Rick&Jeannie

Hah! Sorry! This is for Athens, Greece.

Has anybody taken advantage of the Celebrity airport transfer just to get to the Sofitel Hotel? Is this feasible? We are booked at the Sofitel for an early AM flight the next day...just need to get there. As I understand it, the Sofitel is literally across the street from the airport. Or...should we consider some other form of transportation? We lean very heavily towards cruise line transfers just for the convenience factor...plus having that cost already covered before we even leave home. Taxis just make me nervous. I know, a bit irrational but it seems like we're always hearing bad stories (mainly here on CC!) about getting scammed or ripped off with a taxi involved. Plus the need for even more local currency to cover the fare.

We have done this on a couple of occasions and also have 2 booked on upcoming cruises. Yes, you certainly can "do it for less" but we prefer to have Princess handle everything so that (in theory) we have one point of contact. The convenience factor more than offsets the price as far as we are concerned. I particularly like the fact that your transfers are included, especially if you are in a port area that you've never visited before and are unfamiliar.

Possible purchase of pictures?

Well, I read those rules you posted but came away with a different interpretation. Given the context of all of those points, it sounds to me more like they are saying that once *purchased* that they are non-refundable, not that a mechanism is not in place if the cruise is cancelled . Everything stated there is typical boilerplate text involving the up-front "rules of purchase" that you see with most types of GC purchases, or so it seems in my opinion. I'm certainly not going to go purchase any cards at this point until this is finally settled...I hope we can get the same discounts as we've been able to do from Princess!

Hello all...I just stumbled across this thread because I was researching GCs & Celebrity. I am one of the people from the Princess thread that has taken huge advantage of GCs to fully pay almost 3 complete cruises. I am completely flabbergasted to hear about this bit of the GCs not being "refundable". It's beyond words! Here's a different angle (Perhaps someone has already raised this question and I just missed it...) What if you booked the cruise with a refundable deposit fare but have paid the balance (or portions of the balance) with GCs? Are you still subject to "losing" that money should you cancel?

Each can have your own account with a different credit card. If both are covered by the same CC then your OBC can cover their purchases.

Since you did not select the insurance you did not see the issue first-hand.

I have not...that's what I'm researching now. I have stayed at the Hyatt Athens before...not sure that it is still the Hyatt.

Just curious...did you select BOTH options...and does your invoice show insurance included?

Feb

Is there any advantage in looking for a hotel actually *in* Piraeus as opposed to Athens? Either way...any good hotel recs?

This is strictly an NCL issue! We had the same problem when we sailed out of Athens 2 years ago. They (NCL) made it sound like "it's against the law" to serve while in port. Well...this is certainly true if you don't pay the tax fees!!!

I hope I'm not wearing out my "welcome" here on the Celebrity board...I've got so many questions in regards to how Celebrity does things differently from what we're used to! We've booked an Egypt/Israel cruise that has overnights in both Alexandria and Ashdod (Jerusalem). We've never had an occasion to do an overnight port before. How does Celebrity do this? Do you return to the ship to sleep in your cabin...or (crazy idea!) can you stay on shore until the next day...returning only when the ship is setting sail? There are a couple of VERY expensive excursions that are described as "multi-day" with included hotel arrangements...so it appears that there is at least a protocol in place. Perhaps this is *only* available to the members of this excursion...?

I'm sure you are correct on this...but my point in posting is the design of the website logic. You are initially shown the cost of the insurance based on non-refundable cruise fare. BUT, on the same page is where you select "refundable"...below the section regarding insurance. You've already selected insurance...then you select refundable fare but the price shown in that upper section has not changed. It is still showing the non-refundable rate. Plus the fact that your selection for insurance is totally ignored (and deselected) when you continue to the next page totally gives you a completely false sense of "being protected with insurance" since you *know* that you selected it on the previous page. This could spell disaster at some point in the future if you think you have insurance and you really don't. Very bad flow logic! The selection of refundable vs non-refundable should be made on a page *before* you deal with insurance so that the proper cost can be displayed.

I've done a bit more research...the same room at Marriott is cheaper via Celebrity (Priceline) as opposed to booking direct. BTW - this is in Athens, Greece. That surprised me. I've always assumed that booking through the cruise line would be more expensive, but we have done it quite often just for the convenience factor.

This does not *appear* to be the case (at least for Celebrity). I've been poking around in the hotels section. It appears that this function has been contracted out to Priceline (maybe flights as well...) When I stepped through the entire process, just short of completing the transaction it stayed at the initial price which was shown at the beginning.

I am new to exploring the Celebrity website... 2 issues that I ran into: 1) Is it a known issue with the website that if you are booking on your own and select both the trip protection and the refundable deposit options (which are both on the same page) and then continue to the recap, the website "drops" your selection for trip protection? The booking recap does not reflect the fact that you selected insurance. Then, if you click to go one step back to see those options again, it shows that trip protection is now deselected AND it has increased the cost of the insurance by almost $100. 2) I had to actually call in to book because the website would not accept my phone number. It had the proper phone number retrieved from their database (previous cruise) but it "flagged" it as "invalid". However...it would not let me key in anything into that field. This would appear to be very poor programming involved. I retired from a career in IT so things like this just drive me up the wall! They apparently don't do any quality control testing for their code. (A bit of a rant...apologies!)

OK...I've just booked a sailing for next year (I don't think the details have any bearing on the questions I'm going to ask...) I found where I can add a pre- or post-cruise hotel onto my booking, and also the page dealing with transfers. 1) Do hotel packages not include transfers? (We are used to cruising another line where it is included.) 2) We booked Aqua class. Do I understand correctly that we will have dining in a "special" restaurant (Blu)? 3) The Infinity appears to be an older ship (launched 2000). Has it been maintained fairly well...or is it showing its age? 4) According to the website, booking Aqua class gives us access to some type of "specialty" area. Can someone enlighten me, please? This is only the second time we will have sailed with Celebrity...but we're not new cruisers. We've concentrated on a couple of other lines prior to this booking. Thanks for any replies!

I'm interested in this piece of info.... We have stayed in a hotel of our own booking very close to Victoria Coach Station and took the Princess transfer from there...but we've not stayed in a Princess hotel.

This is a common term in European locales. The first few times we just ordered "water" with our meal and they asked "sparkling or still" kinda threw us off...until we finally caught on!

I would think so.

You will have much better luck posting images if you use .JPG format...

Great pic!

I have heard that they will hand write luggage tags at the pier/port if you do not have them. I always print ours beforehand, though.