For the past 22 years our family does a cruise every year, sometimes twice a year. ALWAYS with Royal Caribbean. This happened to be the 2nd cruise of 2015 (RCCL's Quantum of the Seas in April). Being that our "official group trip" was already in April, this was booked on a whim by a family member to celebrating her husband's birthday. Once work got out, many other family members wanted to go along. We ended up with a group 43 people, NCL would NOT offer us any type of group rate, discounts, onboard credits.... NOTHING; which should have been the first red flag.

Most of the group booked in the Spring but because I wasn't able to financially until much later, in fact I booked a week before sailing. I was consistently checking prices for about 2 months prior to and one thing that I personally never experienced with RCCL was that the closer to sailing the rates were going up astronomically. Hoping to get a "last minute deal", I instead ended up paying more for an inside cabin than all of my other family who had balconies. I wasn't too upset by this because after all it was my fault for not booking sooner. So upon booking I was told I would receive a $100 on board credit and a free drink package and because I was traveling with 2 kids and not another adult, I was also promised 2 soda packages for my daughters. I was NOT told however that I would still be responsible to pay taxes on the drinks , this was a surprise at the end when I got my bill. I got only a $50 onboard credit and only 1 soda package which my girls were NOT allowed to share so I ended up having to spend another $60 on a second soda package.

As I mentioned I was traveling with a group on 43 people all assigned on the 11th and 12th floor with a couple of exceptions who had booked suites; upon check in I was told that my room had been given to someone else and I had been reassigned to the 5th floor!! The embarkation process was tedious but I had already expected this as it takes time to get 3000+ people onto a ship (debarkation at the end of the trip though was a complete nightmare!!) Once onboard I went to find my room, the room size and setup wasn't bad. I was disappointed that there wasn't a sofa or sitting area because on RCCL even the inside cabins have a sofa but again no big deal. I suddenly realized that my luggage tags read my original 12th floor stateroom number so I immediately rushed to Guest Services to explain what happened and to make sure they would redirect my bags to my new room. After several trips to the room to check to see if they'd arrived and several trips back to guest services by 9pm I still had NO luggage!! Finally around 10 pm I visited Guest services again to inquire about my bags, I was directed to a holding area behind guest services where there were about a dozen pieces of deserted luggage. After combing through a slew of black suitcases that all looked exactly like mine, I finally found my pieces. Read more