ExArkie

Agreed. I have sat through several webinars by various organizations (Amtrak Vacations does a good job…perhaps Celebrity should watch one or two of theirs) and conducted a few myself. The Celebrity versions always strike me as being done by a bunch of amateurs with little technical capability. Sort of like the old Mickey Rooney movies where “the kids” decide to put on a show. Fortunately, those movies had a crew of accomplished professionals actually “putting on the show,” so it was less painful than sitting through one of these webinars. Simple things would help, such as elevating the camera (really tired of looking up their noses), back away from the camera a bit so your head doesn’t fill the entire screen, use a lapel mic, reduce background noise, etc. Just do an Internet search on “conducting a webinar.” Definitely have a host who is more accomplished at conducting interviews.

Gee, I was hoping I could be the first person to be pedantic this time. I’ll have to be quicker in the future.

John Kenneth Galbraith: “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

We did one transatlantic on Oceania Marina (PH3), six or seven on QM2 (PG or QG). The only good to very good food we had at dinner on Oceania was in the Asian restaurant, Red Ginger, and the shrimp/lobster grill in their buffet. Other specialties and the MDR were extremely disappointing (e.g., overwhelming anise flavor in bouillabaisse, cold and congealed Sauce Choron in the MDR, boiled beef served as osso bucco in the Italian restaurant). We have had a few average meals on QM2, but the quality has always been much higher than our one Oceania experience. Note that our Oceania trip was about a year after restart from the cruise industry shutdown, when staffing and training issues were especially acute. It is quite possible our experience was an anomaly due to those issues (and lack of quality control), but at their prices I am hesitant to give them another chance. Besides, we really only like ocean crossings - not port-to-port cruises - which is not the best use of Oceania's chosen focus on port-intensive trips.

From the Luggage Forward Web site, under FAQs: "Can I lock my luggage? Domestic Shipments Bags traveling within a single country must be locked. Failure to lock Items will void your right to file a claim for lost or missing contents. International Shipments Bags shipped between two countries must be unlocked as they may have to be opened as a normal part of the customs screening process. If bags are locked, including TSA approved locks, and customs cannot open an item then the lock or seal may have to be broken. Locking any item traveling internationally can cause extended delays and will void Luggage Forward’s industry leading on-time guarantee."

I once tore a ligament in my ankle by stepping off a curb. Really tried to come up with something more exciting to tell people, but it never worked.

I have only received loyalty points for canceled flights/hotel rooms when it is the airline or hotel who cancels my existing reservation and books me on something different. For example, I was booked on Northwest Airlines (obviously, several years ago) out of Tokyo. The plane, while parked at the gate, was hit by one of the airport vehicles, causing slight damage to the landing gear. Northwest booked me on an ANA flight leaving later that day, but gave me points/miles credit for the original booking. If I cancel, no points/miles. It is worth noting that the Celebrity Web site description of Captain's Club says, "You’ll earn points on every sailing..." No sailing, no points. Is it "fair"? we can argue about that, but they made the program and they decide how it works.

The credit card also offers sign-up bonuses which can convert to reasonable OBC. Since the booking we did (Retreat) no longer included OBC or daily service charge, we signed up for the credit card when the bonus - combined with OBC from TA - was enough to cover the daily service charge for the two of us. Probably charge a bit more to the card (sailing is autumn 2025) to build up a bit more OBC before we board, in case the service charge increases (again) in the meantime. One point translates to $0.01 OBC. So the 30,000 point signup bonus gives us $300 OBC. I think this brochure is still valid: https://www.celebritycruises.com/content/dam/celebrity/pdf/2267-Celebrity-Web-Rewards-Chart-and-Rules-FEE-5.18.21-REV.pdf The point accumulation is 2 points per dollar on Celebrity/Royal and one point per dollar for all other spending. (I think...that's what I have in my spreadsheet.) Edited to add: I just looked up the BoA site for the card. Current sign-up bonus appears to be 25,000 points, but I think I saw the 30,000 points still offered when logged into the Celebrity site.

