AlohaLivin

Deceptive? 😂 How would you suggest it be handled when the US doesn’t have a national tax and instead taxes are set at the state and local level? How exactly would that work? You would prefer a national tax that ranges from 6 to 20% like many countries have? You would rather have a nationalized tax that is much higher than what you pay now so you know “exactly” the price vs. understanding the price will be a small percentage higher? If you would check history you might see how it came to be that we differ from most European countries, we established a new country to do things differently.

Now you know, next time you will know just to wait for the final amount until you get to the register 👍🏼 (And the duvet was an example as I’m sure you know). I’ve never spent a lot of time in that part of Europe, but my father spent quite a lot of time there away from home and family in 1944 and 1945.

I love my country, I feel sure that no one is trying to confuse visitors or anyone else. There are things that I find odd when visiting other countries, but that is on me not on them. I find that people are often confused about money issues when visiting other countries, I don’t think of that as the “fault” of the other country. We have a different system and it doesn’t seem a bit odd to us (just as the fact in the US we use a sheet with a duvet 😬). But my sole intent was to explain the situation to someone I thought did not understand that situation.

I didn’t miss the point at all - she asked questioned about why the clerk asked for more money and I was explaining why. Just because she is from Great Britain did not mean that I was going to assume that she didn’t know how other countries do things. Thus, I did not know whether the question was serious or facetious (and stated that up front).

Because the stores and the manufactures together set the suggested retail price often for store that have multiple locations (like Macys or Starbucks) and different cities/ counties within a state have different tax rates (sales tax). So there’s no way to account for that other than to add the tax on the top. In our area, for example it is 5%. I can see how that someone from a country with a different system would be confused by that. Lots of countries have sales tax, Argentina, France, Germany, New Zealand, Russia, and others. Each deals with that in a different way. We all differ, I guess that’s both good and bad.

I am confused, was this tongue-in-cheek? I assume that it was. There would be tax included in this purchase so that $10 would not have been quite sufficient for a 9.99 purchase, but store clerks don’t ask for nor get tips. Thank God, I would have to buy far less stuff if so 😂🤣 And I agree, it would be easier and better on staff overall if they rolled the gratuities into the fare 👍🏼

It used to be, there were offered servers offering a full bar. But post Covid it’s usually in a huge venues and they offer only champagne (which we don’t drink). From now on we will skip it.

Anyone know who the Diamond and the suite’s concierges are for Explorer currently?

Deleted - misfire!

There are a few of the balcony cabins that I know are not available on the adventure that would have been on Voyager. They just don’t exist on adventure. I don’t know how many of those there are. But our TA said they would be swapping one for one otherwise.

Before the shut down there were reserved areas for D+ /pins/ suites, and thus we did not need reservations (I should have been more clear that it was the D+ /pins/ suites categories that I needed info on). Since the re-restart, even cruisers in these categories were required to have reservations (and even the concierges were not making reservations the week prior as they had before). That was still the case in April. I was hoping that had changed at this point to the original way of doing things - I am the planner in the family, so anything off my plate on day 1 is a good thing 🙂

Slightly different question - Reservations before the shut down weren’t needed for anything but the ice show. But the three cruises we have had since restart all required everyone (suites, D+ and Pins included) to have reservations for all shows. Anyone have any clue as to when they will change back to the normal way of doing things? Getting reservations for basic headliner shows just adds more stress to embarkation day that would be nice to avoid as we did in the past. We have friends on a B2B on Liberty now and he says he hasn’t needed reservations for the shows - can anyone confirm that is the case fleet wide now or not?

We were booked on the Christmas/New Year B2B and will keep the cruises now that they will switch from Voyager to Adventure. Not what we expected but also not a problem - they are shaping it to be epic regardless.

How is Royal Caribbean profiting from Covid testing? It isn’t. The testing listed on their site is through Optum (UnitedHealthcare). The testing requirement was a response to a genuine public health crisis (and required of them by the CDC in order for cruise lines to return to service based on that crisis). They believe that requiring customers to test helps keep passengers safe (since we are all sandwiched in there tightly) and helps to keep their business afloat (which is completely reasonable given that they could likely not withstand a repeat of 2020-2021).

We have been looking at this because we’re about to be on a B2B on the explorer. The early shows seem to be a starting time of 7:30 and 8 pm. But as noted, that could change on a one-off sailing.

We have continued to buy stock in RCL, NCL, and AirBNB from the initial dive through the last weeks. I have no more ability to predict the future than anyone else, but we feel good about these for the future. But the numbers show that at this time the things that people are still spending money on are gas, food, and travel.

The butler in the Haven will bring you an iron - they don't love it, but they will. They will also iron things for you I understand, we just have never asked for that. But that bowl of gummy bears, now THAT is a perk 😉

And here I had packed a whole box of them for the August cruise. Daggumit

We always eat breakfast and lunch at either coastal kitchen or the main dining room.

We really enjoy Norwegian, but in the interest of full disclosure we have only sailed in the Haven part of their ships (which is an area of suite’s that is sectioned off with a bar, separate pool, and usually a Haven restaurant). But with that caveat, I can highly recommend the line (the food is always top notch in our experience).

Aug 26 — Sep 2, 202

Definitely… and foam earplugs, I have learned not to travel without them.

By 11 pm usually, we need to function through long and active cruise days!

Not in this lifetime