Suzi66

With the ships excursions, or any for that matter, that have kayaking, how much would be involved? We are looking at a 6.5 hour excursion through Celebrity which is classed as moderate. I have been looking for excursions that are mostly boat rather than anything else but the only other one is marked as strenuous and I'm not sure if that is because of the stairs part of it or not.

If it is anything like the two over January, there won't be any menus for the MDR on the app. See you on board in 10 sleeps (not that I'm counting or anything but also only 6 more days of work for me)

I wonder if he was a NZ citizen and this prevented him from coming to Australia and then flying back to NZ potentially infecting those he was flying internationally with.

Absolutely are. I asked my DIL if she wanted some kits just before Christmas as I got quite a few from school. She wanted to make sure that they were not the ones that you had to use the UV light for as that was what the Coles staff had been given to use and they were a PITA. I hadn't even heard about them until then. If the parents at schools had been given those there would be no way that as many kids would have been tested as they were, and as it was we still had plenty of left over kits as once kids had tested positive they didn't need to test again for a while so didn't bother taking them home.

I am boarding for a B2B on Jan 2 and our turn around day is Jan 14. I can let you know what happened.

Same one as us. So I would be assuming the one after Melbourne and the one after Wellington.

The last time we did a Celebrity cruise to NZ was in 2019, but we have another in a couple of weeks. Looking back through photos, the first evening chic night was crossing between Australia and NZ (we stopped at Hobart first so it was the evening after that for us, I am assuming it will be the night after Melbourne in January), then it was the day we spent at sea between Wellington and Tauranga which was our last stop. For the January cruise I am going to assume that it will be similar, so the sea day between Wellington and Bay of Islands. What date are you travelling?

If only we got tipped!

Not us secondary teachers (I did get one store bought card though this year). But the kids expect us to give them chocolates, and supply them with pens EVERY single day of the school year.

This is pretty much what happened to us, only we were in Vancouver when hubby tested positive on the last day of our first cruise of a B2B2B. No information or assistance. We had to isolate for 10 days and then find our own way home even though the next 2 cruises were how we planned on getting to Australia. We are still waiting for our refunds for the cruises and the promised money to help cover costs for our quarantine. This was September. Somehow I doubt we will see it this year.

I'm both gluten and lactose intolerant. While I haven't been formally diagnosed with Coeliac, both my son and niece have been and I can tell very quickly if I have been glutened. We were on the Eclipse in September and I thought it was excellent. The food in the OV was all labelled so I knew what I could and couldn't eat and in the MDR I ordered the night before and was able to have almost anything on the menu made to suit me. Gluten free bread was supplied when I sat down and I got margarine as I couldn't have butter, or somedays I got hummus instead. Every night a special dessert was made for me. In contrast we were on the Norwegian Spirit 2 weeks later and nothing in the buffet was labelled. The only dessert I could often get was lemon sorbet, and I did get glutened one night towards the end of the cruise. They also ended up toasting my bread as it got stale and it was the only way they could serve it. I have no qualms about going on Celebrity again regarding food, although I would think twice about Norwegian, although perhaps it was just the ship.

We did one with Gastineau tours. The boat only held 14 people and we had a guide that took us through the forest pointing out different things and showing us how to do different things with our cameras. It actually was booked through Celebrity but Gastineau was the company they booked. We did the glacier first and then the whale watch but I think they had other tours that did the other way around.

This is with a super zoomed camera and cropped as well so we could work out what we were seeing. Our cameras both have really good telephoto lenses so we thought taking problems wouldn't be a problem. We were wrong. This is the original shot without cropping but still with lots of zooming. As a comparison, off the side of the ship on one of our two glacier days. I was on the walking track for this one and quickly got the snap as they played next to the ship.

If the RC one and the Celebrity one are the same, we went with Allen Marine this September. This was our first stop in Alaska (and our first trip out of Australian/New Zealand waters) and I, for some reason, thought that we would get a lot closer to the otters than we did. Make sure you have binoculars. We did see seals and whales, but saw a lot more whales the day before from the ship, and a couple of days later in Juneau. We did enjoy the tour, but we also did some land based things in Sitka and preferred those, possibly because we had such a good experience in Juneau to compare it to.

I think you have missed the point. We were SUPPOSED to be on the following 2 cruises which was to get us from Vancouver to Sydney and we were then flying the remainder of the way home ourselves. If Celebrity had bothered to tell our TA what was going on it would have helped. Did we need to organise a flight to Hawaii and then they would let us get back on the ship? Would they possibly help by organising flights by Celebrity for this (so we had peace of mind we would get to the ship, even if we had to pay for the flights), but nothing. Not a sound from them at all except to ask for proof that my husband had actually tested positive. BTW how would you like it if you had travelled to Australia for the very first time not knowing anyone or the area at all, planning to do one cruise in Australia itself and then cruise back to the US on the same ship, did your first leg of your trip up to the Great Barrier Reef and back, find out you were positive on the last day of that cruise, get no help at all to find a place to stay in Sydney (which isn't cheap) for 10 days and then have to work out how you are then coming back home from what was going to be the trip of a lifetime that you had planned for years. There was no need to be rude about us wanting Celebrity to assist us to get home, you would want the same if you had been stranded by them on our side of the world.

