iancal

When we upgrade to a premium cruise, at a premium price we understand that

Part of the premium is attritibutable to a small ship and higher staff ratio.

But we also expect, and desire, a premium ship in tip top condition. Elevators, AC, plumbing, and cabin all in tip top working condition.

Some of the comments remind me of the old railway hotels prior to renovation. The lobbies were beautiful, the exteriors were often heritage, but many of the rooms, pre renovation, were less than desirable.

What I find incongruous is the premium fare on this ship and statements by people who have cruised on the ship to not set your expectations too high,expect the same level of food, service, etc on this ship as you do on any other HAL ship, or it is an old ship with character ( just like so called fixer upper that a real estate agent thought that we should look at).

If we are paying premium rates we want a premium ship, premium service, premium food, etc. Not interested in a floating maritime museum when the rest is very much run of the mill so to speak.

DW has been a very loyal customer of a certain ladies wear store for many years.

They have yet to give her a photo of one of their stores, a pin, or a medallion based on her accumulated spend!

What they do give is a credit once in a while based on her total dollar spend. This just encourages her to spend more.

Marriott and Starwood don't send me pictures of their hotels either. They do however give me free rooms from time to time. Much better than anything else that they could give me.

What I find fascinating is this thing that the cruise lines have about calling their customers 'guests' as though this makes them more special. It is such a silly notion that even Target managers are now instructing staff to refer to customers as guests. Go figure.

The benefit thing is do personal.

Yes, on our RCI cruise Diamond lounge provided gratis Mimosas in the AM.

But we do not care for them. So RCI could have offered us a boatload of them and it would be meaningless to us. No better than a calendar, a free picture, or a medallion to us. About as useful or meaningful to us as as a chocolate teapot.

We have only had one gty assignment that we did not care for. It was on Carnival.

But, our TA has us 'put back in the pool' and we were subsequently assigned a much better cabin. Not certain if this is the norm, or perhaps just a Carnival option. We have never had one that we did not like on any other cruise line, including HAL.

Good for you for snagging a good offer.

Our experience across several lines is that pricing can actually go down for as short a time as one day and then shoot back up.

We hVe been very fortunate...all of our guy cabins have been reasonable and most have been very good.

If you are looking for a very nice, reasonably priced hotel, we recently did five nights in Prague at Hotel Seven Days. It had a very good tripadvisor write up which we found to be very accurate.

Down the street we found one of the best Thai reataurants that we have ever experienced...and we have been in Thailand for the past four weeks! It was a bit of a note in the wall but the food was marvellous..

We never consider cruise line hotels. we have found them to be overpriced.

What we liked best about the Diamond lounge was breakfast. Fruit, croissants, cheese,wfresh OJ, and most especially a few caps with double shots of expresso. And it was typically very quiet.

Having said this,we certainly do not select cruises based on their respective reward programs. It would be a factor if all other things were equal...which has never been the case.

A photo of the ship, a pin, a medal, a bottle of water, priority boarding, a card on our birthday, a magazine cum advertisement brochure, or 25points discount on a cup of coffee are all things that are completely meaningless and of zero value to us. RCI gave us a couple of those ten cent lapel pins. They went straight in our stateroom bin. Really, I do not know why they bother with the trinkets and trash.

Lots of cruise lines include some or all of them and talk it up as though it is a big deal or some sort of achievement. In my previous business we used to joke and say we would give anything away that did not cost us any money. I think some cruise lines follow the same mantra.

Yes, we had both. We could drink to our hearts content in the Diamond Lounge plus we had the three drinks a day from 5-8pm. Not that we did both in fact we very seldom had three drinks unless that grape was particularly good. We did try out the various bars on the ship.

Elite status is not a big deal on Celebrity. Probably 2 star Mariner but we do not keep track of it. Our Internet TA was great...she was the one who recognized the opportunity and called for our $200 discount.

Here is what surprised us. We have had priority boarding privileges several times on various lines but we have never used them. There has not been much of a line up any time we have boarded...on any cruise line. But on this RCi cruise we were moved from the Priority line, did not even know we were in it, to the regular line because it was empty. Some people ahead of us refused to move from the line. Not sure why other than they it may have made them feel privilaged to use the priority line.. As DW remarked...privileged to wait in line an extra five minutes!

Our last cruise was only our second on RCI. We booked our usual balcony gty.

What surprised us was RCI recognized our Celebrity status and made us Diamond Club. There was the usual fluff but what we liked...

-a $200 discount on our cabin

-we were each given 60 minutes of Internet time

-access to Diamond lounge. This had breakfast in the AM, concierge service, and pre dinner drinks, appetizers in the lounge at night. Good choice on house reds. The Concierge was excellent.

-we each had three complementary drinks per day loaded onto or cards. They could be used at any bar on the ship between 5 and 8PM.

Strongly agree. Don't drink the regular coffee.

Request a mattress topper.

We cruise with Princess next month do it will be interesting to see the changes.

I think that in order to do this you need to do two things.

The first is to strip away the meaningless or valueless items. All the programs seem to have some of them as 'filler ' that serve only to lengthen the list of benefits.

Next, I think that you have to determine was is important or what has value to you. there will be differences between perceived benefits.

