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Debarkation day is the best day to chair hog and wear shorts in the MDR for breakfast!

Whoops you're right I did bad math. The global figure is 800,000 / 8 billion. So 1 in 10,000. Royal Caribbean has 100,000 people who work every year on a cruise ship contract. Based on the global figures, you would estimate 10 RCCL crew to commit suicide a year. Even during covid quarantine lockdown when some crew were basically trapped on a ship, I believe the total suicides was 6. And that is the height of suicide numbers for the cruise ship industry. So working on a cruise ship = less likely to suicide than working elsewhere.

I disagree. Some humans are unstable. 1 in 1 million humans, every year, take their own lives. That number doesn't change much even with spending money on mental health. More people die slipping and falling. Should the cruise line spend endless money trying to stop those kinds of deaths? Even more people die on a cruise ship from heart attacks. Should the cruise line spend endless money trying to stop those kinds of deaths? This was an unstable individual who was likely attempting to violate their contract without the penalties associated with it. You can't fix that.

Weird -- all my flights (even the ones I booked last week) have no change fees. Is this a domestic ticket? Did you book direct with AA or with a TA?

What airline is charging change fees? I change flights almost 3-4 times a month with no change fee! Did you book Basic Economy somewhere?

Probably an unanswerable question but if you extend a contract (and get paid a bonus for it), then you can't just leave without violating it. It's not that they blocked him from leaving, likely. Royal pays some pretty strong bonuses to folks who are willing to extend their contracts, and if you need to violate the contract, you best either come up with the money to pay them back, or find out you're blacklisted in the industry after.

They don't, not on board the ship. The mental health industry is always up in arms about this, but when you call them out on the fact that there are fewer suicides on a ship than in society, they go silent.

Crew Center (the source of this story) are really off in saying that the cruise lines don't do enough for the mental health of their employees. The suicide rate of cruise workers is below the suicide rate of of the general US population and below the suicide rate of the general world population. While this is a tragedy for the individual and their friends and family, this isn't a cruise line issue, per se. I know enough *retired* cruise line workers to know that the average person loves the time they spent traveling the world and the money they made doing it. You'll always have mentally unstable folks in any business. You can't account for outliers in how you treat everyone.

ignore this comment

I would book for 3 to lock in pricing for the bigger room and then if you drop a person later, you still get the bigger room.

Check out this thread for answers to that question:

Wow I like this shortened menu for the main dining room. Perhaps we can suggest to RCCL to call it “MDR: Shorts”?

Ah true! Its never been a problem for me yet just charging and watching for refunds but I have so many cruises it might be easier. I’ll try it this year and see!

Can someone just pre buy OBC ahead of time though the cruise line and then use that to book planner items? seems like the easiest way to handle repricing.

Airfare is so expensive now that even my weekend 3-day cruises have been cut back in half. Flying from Chicago means zero local options! I says jump ship once and report back.

I hate to /thread this discussion, but…

Since I got chewed out for wearing shorts and then speedos in the MDR, I resorted to only wearing nothing but my seapass card and ultra long lanyard. The card dangles low enough to stay family friendly!

Seems Royal is relegating the older smaller ships to the shorter length cruises. Why not try a B2B on her? 3 days Bahamas, 4 days Western and back!

I used a TA for 9 of my 12 cruises, 1 is a casino comp and 2 were with RCCL. The TA did the repricing checks in about 10 minutes for all 9, and she answered the phone on 2 rings with zero hold time! Downside is my TA isn’t a part of Royal Up so there’s that. But I got $570 off of Royal’s suite price, so there’s that bonus, haha. If someone started a TA that guaranteed to watch price drops and cruise planner changes, they’d make tens of millions!

Have 12 cruises booked, 3 were repriced lowed — only $300 savings total but still worth it!

You’ll see this!

Thanks for the info!

When did you sail? I was on Oct22-29 and didn’t see it. Is there a way you could tell?

great to know, thank you! that’s what I’m hoping for, appreciate the info!

I highlighted the line in yellow: