SueMo

Avoid cabin 1111. On a cruise about 5 years ago we kept getting "butt dialed" in the middle of the night. We ended up unplugging our phone every night before going to bed. This year in June we were once again on the Summit, and a couple got on the elevator and were complaining that they kept getting phone calls in the middle of the night. We asked them, "Are you by any chance in room 1111?" and they said, "Yes! How did your know?"

I wonder if the demographics change based on the length of the cruise. We're in the oldest age group (but definitely young at heart!) going on a transatlantic from Miami to Barcelona in April 2024, and know that our kids (40 ish) can't take over 2 weeks off of work in one stint.

Thanks, we're happy with our decision. We will be spending 2 nights in each: Auckland, Hahei, Rotorua, Queenstown, Te Anau, Wanaka, and 1 night in each: Mt. Cook, Akaroa, and Christchurch. Included are rental cars for both the North and South Islands, 13 breakfasts and 4 special dinners, and 13 activities such as Milford Sound,Glacier Explorer, dolphin, and glowworm cruises, jet boat ride, kayak trip to Cathedral Cove, Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland, Maori show, Hobbiton, Kiwi hatchery, and hikes, among others. The price is probably twice as much as the base cost of the cruise, but by the time we would have added costs of excursions and extra nights in hotels pre or post cruise, it isn't that much more. Now all we have to do is figure out how to drive on the left side of the road and manage traffic circles!

We tried to book CO for an upcoming cruise on the NS, so our TA checked and told us there were only 55 spots available and they were all full. She called us a month later and told us she had snagged a CO spot for us. She said the trick was to start calling HAL a week before final payment is due as some openings often come up during that week. (We love our TA, but she notified us just yesterday that she had taken a managerial position with the agency and we would be losing her as our go-to TA ☹️)

We were on the Summit to Bermuda the week of June 11th. We ate in Blu and on multiple nights adults were allowed into the dining room for dinner wearing shorts. My husband asked the maitre'd about it and was told they were not encouraged to enforce the policy because people have "health issues". Riiiiight...

I highly recommend the Denali Overlook Inn in Talkeetna and Bear Lake Lodging right outside of Seward. Breakfasts are included in each and they both have amazing settings.

My experience on the Summit last month is that you can transfer money from your OBC to a slot machine one time and cash out, but then will be locked out for the remainder of the cruise. For example, I transferred $100 from my OBC and my husband transferred $100 and we both cashed out. But the next time we went to the casino, we were both locked out of the slot machines. A friend of ours was able to cash out $250 on her first transfer before being locked out. I don't know about the 50% bet rule as stated above, but I do know that you get only one transfer (without betting) to cash out.

Get there early--before your scheduled time--and get a seat close to the driver. Although it is not officially a narrated tour, our driver was quite informative and stopped frequently to point out wildlife and points of interest.

Hi Joyce, By all means, bring your own bath products! I am also very sensitive to scented products and HAL uses heavily perfumed Elemis shampoos and conditioner which I find just awful. Some suggestions for Copenhagen post cruise: Check out the Copenhagen card at https://copenhagencard.com/view/how-it-works I would absolutely recommend a canal cruise, changing of the guards at Amalienborg Palace, a walk down the Stroget, a night visit to Tivoli Gardens, and Rosenborg Castle. Also check out a walking tour with Hans Christian Anderson: https://copenhagenwalks.com/1024x768/ph_General.htm

We had an Australia/New Zealand cruise on Celebrity Edge planned for February '24. When checking out the ports of call, we decided there was so much we were missing in New Zealand by not doing a land tour, so we cancelled our cruise and contacted a company that makes personalized self-drive land tours where they book rental cars, hotels, and excursions. When I read reports like this, it makes me so very happy we cancelled our cruise. I can't imagine after flying halfway across the world expecting to see Tauranga and Bay of Islands how disappointing it would be to have an extra sea day. (I can do that in the Caribbean, no problem Man!) I feel for you...

The X99 bus schedule is here: https://www.lothianbuses.com/cruiselink-x99/ August 18th is not listed, probably due to the fact that the cruise schedule has dramatically changed since the bus schedule was first established.

