JIMinNC

Hi Grandma

We were on the infamous Costa Rica cruise with you last year and I vaguely remember the same discussion on the roll call. I think it was determined that those who received the documents via mail were in the US and received them via the larger TA's. It also appeared they were copies of the online E-Docs with completed luggage tags. The real cost to the TA is the shipping. The printing process is simple and they do it all of the time for custom itineraries. They weren't "bound" they were simply center stapled. They also have printers for doing gummed tags.

Yes, I misspoke when I used the word "bound" in my earlier posts. Center stapled is the proper term, but the nature of the staples appears to be so precise that it must have been machine produced, much like a print magazine.

Our TA is a large regional firm located in the Charlotte, NC metro area, but they are affiliated with the Frosch International travel organization. So this may be something that Azamara works with the larger TA's to produce as you suggest.

I believe your agent printed it. Azamara would not include your private non azamara transfers. Agents can have your luggage tags sent to them instead of you, and would be able to personalize. Azamara doesn’t do that.

 

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I think you misunderstood what I posted above. Our private transfers were NOT included in the booklet that I posted the picture of above. The vouchers for the transfers were printed on regular printer paper, just as we would expect anything else we get from our agent to be printed. We just received them in the same folder that included the Azamara booklet, but they were totally separate. The booklet includes a welcome letter from the Azamara CEO, details on cruise itinerary and embarkation, info on all the onboard packages like is on the website, the self-adhesive luggage tags, the legal ticket contract language, and a page of Azamara logos.

Again, what makes me think this may have been mailed from Azamara to the travel agent is it is addressed to me, at the travel agent's office address on the back of the book. The street name for the agent's office was even misspelled in the address block - the agent would not have misspelled their own address! It's also a bit larger than normal paper sizes, so it was definitely a custom printed book. Maybe the agent did print it, but if they did, they went to incredible expense to produce it just for us and try to make it look like it came from Azamara. Not sure why they would do that.

Photo of the book below

My daughter is a travel agent, she wasn’t sent any paper document for us, just the e-doc. Maybe your travel agent printed it & bound it, or had it bound.

 

 

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I don't think so, because the luggage tags are printed on self-adhesive labels (not just paper) that are also professionally bound into a double-wide center-spread page in the book - not something that would be easy to remotely in a travel agent office or at a local commercial printer (i.e. - they wouldn't have the adhesive luggage tag stock that conforms to Azamara's specs). It also has a mailing address on the back, sent to my name, care of the street address of the travel agent's office. The area where the mailing address is located would be in a spot where it would have appeared through a mailing envelope's address window.

Also, given that it is printed on very heavy glossy paper stock and bound, the base book would almost certainly have to be produced in some volume to be cost effective to produce. If it didn't come in the mail from Azamara, someone went to a lot of expense and effort to create that illusion.

The 31 page document is the e-doc. I’ve always had access to it, usually from an email, and just print off the pages I want. My daughter is my travel agent. She offered to print it all, but I said I only wanted certain pages & was happy to print those myself.

 

 

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The book we received was professionally printed on thick glossy paper stock, bound, and stapled. It appeared to be something sent by regular mail to our travel agent direct from Azamara as opposed to something sent as an e-doc. May be an option for different agents.

We are on a Sept 5 cruise and, about three weeks ago, we received a 31 page personalized printed booklet from Azamara through our travel agent with our other private transfer vouchers (not Azamara transfers). The Azamara booklet includes detailed printouts of the itinerary, is personalized with our names, and includes our pre-printed self-adhesive luggage tags as the center fold.

We had previously printed our ExpressPass online.

I’ve been told that the links to the six 2018 voyages that couldn’t be accessed are now fixed (1:39am Miami time.)

Hopefully everyone can now access their OBC via the Voyage Planner.

Yes. I was able to log in to the Voyage Planner for our Sept 5 Quest sailing and was able to add an excursion from our credit. Thanks for letting us know. New system is easy to use and seems to work well.

Thanks for the update. At least they have identified the scope of the issue, which is the first step to finding a solution. That seems so random to have six voyages that aren't working. Weird. Hope it gets fixed soon.

