare is only $2,514. Oh - and hotel for 2 nights before (because you never know how the snow might affect flights so we're coming in early) is costing me $700. The flights and hotel cost more than the cruise 😵‍