Jan 2022 Explorer cancelled and replaced with Radiance

[Ourusualbeach]

11 minutes ago, Ashland said:

Well darn...per cabin...again you can't trust the RCI reps to give you the facts. They specifically told me it was pp for my change from Freedom to Explorer...and my schedule still isn't showing up online......Eeeek !!!

I suppose there is always the possibility that is per person however all the moves they did for the Europe shuffle a month ago were per cabin and the OBC offered to the people on the Quantum Transpacific was also per cabin.  I just don’t see how they would offer your cruise per person.  The reps seem to be off their game more than usual lately.  

[Dan-P]

I am on sailings in Feb 2022, but here is where I am so far:

 

I had a B2B booked.  Both sailings have been moved to the Radiance.  They moved us to a different junior suite for each leg, when we had the same center hump junior suite for both on Explorer, and they have our OBC all jacked up.  We booked this B2B onboard a previous sailing, so had OBC from that, and we also had a ton of OBC from taking 125% Cruise Planner credit from a cancelled cruise that we had already applied to the 9nt sailing.

 

I suspect Royal is still working to get OBC squared away, but I've told my T/A that he has until the current cancellation date (Oct 30), to get us in the same cabin or we will cancel the 5nt - second portion of the B2B.  Just not worth messing with changing cabins.

 

We did an all-inclusive resort in September (our first time at an AI), in place of a cancelled cruise, and absolutely loved it.  We have booked two all-inclusive trips in place of cruises going forward already.  With the cruise industry in such a mess right now, that may be our future vacation direction.  We are D+ with Royal, but are growing really tired of having vacation plans messed up, even if at no fault of the industry itself.

 

Dan.

Edited October 24, 2020 by Dan-P

[retired dude]

gotta love the tradeoff of loosing aruba curacao and bonaire and picking up san juan, puerto plate and the obligatory labadee..no need to get off the ship for those three....still think this is a ploy to drive all of the diamond members back to our childhood days on carnival and substitute zombies for a great bottle of wine, don the flip flops, ball caps, and wife beaters for formal night....aint life grand!!!!thanks rccl

[NateUpNorth]

51 minutes ago, retired dude said:

gotta love the tradeoff of loosing aruba curacao and bonaire and picking up san juan, puerto plate and the obligatory labadee..no need to get off the ship for those three....still think this is a ploy to drive all of the diamond members back to our childhood days on carnival and substitute zombies for a great bottle of wine, don the flip flops, ball caps, and wife beaters for formal night....aint life grand!!!!thanks rccl

 

Which Radiance sail date was that? 

Ours turned into Dominican, St Thomas, St Lucia, Barbados and Antigua.

Edited October 24, 2020 by NateUpNorth

[retired dude]

november 12th 2021

[toad455]

So it looks like no ABC island cruises? One of the best itineraries, very foolish if RCCL doesn't bring it back.

[smalltimecruiser100]

I was on Explorer 4/1/22 out of MIA but since I'm travelling in 2021 on a different ship to all but two ports as the new Radiance itinerary, I cancelled and found the Vision out of Ft Lauderdale going to 2 of 3 ABC islands, different date though

[NthernLgts]

On 10/21/2020 at 7:49 PM, Dan-P said:

 

Radiance will be in Miami now for late 2021-early 2022.

 

And the 9nt itinerary (ABC Islands) we had booked on Explorer is nowhere close to similar to the new.

 

http://creative.rccl.com/Sales/Royal/Deployment/2021_2022/RD_Caribbean.pdf

 

Dan.

 

 

Royal did confirm today that the above pdf is correct for our 12/10/21 sailing from Miami.  Ugh.  New destinations are:

 

Sea day

Labadee, Haiti (the only original destination they kept)

San Juan, PR

Phillipsburg, St.Maarten

Basseterre, St.Kitts & Nevis

St.Croix, USVI

Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic

Sea day

Miami

[sharpasice]

On 10/23/2020 at 1:20 PM, NateUpNorth said:

 

Call again..... we just got off the phone having ourselves changed.

 

Original deck 8 booking.... new room showed deck 3...... just confirmed and moved back up to deck 8.

We're a lowly interior cave like cabin.... but you never know.

 

Got our new invoice with the room number confirmed while on the call..... but the price didn't carry over...... gotta discuss that now.

So, just yesterday,  I was able to get the room we needed on the Radiance, close to the elevators due to mobility issues, they had put us way back, almost but not an aft JS BUT my bill went up approx $4000!!!!  I know they are supposed to honor your original price so they are working on that now.  I hope you also get yours straightened out.  They told me it would take at lease 72 hrs. 

