kruznkanuk

We were booked B2B on Nov 9 (Mediterranean) and Nov 19 Suez transit)on Constellation in a Royal Suite. Got a very VERY confusing email from Celebrity about getting the best price on India and SE Asia and several phone calls from various people, some of whom said the Nov 9 Med. cruise was cancelled and the Nov 19 Suez was a go. The person we settled on talking to clearly said we'd get 'price protection' if we changed to various sailings, including Australia and South Pacific and we spent tons of time trying to find B2B sailings with Royal Suites available for the same # of days.  When I called back to book the best new options, she wasn't available and another guy said the price protection was ONLY for the India/SE Asia options which are of no interest (been there, done that). The initial person didn't return any of 3 messages--probably because she didn't want to admit she screwed up. We've rebooked as close as we can get to preserve various OBCs... but it's nearly $20,000 total more money so we're unlikely to take the new cruises. The current prices are very high for fall 2020 and X isn't willing to do anything beyond the $500 per suite credit. We sailed the old Galaxy class ships back in the 1990's and about 50 X cruises since... and boy, are we looking for other cruise lines to try! 😖

I nominate JohnBull as the most helpful Cruise Critic poster!!! thanks a ton.

This looks totally possible, especially if I send my husband to vault over the fence while I have my last cappuccino and danish...;)Actually, it doesn't look like a bad walk at all.

We are going to Slinfold--but will have a GPS this trip, too,

Thanks so much, JohnBull, for the great advice. I didn't know about the different classes of taxis or the option of prebooking a car. And of course very glad to hear that we aren't likely to have a repeat!

Haven't decided on the car hire company; I inquired with a few to ask if they would provide pickup service and am waiting for a couple more possible replies.

We are arriving on Celebrity Silhouette April 28th. I haven't checked which pier--I actually didn't know there were multiple passenger piers as we've only ever seen one ship in port at a time. We've sailed in or out of Southampton 5 times over many years so have a little experience but not a lot. Our very first cruise, ages ago, we took the P & O boat train to the docks and walked across the dock to board the old Canberra. Very luxurious, very slick, you checked your bags in at Victoria Station in London and saw them again in your cabin.

We may have made a wrong turn along the way between cruise terminal and the bus stop to find a hill. As I recall, there was another hill between the bus stop and the train station. We didn't have GPS/cell service in the UK or a map so it's quite likely that we either took the wrong bus or found unnecessary hills. I do recall traffic problems because of a freight train stopped on a crossing in the dock area and we did go through/past a construction area where the sidewalk was blocked off and pedestrians were in the road. All past history, but if you're interested it might aid your sleuthing into our experience.

Thanks again!

After searching around the Boards, I am wondering if our last experience arriving at Southampton was uniquely miserable. We came in on the QM2 with train tickets to London, expecting to get a taxi to the train station in November 2015. We waited in a queue of several hundred people in a freezing cold (but covered) terminal driveway area for a taxi for 90 minutes, starting at 8:30am and during that whole time only a dozen or so taxis arrived. We gave up, asked some port workers, and set out in the rain to walk to a bus route, which was a miserable walk dodging trucks and trains across rail lines on rough ground and cobblestones and up a hill with luggage. After about 20 minutes and asking many people, we got to a bus stop near the ferry terminal and eventually got a local bus which took us to the station, where by running we barely caught our 11:30 AM train. We were told by several locals that there are very few taxis in the morning as they are 'on school pickups' so we have assumed this is a chronic problem.

However, I see very few complaints on the Boards.

We need to get a rental car (car hire) when we arrive in Southampton in late April on a Saturday, have had no luck finding a hire company that will pickup at the terminal or bring a car to the terminal, and fear a repeat of that very unpleasant experience.

We are going to visit an elderly relative in a care home in a remote part of Sussex, so the car hire is our only option--and we are fine with that, have driven a lot in Ireland and the UK-- but can't figure out how to get to the car place.

