I know a lot of people want to hear about the whole RCL Star Class experience so let me back track a bit. While most cruisers are families with kids or couples traveling together, we find that the higher in cabin category we want to try, the less options for being in the same cabin and having separate beds. Not a problem for a romantic couple to share a bed. More of a problem when you are traveling as father and adult daughter. If you took a poll of every cruiser on any line, there will always be those that say "Why book the pricier cabins? All you need the cabin for is to sleep and shower." Yes, the cheapest inside cabin will solve our separate beds problem but we'd rather enjoy the perks that come with the suite life when the price and the itinerary is right. One of the reasons it took us a while to try the official Royal Suite Class on the Oasis or Ovation class ships is because at first the only options were cabins with one king size bed and the other person was stuck with a sofa bed. Not the most ideal setup unless you are traveling with your child or teen. Another reason was that until recently as we found out, the suites with two different bedrooms within the cabin (meant to sleep those with multiple extended family members traveling together), used to have a minimum amount of people to book them.
Flashback to last January when RCL offered yet another sale, we searched on RCL's website for dates that what they call a two bedroom aqua theater suite (affectionately referred to online as 2 BR ATS) showed up available to book. Not the easiest task as we soon found out that a lot of the higher level suites aren't even available to book online. You have to call and have the agent release them into the system, book it, and then yank it back out of the system. Our first step was to make sure we could even book a cabin meant to sleep 8 people with just the two of us so I reached out to RCL's Facebook page. They replied that yes, the minimum has since been changed and you can book the cabin for as little as one person if you're willing to foot the entire cost. After sitting on the decision for a couple days, we called RCL to inquire about available dates. The rep we talked to (different than the one on Facebook), was all ready to look it up for us until he asked how many people we were planning to book. When we said "2 people" he immediately turned us down, insisting that the minimum was 6 people. We mentioned what we'd been told from RCL on Facebook and the rep put us on hold to "speak to a supervisor." My fellow online cruise friends will understand my desire to put that part in quotes. A familiar mantra is if you call any cruise line twice, the second random rep who takes your call will likely give you a different answer to your query. The rep came back and insisted that his supervisor confirmed that the rule is a minimum of 5 people. Okay, now was it a minimum of 6 or a minimum of 5? Did we throw some proverbial cruiser overboard while we were waiting on hold?
We ended our call with the unhelpful rep and reported the experience to the RCL rep on Facebook who'd originally told me it was allowed. She asked who we talked to but alas, we missed getting his name in our growing frustration. She blamed it on the phone rep being uninformed and offered to have a rep she promised knew of the rule change call us when she was back in the office a few days later. Waited till 8PM that day she said she'd be back and reached out via Facebook when we'd received no call. She was super apologetic and offered to have someone call right now. I'm such an obsessive planner that in these few days of waiting, I had absorbed all things Oasis class, aquatheater suites, and Star Class you could ever want to know. So by this time when the rep who did call us wanted to share everything under the sun that we'd be getting rather than listening to my questions, my patience was wearing thin. Finally, this rep revealed that there was an available cabin in our category for April and gave us two weeks to choose from. We chose the 4/22 itinerary having long since decided that we'd take whatever was available, regardless of whether it featured ports we'd been to already. Once we made sure all discounts possible had been applied (our Celebrity status much raised us to Platinum on RCL and I had to keep reminding this rep of that so we could get the Platinum perk of a balcony/suite booking discount), we booked not only the deposit but also final payment and insurance as by this time, final payment had been the day before!
Those booking Star Class are given the time frame of a "Welcome to Star Class" generic email 8 days after booking, an email asking you to fill out a crazy survey 6 weeks out from your sail date, and finally 2 weeks before sailing an email identifying your assigned genie from which you can now correspond back and forth with your requests and preferences for onboard reservations as well as little things to make your time on board more comfortable. One thing of note is that RCL could send the emails to any email address they have registered, even if it isn't the one belonging to the person who booked the cruise and/or gave their email as point of contact. Our first 8 days email came exactly 8 days after I booked the cruise and gave my email for contact. That email came to Dad's email. My email however started getting plenty of sales offers addressed to him. Yes, I'm the neurotic one who took note of when exactly 6 weeks before our sail date fell so we could determine whether the survey came on time or not. As it turns out, the survey email came to me closer to 8 weeks out and we sent it back with our answers soon after getting it. The survey questions covered typical dinner party conversation starters like "What 3 people living or dead would you invite to dinner?" as well as ones pertinent to your onboard preferences like "Are you morning people or night owls?" and "Do you have any food allergies or dietary restrictions?"
