canderson

As long as one of the original occupants remains, X is OK with switching out the second. If I understand what you're wanting to do, make the swap official through Celebrity if you have a preference for which 2 people get the SS perks.

Good strategy, Andy. Hope you score a good SS. What would it have cost to pick your own SS, or was that an option?

If we ever hope to see the inside of another one, we're going to have to start booking a whole lot sooner again. There's nothing left at all in Retreat, and hasn't been for a while, for the Fall 2025 Connie WB TA. Will probably jump back to Silversea.

Were you next door to Schmoe on that one? This was the first two Connie cruises out of Tampa after the restart. I waited one day too many to drop the hammer on the cabin you got! We were just down the hall. Here's my own contribution. Who was that masked man??? 😄

Just checked, and such as it is, there is ONE date on Constellation for a 12 nt, Nov 30, 2024, and nothing like this at all scheduled for 2025 of this nature on any ship. Suite only offered as "Guarantee". Nothing else in Retreat. Aqua = sold out. Concierge (all 3 classes) = 3 left. Veranda (both classes) = 2 left. Ocean View (both classes) = 32 left. So OK, everybody wants a veranda for a deep Caribbean! So it certainly doesn't seem to be a huge problem with bookings that's preventing Celebrity from running the longer Caribbean cruises. Why NONE for 2025? Beats me.

It certainly didn't used to be a problem. I remember fondly when Constellation got all of the true deep Caribbean / ABC (usually just AC) cruises of 13/14 nts. Most sailed at capacity, and if you wanted a decent cabin, you needed to book early. I think they called them "Ultimate Caribbean" cruises. Now the only way you can get 14 nts is to take a trans-canal trip or one of the 'slower' transoceanic cruises. Seems like they're even speeding up the TAs now, and those tend to book full as well, and the slower the better. Try getting a suite on the 2025 WB TA on Constellation. A glorious 16 nts, but fully booked, and has been for a while. You can still get the odd suite on other, shorter WB TAs in 2025. Side note: Well bummer -- Celebrity just quit showing ALL prior cruises with them in the "Points History" section of the CC portion of the site. That's why I couldn't confirm the expression "Ultimate Caribbean". Anyone know when that started???

It's 50 cents for pics now, and can be used to offset the membership cost as I recall. Don't want to scare anyone - it's not a pure member site. But membership does get you access to more. Definitely well worth a look.

That on top of seeming to be just a genuinely nice human being. Where did you run across him? Which ship? He was on Constellation for the restart, but we've lost track of him. Wonder if he's 'retired' from the business or moved to another line? We do periodically put out a call here to see if anyone has seen him, but have had no word for a long while now.

Then if your TA could see it (and my agent tells me she thinks the FBC site can be fiddly about what it shows depending upon how you slice and dice things), you should have been able to see the exact same thing if you were concurrently logged into your own account sitting side by side and providing it with the same input. However, we know two things. FBC will never show you all of the possible itineraries because they don't support them all, sometimes even at an entire airline level (as noted above) since they haven't got contracts with them all. That said, the filters they use against the Expedia database in an attempt to limit the flights shown for those reasons and others also causes the public (including TA) online FBC site to not show certain flights that a phone call to FBC suddenly makes possible (who knows if it's an algorithm problem or intentional). It's a 'rules based' algorithm for filtering, and apparently not perfect. Again, my recent experience with an upcoming cruise in November was case in point. Neither I nor my TA could get the FBC site to generate a specific obvious and very agreeable one stop itinerary choice from DEN to BCN, and she's even better at manipulating the site than I am. She then called FBC and landed the exact itinerary I had wanted to book.

If we haven't ordered enough paid-for wines from the Sommelier, and he/she is doing a really good job, I've been known to ask the sommelier for a net $0 receipt to which I add a tip if we're not carrying cash. I'm sure it looks really goofy to the accounting department, but it works. Normally, though, we're ordering enough of the higher end stuff by the bottle that the sommelier is getting good money that way every day or two.

Yes, a TA sees the same thing we do on the FBC site (it's all a filtered front-end through to Expedia anyway, which is what most of the big lines have switched to now - they've quit maintaining their own schedule links to the airlines), but a phone call by the TA can have different results, same as by pax.

Notice that I typed 'new' and not new. It's relative and has been incremental. And the point made was that while wages are higher, part of the cost of operation would be there and paid for whether they take cruising pax along for the ride or not, which would keep that side of the cost lower. The exception would be if they were using the cruising side to subsidize the mail/ferry side, in which case, the somewhat higher cruise fares make sense. For a cruise ship, ALL of the operating expense has to amortized across cruise passenger $. Not so with the cruise/mail/ferry approach, especially given the space allotted per passenger aboard is even less than a river boat. One would think, as I noted, that the evolution from mail/ferry to cruise/mail/ferry would have begun as a way to enhance revenue on itineraries that had to happen anyway.