Would love to hear whether you have been able to get a taxi during the usual morning disembarkation at Southampton, and any suggestions, please?!

Okay this might be a silly question but is Matzalan and Manzanillo the same? Thanks

Nope, Manzanillo is south of Puerto Valllarta and about a 10 hour drive south of Mazatlan. Also quite different types of cities; Mazatlan is a large commercial centre.

Glad to hear there hasn't been a big change which would deprive us of the first couple of hours of our enticing cruise... thanks for all the answers!

Judy:)

Sorry, Dawnypoo, you're right. I was a little teeny tiny bit annoyed so cut corners in my post.

They said 'Yes, the boarding times are enforced'.

Further, they said 'Priority only means that in the group scheduled to arrive at 2 you have priority for that group, but you won't be allowed to board earlier than 2 even if you have priority (either Suite or Elite--we have both).

IE. No, there really isn't 'Priority' boarding anymore.

I'm sure glad the CC posters generally know more than the Princess call center staff... ;) Or I'll hope that the rules don't apply as pablo222 suggests...

Hope you're all correct.

Just got off the phone with Princess folks to ask if our suite status trumps the late boarding time (M deck 2 PM on Regal Princess next week out of FLL) and they said yes, you will have to wait if you show up early.This is crazy in my opinion.

Does anyone have recent information on FLL Princess boarding that confirms or refutes this? Clearly from these boards they weren't being draconian about their 'progressive boarding'.

We've cruised on a lot of lines and have never had the staggered boarding times enforced for 'top loyalty level' or suite passengers so this doesn't seem like a good start to what we hope/expect will be a great cruise.

I can't eat Soy and the Insignia fryers use soybean oil, so that helped with the weight gain issue (no fried food!). After reporting my allergy well in advance as required, I got some rather nasty messages from O's head office about how they could not guarantee that I would be able to eat anything 'due to my multiple allergies' (it's Soy. That's it. No others) but the onboard experience was much more positive. The exec chef on Insignia was excellent and answered my questions about the ingredients used in bread, pastry, salad dressings, etc so I could make my own decisions for breakfast, lunch, and tea-time. He said I should ask the Terrace Grill or Waves staff to use olive oil or butter if i wanted an egg or burger, for example, but I found that was too confusing for them and not worth the trouble and delay. But they would certainly try!

O's policy is to give you the evening menus 2 days ahead and ask for your selections before 10 AM the day before, which works fine unless you decide to dine in Polo or Toscana or somewhere different than your original booking. This is the same as I experienced on X and Princess recently except they ask for your selection the night before, allowing a little more flexibility.

Someday perhaps the cruise lines will be able to put their ingredients on an interactive TV or onboard computer which would make life easier for crew and for guests with food allergies or sensitivities--like many restaurants are doing with their websites. But O does a good job within their current practices. And the food is yummy!

Fish day? Salisbury Steak? No grill station? Are you sure you sailed on Oceania?

Gosh, I forgot to mention that the Carnival Pirates had taken over Insignia somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. Perhaps they plundered the grill station too?

:D

Yes usually the carving station has some meat related item

Maybe if it was a seafood buffet theme there was no meat option

 

Possible the person from X did not realize it was a grill station :confused:

The carving station on 'fish day' was a whole salmon. I am not sure how I would have missed a grill station--especially for many days in a row, as I was prowling the options and am almost as good at finding all the food choices as our puppy dogs are ;)--but that is possible. There was a grill plate at the back of the buffet where they re-warmed food like Salisbury Steak or Cornish Pasties but I never saw things like freshly grilled shrimp or lobster or steak or chops... either at the buffet or on people's tables. Maybe it is just at dinner time?

And just to clarify, I am not a 'person from X'-- we have done more X cruises than other lines but have also sailed Princess, Cunard, HAL, RSS, various River lines, RCL, the old P & O when it was headquartered in England, and some others I have probably forgotten. And generally loved them as we we love ships and the sea.