I've found that it varies a lot, depending on what one is looking at. My wife and I prefer ocean crossings to port-intensive sailings (something about vast amounts of open water...), so we look at transatlantic and transpacific sailings primarily. I set up a spreadsheet - my wife claims I set up a spreadsheet for everything, including deciding what to make for dinner, but that's a (slight) exaggeration - that incorporates all of the things on offer for each line, plus those things that we would be paying extra (daily service charges, for example, and airfare), pricing the least expensive cabin we would like, all of which is normalized on a per-day basis. Generally, for most upscale lines (such as Celebrity, Azamara - although one can always argue cruise line classifications) the entry-level suite is our reference, while on the "luxury" lines (such as Silversea, Seabourn), it is a balcony cabin. My numbers showed that for this year, our most economical option was an Azamara Journey Club Continent Suite, which was slightly less than Celebrity, significantly less than Silversea and Seabourn, and less than HAL when one has to add in all the stuff not included on that line. For next year, we ended up on Celebrity Eclipse for a fall transatlantic (prefer westbound) in an aft corner Sky Suite. Even adding in the extras, since daily service charges are no longer part of the package, Silversea was still $400+ per person more than Celebrity. However, wanting to return to Japan, we also booked a transpacific for next Spring. On that one, there was no comparison because Silversea was significantly less than a Celebrity Sky Suite when accounting for all expected costs. They were also just below Seabourn, but we ended up on HAL Noordam in a Signature Suite because their promotional package available at the time gave us almost all of the significant items included on Silversea and was $500+ per person less. I have never seen anything on Regent that even comes close to qualifying as most economical for what we have looked at. Note that shore excursions rarely matter on these transoceanic comparisons. Azamara, for instance, has one port on our selected sailing. If we were comparing a port-intensive sailing and counting excursions, quite possibly Regent would be in contention. My point, which I took my time getting to, is that the comparison has to be done every time because there is no definitive pattern one can apply universally. Not having brand loyalty is a great advantage...although Cunard's Queen Mary 2 transatlantic sailings do get some degree of preferential treatment from us. They have priced themselves out of contention recently, though.

We were on the westbound TA that month and had boatloads (sorry) of OBC. Really wanted to use some for the tour, but it wasn’t available.

Asking the price or whether something is covered by the package can also be problematic if the bartender is busy and really doesn’t have a moment to explain the unpublished menu.

I really like the corner aft suites. The first night, you are liable to encounter the pole during nocturnal ramblings, but you quickly internalize where it is and it ceases to be a problem. The porthole makes the room much brighter and cheery than the other aft suites.

We have never been on Azamara, but booked a transatlantic (October 3, 2024, Lisbon to Boston on Azamara Journey...we prefer crossing oceans to sailing between ports) under the Flash Sale a week or so ago. This thread - and the board in general - has been fantastic in terms of learning what to expect, especially as regards the upkeep on the "Tips" spreadsheet. Incredible work. Question #1: Since this is a transatlantic sailing, I understand that the Azamazing Evening will not be held (there's only one port we're scheduled to leave at 4 PM, so no opportunity to do so regardless). Is that also true of the White Nights event, i.e., that it is not held on transatlantic trips? I understood it is normally held in port, so it'd have to be an afternoon event on this trip. Question #2: A few posts upstream, it was asked whether Chef's Table should be booked prior to boarding, which was answered that it was not necessary. Is it even possible to do so? I saw nothing on the Booked Guest pages where it could be done, but then I only found where we enter our passport numbers this morning, so it is quite possible that I missed it. No problem with waiting until we're on board to book it (with the OBC from our TA combined with that on the Flash Sale, we have "money to burn" as it were), if that's the way it is done. Question #3: We booked a Club Continent Suite, which includes specialty dining evidently for as many nights as we care to do so. If we are on board and decide that we would like to avail ourselves of a specialty restaurant, how likely is it to be able to get a reservation on the same day? on the next day? on any day? I will probably book a couple of nights in advance, just to be sure we get our preferred dining times, but would like the flexibility to repeat the experience if we really enjoy it. Thanks (in advance) for whatever explanations you can offer. Meanwhile, I'll go read more of the spreadsheet.

We have the Early Booking Bonus, which comes with an Elite package. Being a fan of single-malts, I was interested to see whether one was included. The package flyer lists none, but says at the bottom of the spirits list "And Many More..." Considering that the bar and drink menus I have found on-line list only cocktails and not individual spirits (to me, a cocktail is made by taking the Scotch bottle, pouring some into a glass, and maybe adding a drop of water, depending on the spirit), I have resigned myself to ordering drinks on board by asking what Scotch is available on the package.

It is worth mentioning that Annual Reports and Proxy Statements do not necessarily contain the same information. While the 2022 Annual Report specifically mentioned the shareholder benefit (section immediately following the Executive Summary), there was no mention of it in the 2023 Annual Report, hence this thread. Those who are current shareholders will receive a proxy statement that lists actions the board recommends be taken by the corporation or actions that have been added to the annual meeting agenda arising from shareholder initiatives. The current proxy statement apparently includes a recommendation to vote in favor of the shareholder benefit. We sold our Carnival stock last year to take tax advantage of the capital loss (sold our house, triggering a huge capital gain, and we had already recouped the Carnival stock losses in OBC over the years we had it), so we did not receive the proxy statement. I do not recall the shareholder benefit being a matter for voting at the annual meeting in years past, but generally an action taken by the board independent of a shareholder vote. It may have occurred, since I don't retain proxy statements from the past (you're surprised at that, I'm sure), but I don't recall it. Potentially this is a result of whatever governance changes have occurred over the year or two.