We also stayed at the Premier Inn Waterloo and thought it was reasonable in price, close to many attractions, modern & clean. The only thing I would suggest is to bring a loofah for showering, as unbeknownst to us, European "budget" hotels don't provide washcloths!

On our last cruise, our nonrefundable OBC was used to pay our tips, and the prepaid tip money came back to us as refundable OBC. We found their accounting system to be incredibly confusing.

We have a good amount of nonrefundable OBC on our upcoming British Isles cruise in August. Just wondering if that can be used in the casino...

Is that Canadian or US? If it's $350 Canadian, then it's about $265 US.

Go to https://www.cmport.com/terminals/ships-in-port/ to find where your ship docks. For July 3, it shows MSC Fantasia at Oceankajen Quay C333, LeChamplain at Langelinie Quay C177, and AidaNova at Oceankajen Quay C331. It doesn’t list the Silhouette. The only other cruise ship quay is Oceankajen Quay C332, so maybe that’s where the Silhouette will be?

A lot of people on my roll call last October used Saguenay guided tours dot com and seemed to like it. The bus picked them up at the dock. We didn't do the bus trip, but rented some e-bikes for a couple hours from the same company, which was fun.

Cabot Discovery Tours has a mini Cabot Trail tour shore excursion. It's worth checking out.

We booked CO specifically because changes to our upcoming 14 day British Isles cruise were an addition of tendering ports (of the 10 days at port, 6 are tendering) and reduced time in each port. We wanted the priority tendering you get with CO. Also, we want to try out the separate dining room!

Rent a Boston Whaler from BDA Watersports in Somerset. If your kids are swimmers, make sure to bring snorkels and swim with the turtles. (BDA will give you a map of where to go and what to see.)

On the last cruise day, we really like the Rising Son 3-hour snorkel tour that leaves right from the Island Tour Centre at the dockyards for $75. (Just google Rising Son Bermuda to get their website. You can also book it through the tour centre or viator, but it will usually cost a bit more.) Because it leaves and returns you right to the dockyards, you don't have to worry about making it to the ship on time. Be sure to reserve well ahead of your cruise, though. They do sell out!

We have gone on quite a few cruises in the last two years, and our experiences were wildly different on each one. Our two Edge cruises and our Apex cruise were excellent. We had great food, entertainment, and fun. We were on HAL’s Nieuw Statendam and had an excellent cruise as well. Then we sailed the Silhouette, and like you, had a very disappointing cruise as far as food (severe cutbacks on evening buffet, poor quality cuts of meat, etc.), bar service (we had to stand in line to get served as there wasn’t enough bar staff to wait tables), and entertainment. This led us to book our first Oceania cruise. We were hoping to love it, but just didn’t. The food was better than X’s, but not every meal was a home run by any means. The service was excellent, but the entertainment was just …blah! (A tribute to Peggy Lee?) We have another HAL cruise coming up for the British Isles in August, but they have changed the itinerary so much since we booked it that it barely resembles the original cruise. Anyway, we decided to cancel our Feb ’24 cruise to Australia/New Zealand on X and contacted a company that made us an individualized self-drive itinerary—booking a car, hotels, and excursions—for New Zealand that has us very excited. I think we are going to try spending more time on land for the time being!

Go on Celebrity’s website, choose “Find a cruise”, type in a destination, such as “Iceland”, pick an Iceland destination from the drop down menu and you will find all of the ships going to that port. Choose “View Itinerary” from one of the cruises and “Shore Excursions” from its menu. You can look at the popular excursions at that port as well as excursions from the other ports of that particular cruise. It isn’t a complete list, and there may be a better way of finding all of the shore excursions, but it’s a start!

My TA allows us to deduct agency OBC from the cost of our cruise.

We enjoyed happy hour drinks in the Casino Bar on the Marina in March for several days until a man came in and sat at the bar and loudly started making political statements that were entirely offensive to my husband and me. The couple sitting next to him at the bar politely finished their drinks and walked away. We did the same. We checked Casino Bar out a few days later and found the same man in the now deserted bar pretty much making life miserable for the bartender and two servers working that venue. This also happened upstairs at lunch in Waves Grill with a different man. My mother told me, growing up, to never talk religion or politics. As much as some want to think that O passengers are more refined than those on other cruise lines, it was not entirely our experience.