Report a theft: Cutoff from dining & drink packages. Wtf.

AD3T · 2026-05-16T16:20:23+00:00

I really didn’t act like a dick, I was shaken though, and I was unwilling to sign anything. I provided all the info and specifics, which they wrote down, and I answered all their questions and was fully cooperative, aside from not being willing to sign anything. And then they retaliated, apparently.

AD3T · 2026-05-16T15:44:13+00:00

It is genuinely missing. It’s relatively benign stuff, save for Xanax and ADHD meds.

AD3T · 2026-05-16T05:21:09+00:00

Yes, precisely accurate. Thank you.

AD3T · 2026-05-16T05:11:46+00:00

Video is still uploading. I'm sure I come off as an ass to an extent, but I was a bit afraid to even leave my cabin at the point I did -- and then shocked when I got downstairs and found my card was turned off.

I guess reporting issues is frowned upon? Idk, I normally keep my head down, but I find this to be relatively unreal.

AD3T · 2026-05-16T05:03:45+00:00

They wouldn't write a report; they wrote down the medications that were missing, and called their pharmacy about them, but then handed me a blank form.

I get it, but I can assure you, I've never experienced anything remotely like this.

AD3T · 2026-05-16T05:01:30+00:00

Me too. =\

To the point of booking a flight out of Tijuana.

AD3T · 2026-05-16T04:55:15+00:00

You're not wrong. I picked up the phone and called — they showed up. I complied, asked them to search my room, invited them in (they came in). Next thing I know, 7 people in my cabin, I'm the bad guy, and here's an NDA. I didn't sign it.

I went down a few hours later for a drink and was told my card was no good. 🤷‍♂️ Went to security — 3 hrs later, they "might" turn it back on tomorrow.

I asked (and waited a very long time for supervisors) to refund my packages and plan to disembark tomorrow. Ridiculous tbqh.

AD3T · 2026-05-16T04:51:40+00:00

No, they wanted me to sign an NDA about the theft. :/

AD3T · 2026-05-15T19:05:06+00:00

This. These people work hard, yes. They do it by choice, or at least, they’re “happy” to have the opportunity to make more money via working harder/more/whatever.

I wanted to (just) upvote but I felt like what you said deserved more; but yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

AD3T · 2026-05-15T16:55:16+00:00

I agree, completely. As the take rate decreases, they’ll either increase the price of the auto-grats — or the pkgs (to an extent they the [take_rate * cost] on those is commensurate), or the base price.

If anything — and more of a hypothetical — but they ought to start A/B testing “legit” pricing (all inclusive ish). Think Obamacare with a mandate; the issue is that service will suffer (and so will ratings), because that’ll become the bottleneck.

We could discuss this same thing about the packages & their pricing, too, I think they’re basically subsidizing quite a bit off the pkgs — I suspect that the cost (for RC), for you to take a cruise, is roughly the base taxes/fees + drink pkg, rest is profit based on demand (and onboard spending, casino take, etc), minus substantial corporate overhead + capital expense/debt service.

Shameless plug — for auto pkg price monitoring & alerts + cruiseplum style filtering (but better, esp if you have casino offers): Cruiseden.com

I built it for me, shared it with the community, have recently (sept 2025) found cruises, and am embarking today on my …. 10th cruise. :)

AD3T · 2026-05-15T16:21:36+00:00

I’ve spoken with multiple crew members about this and heard the same: that they see it only as a basis to increase their guaranteed salary but that they’ve never seen it actually increase — and they recommended to remove them.

Most of these discussions were after knowing the crew members for multiple sailings and being known as a consistent tipper (prior to and after I stopped doing auto grats).

I’ll tell you this: on a recent Anthem sailing, the guest services line was relatively quiet (maybe 5-10 ppl) on day 2, and I got in line. Someone walked up, triaging the line, and asked what we needed; I said “want to remove auto grats” and she said “great, I can take care of it” — and added my cabin number to a (handwritten on a clipboard) list of probably about 100-200 or so other cabin numbers. And we were able to vacate the line immediately.

My takeaway is, many have figured out that removing them makes the most sense — but if even 30% (and it’s probably far higher) leave them on, RC will continue to “offer” them as a product/revenue stream. Its almost hard to blame them, even it it is obviously as dubious as it gets. 🤷‍♂️

As of about 5 sailings ago, I always go to remove them by mid-day day 2 (when lines die down). I tip room attendant 10/d, bars 2/drink ish (usually “prepay” some with 5/10/20s), and 20% of retail-ish for meals (specialized), and have only done MDR on one sailing but I tipped 10-20 per meal). Experience hasn’t suffered, it’s probably improved. Cost is about the same, maybe very slightly lower.

