The best time to buy your Royal Caribbean drink package is now

If you’re going on a Royal Caribbean cruise, you may be thinking of buying one of the cruise line’s all-inclusive drink packages for your trip. There are four options for drink packages in a variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic options, and each has a per-day price, plus gratuities.

While there is a set price for these packages, Royal Caribbean does run frequent sales on these beverage packages, meaning that you can pay different prices for your drinks package depending on when you buy it. Doesn’t seem quite fair, right?

But here’s the good news: Even if the price of your drink package goes down after you buy it, you can still get the lower price. I wrote in this blog post about the simple process of canceling your previous Cruise Planner purchases. If you see that the price of your beverage package has changed, simply follow these steps to cancel your original purchase and re-purchase at the new price.

A couple of tips to get the best price for your drink package:

• Go ahead and purchase your drink package once you set up your online account. Make sure to note the price you’ve paid for the entire package, including gratuity.
• Don’t be fooled by Royal Caribbean’s sales and promotions (Buy One Get One 50% off, 30% off, etc). Simply focus on the end price you’re being charged for the entire amount of the drink package.
• If you get an email about or otherwise see a promotion about a sale on beverage packages, go to the Cruise Planner and go through the steps to re-purchase the package. Compare the new price to what you paid and if the new price is lower, follow the steps to cancel your old purchase and buy the package again at the new price. (Remember to look at the full price, not the per-day price or the discounts being offered.)

Royal Caribbean traditionally has a big sale on pre-cruise purchases on Black Friday/Cyber Monday. While some people might wait in the hopes of purchasing on this deal, I say it’s not worth the risk that you might get busy with holiday festivities and forget to make this important purchase. That’s why I say that the best time to buy your Royal Caribbean drink package is now! You can always get a lower price later.

Cruise the Med with the Nerdy Traveler!

I’m really excited to be organizing a group cruise next May on Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas. This Oasis-class ship is due for a drydock and refurbishment in March 2020 and will have tons of new features added, as you can see in this video produced by the cruise line.

When booking opened for Allure’s summer sailings in the Mediterranean — roundtrip from Barcelona with stops in Spain, France, and Italy — I scooped up some cabins at the group pricing level, which offers a significant savings over the current pricing. For instance, the group’s interior cabin rate of $999 per person, including taxes and fees, saves over $300 per person over the current pricing from Royal Caribbean!

We also have some cabins available at the group pricing for the Central Park Balcony ($1242 per person) and Ocean View Balcony ($1412 per person). If these prices aren’t enough to tempt you, we’ll also be planning some fun group activities and excursions, which you’d be invited to participate in if you’re part of our group. (You don’t have to if you don’t want to, of course…but as I wrote in a previous post, group cruises are great for a lot of reasons.)

You can contact me at cruises@lovetotravel.com if you’d like more info or to book one of these cabins. I hope you’ll join us!

What your travel agent needs to know

I’ve been working as a cruise travel agent for about two years now, and I’ve learned that the process of talking with clients about potential vacations can go a lot more smoothly if they know what kind of information to give me. Based on my experience, here’s what your travel agent wants to know about you so she can help you book your perfect cruise:

When do you want to travel? But more than that, when CAN you travel? If you have kids in school (that you don’t want to take out of school), or if you have a restricted job like an accountant, I need to know that so I don’t waste our time with sailings that won’t work for you.

How flexible are you in your timing? Can you go last minute? It really helps for me to know where you live – for instance, I can tell you that trying to fly from Kansas City to south Florida in March is a fool’s errand – the tickets are outrageously expensive. But if you live in a place like North Carolina, like I do, and you don’t mind driving to the cruise ports in Florida (I don’t mind!), that’s helpful for me to know.

Are there any places you’ve been before or cruise lines that you’ve sailed on before? If so, tell me what you like and (especially) what you don’t like. If you don’t like the Bahamas, or the Southern Caribbean, makes sure you tell me that up front – even if you sort of like something, and you just aren’t sure that you want to do it again.

What’s your budget? Everyone hates this question, but honestly if you only want to spend about $5000 for your trip and I price you something that’s $10,000, it’s a waste of everyone’s time. If you want to (and it helps you feel better about spending lots of money), tell me how much you want to spend per person, per day, etc.

In your mind, what’s the ideal vacation? Is it relaxing or exciting? Do you want to try new foods and drink? Do you want to do daredevil things like rope courses and ziplines, or do you want to sit on a beach? For that matter, do you want a beach/island vacation, or a scenic one (Alaska, Norway), or a history one (Europe)?

