Well, we wne to the seminar of Shopping on the Fantasy. At St. Maarten my son bought a watch, we used the dkiscount coupon that the shopping guide saved us. And we saved 30%. Wow- great deal!! NO... getting back to the good old USA. We could find the watch cheaper at many places. So we could have bought the watch at a bout 5% lower than the "shoppers special discount" I can not beleive that Disney permits this. Very, very disappointed.
It's very important to do research before buying things like watches while on a cruise. Prices are so easily looked up ahead of time. Check local shops, look on
amazon, look on google, etc. easy easy.
DH talked about watches before our eastern rccl cruise so I did some research and so did he. Onboard he found a decent watch in a brand he likes for a decent price. Never thought he got a deal because he knew the value of it, but he wasn't ripped off and has a memory along with the watch. Now, the invictas later on..... After 5 nights of seeing the huge, not our style, watches, we saw small ones we liked. Price seemed ok and DH really wanted to get them. Turns out his is a woman's watch, that was the only way to get one with faces small enough to match our style (and his watch's face isn't tiny...invicta makes some BIG watches). And it turns out that mine was a bit over what I could have gotten it for on amazon while his was under, so it turned out ok.
But it certainly wasn't the cruise line's responsibility that we didn't know that if you pay full price for an Invicta you are very very unaware of their pricing structure, so when you see 75% off sales you are finally getting down into the realm of the price you should be paying. (We kind of had a feeling, since DH knows watches, and I noticed they were on perms-sale which generally means that's the normal price, but we hadn't priced out Invicta so we didn't KNOW)
And DH does remind me that with WA's nearly 10% sales tax when buying directly from amazon, we did save a little more by buying it on the ship vs at home.
