Royal Caribbean doesn't allow many changes before your cruise begins, but there's one important one you should know about.
Once you pass the final payment date for your cruise, your reservation is pretty much locked in without incurring change or cancel fees.
The final payment is typically 90 days before a sailing commences.
As an example, you cannot add someone or remove some from a reservation without repricing the entire cruise. If you want to change the ship and/or sail date, that is akin to cancelling and rebooking, and that's rife with penalties and new costs.
I've noticed a lot of people are unaware they can swap people on the reservation without penalty, even right up to the sailing itself.
Known as a name change, Royal Caribbean will allow passengers to swap out a person on the reservation for someone else without a price change or penalty, even if they booked non-refundable cruise fare.
The cruise line will allow name changes right up to 72 hours before the cruise begins.
The only "catch" is at least one person from the original reservation needs to remain on the reservation.
There are many use cases for doing a name change. One common example is for newborn babies.
On the Royal Caribbean message boards, user Scotsman wanted to book a cruise for an unborn baby. Not only does the baby not have a name yet, but the baby does not have a birthday either.
In this situation, you could book the baby as "Baby surname" and change the name later. It's essentially a placeholder.
"I wish I would have known that name changes were allowed," wrote AlmondFarmer.
Another common scenario is a friend or family member that can no longer sail. Boyfriends and girlfriends break up, a spouse is called back to work, or a friend is no longer a friend.
Royal Caribbean would allow you to swap out someone for another person on the reservation.
Name swaps, but not adding or subtracting
There's an important distinction with this rule, and that is you can swap people out, but not add or remove.
In Royal Caribbean's reservation system, adding or subtracting a person from the reservation (and thus changing the total amount of passengers booked in the cabin) will trigger a reprice.
A reprice is tantamount to making a new booking at prevailing rates.
So in a scenario where there are two people booked on a cruise, you could change person A or person B with person C without a price change.
But if you wanted to remove person B without a replacement, you'd incur a change. Similarly, if you tried to add person C to the reservation, that would be considered a change.
In a scenario where person B can no longer cruise and there is no replacement, your best bet is to leave person B on the reservation and no-show to the ship without them.
Royal Caribbean will later refund port fees and taxes for person B.
Other Royal Caribbean policies you might not know about
Name swapping is a great trick to remember for the future, and there are other things you might not have known about that are also equally helpful.
Residents of certain countries are able to re-price a cruise before final payment if the price goes lower than what you originally booked.
It's not a well-advertised policy, but I've used it time and time again to save money.
Travel agents can do it easily on their end, whereas those that book directly with the cruise line need to call in to get it done and some of the phone agents are unaware of it (or confuse it with the 48 price protection policy).
It's open to residents of the United States, Canada, and a few other countries. Notably, resident of the United Kingdom are not eligible for it due to local laws.
As long as the price of the same exact room category is lower than you paid and you are before the final payment date, you can get a price adjustment to the lower price. It has to be the same cabin category, such as D4 or CB.
This tip can go one step further, as it can sometimes be advantageous to change from refundable deposit to non-refundable deposit right before the final payment date.
It may seem silly, but sometimes it's cheaper to change the deposit type from refundable fare to non-refundable a day or two before final payment is due. That's because Royal Caribbean's pricing algorithm sometimes drops the price for different fare types.
If you know you're going to sail and make final payment date, switching to non-refundable cruise fare is easy savings.
The other useful policy a lot of cruisers are surprised to hear about is the workaround to Royal Caribbean's drink package rule.
If one adult tries to buy the Deluxe Beverage Package (the unlimited alcohol package), then all the other adults in the same cabin have to buy it too.
There are situations where buying a drink package that includes alcohol wouldn't be practical, such if someone was pregnant or couldn't drink for medical reasons.
The lesser-known alternative is to call Royal Caribbean and explain the situation. They'll allow the other adult to buy the Royal Refreshment package instead, which would save a lot of money.