Finally, the logistics. We can’t get you a quote unless we know how many cabins you need, how many people will be in each cabin, and what their ages are at the time of the sailing.

I’m going to ask you a lot of questions, inevitably, as we plan your vacation. But providing me with this information ahead of time will really help get the ball rolling on getting you hooked up with your dream vacation!

Should I buy travel insurance for my cruise?

Travel insurance – like all insurance, really – can seem tricky. But really, it’s just like car insurance, health insurance, etc – you can buy it to cover unexpected expenses during your cruise. The question is, should you? Here are four reasons why I recommend that you should buy travel insurance:

1. You’re traveling during a dicey time of year, weather-wise. If clients are traveling during hurricane season (August 1-November 30), or leaving a cold part of the country where they’re likely to get snow over the winter months, I always recommend that they take the travel insurance option. During hurricane season, your cruise can be shortened or lengthened by weather – or it may even end up at a different port than you left from! Travel insurance will cover the extra expenses you might incur in a case like this one, such as the need for additional hotels or changes in air travel.
2. You’re a worrier. Whether you admit it to yourself (and others), like my friend Jill over at FindingJillian, or whether you like to keep it under wraps, if you’re a worrier, you should buy travel insurance. Simply put, insurance will allow you to travel without some of the concerns you might otherwise have about travel interruption, unexpected medical expenses, etc.
3. You’re going a long way. I always recommend travel insurance to my clients who are going to Alaska, Europe, and other far-from-home areas for their cruise. Why? Because travel insurance will cover your costs to return you home if you run into a medical emergency on your trip – for this alone, I feel like the investment is worth it. I’ll never forget the story of the terminally ill woman who was stranded in a hospital in Alaska, far from her family, because she hadn’t taken out the insurance. (fun fact: One of my grad school classmates wrote this news story!) Which brings me to #4…
4. You have existing health issues (or are prone to them). Cruising is a great way to travel because it’s low-impact, and it allows a lot of people to see the world who might not be able to travel in other ways. But if you know your health is not great, or that there’s a possibility that something might go wrong on your cruise, always take out the travel insurance. Even if you never use it, you’ll be reassured knowing that you have it.

 

Saving money on your pre-cruise purchases

If you’re lucky, in the months leading up to your cruise, the cruise line will run a sale on pre-cruise purchases such as beverage packages, specialty dining, and shore excursions. This post will talk specifically about Royal Caribbean, but the same principle applies to all lines: When the price of something you’ve already purchased drops, the only way to get the new price is to cancel the previous purchase and re-purchase at the lower price.

The first step is to find the place on the site where you can see your prior purchases. On Royal Caribbean, this is called your “Order History” and it’s located at the top right of the screen. Once you click here, you’ll see all the purchases you’ve already made and, if you click on “see order details,” you’ll see what you paid for them.

If the price on the current sale is lower, all you have to do is click “Cancel” and cancel your first purchase. Once you’ve gone through that process, you want to immediately go back to the Cruise Planner and make the purchase at the lower price.

That’s how easy it is! Cheers!

Pre-cruise prep: Check-in online and go!

This is the third of a series of posts designed to provide advice for planning and preparing for your cruise vacation. You can read the first post here and the second post here.

Checking in for a cruise is in many ways similar to other things you may have checked in for before. But because a cruise has a lot more moving parts than say, an airplane flight, there are some noticeable differences.

One of them is timing: You’ll want to check in for your cruise about 1 to 2 weeks before your scheduled departure date. Many cruise lines will close the online check-in window 72 or 48 hours before your sail away, so make sure that you don’t leave this until the last minute. You can also check in earlier too, often up to a few weeks or sometimes months before your cruise. (You’ll usually see a link to check-in for your cruise on your online cruise planner.)

In order to check in online for your cruise, you’ll need to have your passport (or other identifying documents if you’re taking a short Bahamas cruise) and the credit card you’ll be using for your online expenses. This will be the primary info you’ll need to input during the online check-in. You’ll also need to tell the cruise line what your transportation plans before and after the cruise are.

Here’s a little secret about online check in – they ask you a LOT of questions, but you don’t have to answer them all. They try to throw in some sneaky marketing questions, like asking you how many cruises you’ve been on before – don’t spend your brain power trying to count them in your head if you don’t know the number right away. Many of the fields in your online check-in are nonessential and you can leave them blank.

You’ll also be asked to designate an emergency contact – this has to be someone who is not on the cruise with you – and provide a phone number for that person.

As part of the process, you’ll be asked to accept a contract that sets out the terms of your cruise – one day, I’m going to have one of my lawyer friends read this and write a blog post on what it actually says. But for now, since you won’t be able to check in unless you accept it, you might as well go ahead.

