Utopia of the Seas Short Cruises??

[Another_Critic]

2 hours ago, orville99 said:

DW and I have not paid a penny in credit card interest in more than 30 years either. Unfortunately you, your children and the two of us are a significantly small minority.

 

2 hours ago, OCSC Mike said:

Yay for the no CC balance ever club! 🎉

 

Add me to the list.  

 

I've actually been on the no interest at all list (no loans 🙂 ) the past 11+ years.

[RFerrington]

1 hour ago, firefly333 said:

Idk if it's because people booked wonder when it first came out because I'm seeing utopia cheaper. Wonder booked in march and utopia just booked of course.

 

Wonder isnt quite double but my math says almost $300 a day and utopia about $225 a day, significantly less for a neighborhood balcony. Got central park on wonder and boardwalk on utopia. No way I can see that utopia costs more. Booked sorta s2s same time frame, feb 2 and feb 10. 2025.

 

Confused why people just keep posting utopia is more... not my s2s. Not sure if mine arent typical but utopia for sure better price. Just a regular cheapo balcony, not a suite. I keep doing the math again when I keep reading the assumption again ...I saw another post someone saved $800 b2b on utopia vs a week on wonder. And some others too who saved money doing 7 days b2b on utopia. Only one above who said utopia cost more 7 days in a suite. Everyone else says less. 

Utopia is more per day than Wonder for us.

 

The Bella cruise (Wonder) is $107 PP/PD and the Utopia cruise (Bella 2.5) is $146.75 PP/PD.  Same exact room (12229 on both cruises).

Edited June 27, 2023 by RFerrington

[ink76]

The wife and I pay all our bills with cc them at the end month we pay off the card then will collect the rebait that what pay our cruises you just got to be discipline,  the bank has some great deal you just have to be smart about it

[splashsmom]

18 hours ago, orville99 said:

With Mariner docking at T5, parking on that side of the port is not bad at all (especially now that they have changed to a "pay as you enter" model for the garage). T1 where Wonder and Independence dock is quite packed most days and if you don't get there early, you probably will find yourself parking in one of the overflow surface lots.

Thank you for posting about the change to "pay as you enter" for T5 parking.  Good news that I must have missed if it was published earlier.

[orville99]

27 minutes ago, splashsmom said:

Thank you for posting about the change to "pay as you enter" for T5 parking.  Good news that I must have missed if it was published earlier.

No problem. I didn't see it published on this board, and we only found out about it when we sailed out of T5 on Mariner last week. They are still working on relocating the gates, so last week they had staff waiting at the entrance to the garage to swipe our credit card and give us a parking stub. When we got off the ship we were in our car and on the road within minutes of getting our luggage😎

[orville99]

7/21/24-7/28/24 Wonder 7-night in Boardwalk (cheapest) Balcony = $1589/pp +port fees and taxes

7/22/24-7/29/24 4/3 B2B on Utopia in Boardwalk (cheapest) Balcony = $2715/pp +port fees and taxes

 

BTW, that same balcony on Wonder for 7/16/23-7/23/23 was over $2500/pp when  we booked. Changed to a B2B on Mariner in a GS for about the same price

 

No thanks😇

Edited June 28, 2023 by orville99

[Jimbo]

1 minute ago, orville99 said:

7/21/24-7/28/24 Wonder 7-night in Boardwalk (cheapest) Balcony = $1589/pp +port fees and taxes

7/22/24-7/29/24 4/3 B2B on Utopia in Boardwalk (cheapest) Balcony = $2715/pp +port fees and taxes

 

No thanks😇

That cheapest balcony price is insane on Utopia.............Hope the ship sails empty !

[OCSC Mike]

1 hour ago, Jimbo said:

That cheapest balcony price is insane on Utopia.............Hope the ship sails empty !

 

That's the inflated inaugural. To be fair, one shouldn't use that for most comparison purposes.