HAL does has one unique feature though. From time to time they actually charge repeat customers more for a cruise than they do new customers.

If your definition of refinement and elegance is based upon more dark wood, brass, traditional lighting and floor coverings then HAL may be more elegant, refined, and civilized (not certain what civilized means)

But that is not our definition. We see little differerence between HAL and Celebrity. Only the decor is different with Celebrity being more contemporary.

For us it is the difference between an older hotel with lots of dark wood and brass and a newer one. We find no other difference, on balance, between them other than library,entertainment, and reward programs.

I think the differences are more aspirational than anything else.

I think that there are many people who believe that their particular country sets the standard for safe. For most of us it is an illusion because we are so familiar with our own environment that we overlook the actual statistics and the relative risk from the crazies.

Many would be very surprised how those outsiders actually view the relative safety of their country, or areas within it.

That is a very good idea.

We have also heard of a couple who went down to the front desk area at night in their pyjamas to sleep in the chairs. But mostly to bring attention to the no AC in their cabin for several days. They tried everything else and the last resort was to embarrass the staff into action.

We each take a 20" roller carry on. DW has her purse, I have a small backpack fit the iPad and a book. We add cruises to land trips. We are part way through a three month trip with a 14 day cruise towards the end and another if we can snag an attractive deal.

We skip formal evenings in the MDR so we need less. We are fine with paying for laundry. We no longer feel that we need to bring everything that we own or a pile of extra clothes for 'in case'.

Exactly.

If we were making a choice between travelling in the US and travelling in Europe based on violent crime/murder stats and the probability of being involved in an 'incident' etc. our overwhelming choice would be Europe.

We want the best price and then we are free to select what we want.

Just the price, net of all taxes, per diem gratuities, cruise line OBC's and TA provided OBC's.

We are just as concerned about travelling in the US as we are in Europe.

Why? The exceedingly high rate of physical crime and the murder rate in US cities. Potential visitors from outside the U.S. are very much aware of the unusual and liberal gun laws and it does concern them. And for some Europeans that we have met in our travels this is frightening.

Recent history has shown that the U.S. is certainly not immune from acts of terrorism either by it's own citizens or foreign nationals. Or acts by out and out crackpots.

So, we do not see much of a difference.

It is a dangerous world out there but we have rejected staying at home and watching Fox or CNN.

Don't know about that. Our last four Celebrity cruises- three in the Med and the last one a 14 day Christmas Carib cruise were all booked just prior to, or within the final payment window. Same with our RCI Med cruise this past October. All booked at very attractive rates, well below prior rates and below competing ships at the time of booking.

Currently have our eye on a HAL, a Celebrity, a Princess, and 2 RCI sailings for March. We will book the first one that has an attractive offer. If not we will revert back to our land based plan. Unlike many others we have a great deal of flxibility in our schedules.

Based on past experience Celebrity drops first with a Tuesday special, followed by HAL, then Princess and RCI. But, it is really a supply and demand driven price curve. Anything can happen including a price increase in the final payment window.

It is not unusual for us to be in our room by 10:30 or 11 in business class hotels. These rooms are often vacated and cleaned early. We email ahead. Last time in London we landed at LHR at 9:15, grabbed the tube, and we're in our Marriott Kensington room by 10:30. They had a room ready, they had my note. We are Marriott members BUT the room was actually won on a Priceline bid.

We have also found that you have an even better chance of getting a room early when you arrive at a business class hotel on a Saturday,Sunday, or local stat morning. Far more chance of rooms being available for immediate occupancy..

We have found that most hotels are very accommodating whe they have the available rooms.

We were told by a few people who lived in a Florida retirement community that a travel agent comes by their complex from time to time to offer them last minute specials. We met them on an early Dec. Caribbean cruise.

The people we met said it was sometimes cheaper than staying at home. One of the couples told us that their bags are always packed an ready to go!

Good for them...they deserve a break.

In addition to using this card (Amazon, Sears, Marriott, etc) to avoid the 2.5 percent service fee that Canadian banks charge on foreign transactions, you can also use it as anATM like card.

Canadian retail banks are infamous for high cost and for hidden service fees. When you withdraw money from a foreign ATM your bank is more than likely charging you THEIR retail exchange rate. This rate is about 2.5 to 3 points higher than the actual spot rate.

Load up you Chase Visa with cash and then do cash advances on this card in foreign ATMs. The foreign funds will come across at the spot rate..same one Chase uses for your foreign Visa purchases. One proviso...Chase charges 1 percent fee with a five dollar minimum. We pay by cash often when we travel..our average withdrawal is $700. You need to have a positive balance otherwise the interest on the cash advance is userous. We can save about $300 in hidden bank ATM FX fees each year simply by doing this.

ms mayor...I say go for it. You have a reasonable back up plan.

This is what we do now. We have snagged cruise deals one week prior to sailing. We are picky though since our strong preference is a balcony. We keep an eye out for several ships, several cruise lines. We used to plan every trip down to the ground but not any more. In fact we are 'winging it' right now in our SE Asia travels. It takes time to change your mindset to this mode of travel...at least it did for us. But, there are usually unexpected rewards that surpass the monetary benefits.