I'm going to start backwards and work my way back up the thread...
Kenny's Coworker: how are the earned cabins/berths for the tour conductor going to be handled?I will need the first two tour conductor berths for my room for myself and my assistant ... after that I'm contemplating several options ... one is to use two berths as a fundraiser for a charity ... another idea is to give two away as an incentive drawing prize (i.e. for everyone who books & deposits by a certain date will be entered in a drawing to have two tour conductor credits credited towards their room) ... if anyone has specific suggestions, please email your ideas to me at
susan@shipsntripstravel.comJosh: special features they plan to unveilOnce RCCL announces anything - it will be posted on Cruise Freeks
Cruiser Brooke - more suites than Freedom/Voyager class ships?We do not know yet, but once we have concrete details from RCCL it will be posted on Cruise Freeks
(Ugly Betty I'm not skipping you, but I'll answer your question along with Travel Geek's)
Trish - reduced deposits?Unfortunately no. RCCL and Celebrity changed their group policies a few years ago. From the time we block group space
normally we have 90 days to book rooms with passenger names and full deposits (i.e. $250 per person for 7 night sailings). But for specific room number requests and suites, we need to deposit immiediately in order to be able to hold the space longer than 30 days. As of right now I have not heard of them implementing stricter policies for the inaugural. Because it'll be popular, I doubt they'll loosen up on the policies.
Miriam - special ceremonies, gifts?The assumption is that there will be something special to commemorate the sailing, but until RCCL announces more we don't know exactly what.
Travel Geek - meet & greet, amenities?Once the group is formed and we have some rooms booked into the group, we can submit our formal request for an onboard meet & greet. I've already had discussions with the Groups Dept about this, and they have said they'll work with us to make it work.
As for amenities, they've offered amenity points on past inaugurals and the thinking amoung the Group Dept reps is that they'll
probably offer some kind of amenity points on this inaugural as well. No clue how many, but we might get something. Also I will be booking this through a large host agency that has a lot of pull with RCCL, so I'm confident we won't be looked at as small fish compared to Cruise Critic.
I'm also looking at some ways to include some extra goodies above and beyond anything that we can get through RCCL.
And Ugly Betty Fan, to answer your question, yes if there are no amenity points we will still have a group gathering of some sort ... cocktail party or otherwise.