We certainly didn't.

Hi, my internet has been very limited for the last couple of weeks and I have only just now found this post. So the story is that we were doing a B2B2B as quoted with the first leg being an Alaska round trip from Vancouver and we were then going home (other than needing 2 flights from Sydney to get to our country town - this is relevant information BTW) to Australia on the Eclipse. On the information day for the B2bers we were told there would be no testing, however on the following day there was a note on the door saying that all B2Bers would now be getting tested that afternoon which was our final day. My husband had just come down with the sniffles that morning and he tested himself with the RAT tests that we had brought with ourselves and it was positive and he informed the medical centre who tested both of us. I was negative. The doctor told us that we had a decision to make, would I stay on for the next cruise if my husband had to leave and he could then meet us in Honolulu, or would we both go? Or it was possible they would just put us both in quarantine as we had sea days coming. We were escorted back to the room and then left for hours without any information, nor told what we could do for food for the day. However at 8p.m we got the phonecall stating that both of us had to leave the ship the following morning and where were we planning on staying. No offer to help us find somewhere, however there were continual calls throughout the rest of the evening demanding to know an address. Trying to find somewhere to take us until the start of October in a place we knew nothing about was difficult. Our TA then had to find out if they would allow us to rejoin the cruise as because my husband had tested positive we needed a Certificate of Clearance, but as they hadn't even bothered to register us with the Canadian government we never got one, nor did they have a record of his test when she was trying to find out about us getting our money back for the cruise. October 3 which was the day we were supposed to rejoin the ship came and went and we still didn't get a definitive answer from them. However we made other arrangements for ourselves and have continued our vacation in another way. The headoffice did ask our TA for proof that my husband had Covid though which we thought was rather infuriating as they were the ones that supposedly made the decision to kick us (and many other B2Bers off as there were 200 people that were shuttled to accomodation, and others that were allowed to drive home if they were close by. What we did get from the ship was an offer of paying $250 per day for accommodation and a $100 meal allowance and if we had booked flights through Celebrity they would rearrange our flights. However Celebrity does not do flights from our town and we were trying to get them to acknowledge that they were our transport from Vancouver to Sydney so they should shoulder part of our costs of getting home.

We are Australian and were supposed to be on the Eclipse until it got back to Australia. We are in the same situation as you, but we were told by the driver of the coach we were on, there was actually 4 coaches of positives, so 200 people. We only discovered at 8pm on the final night that we had to go as that was the day my husband tested positive, as that is when they tested the B2Bers. Celebrity has not let our TA know anything of what we need to do next and if we could even rejoin the Eclipse to get home.

I hope the trip is wonderful for you and I will be doing it vicariously through you. I can't wait to get back on on Oct 3 hopefully, even though today and last night for us were somewhat stressful.

We used to be able to download on the ship without having wifi at all on cruises pre 2020. I am hoping that when we go in a couple of weeks we will be able to do the same. We used to download our photos every day or couple of days.

I have a cruise this coming January in the South Pacific and as it still hasn't opened for tourism yet fully, no excursions are listed for half of the ports. Your cruise could be the same. If they were sold out, a label saying so is put on the name of the excursion. For our September cruise in Alaska I know that probably close to 5/6ths of the excursions are already sold out that way.

We still do US dollars, but I don't think it would matter if you did either of the others. However at the moment I am not sure what NZ's rules are for crew leaving the ship, and I know that Australia was being quite strict with the couple that are currently cruising right now.

We have always found tipping difficult to navigate, so are happy that cruises sold in Australia have to have gratuities included by law. However we usually also have some extra cash put aside for our room steward for good service (only on one cruise have we not given extra), our favourite barpeople, and our waiters as we have fixed time dining. It is up to you if you want to give extra and the amount you want if you do want to.

Order history still has it as booked. It is just that the tour doesn't exist in possible excursions for the cruise that makes me worry . I'm hoping they have moved us to the other one.

I have something that I have booked through Celebrity (last November for this September so we didn't miss out) that doesn't show on the planner as existing any more, however they haven't sent me a message to say it doesn't. The option that replaced it and is slightly different, and cheaper (of course), has sold out but wasn't when I sent an email to shore excursions asking did my first one still exist, which they still haven't answered. I will be very annoyed if we don't get to do a close up tour of the glacier after all.