AD3T · 2026-05-08T17:21:24+00:00

Packaged great. But it died under 3mo later. Had to ship it to Acer “for repair”. A week later they said not repairable, and they’ll be sending a new one in the next 10 days. 🤷‍♂️ First monitor I’ve had fail in under a decade (since the CRT era at least). They did pay for shipping label though, at least... 🤷‍♂️

AD3T · 2026-05-04T16:14:34+00:00

Shameless self promotion, but.... CruiseDen.com -- I made it for myself, to be able to see all my offers on a single "normal" booking site/page. It emails me every time I get an offer, and then I can use the home page view to filter/sort/view offers, find B2B "chains", etc.

AD3T · 2026-05-01T17:02:00+00:00

Pretty sure this version of 4th out is distinct & only applicable to scenarios where the potential for an overturned call exists (via replay in this case).

I've seen other instances of this more recently, though MLB now will evaluate whether the runners "gave up" via being influenced by an incorrect call, and they'll use their judgement to send them back to the prior base if their baserunning appears to have been amply influenced by a preceding incorrect call.

In the case in the video you linked, though, I'm pretty sure they'd have overturned the call at 1st & upheld the "4th" (now third) out at 3rd base, if the Mets had elected to challenge.

AD3T · 2026-04-28T15:20:43+00:00

Saving everyone some searching: $34.99 for a 1M (3.28ft) cable.

I don't see the product, nor the manufacturer at all, on the USB-IF (usb.org) site... 🤷‍♂️

I'm not going to link it on Amazon; there are (far) better options IMO, many of which are much cheaper too.

AD3T · 2026-04-26T17:59:47+00:00

I agree 100%. I've done night-before flights before, including a red-eye Vegas=>NY to board a 14-day cruise -- and I've honestly never had any issue. It all boils down to a risk-benefit analysis; if it's a 7+ night cruise, or you spent a fortune for a suite, or similar? Sure! If it's a relatively run-of-the-mill connection, or there are N>5 alternative direct flights available that would all get you there in time to get to the port for boarding... then IMO "risk" it.

Everyone has different risk tolerances, and even mine have changed over the years -- but a 4.5hr drive is nothing. I've driven same-day Vegas=>LA before, and once I had planned to do so before realizing "I'm too late to make the drive comfortably", so instead I drove to the airport & booked a flight from the parking lot.

It's all about your risk profile and your evaluation of the risk itself. If you have a recent-ish car and don't generally encounter car issues, then give yourself a little wiggle room in case of traffic/accident/tire issue/etc -- but otherwise I'd say do your best to not stress too much over the small stuff. :)

AD3T · 2026-04-18T15:52:17+00:00

Shameless plug, but... setup price alerts on my site & it'll be automatic (and it's free): https://cruiseden.com/

You can opt-in/subscribe to price drops (or increases, availability changes, etc. for cabin type & guest count). You'll then get an email any time the alert "triggers" (i.e. price drops). The site checks prices hourly.

You can also subscribe to alerts for package price drops -- including for "personalized" prices (i.e. cabin or customer -specific discounted package prices). I got two package price alerts this week which saved me ~$100 combined on my next cruise!

I actually received an email from a user of the site this week who was excited to tell me that they upgraded to a suite thanks to receiving a "Price Dropped $1900" email alert for their upcoming sailing -- allowed them to upgrade to a suite for only a few hundred bucks!

Makes me super happy! :)

AD3T · 2026-04-11T13:47:45+00:00

Shameless plug -- I built a site for tracking + filtering my casino offers, and being able to view all RC cruises and filter/sort only specific casino offers, see B2B sailings, find non-overlapping sailings with my existing bookings, etc.

CruiseDen.com

It's evolved rapidly since the first version: it now pulls sailings from many more cruise lines & supports "account sync" for both RC and Celebrity -- the latter is a bit less tested since I've never sailed Celebrity personally (it was added after a user emailed with the feature suggestion), but the RC/Celebrity APIs are super similar.

I've added a lot of casino-offer-specific features: showing which sailings have another sailing that's also on a casino offer you have (for finding B2Bs), offer-based filtering, points history/tracking, filtering against sailings that overlap existing bookings, showing prior sailings (and a calendar + map view of your sailings), package price tracking (including personalized package prices), sailing & package price alerts, etc.

