grandgeezer

19 hours ago, Another_Critic said:

As they say ... you can't take it with you.

They also say…. Don’t out live your money. Ask my brother, he’ll be 66 soon, and do to poor money management, he has no hope of retiring unless he wins the lottery.

5 hours ago, colesc15 said:

Casinos will always win. On land, holds are usually around 89%, on ships likely 93% or so. I've had good winning cruises and losing. But, offers don't care what you win or lose. They care about the money you're willing to circulate through the machines because they know in the end, the casino will win. I win/lose the same in the casino now as I did before the casino reward program so the way I see it, I would have played in the casino regardless, but as a reward, I'm not having to pay for gambling plus a cruise fare. 

 

Losing $5k-10k on a comped cruise is better than losing $5k-10k plus paying for the cruise. 

I had heard just the opposite on the payout percentage so I googled it. The articles I found had a 90% or higher, payback, depending on the cost per line in Vegas. On cruise ships it was in the 75-80% range. The percentage is based on the life cycle of the machine not over a specific period of time. The difference in percentages were based on the ships not being regulated and they have a captivated crowd, no other place to play. The articles were fairly recent, all in 2023.

4 hours ago, ReneeFLL said:

You don’t get a free cruise until you become Pinnacle. People who get “free” cruises thru the casino have paid for them thru their losses. 

I can’t comment on RCL, but I can on it’s sister line Celebrity. Post pandemic I have been offered free cruises, through the casino, four times. The last time we sailed with them is October 2019. The time before that was December 2016. We were never a fan of cruise ship casinos so I’m guessing we haven’t dropped any money there in the last 10-12 years. 

Any other theories?

On 6/19/2023 at 4:32 PM, The Fun Researcher said:

Thank you all!  She does not have any sort of brace or cast.  Pretty amazing.   However to help with the swelling she does need to keep it elevated a lot.  She’s also using those soft cloth covered ice packs pretty regularly.  Hopefully the swelling is a non issue soon.  
 

I think the key is going to be when they allow her to put weight on it.  If that’s the case before the cruise then maybe a wheelchair would work out for her because she can fold it to enter the doorway and then open it again once inside.

 

Fortunately, their balcony room on the Quantum is one that has the bed by the balcony so the couch is closest to the door. That will make it nice so that she does not have to try to get around the bed every time she comes in the room to get to the sitting area.

 

Will still work on her to get a scooter but we’ll see 🙂

It sounds like things worked out the best it could, financially. Couple of comments on the injury.

About a year and a half ago, I fractured my fibula, which is the bone to break if you had a choice.

It’s smaller than the femur and it only carries 15 - 20% of the body weight with the rest on the femur. Believe it, or not, it was done as an outpatient. Went to surgery at 12:30 and was home on my couch before 5:00. I had a cast on for a little over two weeks, then a walking boot on for four more weeks. I almost forgot, I had to wear compression socks until the boot came off, prevent blood clots. No P.T. needed. I do have a 4” plate four screws holding it in place as a reminder.

Having lived through that, I wouldn’t do any traveling during this time. Not being to put weight on the leg until the boot went on was really depressing, having to put the extra burden on my wife.

2 hours ago, KellyCz said:

Departing for Alaska on the Solstice in two weeks, and I was excited to get what I thought was a move-up offer email. Instead, it's the opposite.

 

We're writing to let you know that, due to a rare inventory error, your scheduled sailing is currently oversold in certain stateroom categories.
If you would be willing to volunteer to move to a different stateroom type, you may be able to take advantage of a special resolution offer. 

 

The offer is a move from Veranda stateroom to Veranda stateroom with obstructed view for a $500 refund. Since this is our first trip to Alaska, we've decided to keep our original stateroom.

 

What would you do? 

If it’s cash or a credit back to your card, take the money. If it’s a no refundable obc, stay where you are.

I have nothing against tipping if the service is good and tipping extra if it is exceptional.

Through no fault of their own, the servers are stretched so thin, they have all they can do to just keep up, hence we have never eliminated them or cut them back.

I have one question for all you experts out there, why is it based on the cost of the product plus the tax which is built into the price. For example, we stop for a drink, I have a beer that cost $9 so the tip will be $1.80. My wife has a drink that cost $15 so the tip would be $3. Why?? The waiter took our order and delivered it at the same time, what did he do for the extra $1.20 for my wife?

1 hour ago, twins_to_alaska said:

I'm rebooking today. Exchanging $200 OBC for $120 in cruise fare.