If I understand the original post, yes, they do. FBC has access to a great many flights that don't show up on the online FBC web site. My next cruise is an example of that. If there's a real desire to book flights through Celebrity, it's always best to do your own search for a couple of itineraries you like, and start your live conversation with FBC with those if you don't find them on the FBC site.

The only thing to be careful about when viewing photos and videos on cruisedeckplans is to be mindful of the dates. They've amassed an incredible gallery there over a considerable length of time, but as a result, you have to pay attention to whether a particular photo or video is current when viewing them. If a person is wondering what a Royal Suite looks like on Millennium, there's quite a difference in appearance pre/post Revolution, and CDP has plenty of photos both ways. Is the current layout for a given M class a combo of bench seating + chairs around the dining table, or all chairs? How big is the table? It was just noted a couple of days ago that the use of space in the Millennium M class PH changed due to the Revolution in addition to the appearance change (no more vanity area outside the master bath - just another closet now - for example).

Yes, that's often done, and is a separate business model - totally opaque, as you say. But tipping where it's clearly a 'tip' on the receipt is another thing altogether. Here in the U.S., it's strictly verboten for a business or a manager to pull any amount from an employee's tips. The Department of Labor is always interested in hearing about these incidents when they occur. Here's a decent article on the topic re the law here in the U.S.: https://natlawreview.com/article/dol-cracks-down-and-opens-cracks-employers-keeping-tips And yes, before anyone reminds me that these cruise lines don't play by any rules out there on the sea, no, it's not a legal question for them, just a potential PR nightmare. I only point out the U.S. situation to provide an example of how the practice is not only considered really bad form in most of the civilized world, it's even outright illegal in some countries as well. As I say, I really doubt Celebrity (or any of the other well known lines) is doing this. Just too much risk to the brand.

I am still keyed into post #1 where the OP said "We were both logged into our accounts" which definitely sounded concurrent. It wasn't until #4 that it sounded like she had afterwards begun to do her own separate log in/out/in with the two accounts as a test of the pricing differences.

Yes, significantly more focus on cruising (much increased cabin count). If you look at the ships now, the bulk of the space above the waterline is taken by cruise accommodations and public space for same. It started out as a 'sideline' and has now taken over the majority of the GT of the ship. Then there's the addition of the Signature runs to the original Coastal Express itineraries.

Yes. You can look at a hotel price, first while logged on to the site, then while not logged on, and voila, the price has changed. Certain travel sites have been playing that game for some years now. The differences are generally small, but in some cases predictable There have been some interesting and revealing articles written on the subject. Problem with Celebrity is that you get NO pricing for add-ons unless you're logged in and have specified a particular booking, so they don't even need cookies to play the game for that. There they could use your account login to differentiate things for you. Am still surprised by the ability to open the record for a booking with 2 accounts simultaneously, though. Even my TA can't update anything if I've forgotten to log out! Then it takes something like 15 minutes. It used to be possible to lock yourself out of your own record for 15 minutes by closing down the browser without logging off first! Couldn't use the site again in a new browser session until it timed out. Neither could a Celebrity agent. Used to really annoy people!

Just a further thought upon what you might be insinuating there (or not?)... If it EVER got out that the company was taking a cut of the tips to add to the bottom line, they'd have a PR nightmare on their hands. It's more or less universally understood, at least in Western countries, that the company grabbing a share of the tips is EXCEPTIONALLY bad form, and is actually unlawful in many places. I doubt RCG would ever risk the fallout from doing that. That's not to say that RCG doesn't cheat and enjoy the "float" between the time the tip is gained (typically from credit cards) and a somewhat delayed payment to the crew, but it's very hard to imagine they'd take the risk of taking any % off the top.

Don't know. Guess one or two people associated with the service might get a piece, but it's the somm's incentive to sell. The only other two people with actual skin in that particular game (wine sales) are the F&B Manager and Hotel Director, and their incentive plans certainly wouldn't include dipping into the tip jar! I'll have to check next time.

You were both trying (successfully?) to access the same booking # at the same time? You have two separate account logins tied to the booking? I've always had record locking problems if trying to access one booking from multiple logins.

The FBC web site never has shown all of what they're prepared to sell you. Like I say, I use Kayak to do this kind of initial 'filtering' legwork (it knows how to handle multiple airport options, too), and then call FBC only after I've spotted a couple of itineraries I like so we have something to discuss. Edit: Kayak also offers flexible dates with a calendar that shows red/orange/green to give you an idea of which days offer better prices.

Amen to that. Just dialing up and asking for flights is like using Kayak.com with no filters. Most US cities to Rome would bring up a hundred different ways of getting there, and as @Ronaldo807 days, you really don't want to spend hours sorting through them. Just as another data point regarding 'days ahead' ... used FBC for upcoming cruise and we're flying out on 1 Nov, not embarking until 7 Nov.

It helps if you start the conversation with a specific itinerary or two in mind. Have often come away with my first choice.

We had such an experience in Dec 2021. His name was Anu. An individual you'd really want to spend your time with in a more normal setting. He set a really high bar for all that have come after.