I'll second the advice on moving from Aqua on X to inside on O--- I don't see enough benefits from O to offset the loss of an outside balcony accommodation. If you do it, go for a very short cruise. But then, as with everything on CC... these are only opinions!

Yes, we tried Waves and the food was very good, though they couldn't get an order right most of the time, brought mine or my hubby's but not both. I waited 40 minutes one day for a grilled sandwich, ordered with my husband's burger which was out in less than 10--and only ended up with something to eat after flagging down one of the maitre d's. The Wave Grill lines were often long. Didn't see any grill options at the Terrace other than the burgers--just the omelettes at breakfast, the pizza window-- perhaps Insignia isn't adopting that?

The Terrace lunches were heavy on 'theme food'... Seafood day, Middle Eastern day (kebabs were only lamb I saw there), Asian day etc. But nothing cooked to order.

We, like the OP, are frequent X cruises, along with 5 or 6 other lines and a total of around 100 cruises. On X we prefer the Millennium class ships. We sailed on O for the first time this month. We normally splurge on a big suite if we can get it, but had a Penthouse on O. Their Penthouses are smaller than an X Sky Suite. Our cruise, though heavily discounted, cost more per day for the 380ish square feet cabin than our cruise last year in a 1200+ sq ft Celebrity penthouse. The ship was lovely and well maintained.

O needs to look at their shore-side service. Embarkation was a joke with no guidance, no drinks, cold cloths, or help, even for 'priority suite' passengers. We stood in the hot sun with no chairs and no O staff for 40 minutes waiting for a shuttle to the ship from the terminal, and when we got on board were herded to the lounge and treated without courtesy. One person asked if lunch was being served and the answer was 'I don't know, we are just doing the paperwork'. One poor lady on crutches was trying to carry her carry-on up a steep gangway and the O staff just stood at the top and the bottom and watched as she set the bag down, moved her crutches, took a step, picked the bag up, swung it a foot, dropped a crutch, picked up a crutch, and repeated that painful progress. My husband finally crowded past the other people trying to go up the same ramp and carried her bag aboard for her. At each port, there was a shortage of crew on the pier, no one to help people up steep gangways, no cold towels, no drinks, no shade. The tender crews were great and safely got us all on and off in quite rough conditions.

Our favourite thing about the cruise was the other passengers (friendly, interesting, avid travellers, no 'discouraging words overheard' , no abuse of the staff). The service staff were wonderful--they obviously do a great job recruiting and training the stewards, waiters, etc. However, the management was hopeless and no-one was given authority to solve a passenger's problems. Rules and policies were supreme and there was no effort to find solutions that made people happy. We had personal experience with this where it would have been very easy to solve our concerns, but also heard from lots of other people. Some sections of the main dining room service was poor, very slow, no water refills, etc. Our butler was very nice but not empowered to do much, unlike the X butlers.

The library is great, the lounge where shows are held has terrible sight lines and isn't suitable for the purpose, even if the show is fine. No big productions but the crowds were appreciative which made the 'ordinary' entertainers more fun.

The buffet restaurant food quality is great (better than X) and they serve everything, not stinting on portions, which is a hygienic practice we appreciate. However, selection could be improved (much worse than X). One lunch everything (including the pizza) was seafood except for a hamburger. Seafood salad, fish soup, etc. I like fish but had had it the previous 3 meals and was looking for options. We found Polo Grill wonderful, on a par with the best specialty restaurants at sea, but Toscana was just OK. O's desserts, pastries and bread are all made the way your great-grandmother made them, real butter, real cream, no vegetable shortening or soy meal or palm oil, and they taste great. The main dining room food was a bit better than X, but the service often not as good.

And O is NOT 'all inclusive'. We paid our own airfare, tips (about 50%higher than X), shore excursions (again, very expensive) and all alcoholic beverages (about 20% higher than other lines). And internet, which doesn't work any better than any other ship's, in spite of smaller passenger loads. The only thing I am aware of that O includes is soda pop and specialty coffees, though I felt the quality of their coffee on Insignia, even the espresso, etc, was not near that of X's coffee bar.