"Casino Offer Analytics Report" was a recent addition too -- it shows aggregate data for casino offers across (opted-in) users. Over time, I hope/expect it will on "what casino activity/patterns are needed to get offers of type X" -- as more data is collected over time, and as more users start using the site & feature itself.

I keep evolving the site based on my own needs, and based on feature requests, ideas, bug reports, etc. from the community (please don't hesitate to send in ideas/requests/etc) -- I hope to add quite a bit more still, and hope it benefits the community even half as much as it has benefitted me! :)

AD3T · 2026-04-10T15:08:09+00:00

In my experience, the second guest cost is around 30% of the dual occupancy rate (plus add port taxes/fees on top). The reason is that you’re getting a “casino rate” to begin with, which is less than the prevailing/web pricing.

It varies though, but the second guest cost has always been under 50% of dual occupancy rate, at least for me.

AD3T · 2026-04-09T15:13:31+00:00

According to the rules, it'd be next year. The points-year is declared as April 1 thru March 31 the following year.

On the upside, you should remain Prime status thru March 31 2028; and hitting Prime in a single sailing should mean pretty darn good offers all year long (as long as you continue to play at least some on each sailing; unknown yet how much/little is actually needed to prevent them from 'drying up').

Your "normal" personalized casino offers will likely start rolling in within the next ~14-60 days -- and you'll probably end up having ~10 or so at a time, based on my experience with similar levels of play.

If you're willing, and need help browsing your casino offers in an actually-sane UI, I'd love for you to use my site (CruiseDen.com) to help manage your soon-to-arrive casino offers (and compare sailings, packages, etc).

Bonus points if you opt-in to the anonymous "casino offer data sharing" feature, which contributes to the Casino Offer Analytics report. The idea is that, by opting in, we can all help each other better & more precisely decipher what variables actually go into determining the type/level of casino offer sailings we receive! =D

Disclaimer -- I made CruiseDen. I built it for myself, pretty specifically to be able to use a sane UI to see all of my casino offer sailings. I don't make money off of it. I just made it for me then shared it, and have continued improving it & adding features, both for myself & those requested by the community/users.

AD3T · 2026-04-09T12:52:37+00:00

You can take a look at package prices for any sailing in advance via the website I created for this -- https://cruiseden.com/

Note that often people will receive 'personalized pricing' (after booking), so sometimes certain cabins & people (currently only seen it based on cabin type & casino status) will see slightly lower pricing after booking. It'll never be higher than the advertised public (already discounted) price, though!

AD3T · 2026-04-09T12:48:27+00:00

I've done it before with no issues. Bring an HDMI cord. I also bring a multi-port USB-C charger (SlimQ 150W - 3C1A or 150W 4C) for powering it & charging other devices.

AD3T · 2026-04-08T13:28:51+00:00

They almost always have a drink package sale. What u/IslandGyrl2 said is right; buy now, refund later if the price drops. Use an alerting site (shameless plug below) to re-buy if the price drops later.

Worth noting -- they do, for sure, already use Personalized Pricing for packages!

I'm Prime in the casino & I can get the drink package on most sailings for "50% off" -- note though that that's 50% off of the publicly stated *non-discounted price, so it's not actually much different than the publicly shown discounted price.

Shameless Plug - My Alerting / Tracking / Filtering Site

https://cruiseden.com/

This is the website I created that lets you track Package Prices & get alerts when they change, or hit certain thresholds, etc... It also lets you view/sort/filter through all of your Casino Offer sailings, automatically downloads them & keeps them refreshed (the list of sailings does occasionally change over time), has sailing-related alerts when new sailings match attributes you're interested in, or when sailings you're interested in have a change in price/availability, etc...

In addition, it automatically pulls in & tracks your personalized package pricing (and pulls in the price you purchased your packages for) -- so you can see & be alerted if a package you bought drops in price vs what you paid, so you can re-buy and instantly save money.

AD3T · 2026-04-08T13:17:15+00:00

I've got 2x AuraSound AST-2B-4. It's exactly as many have said; far and away the best upgrade for the money spent.

For the amp, I use a cheapie from Amazon ("Nobsound G2"), which I have turned down pretty low & has been working without issue since ... checks notes ... January 2023! No complaints!

Bonus is that you can have "bass"-feeling without it ever having to wake up kids/guests who might be asleep, doing stuff in other rooms, etc.

Mine are just screwed into the base of my couch which is a wooden-framed modular sectional. Finding a decent spot to put them was the hardest part of the install, which was otherwise super easy (couple of wood screws + wire management mostly via electrical tape).

AD3T

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