I have sailed concierge, went once to non-concierge and decided I didn't like going back. I'm waiting for the comment from previous poster stating I'm wrong but for me I decided I enjoyed the extras more and it isn't enough of a price difference for me personally to not pay extra. I like the lounge, the 120 day window, the never going to guest services, the cabanas. I realize the people that don't go concierge because they apparently take all these extra cruises with the money they save sounds very appealing but when I get one week away with the family to not need to worry about anything it's worth it to me personally. I know if I didn't pay extra apparently I could sail once a month but it's tough getting that much time off.
Dug isn't saying you are wrong for you feeling like you can't go back. All she's talking about is the phrase that was stated on the first page. "Once you go concierge you never go back!!!"
For some people, words have real meanings, and that phrase can be irksome. I know people who wouldn't book the level for "fear" that they would never enjoy a different level of cruising. The phrase is cute, but it should be left to specific individual people, not the blanket phrase.
Not sure who said they were cruising extra. For me only booking a V when it's a few hundred more than the other category we're thinking of, that's not getting us on extra cruises LOL.
+1000. I sail Concierge because I can and because I like the special attention, access to the lounge and priority embarkation and disembarkation. Not because I think every other peon in the world deserves to be in steerage. The best friends I've made on my cruises have all been from the "other side of the tracks" and they've been nicer and more fun than my fellow Concierge passengers have been.
If you can do it, try it. You'll understand why a lot of Concierge passengers will only sail Concierge. But then again, maybe you won't. Some people find it to be a good value. Some don't. We do.
That said, we're cruising VGT this time, and unless there is a cheap Concierge upgrade available at the port, we'll be staying on the same hallways as the unwashed masses. I'm guessing we're going to have just as great a time as we have on our other cruises.
I like the way you put all of that.
Except that the only people we meet while on Disney cruises have been in the concierge lounge, LOL. Everyone else everywhere else just seems to be into their own things. We don't end up going to the bars (too tired!), we aren't pool people when on Disney cruises, etc.
I do enjoy my drinks on a cruise but probably know that I cannot take an alcohol drink outside of the concierge lounge so not sure how much I would use it.
Is the concierge lounge open late? Do people in concierge have their own place for breakfast, lunch and dinner if they desire?
Others have said it and I'll reinforce it. Of course you can take the drinks from the lounge. Every MDR night in October I took my glass of wine from the reception and brought it to the dining room. It's hard to really call the offerings in the lounge breakfast lunch and dinner, but then I remind myself that since we're vegetarian, the offerings are pretty skimpy in terms of things we can have. Probably colors my view of it.
Personally just "ignore" concierge threads if they annoy you.
She's annoyed by that phrase. She has good info and experience to impart. You always mention that there are perks that aren't listed and are often just given but you won't tell us what they are so no one expects them... Dug and I apparently haven't gotten any of those mysterious perks; we aren't wrong to mention that. She and I have had our experiences, and the phrase "Once you go concierge you never go back!!!", as was said in one of the first replies on this thread, doesn't apply to either one of us. My family has *easily* gone without concierge. I wouldn't *choose* an inside cabin again, but that's because it makes me sleep even better on a cruise, and I don't pay to go on a cruise so I can sleep. [Been there done that with our one-week-after-the-wedding honeymoon cruise, when I was already brand-newly pregnant, reacting to the hormones like crazy, and was fully asleep by 8pm every night (I'm a nightowl by nature). Barely even remember the cruise I was SO exhausted.]
She shouldn't avoid giving her good and useful information, just because some think she's bitter. (bitter?)