Still not working for our Sept 5 cruise on the Quest. I sent an email to the webcontent address that ECCruise said above didn't bounce

Works on Firefox for me

 

 

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So you are able to log into the Voyage Planner? I've tried all day and can't get in using Safari, Chrome, or Firefox. Even the Customer Service person I talked to tried to log in through the Voyage Planner and got the same message. That's when they told me the site might be down for another 24-48 hours. Now there is a message on the home page saying everything except the browse functions are down until 6/21 at 3am.

I just talked to Customer Service and they said it might be 24-48 hours before the Online Voyage Planner is back working. Happily, they were able to book our two top choice shore excursions for me over the phone using my onboard credit. I'll wait until the system comes back online to make our other decisions for our Sept 5 cruise on the Quest. We still have over $1000 of credit left.

A couple of days ago I was close to going ahead and booking at least one of those excursions using a credit card to make sure we got it before they were booked, but for once I'm glad I procrastinated. So much easier now to just book using the onboard credit than having to do the whole cancel/rebook workaround

Link is to the same video as the email and NO sound!!

You quoted my post about the log-in, but just to make it clear, my issue isn't with accessing the video. I can't log-in the the Voyage Planner. It comes back with an error message saying the system is down. But it sounds like at least one person was able to get in.

Just tried to Log In and the website says it is down...

You didn't mention where the OBC's are coming from. If they are from your TA, they are most likely refundable. This means that you don't need to spend them. At the end of the cruise, they will be credited back to your credit card. When you view your onboard account, refundable credits will have an R next to them, nonrefundable ones will be marked NR ( I know - makes sense!). We always get OBC's from our TA which are always refundable. Sometimes we spend them, sometimes we don't and just get a credit applied to our card.

I agree with Host Grandma... we have had some fabulous excursions on AZ and some that were not very good. In Europe we have found that it's much better to book a private excursion. The guides and companies live and breath for their reviews on various travel sites and, because of that, we have always had terrific experiences. September is a nice time to go as well. Also, your roll call may provide some opportunities to share private excursions with other people on your cruise. We have made lifelong friends meeting people on some of these trips (we are sailing with 4 of them on our upcoming Singapore cruise).

Enjoy your trip. We are getting ready for our 11th AZ trip and have another booked. You can't beat the onboard experience!

Sue

Only $200 of our onboard credit is from our TA, the remaining $1600 is from Azamara (early booking + suite promotion) so from what I've read here, that is probably non-refundable. Do you have to wait until you are on board to view the OBC, or can you view your on-board account anywhere prior to sailing on My Azamara? If so, I haven't found it.

First post here...we are on the Quest Sept 5, 2018 Barcelona to Civitavecchia, with stops in Valencia, Ibiza, Monte Carlo, Santa Margherita, & Livorno. This is our first Azamara cruise, our first cruise of any kind since a 2007 Disney Caribbean cruise with our kids, and our first cruise as a couple since a Bahamas cruise on Carnival back in the 1980s!

We are in a Club Ocean Suite. We should have $1800 in OBC, and trying to figure out how to best use it. Shore excursions are the most obvious answer, but I had some questions.

1) Any comments on the Azamara excursions...are they good and worth the price? We have enough credit to do one in every port, but should we? We've never been tour bus people, but we're also new to Europe and these locations, so a group tour might be beneficial, but we don't want to feel like we're being herded around like we saw some cruise groups when we were in Los Cabos, Mexico last month for a five day getaway trip.

2) Does Azamara use motorcoach-type buses or smaller buses?

3) Any tips on any of the ports of call?

4) If we elect to do some independent exploring or external tours, what are the other things on-board that the OBC is a good use for?

5) We get the speciality restaurants included, but we will probably have wine most nights at dinner, so that will be one possible OBC use. The beverage packages would be another, but we're undecided whether we would drink enough of the premium drinks to warrant the cost of the package or just pay as we go for upgraded drinks.

6) Any other tips for a first-time Azamara Mediterranean cruiser?