Remember when I wrote about wanting to book an inside for our Trans Atlantic on the Royal but it looked like Princess had locked them out. Here is a link to that blog.
Well yesterday they opened up those insides.
You see when a ship has a lot of cabins left relatively close to sailing. Princess is going to try and sell the balconies first. They will offer upsells to those in insides to balconies for a nominal fee, then once they have sold some balconies they will open up the available insides.
Because of the Ship Mate App I have that notifies me (for free) when there is a price drop. I got an email saying insides were lower. That meant insides were once again available.
The price just couldn't be beat either. An IE sideways inside for $850. This means a $500 per person savings from our balcony to this inside.
Although I would love the balcony I don't really need it and right now I need the savings more. That $1,000 will go far towards other things. Plus on a Trans Altantic and so many sea days I don't think I will miss the balcony too much. Also we find we tend to venture out to the public areas more when we are in an inside. Another big perk is that insides are so much quieter than balconies, and way darker.
I got in touch with my agent and we are now in A217 for the Trans Atlantic and in A216 for the five day Caribbean. Which dropped by a $100 last week - thanks again Ship Mate App.
The one downside of doing such a large cruise this year is that it used up almost all of our vacation time this year. So what is a girl to do? But plan a future cruise.
We really missed the Caribbean this year so I discussed with Bernie, do we go back next year?
The one good thing is that the Royal will be doing the 10 day itinerary instead of the Crown. Now is that good or bad, well I guess it depends who you ask.
We haven't been on her and I really want to see her, but there are some things I will miss from the Emerald (Skywalkers, Oustide cabins, wrap around promenade, oh and the Explorer's Lounge). But there are quite a few things that I am looking forward to on the Royal (Champagne Bar, Fondue dinners, the aft area of the ship, the bigger showers, the new Live Theater, the larger Horizon Court and well a ton of other things).
Bernie's birthday is the 18th of January so it is a given we have to be away then. But the ship is scheduled to leave on the 18th, so it looks like it will be our embarkation day.
We have now booked the highest inside guarantee on the Royal for a back to back to back. Thirty Days again! We talked about twenty but we knew that we would be disappointed if we had only twenty so we thought lets do it for thirty. This is why we have to book an inside, we just can't justify the added costs for the balcony. If we booked a balcony for twenty days it would actually cost more than the thirty days in the inside.
We are also excited because we will get to see so many of our friends again. On each sailing we will have friends we know on board.
So if you are interested in joining us, look into the January 18, January 28 and the February 7th cruises on the Royal.
Ports include: Princess Cays, St. Thomas, St. Lucia, Barbados, Grenada, Bonaire, Aruba, St. Kitts, Dominica, Antigua, and Grand Turk.
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