The quicker than expected survey spoiled us because it made us even more anxious to get the introductory email earlier. We did in fact get that final step email early by about a week or two. For someone who is an obsessive planner like myself, one of the hardest things you'll experience trying Star Class is the waiting for your genie to make that personal introductory email to make any reservations when all you're reading online is other people on your sailing talking about being done with their reservations or even going to make reservations and being told they are fully booked. It took a lot of reminding myself that the magic of Star Class includes the preferential treatment when it comes to getting reservations at otherwise booked full events. It was at this email that we learned we'd been assigned Smitha (whom thanks to another cruiser's review, we learned is pronounced Smeeta), the only female genie on the Oasis of the Seas at the time. During the cruise we learned that each genie was responsible for 4 suites, 2 of Smitha's being us and our across the ship neighbors in the other deck 8 2 BR ATS. We later learned that she also had at least one of the Deck 17 loft suites in her care since we ended up paired with the occupants a couple times throughout the cruise. It was a little off putting from the start of this email because despite one of the first survey questions being "What do you prefer to be called?" Smitha addressed me as Daniel. Last I checked I didn't undergo any gender reassignment surgery in between cruises.
Our email from Smitha basically repeated the general concepts of Star Class and asked us again of the preferences we mentioned in the survey. Knowing that we'd never been on Oasis before and that all the specialty restaurants cover charges were included, we simply told Smitha that except for Labadee evening dinner, we would leave it up to her to plan our dinner and show reservations so that it gave us a chance to experience everything possible onboard at least once. We also took the time then to put in our request for a standard cabana on the suite only Barefoot Beach section of Labadee because we cared more about being equidistant to the food and restrooms as we were to the water. Let the other cruisers rush to get the over the water (OTW) and beachfront cabanas. Personally, I don't know why anyone would want the other option of a Hilltop cabana unless they never planned to get in the water.
One of Dad's favorite things to do on a cruise is grab cookies for a late night snack in the cabin as we get ready for bed. I'm more of a salty snacker so between us we requested chips, guacamole, queso, popcorn, cookies, milk, nuts, and candies like gummy bears and m&m's to have in the cabin. Don't worry healthy eating police, I also requested fruit. One of the things we made sure to note for the cabin was extra plates and silverware sets as Celebrity never seemed to supply those when we'd bring snacks back to the cabin. I was impressed that in a later correspondence, while we have no actual food allergies, I mentioned that I don't like nuts and Dad doesn't like seafood. Smitha came right back with an email double checking because I'd asked for nuts for Dad in that first email to her. As it turns out though, she put it in as a note on our account that we had actual allergies to seafood and nuts. Made for quite the panicked restaurant host when he realized at the end of our meal that I'd ordered lobster. Kudos for the special attention, maybe next time ask before we consumed something potentially injurious to us?
Smitha got back to us 5 days after that initial email apologizing for the wait (they are also juggling the needs of current cruisers while corresponding and planning for future ones like us at the time) and included not only PDF files of a dining and show schedule matching our wishes but also the menus of each specialty restaurant available. She also sent a list of Star Class perks we could expect - the same you'd find searching online. We continued to trade emails back and forth with random little questions and Smitha was always quick to reply. We told her of our travel plans and when we'd expect to arrive at the port.
A week before the trip, Smitha sent the link and instructions for the Loop app which I immediately opened on my phone and left it as an open browser window. I'd read a lot about the faults of the Loop app since the genies don't get those messages you leave unless they are sitting in front of their computers but knew that once onboard we could call Smitha from any onboard phone as needed. I think by the end of the cruise, we'd been given about 10 business cards with her phone number and email so we always had one to carry around. As it turned out, anything we sent via the Loop was answered quickly. The only drawback was the lack of any sort of notification of her reply. The morning we docked in Labadee she sent us information about a potential meeting place for an escort off the ship and we didn't see she'd even replied in the app until hours later. Thankfully she followed up with a call to the cabin when we returned to get ready to head ashore.
The Star Class perks we ended up taking advantage of by cruise end:
1) Use of genie to make reservations for us pre-cruise and a few changes during the week when we decided to swap the Headliner show for the comedy show and a dinner in Coastal Kitchen to a dinner at Solarium Bistro.
2) Priority Boarding
3) Included drinks and specialty dining (including Starbucks drinks and popcorn at the theater as well as what you chose to request for your cabin mini bar)
4) Included Voom internet (we each had our own code for one device but Smitha said to just log off one and log in on another if we wanted to use two devices per person. Dad had a couple times being prompted to re-log in and while I never had to re-log in, I did find that I'd lose signal every so often while in the master bedroom that would re-appear once I moved into the main living room area of the cabin.)
5) Included laundry (we purposefully packed for only a couple days of daytime outfits and sent out a bag almost every other day. Laundry was always returned by 5:30PM the following day since we put it out before our cabin got cleaned in the mornings.)
6) Breakfast in Coastal Kitchen (only time we didn't attend was when we wanted something quick and light before an early activity)
7) Prime seats reserved at each show (we tweaked this a couple times as most often the genies will reserve front row seats yet for shows like the comedians and "Come Fly with Me" it's a much better view to sit back a bit. Never was a problem changing before or when we arrived for the show.)
8) A cabana on Barefoot Beach in Labadee
9) Suite lounge access and suite sun deck access
10) Waived room service charge as we had snack deliveries twice a day, a snack for the aquatheater show, and one dinner on our balcony. We did try and give a little tip to the delivery person if we were in the cabin when they delivered the food.
11) Using Smitha as our go between when we had issues at restaurants and room service deliveries.
Coming up - Embarkation Day!
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