It was good to try a small ship and the itinerary was interesting, but in our view the management was disappointing and the value wasn't there.

We had a great cruise on Millennium Feb 1-15 and tried to do the post-cruise survey, wanting to throw both bouquets to some fantastic staff and a few bricks. The survey was 4 questions on overall expectations and no chance to do more-- a big change from previous X surveys. I emailed the survey company with the link in X's email offering the survey but it bounced as invalid address. I tried to email X in the 'Contact Us' area of their website but that gave an error too. What's going on? Any one had recent experience with a Celebrity survey? Are they all so limited or is this one just not working right?

As of November when we disembarked, there was one place on the ship to get really good coffee (decaf or regular, not expresso but starbucks-type flavour) without paying the big bucks, and that was at the Connexions Cafe (computer area) where there are two drink stations. For some reason, it tastes freshly brewed unlike the buffet or dining room. It's open from about 6 AM to around 9 PM.

And yes, I am a coffee snob... :rolleyes:

We arrived on the QM2 on Nov 4th and weren't in a big rush as had booked a 1PM train to London with Megabus (6 pounds each, what a steal!)

The taxi line extended through the big warehouse-type building back into the terminal area, with at least 400 people waiting. Porters kept cutting in near the front of the queue. After 40 minutes waiting we had moved 15 feet. I could see the drive the taxis came in and they were arriving about 1 every 8 minutes. Port staff said the problem was a freight train blocking the road plus it was time for 'school runs' which the taxis are committed to do. It was complete disaster. Perhaps arriving on the weekend would be better. We decided to walk, in spite of luggage and rain. Others were doing the same. Many people were missing flights and trains. Folks who had booked cars were also waiting for hours as the cars couldn't get through either. As warned by the port staff, it was a long walk but at the ferry terminal (after about 20 minutes walk) we were able to catch a bus and fortunately had a bit of UK money for bus fare. Once we got to the train, all was well.

We once had a long taxi wait arriving at the pier in New York but this was 10 times worse. I wouldn't be surprised if some passengers were still in that terminal a month later.... I don't ever do the cruise line transfers but in Southampton it might be worth it.

And don't schedule onward travel too soon in Southampton!

We've crossed 7 or 8 times and the QM2 is so large and well designed that even in 15 meter (48 feet) seas and gale winds there was very little movement. We've had far rougher seas in the Caribbean, Baja California, Hawaii and Mediterranean than on transatlantics. And far rougher on other large ships than on the Cunard liners. No guarantees of course, and a lower deck mid-ship or aft is smoother, but don't worry and go for it. We love the QM2's sheltered balconies on decks 5 or so--great value, open air and convenient to the public areas. And smoooooooooth sailing!:D

Maybe others are tougher or braver than we, but we just got back from the Star Princess BA to LA and a stop in Lima via airplane on the way to BA and then the overnight of the ship in Callao. We waited for our pre-booked private tour at the port entrance and were uncomfortable; would not have walked 1/2 block from the entrance guard. A crew member was robbed with a knife a block from the port entrance. There are cabs there but many look unsavory and some are very pushy. Callao as a whole is not an area for wandering around. :eek: We are seasoned travellers and have had no problem with venturing on our own in most S American ports, Europe, in Asia, and even in the US and Canada :D but Callao is a place where we were very glad to have a pre-booked car and tour. Even if you are going to the sea lions, I would book a cab online and have them meet you and bring you back. We used LimaMentor for our first visit and airport pickup and LimaCabs for the second time, port pickup and tours and drop off. Both were great, LimaCabs was outstanding. On return to the ship at about 9 PM, the LimaCabs driver did not want to drop us at the outside of the gate but got permission from the security guard to drive through and drop us in the secure area near the shuttle back to the ship.

In a word: Yes.

You get to have breakfast in Sabatini's.

While there you can enjoy fresh brewed coffee, Espresso and Specialty Coffees, and the special Teas at no charge and without a coffee card.

