Jeremiah1212

There was quite a bit of shuffling with Apex in the past year. All of that should be settled now. The only gap in the schedule is between March 21, 2025 and April 6, 2025 between the westbound spring TA and the 7 night from Barcelona to kick off the summer Med season.

Yes. You can also do a Book Later instead which you can transfer or add/remove whoever you want up until you select a cruise.

Yes and no. There are what they call headquarter groups but the details don’t really matter in the end. These posts almost always get nuked despite no mention of specific TA’s but I’ll take my chances… Shop around with the big ones to start. A lot of them use the exact same booking interface and will show 6-12ish rates for the exact same cabin. There will also be a banner at the top that says alerting like “group exists for this sailing”. In some categories you’ll see rates that start with Group123456 or GRPX. Even if you don’t see the category you want with one of those rates, call them to see what they can do. Ask around on other sites or just start googling.

Shop for a refundable group rate. Book onboard for the OBC then transfer to a TA. You would have to pay the full deposit when you transfer.

Groups and discounted groups are possible on every itinerary at some point in the game. Finding an agency that has open space may be the challenge if you’re booking later.

Save your money, shop smart and book refundable group rates.

All of you with nearly 7 year old phones are back in luck for a little while.

....the amount of people who continue to book refundable fares. They either have no real intent on taking the cruise, think they may need to cancel on or around final payment, or hope they can reprice as a NRD rate closer to the sail date. It has mostly solved the issue where people book multiple cruises, many times in mid/upper suites, then settle on the best deal at final payment and cancel all of their backups.

You could show people a side by side comparison if All Included versus doing Cruise Only and purchasing drinks and WiFi a la carte with any associated discounts. The amount of people that still choose to spend more and book Cruise Only is very surprising.

If you're booking a GTY, there is a strong possibility you end up in a Magic Carpet Suite. I almost prefer them to the S1 in some ways, FWIW. However if you choose to save the money and choose GTY, the unknown cabin is (literally) the price you pay. No way around that. I think you had some miscommunication with the agent. You can pay prevailing rate for whatever open cabin you want.

The current promotion is scheduled to run through July 17th. No details available yet as to what will be available after that. I would not expect a promotion that drastically lowers prices.

You can’t switch from All Included to Cruise Only by having a price adjustment equal to the cost of drinks and WiFi. You would have to reprice at prevailing rates. There’s a chance you wouldn’t benefit from repricing to Cruise Only as that rate now may be higher than your initially booked All Included rate. Or if you’re past final payment it likely wouldn’t work either since you would be in the penalty phase.

Not correct. They aren't going to do anything on this board to appease everyone (or anyone?) Too young, too old. The entire brand campaign and focus was revamped in April. Not that it matters but the lady is 67 and quite an accomplished photographer herself. There is no 'max age range'.

It's on the deck plans. https://www.celebritycruises.com/cruise-ships/celebrity-xcel/deck-plan Deck 9 and 10 V1 Prime Veranda. 9144, 9153, 10128, 10129.

They either made an exception (which is rare) or somehow pushed it through incorrectly. The timeframe to transfer to a TA is completely unrelated to the fact that the reservation was an onboard booking.

We'll see what they do with deployments moving into this winter. There has been a lot of leadership changes at Celebrity since the most recent deployments were thought up. I will say selling these itineraries the way Princess and MSC market them does seem to create a lot of confusion for inexperienced cruisers. It also complicates inventory if you want to hold cabins for people doing multiple segments that wish to stay in the same cabin. (Personally I find selecting cabins on the Princess website itself incredibly frustrating). Not sure if that is why Celebrity has always shied away from selling these but as far as I know it's never happened to date.

You can transfer Book Later reservation to a travel agent. It's just a booking number with no cruise attached to it (with a placeholder 2039 sail date). It's always been 30 days (it was 60 days up until a few years ago) to transfer to an agency. Whether they apply it consistently is a different issue. When you book a Book Later certificate you get a Reservation ID which and a booked date (which is the date you purchased the certificate). That Reservation ID and created date never changes. Going back at least a decade the document to transfer say it must be done within XX days of creation, i.e. the reservation creation date. It's a little concerning some TA's don't know how to figure this out but that's also another topic. You get an email from Celebrity when you purchase the certificate. It has a PDF file attached with the terms and conditions. From: DONOTREPLY Subject: Onboard Bkg: Guest Booking Offer for Reservation ID: XXXXXX The last two pages of that PDF contain all of the timelines and refundability terms attached to the certificate. If they try to tell you something else, you need to refer back to this document.

I don't know what areas of the world they have in mind, but it's been mentioned several times that they are trying to create more back to back opportunities to piece together longer itineraries without repeating ports.

Technically their bags get in line then they go about their business....but don't dare try to cut in front of their bag.

If you can move yourself with any quickness what so ever you will be fine. It's not that hard to be at FLL from Terminal 25 by 8am if not before. You can also see the huge line of people that anxiously lineup at 6am. Don't stand in line. Wait 10 minutes and you will walk off the ship without stopping. Or walk forward near the theater and they will have side doors open which bypass any line that still lingers from the 6am crowd.

The decade old "it's a room with a window!! comments still come flying in. To answer the actual question, if you are not booking a suite your options are SV or the Porthole Veranda. Xcel will have four cabins with a traditional balcony that are neither SV or suites.

The only thing you can do it find what you consider the worst cabin in the category and then consider if it is acceptable to you.

Book Laters are essentially used to get the extra OBC if you're okay with the (now) required nonrefundable deposit. Most of them do qualify to transfer to a group. Some may not. You can also transfer the Book Later to someone else all together. You don't have to keep a name consistent until the cruise is selected. And you don't have to sit at the desk booking a cruise you know you may not really take.

I'm not sure why people enjoy sleeping in a cabin that is wet and swampy but people do it on every cruise I've been on. You can tell as soon as you hit a particular section of a hallway where the temp and humidity noticeably increase.

Incorrect info.