jencruzin

I would think that this would depend on how many people are not satisfied with quality of service; it would probably occur closer to the end of the cruise if people are thinking the quality of service is lower than expected.

Not a ridiculous question at all. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm leaning toward the day you pay that final payment. Air2Sea is, in a way, like your TA for the flights. They buy your tickets well in advance, but the part where you mentioned fully refundable now has me wanting to go back and look at our Air2Sea booking. My question is similar, I may want to change times of returning flight to a later time, same day, back from LHR to IAD.

Exactly, just hoping the 0530 moored to pier happens, and they let us off as soon as possible. We yet dont know the distance from the pier to the bus terminal. If we make that bus, we'll be just fine.

Bus times are 0700 and 0900 the day of arriving back to Southampton, but our existing flight is at 1230pm. So I'd rather take that earlier bus!

Yes. And it surprises me how people will still forge ahead and pay extra tips! We pay extra tips if something out of the ordinary goes down and they're on it.

Yeah, I remember that! But given how things have changed (or CAN change suddenly) what happened to us on AOS was that the regular chef's table room was snatched up to accommodate either COVID ops or it was the Bermuda visa entry nightmare, where lots of people didn't fill out a form properly.

We booked via Air2Sea this time. Our ship returns to Southampton at around 0530, our prebooked bus leaves for LHR at 0700. There is, apparently another bus leaving around 9am, but our flight departs LHR on 16 June at 1230. We'd like to get that 0700 bus, we'd be self-assist debarking, unsure how long it would take though being able to leave the ship to catch that bus. Is it possible for Air2Sea to arrange us on the next flight at 1625 from LHR to IAD without added cost? Or would I be better off attempting to get on the later flight myself by just calling Virgin Atlantic and arrange it via the airline? I have our booking reference through the airline already.

We have always done Chef's Table on a sea day and usually book before boarding. On our previous sailing on Adventure, it was rather disappointing, they held it in the middle of the stairs in the MDR. There was no cozy private room for us, just out in the open, so we are hoping this is not the case on our upcoming Anthem sailing for a 12-night. Overall, what a fantastic wine pairing dinner!

Good review. Gives me hope that some of your negative points are fixed by the time we sail on Anthem this June out of Southampton.

😵 THIS made me THINK (hide our toothbrushes)...we pre paid gratuities, I hope that our cabin attendant knows this. Might slip that person an extra $20 at the start, then another $20 when we leave.

Agree with the OP. Tipping is OFF THE CHAIN these days, especially considering the added gratuities to the already high fees. We haven't extra tipped the dining staff the past couple of cruises because they really never went above and beyond for us. And, extra tipping the cabin steward? Only if, again, they really WOW us and do something very extraordinary. Head waiters stop by and interrupt the dining table's discussion to tell us something we already knew. Tipping them is throwing cash away, IMO. Gratuities in advance = tipping in advance.

ourusual is right though about this. I found out this without knowing beforehand and yes, it is crazy!

Actually no, this particular hump balcony wasn't listed as a different or higher category rating for some reason. However, thanks much for pointing out earlier what I did not notice. I checked, the midship balcony cabin booking is the same as our category.

Some of the brits on our upcoming sailing managed to get a lovely deal of £43 pp each day on their drink packages. What a fantastic deal. For us right now, that would be around $1260 for the two of us. But without that cool discount, we'd be forking out something like $1861 for two drink packages. We're on a 12 night sailing but since we are Diamond, we get 4 free drinks each per day.

All of the suites are booked, just checked. But....this makes the bidding more interesting because there are usually some cancellations.

Morning. But since they've cut one of the cleaning services, this'll affect any extra cabin tips, sadly. We fork out enough in the advance gratuties as it is.

Tried it, we're not within the next 30 days of sailing quite yet. Thanks though! Tempting but not certain we'd do it.

So here we go. Thanks ourusualbeach for pointing this out, I'm sobered up now from thinking I'd get the PD! THIS time I ran the mock booking center ship, like our booked cabin. Now, it's went up, so I think I'm giving this up and just pay off the remaining balance:

ahhh. UPDATE: it's now just "we book your room" and no longer "you pick your room" which I chose last night. So now I know, it's off. update#2: NO! "You pick your room" was below, I just now noticed... I may as well pay off the remaining balance and realize no more PD checks. Final payment is due March 6th, so....but, there's still a lot of unbooked cabins! Should I give up the ghost on this?

Thanks for pointing this out....about to run a mock booking again to see. We're midship, on the hump, slightly bigger balcony but didn't pay more for it. We booked this cabin on our last cruise.

Yes, same exact category as what we booked. But, I did not know about these two different sub categories....will investigate as the day progresses. Thanks!

Yes, I do all of that. Just a simple mock booking, all the way through. I leave off gratuities on purpose, of course.

I gave up after two (lengthy) attempts on the PD's noticed. I did, however, send them an email via their portal, to explain how and why I see it. But the agents were pitching smokescreens, using excursions, air fare, gratuities into the mix. I get the feeling that they know I meant BASE pricing, including taxes/fees. I am going to see if they'll honor the difference I see since Feb 7th. They are getting tougher and more resilient to fend off honoring the PD's we see, this only makes me want to press on even more.

That's probably it right there.