[OCSC Mike]

On 6/27/2023 at 5:18 PM, RFerrington said:

Utopia is more per day than Wonder for us.

 

Same here. I have a Utopia B2B on hold for our spring break 2025 for what wasn't a great price but wasn't terrible. Factoring in TA group rates and perks for both, Wonder is $600-700 less for a 2 person interior.

 

I want to check out Utopia, I love CocoCay, I enjoyed the last 3/4 B2B I did, and I will have been on Wonder 3-4 times by then... but even with all that I don't think I can pay that much more for a nearly identical ship.

 

I'm thinking there may be certain off-season dates where Utopia would be cheaper or at least close but I'm not flexible enough to use them. We'll either try to sneak in an extra shorty or Utopia will have to wait.

Edited June 28, 2023 by OCSC Mike

[notmyrealnameoremail]

Our great travel agent got us a good deal on Icon's 30 November 2024 cruise a while back and we thought it would be fun to sail Utopia and check out both of Royal's newest ships.  We hadn't been paying close attention to the Utopia launch and didn't realize it was doing 3/4 itineraries. We really didn't want to go to Florida for a 3 or 4 day trip. 

 

It took me a while, but I finally realized we could tack Utopia's 9 December 2024 4 day cruise onto our trip down to Florida for the Icon.  We have two days to get from Miami to Port Canaveral and I'm sure we can find something to do. Our travel agent got us what we consider an excellent group rate for a Central Park Balcony ($1419 including taxes and gratuities total for the 2 of us) and now we are booked.

 

I'm convinced we may be doing more of these almost S2S, or real S2S in the future. It's easy to find other longer Royal cruises to match up to Utopia when there are cruises out of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and Port Canaveral to choose from,

 

Just my two cents.  As always YMMV.

 

Tom

[Christefan]

RCL published the schedule for the newest ship in the fleet and the one word that comes to mind is DISAPPOINTING! The ship will only offer 3 and 4 day “party” cruises Mon-Fri & Fri-Mon similar to Freedom out of Miami but at average prices of 7 day cruises on any other Oasis class ships. Many customers will now have to decide to drop $3000 for a 3 day balcony or spend the money at any of the Orlando theme parks (not many families can afford both together to fill the week of vacation so that they can justify the airfare). That is in direct comparison with 7 day Wonder cruises, which is Utopia’s sister ship, also sailing out of PC. Unlike Icon, Utopia has nothing new to offer over Wonder, unless you consider moving restaurant locations on the ship as improvements. It will be interesting to see how quickly RCL will sell this ship. One thing is for sure, it will not be at the selling rate of Icon. 

[bigmoose7563]

17 hours ago, orville99 said:

7/21/24-7/28/24 Wonder 7-night in Boardwalk (cheapest) Balcony = $1589/pp +port fees and taxes

7/22/24-7/29/24 4/3 B2B on Utopia in Boardwalk (cheapest) Balcony = $2715/pp +port fees and taxes

 

BTW, that same balcony on Wonder for 7/16/23-7/23/23 was over $2500/pp when  we booked. Changed to a B2B on Mariner in a GS for about the same price

 

No thanks😇

Comparing inaugural week vs a ship that will have been out for 2.5 years is not a valid comparison at all

[Vera/Lee]

12 hours ago, notmyrealnameoremail said:

I'm convinced we may be doing more of these almost S2S

My favorites are B2B in the same cabin. For us it's stressful getting on/off the ship, packing and unpacking. It's not worth it for just 3 or 4 days to the same Ports. If we were younger, it may be worth it once or twice. I love Florida;) There's so much to do there and so many options. Have fun!

[OCSC Mike]

40 minutes ago, Christefan said:

One thing is for sure, it will not be at the selling rate of Icon.

 

Nothing will be. It will sail at 100% capacity though and make Royal tons of $ from the PDCC visits and other add-ons.