You’ll enter each passenger’s passport info and add a credit card for your onboard account (if you want, each passenger can have a separate card) before you finish the process. When you’re done, you’ll have two things. The first is something that’s akin to a boarding pass – each cruise line has its own name for this document. You’ll print this out, sign it, and bring it with you to your cruise.

You’ll also get paper baggage tags that you can print out and affix to the luggage that you’re bringing on your cruise; you’ll want to print these out too, one for every piece of luggage you’re planning to bring, and preferably in color if possible. (You don’t need a tag for smaller bags that you plan to carry on the ship.) These tags are for your “checked” luggage, which will be dropped off at the terminal when you arrive and later delivered to your cabin on the ship.

Checking bags onto a cruise ship works a little differently than on, say, an airplane flight. When you get to the cruise port, before you go inside the terminal, you hand your larger bags off to a porter, who will put it on a large cart full of luggage to be taken onto the ship. It must have a bag tag attached, or the porter will write one out for you. Only bags small enough to fit through a standard scanner (like you’d find at an airport) can be carried on to the ship.

The tagged baggage you give to the porter will show up later in the day at your door, but keep in mind that it might be a while, so you might want to bring a swimsuit or a change of clothes in your carry-on bag for the first day. You should also to make sure to keep any important medicines with you in your carry-on, just in case your bag gets misplaced!

Once you’re checked in, and your boarding pass and luggage tags are printed up, you’re ready to go on your cruise! I recommend putting your boarding pass in the same place as your passports, so you’ll make sure to bring both of them with you. Happy cruising!

Pre-cruise prep: Plan your cruise!

This is the second of a series of posts designed to provide advice for planning and preparing for your cruise vacation. You can read the first post here and the third post here.

My husband likes to joke that planning for a trip is the best part – even better than actually taking the trip! While it’s true that research actually does back him up, sort of, I’m not sure I totally agree. But planning for a cruise is fun – and in many cases, it’s an important part of making sure you have an enjoyable trip, too.

Of course, you could walk on your cruise ship with nothing planned ahead of time, and you might still have a wonderful time. But if planning really is a big part of the fun, why not do some of that too?  Here are a few of my thoughts on things that you should plan before your cruise, especially for those of you who may be new to cruising, or who might be back after taking several years’ break. (If you’re cruising on a newer, bigger ship – such as the Royal Caribbean Oasis or Anthem Class – make sure to read this section #4 below about reservations for entertainment and Broadway-style shows.)

1. Food and drinks. When I started cruising in earnest in the 2000s, we often joked about being afraid of our onboard bill at the end of the week, because we’d racked up such a large tab at the bar. 😉 Today’s cruises offer an alternative to this big-bill-panic: The unlimited beverage package. There are lots of opinions on the web about whether you should buy a beverage package (also here and here), and of course I have my own thoughts too. But one thing is clear: If you are going to buy a beverage package, you should absolutely do so before your cruise, as the prices will be cheaper and the cruise lines will sometimes offer pre-cruise sales.
   
   Another new trend is cruising is what’s called specialty dining. These are meal options that aren’t included in your basic cruise fare; they’re often somewhat more upscale and the service and setting are more intimate than the main dining room. These options vary from cruise line to cruise line; for instance, Royal Caribbean’s specialty restaurants often charge a flat fee, where Norwegian’s tend to charge a la carte. If you want to check these options out, I’d highly suggest that you look online in your cruise planner for special offers, as you can often get a deal by buying your specialty dining ahead of your cruise.
2. Shore excursions. As a frequent cruiser, I’ve become much more DIY about my schedule when a cruise is in port. I often do some research myself and sometimes just wind up walking around the port city, especially if it’s a place I’ve not been to before. But if you’d rather have someone do the work for you, you might want to consider a shore excursion, which is a preplanned tour at your cruise port. You can buy these through the cruise line by visiting the online site before your cruise, or you can do this on board your cruise. Planning and buying ahead, however, guarantees you a space in the excursion of your choice, and sometimes you might even find your excursion slightly discounted by buying ahead.
3. Internet access. As a travel agent and blogger, I pretty much need to have access to the internet at all times. (Also, I might be a little addicted to Twitter, haha.) Maybe you like to take your cruise vacations as an opportunity to disconnect from the world, and you don’t need internet access. That’s great! But if you do want to buy an internet package, you should look to do so before your trip and purchase online. You’ll usually get much lower prices this way than if you buy internet on the ship. Most cruise lines offer a variety of packages at different price points. (My husband and I tend to buy the package for 1 device and share the access – it just means that we can’t both be logged on at the same time, but we can work around that.)
4. Entertainment. Traditionally, you could attend cruise ships’ nightly entertainment shows by simply walking into the theater and taking a seat. But on many of today’s cruise ships, entertainment is a far cry from the shows I saw when I first started cruising with my mom in the 1990s. Royal Caribbean, in particular, has really amped up its entertainment game with shows like Grease (Harmony and Independence of the Seas), Cats (Oasis of the Seas), Hairspray (Symphony of the Seas), and my favorite, Mamma Mia (Allure of the Seas). Due to increased demand – and the ever-increasing number of passengers on these cruise ships – you now have to pre-book your reservations for many shows on these ships. In many cases, you can opt to join a walk-up line on the day of the show, but if you want to ensure that you won’t be left out in the cold, pre-booking your reservations is the way to go.

