Welcome to the Royal Crime Blog podcast.

We look into the world of Royal Caribbean cruising.

I'm your host, Matt Hodgeberg, and this is episode number 494.

You know, it's been a while since we've dedicated an episode just to podcast questions that have been sent in,

and email inbox is getting a little full.

So this week, it's all about answering your Royal Crime and Cruise questions.

Here we go.

As I mentioned, the email inbox queue is getting pretty big. You know, I like to keep the queue big enough that I'm not going to run out of questions, but also not too big that I'm answering questions from like three months ago and people are, you know, already going on their cruises. So with that in mind, this week's episode is dedicated just to listen to your emails. and it's also an episode in which you can listen to that awesome background music that a lot of people evidently enjoy for whatever reason. Anyway, our first email today is from Roland and Lana. My wife and I love listen to your podcast. Your back catalogs, entertain, and informants from many hours on the road. Following your excellent advice, we've added flights via Air to Sea for our upcoming May Alaska cruise on ovation to the seas. As you mentioned, you don't have to pay for the full amount until closer to your sale date, which is a really nice benefit. I received regular emails from Air to Sea informing me of the airline schedule changes, but I assume they would notify me when the balance was due, bad assumption. One warning opened my inbox to get the This Can't Be Happening notice that my cruise has been canceled for non-payment on the Air to C balance, even though the cruise fair itself had been paid in full. Fortunately, I had followed another piece of your advice and booked the cruise through a travel agent. On my behalf, they spent two hours on the phone with Royal Caribbean and Air to C, and got everything reinstated with only a $24 upcharge. Our travel agent was bounced from person to person and finally escalated to management to get this done. First rep wanted several thousand dollars more to reinstate the cruise and flights. Our travel agent saved our bacon. I hope this helps somebody to avoid a nasty surprise. Put the final due date on your calendar and don't wait.

Be told it's time to pay up.

And rolling in a lot of thank you for the email. And you know, Air to C is a great benefit to be able to save some money. In fact, there are some really good deals actually on some airfares to Europe and Alaska this year through Air to see, which will come from subsidizing some of those fairs. But it is important to me on top of those final payment dates.

I mean, I'm lucky in that sense that I travel agent at MEI travels always done a good job of making sure one of their policies that I like about MEI is they always ask for final payment like a week or two before. It's actually due to prevent, you know, oopsies and long weekends and all those kinds of things. So hey, great to hear that and I'm glad that it worked out for you in the end. But yeah, no one wants to see that kind of an email in their inbox. But what Roland and Lana are talking about is a really important factor. Travel agents. I mean, a lot of people always say, and when I talk about travel agents, the importance of travel agents, you know, I'll always see a comment like, I always put my creases myself. What's the point? They just get in the way. I can't service it myself. I want to change. Like, for whatever benefits you get for doing your own reservations are greatly outweighed in situations like this when there's an oopsie, when there's a problem. My goodness, a good travel agent is worth every single penny that you're not paying them because, of course, you know, Royal Caribbean's paying their price. You don't pay them anything extra.

Next is an email from Nadine. Good evening, Matt. Hope all as well. You've always been very helpful to my husband and I regarding questions and concerns as we are big fans of Royal Caribbean. With that said, you know by chance when booking a special restaurant, whether it's for lunch or dinner, prior to the sailing. and if the price should go down prior to the sailing,

as RealCrim is known throughout a sale for pre-crued purchases,

we can just cancel our specialty restaurant and then rebook at the lower price, correct? This is correct. By the way, the answer is yes. Does RealCrimand generally refund on the original amount we paid, then charge us again for the new lower amount? I think in advance for regarding this. And the answer is yeah, actually, all your assumptions are correct.

When you cancel any purchase, the cruise planner before your cruise, whether it's a dining reservation or a short excursion, whatever, and then rebook the same thing.

You're going to get a refund back to your credit card, and then they'll charge you again

the full amount.

And the refunds

usually take about a week or two let's go see seven to ten days is usually the the norm uh at this point

and the thing is for most people i feel like for most people in the grand scheme of your credit

card billing cycle it should come out as a wash right i mean i'd say worst case obviously the

cancellation gets posted on one statement

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