Smart move if you don’t spend money on the ship. Depending on what you would use the obc for, their cost is peanuts. What we would use it for is domestic beer and at the price charged on the ship, that would get us 20 beers. We stocked up with the July 4 sale, and 20 beers cost would be $12 total, including tax. 

12 hours ago, Ellaleah said:

 

 

That probably depends on where “home” is for them!  Have you encountered any Americans working on ships that say it’s better than the job they could get at home?  Doubtful.  There was one American that worked on a cruise ship and wrote a book about it.  It was very interesting, but it certainly did not sound glamorous or lucrative.  The book is Cruise Confidential.

That’s because it’s not for 99% of the people in the U.S. Who in their right mind would take a job that you have to abandon your family and friends for six months or longer, work seven days a week, up to twelve hours a day unless the money was substantially more than they could make at home? When I first started out I had a job that paid big bucks but it required me to travel a lot, sometimes for two weeks, or longer. When I met the girl of my dreams, I quit, and found a job that paid less money but allowed me to stay home. That was only about 54 years ago.

As far as the ONE American who wrote the book, what was her job? I’m guessing it wasn’t a room steward, a drink server or any of what I would call manual laborers.

If I recall, RCL has a ship that just does Hawaii and is flagged in the U.S. If so, they have to abide by our laws that cover wages, hours worked, etc. They might have Americans doing the manual labor jobs.

2 hours ago, ldubs said:

 

Sure I can agree with that.  I hope what @grandgeezer says about cruise staff living well with what is provided via their wages and tips is true.  For whatever it is worth, I actually think we are not far apart as our back and forth might indicate in what should be or shouldn't be happening with tipping on cruise ships.  I think we both agree it is the process that might be flawed.  It is just that we deal with it differently I think. 

 

On a related vein, I've never been asked for an added gratuity on a cruise ship.  I have been asked several times for "10" ratings.   Truth be told, I would likely never give a bad rating unless the service were exceptionally poor.  It is something I happily have yet to encounter on a cruise.  

If you check on Google, the average annual salary for a waiter/server, on Celebrity Cruises, was about $1,700 per month. Compare this to the $4,000 per year they would make back home in the Philippines, and I would call that upper middle class, at least.

4 hours ago, ldubs said:

 

First you say your tips provide staff with a living wage.  Now you say your tips are providing an extravagant lifestyle.  

In many cases you are providing some of them with an extravagant life style. We’ve talked to many crew members who are highly educated, college degreed, and they said they make much more money working on a cruise ship than the could at home working in a job that needed their degree to get.

Prepaid gratuities are good if you are getting them from your travel agent. It helps a great deal if you don’t want the Always Included package.

We are both Elite Plus and the laundry is a great perk. We do all B2Bs and are able to travel with just carryons, four free bags of laundry per week. The 480 minutes a week is an overkill, as we use less than 1/2 of them. We don’t change our internet habits just to use them. That’s also why the drink packages have 0 appeal to us.

1 hour ago, fredmdcruisers said:

9 Royal cruises booked, so owning the stock is a no brainer. AND when Covid hit I bought at $25 then sold at $52 after Covid. Are any of your growth stocks doubling your money.

Like my Economics professor said many years ago when one of my classmates made a comment 

 on someone he knows made a big killing on a stock. He said “Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile.”

I have doubled my money several times on longer investments. My best short term investment was 48% in two weeks when United Airlines bought a regional airline I had just picked up. It amounted to about $6,000 after commissions.

I’ve been on the sidelines for several years since I had to take a minimum distribution from my IRA, which by the end of the year will be around $108k for the past two years. That’s a lot of obc.

On 6/28/2023 at 10:25 AM, cruiseguy1016 said:

I bought 264 (I don't remember why I chose that number) shares when it was around $22/share. I've sold off enough to cover my initial investment and now I'm playing with "House Money". I just applied for the OBC for a cruise booked for next year. The OBC posted in 5 days.

264 shares? I started buying stocks in 1988 and you could only buy/sell in multiples of 100s. Anything different than that was called “odd lot” and there had to be a seller that had, in your case, 64 shares to sell. There was a premium for this and from what I read, it could take quite a while. Maybe things have changed. If so, I wouldn’t want to be the one who put 100 shares for sale and they only took 64 to sell to you.

3 hours ago, Mark_T said:

When did you last see MSRP on pre-packaged food products in the US?

Funny you should ask, Wednesday is our shopping day. We went to Frys Food, Sprouts Markets, and Albertson’s and everything we bought had MSRP on it and a sticker showed the new price if it was on sale.

5 hours ago, Mark_T said:

However, leaving the packaging visually unaltered so you still think you are buying the same quantity and then labelling it correctly in small print is entirely legal but still unethical...