You can also book spa treatments and other on-board amenities and activities before your cruise – or if you prefer, you can wait until you’re on the cruise and see if the mood strikes you. After all, you’re on vacation!

Click here to go to the next post, Check-in online and go!

Pre-cruise prep: Setting up your online account

This is the first of a series of posts designed to provide advice for planning and preparing for your cruise vacation. You can read the second post here and the third post here.

Much like any kind of travel, your cruise vacation can be managed using an online account. If you’re cruising for the first time, or you’re cruising with a new cruise line, you’ll need to set up your account with that company so you can manage your cruise vacation. (You can and should do this even if you’ve used a travel agent to book your cruise.)

To do this, go to the homepage of the cruise line you’ve booked your trip with and look for the link to log in, then choose to create a new account. Links to popular cruise lines’ login pages can be found in the list below:

• Royal Caribbean
• Celebrity Cruises
• Norwegian Cruise Lines
• Carnival Cruises

You’ll need to give your personal information and choose a user ID and password. You may need your cruise reservation number in order to link your booked cruise to your account.

(If you’re cruising for the first time, or cruising with a new company, you’ll also want to make sure to set up a loyalty account for each person traveling with you on the cruise. Whether it’s Royal Caribbean’s Crown and Anchor, Norwegian’s Latitude Rewards, Celebrity’s Captain’s Club, or one of the many others, these loyalty programs can offer benefits to frequent cruisers. Some of the smaller perks will even start to kick in as soon as your second cruise!)

Each cruise line has its own online pre-cruise planning system, so you’ll want to take some time looking around and getting used to the site. In general, though, the site will allow you to pre-plan (and often pre-pay) elements of your cruise experience such as beverage packages, shore excursions, etc. (More on that in the next blog post.)

Ultimately, you’ll need to use your online account to check in and print out your boarding documents before you take your cruise. But why should you do this earlier? Well, often the cruise lines will offer sales or discounts on pre-cruise purchases, or other deals such as prepaying for dining. So by signing in early, you might save a few bucks!

Make sure you remember the login ID and password you created for this site – you’ll use them to check-in online and get your cruise documents when it’s time for you to go on your cruise!

Click here to go to the next post, Plan Your Cruise.

The dreaded “solo supplement”: myths and truths (Part 2)

Let’s face facts: It’s (usually) more expensive to cruise by yourself than it is to cruise with someone else (or multiple someone elses). And while I understand the reason for that, it doesn’t really seem fair at all, especially when you’re not particularly traveling solo by choice. Believe me, as someone who was single until I was almost 35 years old, I get it!

If you’re traveling by yourself, here are a few things you can do to travel solo and still keep your costs reasonable:

1. If you can, be flexible in your travel dates. I’ve written before about how flexibility and the ability to travel last-minute are your best weapons in the fight to find lower cruise fares. Some cruise lines will reduce or even remove the cost of the second passenger on close-in cruises. Usually this is only for cruises only about one or two weeks out though, so it also helps to live close to a cruise port, so you don’t blow your last-minute savings on expensive airfare.
2. Be vigilant on checking fares, and/or engage a travel agent to help you with this. I booked my first solo cruise, a 4-day Bahamas cruise on Majesty of the Seas, when I noticed that the price had dropped to a very reasonable $184.00 per person, which made my total cost as a solo cruiser around $400. This price is definitely an outlier: The cruise was on December 4th, which is a traditionally slow time for cruising; the price I saw when I booked didn’t last very long, likely because a number of people had the same idea that I did! But that leads me to my next suggestion…
3. If you want to cruise solo, target times of the year that are traditionally slow so that you can find the lowest prices for your cruise fare. In the US, this tends to be the times between New Year’s and Spring Break (mid-January to early March), the dreaded second half of the hurricane season (mid-September to late October), and post-Thanksgiving through the holiday season (late November to mid-December).If cruise prices are low to start, you’ll find that paying a double fare isn’t quite so painful. For instance, the hubby and I took advantage of a sale and booked a 7-night cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas that came to a ridiculously low total price of $898. Even for one person, that would have been a deal – plus that one person would have gotten double Crown and Anchor loyalty points! Which leads to another point:
4. Consider a studio cabin – these are cabins that are designed (and priced) specifically for single occupancy – but consider carefully. Norwegian Cruise Lines has made a point of including studio cabins on its new build ships, and these are good options for solo travelers. (I was in one for 12 nights myself and found it to be perfectly pleasant.)However, the number of solo cabins is limited, so the dynamics of supply and demand aren’t always in the solo traveler’s favor, especially on popular sailings. You might actually find it cheaper to pay the extra fare in a (double occupancy) inside cabin than to pay the studio rate. (This was the case on my Bliss sailing, but I stuck with the studio because I wanted to check out that kind of cabin.)