[orville99]

5 minutes ago, bigmoose7563 said:

Comparing inaugural week vs a ship that will have been out for 2.5 years is not a valid comparison at all

Which is why I put the July 7-night cruise that we booked early in Wonder's inaugural year as a more apples-to-apples comparison. Utopia's inaugural high season sailings are more expensive than Wonder's inaugural year high season sailing that we originally booked around this time in 2022.

[Vera/Lee]

4 minutes ago, bigmoose7563 said:

is not a valid comparison at all

No, it's a decision about how you want to spend your money and what's important to you. We were happy on Oasis of the Seas' second sailing. That's what we could afford back then. Now in retirement, I would rather sail more. As they say, different strokes for different folks;)

[Christefan]

20 minutes ago, OCSC Mike said:

 

Nothing will be. It will sail at 100% capacity though and make Royal tons of $ from the PDCC visits and other add-ons.

So you believe that RCL will be able to fill this ship every week for 3&4 day party cruises at the published rates....?

[bigmoose7563]

4 minutes ago, orville99 said:

Which is why I put the July 7-night cruise that we booked early in Wonder's inaugural year as a more apples-to-apples comparison. Utopia's inaugural high season sailings are more expensive than Wonder's inaugural year high season sailing that we originally booked around this time in 2022.

I believe everything is more expensive then it was then. Add in inflation rate and its a whole lot closer than your numbers would suggest. Plus price point per day on a 3 day is going to be higher than a 7 day which is exactly why they went this route.

 

[OCSC Mike]

3 minutes ago, Christefan said:

So you believe that RCL will be able to fill this ship every week for 3&4 day party cruises at the published rates....?

 

I believe they will fill them using their dynamic pricing, yes. They will drop prices if they have to but I feel pretty confident that they won't have to. They're not THAT crazy during non-peak times and weekend cruises are usually expensive. There used to be good deals on the M-F 4-nighers.

 

 

[orville99]

1 minute ago, bigmoose7563 said:

Plus price point per day on a 3 day is going to be higher than a 7 day which is exactly why they went this route.

You keep making my point better than I could. Thanks😇

[orville99]

11 minutes ago, Christefan said:

So you believe that RCL will be able to fill this ship every week for 3&4 day party cruises at the published rates....?

In a word...no🍺

[bigmoose7563]

6 minutes ago, orville99 said:

You keep making my point better than I could. Thanks😇

Sure since you ignored the inflation part 

[ShillyShally]

1 hour ago, Christefan said:

So you believe that RCL will be able to fill this ship every week for 3&4 day party cruises at the published rates....?

I fully believe they're competing with Disney on this ship - for those priced out of Disney, or who just don't want to commit to all the Disney after WDW, this will be a viable option.  Great way to do WDW and then a big ship, especially with older kids.

 

Mock pricing 9/13/24 - both 3 nights:

 

[ink76]

48 minutes ago, ShillyShally said:

I fully believe they're competing with Disney on this ship - for those priced out of Disney, or who just don't want to commit to all the Disney after WDW, this will be a viable option.  Great way to do WDW and then a big ship, especially with older kids.

 

Mock pricing 9/13/24 - both 3 nights:

 

Yes that what RCCL going for I don't know why some folks don't get It, these ships are not my cup of tea but understand why RC going this route

[ShillyShally]

13 minutes ago, ink76 said:

Yes that what RCCL going for I don't know why some folks don't get It, these ships are not my cup of tea but understand why RC going this route

Yep, not really mine either, I do have one booked on Harmony and have done Oasis and Allure but much prefer the Freedom or Voyager class.  Then again when my kids were young I never had the budget for even WDW, certainly not Disney cruise, and heck, we only did a few Royal cruises back then.  Now that it tends to be just my husband and I cruising, we just want a solarium and shade but I've rarely ever been anyone's target market 🙂  I get it though for RCCL, I think they'll be very competitive with this one.