They might do that in the U.K., but here in the U.S., the only info on the package is the exact weight and the MSRP in big, bold print. Never seen otherwise.

55 minutes ago, miched said:

Shrinkflation is nothing new.  Gillette did it in 1924.   They reduced the amount of blades from 12 to 10 to maintain the same price.   

https://hbr.org/2010/09/gillettes-strange-history-with

Look at a “1/2” gallon of ice cream.  It is no longer a 1/2 gallon.   A pound of chips is no longer a pound.

 

I am sure that eggs will eventually drop to 10 for a “dozen”

 

Some bars don’t serve a real pint,  they use a 14 oz “pint” glass selling it as pint. When you get it after the foam and short fill you are lucky to get 12 oz

 

Can’t cheat with the fill lines on the German mugs. 

 

What ever happened to a bakers dozen?

 

Happy cruising 🌊🚢🇺🇸🌅

 

 

Where we live a 1/2 gallon of ice cream is still  a 1/2 gallon. 1# is still a #. The items where the quantity has been lowered is labeled accordingly. To do otherwise is illegal and unethical.

4 hours ago, prmssk said:

Price out a verandah where you get to select your room and you will see the difference between cruise only and AI is $75 pp/pd which is right in line with typical AI pricing. 
 

They want to fill the ship and are willing to take a loss on the cruise fare but not the add-ons. This makes perfect sense after final payment when there are still plenty of cabins to book. 

What has that have anything to do with the regular post. How about booking the cruise only and buy the drinks and internet later? I’m pretty sure you would be able to get them for less than the $229 p.p. per day that it shows on the original post.

2 hours ago, Kelownadon said:

I don’t find it that cheap. A 7 night sailing in October worked out to $3,660 as seen below. If we do the math $3,660/7 times 12 you get $6,274 for a 12 night equivalent. This is pretty close to what a lot of 12 night sailings are going for. I forgot to mention these rates are AI. 

As stated, these are six day cruises between the last week in October and the first week of December. It’s part of the Exciting Deals. The price is about $620 p.p. including tips, but not AI.

The good part is, if you want AI it’s only $1149 p.p. more.

2 hours ago, Kelownadon said:

 

10 hours ago, neverlaysup said:

I just booked B2B Alaska on Millie in an oceanview cabin for less than $350pp for each leg. The taxes were almost as much as the cruise fare, felt like a pretty good value. 

Everybody’s opinion may be different. I should have said, for the cruises I might have considered taking, I saw no value.

2 hours ago, neverlaysup said:

Nor will it, people just like to complain but at the end of the day, for the money, Celebrity is still a good value for certain cabin categories.

That’s one opinion. The opposite of that is Celebrity, as it is now, doesn’t have any categories of cabins that are good value. That could be said for the whole industry.

4 hours ago, Texed said:

I have been waiting for a massive exodus from Celebrity so prices would fall on the rooms we book.  So far, neither has happened.  😎

I don’t remember seeing big discounts during the pandemic. Their goal was 50% which greatly influences the supply and demand theory. If you want to see discounts, look at the six night Mexican Riviera out of L.A., insides $249, ocean view $299, Veranda $349, and Concierge $499. The real deal is adding the AI package, on the Verandah it’s only $1148 more.

5 hours ago, MISTER 67 said:

You’re probably right but so far they’ve never turned down a booking of ours. Guess what? We loved the old Vegas too, haven’t been back since 1990.

We used to be Vegas groupies too. We lived in Wisconsin and went to Vegas 17 times between 1994 and 2000. Funjet had charters that ran about $300 p.p. which included four nights in a hotel and air from Milwaukee. For about $30 p.p. for better hotels such as Luxor, Mirage, and Treasure Island. Food and drinks were dirt cheap in smaller places.

In 2001 we retired and moved to Arizona. About that time the prices started to climb to a point, like the cruise lines, that the value wasn’t there so we stopped going. It’s about a 4 1/2 hour drive and we were only there four times, none in the last 15 years. Looks like it will be the same with cruising as far as going on one.

If you set your expectations low enough, you’ll never be disappointed.

On 6/4/2023 at 9:33 AM, lulabelle said:

Coming back to Bayonne on the Oasis on a Friday in July.  Just found out I have a final test in the am in the Bronx.  How early can I do a walk off?  Thanks

Depends on what time the ship is cleared at the port and when Customs is ready. Most of the times it’s around 7am. Last cruise we were on it was 8:45, in Miami, because of computer problems. Have a Plan B, just in case.