 

Rick

Thanks a bunch, Rick!

I am so happy to hear this. Although still have the quandary about hauling a coffee pot to South America or waiting for the delicious first cup and going to Sabatini's. I did check the location on the deck plans!!

Thanks for the answers, caribill!

Looks like I'll be trying to make room for my little 4 c coffeemaker in my luggage. And yes, I do know they are not allowed. Sitting on the balcony, first thing in the morning, watching the sunrise and hearing the birds or waves, with a good cup of coffee is what hooked us on cruising. Can almost smell/taste/hear/feel it now! :D Only 3 weeks to departure for us.

We met a lady on our last cruise who says she has donated 32 coffeemakers to various ships as she brings one always and then, unconcerned about the $8 cost, leaves it in the cabin.

So, as a coffee addict I am trying Princess for the first time (Star) in a couple of weeks, for a 29 day cruise. Being spoiled by another unnamed cruise line, for our last 8 or 10 cruises we had cappuchinos delivered to the suite every morning. If we get a coffee card, can we get the International Cafe brewed coffee delivered or do we have to go down in our bathrobe (that would clear out the place!!) :):eek: to get it? Are there any coffee advantages to being in a suite on Princess?

Hi, I went all the way to the page where I pay. Just have to fill in the credit card details. But the sum was the normal one, no 10 % off.... :mad:

It seams that X have problems (as always) with their website. Or maybee they wan't to decieve you of the prize, thinking of how difficult it is to find info of the 10% off. It's only thanks to this board I found out about it.:)

If I hadn't had knowledge of the 10% off I had payed the sum and they would have sold me two packages for the normal prize ragardless the offer. It feels a bit......strange....

Hi,

My understanding is that the total cost is the 10% (or for some packages, 15%) off the regular retail price that you will pay on board buying one bottle at a time. So it's not a 'sale' but rather a discount built into the package price. That's how it's always worked when we have bought the packages. It's hard to tell, especially with the wine, if you are really saving the 10% or 15% because the regular wine list and the package deal don't have the same wines shown in many cases. I could be wrong; it's been a while (a while since we were on X, not a while since I was wrong. That happens daily... ;)

At least 5 different people at HAL told me, when I was calling trying to get traditional seating for our 20 day B2B coming up, that the move to AYWD is "based on customer demand". The fixed seating was full 13 months before sailing. After multiple calls, I was able to get waitlisted (hooray! what a victory!) for traditional, and finally last week confirmed. It seems to me that if there is a huge demand for traditional, and you are trying to meet 'customer demand', you would offer more traditional and less AYW. If you are changing to cut costs, just be honest. But don't tell me that customers are clamoring for AYW and yet traditional is so popular that you can't even get on the waitlist. It is insulting.

Kind of like the taxman telling us that income tax forms are more complicated because people were complaining about their simplicity :D !

Judy

Got married in 1974, paid off student loans in 1978 and in 1979 booked a cruise from Southampton to Turkey and back, when every night was formal and there were 4 passengers under 50 years old. We hit a huge storm, which the commodore of the P&O line, who was our captain, said was the worst he had seen in the Med after 42 years sailing. Blew us 400 miles off course in one night, emptied all the bars of glasses and liquor, and the water from the pool all ended up in the lounge. DH was sick as a dog, I loved it. The stabilizers were not as good back then. The plate steel on the bow had 8 foot high dents from the waves. And... we are still cruizing!:D

Got married in 1974, paid off student loans in 1978 and in 1979 booked a cruise from Southampton to Turkey and back, when every night was formal and there were 4 passengers under 50 years old. We hit a huge storm, which the commodore of the P&O line, who was our captain, said was the worst he had seen in the Med after 42 years sailing. Blew us 400 miles off course in one night, emptied all the bars of glasses and liquor, and the water from the pool all ended up in the lounge. DH was sick as a dog, I loved it. The stabilizers were not as good back then. The plate steel on the bow had 8 foot high dents from the waves. And... we are still cruizing!:D