[NateUpNorth]

On 10/31/2020 at 3:32 PM, sharpasice said:

So, just yesterday,  I was able to get the room we needed on the Radiance, close to the elevators due to mobility issues, they had put us way back, almost but not an aft JS BUT my bill went up approx $4000!!!!  I know they are supposed to honor your original price so they are working on that now.  I hope you also get yours straightened out.  They told me it would take at lease 72 hrs. 

 

For our invoice change they indicated wait till after Oct 31 to even bother beginning to look for the correct one.

I think they're fairly backlogged processing these. We'll give them a few more days before we call again. Maybe next week.

[Ashland]

4 hours ago, NateUpNorth said:

 

For our invoice change they indicated wait till after Oct 31 to even bother beginning to look for the correct one.

I think they're fairly backlogged processing these. We'll give them a few more days before we call again. Maybe next week.

I think it's going to take a lot longer than a few days...maybe a couple of months.

[retired dude]

we got our new room assignment on the radiance and at the same price, but we still have a bad taste over what rccl called a similiar cruise in moving from the explorer to the radiance and what they called a similar itinerary  that no longer includes anything close to the abc's.....we had to put put up with it or loose quite a bit of $ but it still does not make this diamond couple happy campers and we will probably stop cruising with rccl....clearwater florida by way of kentucky.....

[Ashland]

8 hours ago, retired dude said:

we got our new room assignment on the radiance and at the same price, but we still have a bad taste over what rccl called a similiar cruise in moving from the explorer to the radiance and what they called a similar itinerary  that no longer includes anything close to the abc's.....we had to put put up with it or loose quite a bit of $ but it still does not make this diamond couple happy campers and we will probably stop cruising with rccl....clearwater florida by way of kentucky.....

I agree...you have every right to be completely unhappy with this change. Going from Explorer to Radiance and a definite change in itineraries should absolutely be a price reduction !!

[NateUpNorth]

14 hours ago, retired dude said:

we got our new room assignment on the radiance and at the same price, but we still have a bad taste over what rccl called a similiar cruise in moving from the explorer to the radiance and what they called a similar itinerary  that no longer includes anything close to the abc's.....we had to put put up with it or loose quite a bit of $ but it still does not make this diamond couple happy campers and we will probably stop cruising with rccl....clearwater florida by way of kentucky.....

 

As a booking that was affected exactly the same way we are very very disappointed in how it was handled.

We booked specifically for the ABC's.

Given Radiance CAN dock at all three ports (no size issues) AND the fact that the ABCs are still scheduled from San Juan there is NO reason the itinerary change was 100% necessary......... other than to generate cancellations, which I still believe was the goal here.

[sharpasice]

On 10/31/2020 at 2:32 PM, sharpasice said:

So, just yesterday,  I was able to get the room we needed on the Radiance, close to the elevators due to mobility issues, they had put us way back, almost but not an aft JS BUT my bill went up approx $4000!!!!  I know they are supposed to honor your original price so they are working on that now.  I hope you also get yours straightened out.  They told me it would take at lease 72 hrs. 

Finally got my corrected invoice!  NOW, I hope the ban on cruises lasting more then 7 nights doesn't extent to our cruise in November as I noticed cruises on Radiance lasting 9 nights are not on the website at all. Fingers crossed. 

[Wine-O]

54 minutes ago, sharpasice said:

Finally got my corrected invoice!  NOW, I hope the ban on cruises lasting more then 7 nights doesn't extent to our cruise in November as I noticed cruises on Radiance lasting 9 nights are not on the website at all. Fingers crossed. 

There is one showing up for 26 November 2021.  There's a gap between 12-21 November.  Maybe it's for a drydock.  🍷

[sharpasice]

Has anyone had any trouble accessing the payment portion of this cruse on line?  It keeps telling me there is a server problem.  Also I wanted to check current pricing on this cruise & can't find it anywhere on the RCI site, looks like it doesn't even exist.  Wonder if there's more going on than they are telling us?  Like are they thinking of canceling this cruise all together?  Or is it being chartered? Usually they say sold out but I can't even find this cruise on cruise booking sites.   

[Biker19]

14 hours ago, sharpasice said:

Has anyone had any trouble accessing the payment portion of this cruse on line?

If you haven't done it already, also ask in the Roll Call thread.

[sharpasice]

11 hours ago, Biker19 said:

If you haven't done it already, also ask in the Roll Call thread.

Thanks Biker but I checked for a roll call just 2 days ago and couldn't find one...maybe I'm doing something wrong...I'll check again, thanks.     

I just found it but the title is confusing, instead of saying roll call for Radiance of the Seas Nov 12 2021 it has a long title "What used to be the Explorer, now the Radiance Nov 12 2021. I DID see that before but when I clicked on it, it didn't actually say it was a roll call but looked more like a regular thread...till I saw the Cruise Critic Host give instructions on how to title the roll call.  There appears to be only one person on the roll call.  I'll try though, thanks again for the idea.

 

 

Edited January 7, 2021 by sharpasice