A lot of posters love to make fun of CCL's Platinum and VIP "perks".

[CanWeGoYet?]

I'm glad I found this thread. All I seem to read is how lame the platinum perks are & people would be crazy to be trying to squeeze in cruises now to make platinum. Which is exactly what I'm doing. :p

 

I think priority embark & free laundry, even just limited free laundry, are substantial perks. I'm only a little more than half way to platinum on days, so I want to get there before the number of cruises no longer counts.

 

I wonder if the price of the shortie cruise has increased due to the platinum deadline. And if the prices will drop when january 2014 rolls around.

[golfadj]

I'm glad I found this thread. All I seem to read is how lame the platinum perks are & people would be crazy to be trying to squeeze in cruises now to make platinum. Which is exactly what I'm doing. :p

 

I think priority embark & free laundry, even just limited free laundry, are substantial perks. I'm only a little more than half way to platinum on days, so I want to get there before the number of cruises no longer counts.

 

I wonder if the price of the shortie cruise has increased due to the platinum deadline. And if the prices will drop when january 2014 rolls around.

 

I dont think that many people will throw in extra cruises to get to platinum.

 

Benefits not that great. So I dont think pricing will be much affected.

[fig414]

I had a feeling my post would go the way it has. All the little "no big deals" somehow seem to add up. The laundry on our 12 day was invaluable because we were in the midst of an extended vacation. The dedicated line at the Purser (or whatever it's called now) saved us BIG time once (30 minutes) and small time on another occasion. I won't go on and on, but to say the little things do certainly add up. We are the silent majority.

[golfadj]

Thge perks are very nice and make the cruise a notch better.

 

Just wish we didnt lose some of the things we had gotten used to.

[glrounds]

Yes, they don't seem earth shattering on paper. I'm sure other lines have different perks that some feel are better. I've seen all the posts about "we should get this" or "we should get that". Points well taken. Our experience with VIP is that all the little things add up to make our cruise a lot nicer. No one puts a gun to your head to sail on a particular cruise line. It's all about the little things, at least to us.

 

I didn't even know I was PLATINUM when I first was.:confused: I had given up on having many of my cruises counted going back so far to the TROPICALE and the JUBILEE. My cruise mate, Amy, who was already PLATINUM told me looking at my cruise history, "just go down to the Purser and tell them you're PLATINUM". So, we took my gold card down there, told them they had made a mistake, that I should be PLATINUM. They went to the back (I assume to their computers) and came back, apologizing up and down, taking my gold card and giving me a PLATINUM card. They sent a bottle of wine to our cabin EVERY night for the remainder of the cruise ! ! :D

 

I've only really cared about the VIP boarding, FREE slots tournament, and FREE laundry. The laundry is so questionable now with all the friggin' rules, etc. that the only thing that really matters is the early boarding. I cruise Carnival for the PRICE and the FUN people. Perks are not only NOT THAT GREAT, but don't really matter that much to me.

 

[golfadj]

I didn't even know I was PLATINUM when I first was.:confused: I had given up on having many of my cruises counted going back so far to the TROPICALE and the JUBILEE. My cruise mate, Amy, who was already PLATINUM told me looking at my cruise history, "just go down to the Purser and tell them you're PLATINUM". So, we took my gold card down there, told them they had made a mistake, that I should be PLATINUM. They went to the back (I assume to their computers) and came back, apologizing up and down, taking my gold card and giving me a PLATINUM card. They sent a bottle of wine to our cabin EVERY night for the remainder of the cruise ! ! :D

 

I've only really cared about the VIP boarding, FREE slots tournament, and FREE laundry. The laundry is so questionable now with all the friggin' rules, etc. that the only thing that really matters is the early boarding. I cruise Carnival for the PRICE and the FUN people. Perks are not only NOT THAT GREAT, but don't really matter that much to me.

 

 

Nice that they sent you the wine. Annoyed that we lost the free

casino games after being told the new program would be so brilliant.

[cv322]

It's all about the priority embarkation & disembarkation for me....love it, love it, love it. I don't care about the laundry, as I would never let them wash my clothes anyway. I did a 16-day in April and packed plenty of clothes for the entire trip!

 

Speaking for myself, I'm sick to death of the complainers.

[halos]

Nice that they sent you the wine. Annoyed that we lost the free

casino games after being told the new program would be so brilliant.

 

I don't usually cruise on longer CCL cruises so I don't usually have to worry about laundry, and I don't get upset when I have to pay to have laundry done....that being said, I feel the limits on the laundry for platinum are totally lame for those that do utilize it. That little change was utterly stupid and really unnecessary imho.

Seriously, those bags are not large and they are pretty thin. It's not like you can squeeze 10 pounds of stuff in them.

Brilliant isn't what I would call any of it....

[CanWeGoYet?]

I dont think that many people will throw in extra cruises to get to platinum.

 

Benefits not that great. So I dont think pricing will be much affected.

 

I can easily see how the benefits don't look like much, if you had better perks under the old system. But if you never had platinum & don't get priority embark, any free laundry etc - those perks are worth something. It's taken me so long to get this far, even if I hadn't cruised with Celebrity or HAL I still wouldn't be there. So I feel like I need to get in a few more cruises before the deadline or by the time I make it to platinum under days, I'll be so old I won't be able to cruise.