   Studio cabins can save you some money over paying the extra fare in a double-occupancy room, but if you’re loyal to a particular cruise line, they may not be the best bang for your buck. On my Majesty cruise, I received double Crown and Anchor points for traveling solo in a traditional double room, which allowed me to reach the Diamond level in Royal Caribbean’s loyalty program. If you calculate the number of points earned per dollar spent, you’ll find it’s much more efficient to pay double in a traditional room; however, on a longer or more expensive cruise, this might simply put the trip out of your price range. And we wouldn’t want to do that!

Just as a reminder, I’m not only a travel blogger, I’m also a travel agent! So if you’re interested in learning more about opportunities for solo travel, you can fill out this form and I’ll be happy to help you find your best options for a solo cruise. You can also follow me on Facebook, where I’ll be posting last-minute and solo travel deals.

The dreaded “solo supplement”: myths and truths

I’ve been extremely lucky to put my career as a college professor on hold for a year while I get started as a travel agent and do some (pretty fun) research about all sorts of cruise experiences. One thing I’ve learned is that I’m a pretty big fan of cruising solo.

I’m certainly not the only one who likes cruising alone – you can read plenty of blog posts about how to make the most of your solo cruise, including specific tips for solo cruisers on Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Lines. (Both of these lines offer solo cabins for cruisers, such as the studio cabin I had on my Norwegian Bliss transatlantic cruise, which you can see in the picture at the top of this post.)

What I wanted to talk about today is the thing we don’t like to talk about, especially if we like to travel a lot: Money.

I think it helps a lot to think about the business of cruising, something I allude to in my post about finding deals on last-minute cruises. The cruise industry has built itself around the premise of double occupancy – that is, that each 2-person cabin will be occupied by two people.

Sometimes, of course, a cabin will be occupied by more than two people: When a family brings kids, for instance, or when more budget-conscious cruisers decide to put three or four people in a room to cut down on costs. Often, though, you’ll find that third and fourth passengers are heavily discounted or even free – this becomes cost-effective for the cruisers, but not really too great for the cruise company’s bottom line.

It’s easy to compare a cruise ship cabin to a hotel room: We don’t pay any differently to have one or two people stay in a hotel. But of course, the costs to the company of a cruise ship passenger extend much farther than the costs of a hotel room occupant (food, staff in the kids clubs, extra use of resources like toilet paper, etc). The cruise line is willing to discount third and fourth passengers because often they’re kids, and frankly, no one is probably going to pay full price to jam four people into a 180-sq-ft cabin no matter how great the cruise is.

But here’s where things get tricky: When a cruise ship cabin is occupied by only one person, instead of two, the problem isn’t that the cruise company uses additional resources. It’s that the company doesn’t recoup its expected costs, which it plans to use to pay staff like waiters and stewards and do all of the other things it needs to do to run the cruise, because it only has one paying customer in the cabin, not two.

Because of this, many cruise lines will charge what’s often known as a “single supplement” or “solo supplement” to account for the expected fare that’s not being paid by a second passenger. In truth, I think this is a bad way to look at it: Really, you’re just paying for a second person, even though that person isn’t actually there. (You do pay the fare, but not the taxes and port fees, which is why cruising single is often roughly double the cost of cruising with someone else.)

As a solo cruiser myself, I’d love it if the cruise lines would change their policies to be more in line with the hotel industry, but I understand why it’s not possible. So in the next post, I’ll look at what you can do to book a solo cruise that’s affordable and realistic.

Interested in booking a solo cruise? See more on my website or click here to contact me for more information.