I played with the numbers and came up just short of one spend point per cruise day regardless of how much I overestimated the counting. Probably doesn't matter, since we would (at best) get close to 3-star status, while the Mariner benefits really don't get impressive until reaching 4-star. By the way, I said it was 16 days, but our reservation says 15 days. Their number fails to account for eastbound crossing the International Date Line (April 30 happens twice on this trip), so I'm not even sure how many base nights will be credited.

For a few years, most recently in 2019, I was teaching a class in the UK and once in Ireland. For a few years in a row, we were on the mid-December (usually around the 15th) westbound transatlantic coming home from the assignment, preferring a one-way business class flight for the outbound. Booking one-way fares from the US on a US-based airline is typically exorbitant, generally the same as a full fare round trip. At one time, using miles was half a round trip, but most airlines have changed that policy now, so it is no longer universally true. I was able to get good pricing a few times on a European carrier leaving out of Toronto, but those were relatively rare. I used Cunard Air a few times, since they were able to come up with business class seats that were usually less than one-half the round trip ticket price I was finding. I had pretty much as much control over things as I could desire. The standard policy is that the airfare is not paid until final payment is due to Cunard, but one can pay it early - as soon as it is booked - which will help secure the reservation (it is not guaranteed until paid for), select seats, or whatever else is required. I did that, given that if I were booking my own airfare I would be paying immediately anyway. They will provide you with a form to fill out for early payment. I was able to book the flight arriving on the far side of the Atlantic many weeks before the transatlantic departure. I don't know how far back I could have gone, but they didn't charge me any extra for arriving as early as I needed to. I was also able to select which city would be my destination, usually Manchester and one to Dublin. Once, when they told me I'd change planes in Edinburgh to get to Manchester, I had them back up the date a few days and terminate the flight in Edinburgh, where my wife and I were able to visit friends. We booked the train to Manchester ourselves. Cunard Air allowed me to choose which airline I preferred, so I maintained elite status on my airline of choice. After payment with my frequent flyer number attached, I could bring up the reservation on the airline's Web site to do whatever I needed, such as change seats. The airline automatically notified me of any schedule changes, potential weather interruptions, political unrest (okay, not much of that in the UK or Ireland at the time), and so forth. In the event of a cancellation, the airline would have issued me a voucher for the amount paid if the fare class was one that precluded cash refunds (some consolidator tickets apparently are not refundable for cash, while most others are if the airline cancels the flight). With my travel history, using the voucher would not have been an issue. Short version: My experience with Cunard Air, all of which was pre-COVID, was positive. No issues, as much flexibility as I required, and significantly lower prices than I could find on my own. Post-COVID, we have done one westbound TA (again in December because the QG price was nearly the same as PG - our usual booking category is PG) in 2022. We booked one-way air on our own because we found a European carrier that offered a ridiculously low one-way business class fare to Paris. (Train to London, then out to Cornwall and the southern coast, ending up in Southampton for the TA.) So, I cannot state from my own experience how things may have changed after the shutdown.

This one I knew immediately, since I have my own photo taken from approximately the same location as the third picture. (it was a Pacific voyage on Celebrity for us.) You just beat me to it...by more than twelve hours.

Assuming Port A would be in the same neighborhood as the other two, I got a good match on the third photo to the Iririki Island Resort, which is also in Vanuatu. The island is in the harbor for Port Via, which appears to be a cruise stop.

Thank you for the explanation. I was wondering how that worked. Since our booking (16-night transpacific) is under the Early Booking Bonus, I would assume we would be credited with on-board spend for the Elite Beverage Package, Premium Wi-Fi, two specialty dining credits, and gratuities, since all those are included in the promo fare? Adding in the non refundable OBC we have (currently $700, without having applied for shareholder credit yet) and will probably spend, that could add up to several additional days’ credit.

I generally ignore Christopher Elliott’s articles. For a travel writer and advocate, he has a remarkably high ratio of inaccurate or false information to the things he gets right.

And everyone complained because they stopped serving meals on the airlines...

We saw the resident bottlenose in the Firth of Moray several years ago when we were last in the area, which had us near your home of Inverness. Not being able to identify individual dolphins by sight, I do not know if this is the same one that we saw.

Possibly useful discussion from a few years ago:

For a 2025 transpacific we wanted, I took them at their word and booked the EBB fare when we decided it was a price we could accept…and not wanting that bonus to disappear on me. Checking again (prompted by a Cruise Critic discussion) about six months later, the EBB was still offered. Just checked again and it is now gone, which is around nine months after we booked.