Fly and Sail

Not sure which ones but the huge stain on my couch pretty much excluded mine from having undergone any refurbishment. 😛

Probably I'm having a strain of bad luck but I went to Alaska for fresh air and some nice scenery so I'm happy with that. The weather was perfect, I enjoyed every moment that I could focus on the nature so my recommendation would be to enjoy your time at the destinations and treat the ship like a hotel. Of course this was the first sailing of Solstice and I feel like they used the pax this week as guinea pigs to get up to speed (at our expense). You should have a better experience tomorrow onward. Happy anniversary and bon voyage! PS: Don't expect the wifi to work, no matter what package you have - it was a disaster!

How many is "a lot" ? Probably 0.01% or less of all travelers. Of course you're free to do your own risk assessment but there are way more than 3% with actual Covid around you every day. Of course you're right, an overseas cruise would be an inconvenience with that although that pesky testing requirement should hopefully go away soon, at least for U.S. citizens.

Sounds like your results are very good either way. No need to game it then. Although currently with Covid you could say you didn't feel well and weren't able to visit the Casino due to isolation. 😷 But yeah, your results show you don't need such nonsense. As Sapphire they bombard you with free cruises. Any chance of reaching a higher tier? Even though Ruby is nuts. A cool million in coin in on cruise ship slots is suicide.

Nah the Casino deals never have any drink package to begin with. For some reason the onboard bookings indeed always show some base fare for me. I feel it depends on the talent of the person at the booking office. I found one lady who is excellent and automatically prices me Aqua Class. It's usually $140 base per week no matter which cruise she picks. It's a tab called "Casino Offer". Maybe you should actively request them to price an AQ Casino Offer and see what comes out of it.

Next time do a zero play cruise and then pick up again on the next. That was my strategy and it worked. Also there were almost no heavy hitters on this cruise, the host/manager were around me and another Amethyst all the time. Usually nobody should care about us little guppys. 😄 Are you Sapphire?

I didn't think you were serious (not that I haven't tried it myself since it didn't mention any specific cruise/ship/cabin/offer code). All I got back was a question where I received this because my name wasn't on "the list" which I then got a glimpse of. 😛

Probably so. I booked on Edge and Apex. Can't see why Beyond would be excluded but Celebrity has weird rules about everything. Today when I disembarked in Victoria they wanted to keep my Seapass card until the Guest Relations Director authorized them to give it to me. Just one of my stupid souvenir habits and I rarely collect anything these days. Something you could have told them "I lost it" several times during the cruise and gotten a replacement, suddenly it's a big deal? BS.

Considering we're going into June soon I'm sure they can't maintain that policy for very long.

Glad I bought in at $17 when stocks bottomed out. While this is a significant drop it's not the end of the world. I see the realistic value of RCL stock in a post-Covid world around $120-140. YMMV

There is a limit. I believe it was $2000 but don't nail me on that. Anything beyond that would make the Casino lose significant edge with more professional players.

Since it has often been asked, here are the two different menus CLASSIC & PREMIUM. I think as some stated above it depends what you usually drink. At the Martini Bar usually all drinks are made with Grey Goose or Ketel One. And I really wouldn't want to drink a Martini made with Smirnoff or Stolichnaya, maybe Tito's but yeah... $10 really makes the difference here.

I was allowed to make one for 2023 (April) so ymmv. Yes, when booking at the FCV desk there is a base fee for the rooms but since I was always able to book into Aqua Class I never questioned or disputed that. For some cruises the deal isn't THAT great considering as you mentioned that you got to pay for tips, drinks and internet separately. Best is to redeem this for expensive itineraries during peak season.

Won't help you. The flyer alone means nothing it's just a visual aid. Your name will be on a spreadsheet provided to the Future Cruises Desk by the Casino Host/Manager.

Nothing has been done on Solstice. I'm on it right now and this ship is patchwork wherever you take a detailed look. My AQ cabin had three severe defects within one week. They still use magnet striped key cards that have to be replaced every 2-3 days because either the foil with the data peels off or other faults. I wouldn't book it again until it has undergone substantial renovations.

Obviously not. Neither are any of the other folks. You hear people sneezing and coughing all over the place on this trip and that's not an exaggeration on my part.

Having a congestion from cold weather is common and doesn't mean you have a virus. I'm not living my life on the premise that I *might* have Covid. I guess there's the chance for everything in life. We *might* also have disease xyz but aren't testing ourselves for that, let alone isolate at home. Life goes on. Anyway, off the ship today. It was an interesting cruise of this first Solstice Voyage. A bit rough around the edges in particular maintenance and service wise. If they are already this unorganized in the main areas I don't want to know how they treat people in isolation. Safe travels!

They have gotten extremely stingy. There were only 9 people on the comp list during this cruise, even the people in the booking office were surprised. I'm not a big player, roughly ~7k coin in at this point (all slots). I wouldn't expect much to be offered to table or VP players as they have a lower house edge on those games. Slot players lose the most money so it makes sense to bring them back.

Yes they send people offers to the cabin on day 2/3 saying to visit the Future Cruises Desk for a future booking. This (I would think) is based on the discretion of the host.

I'm always confused about this. I'm actively playing on a slot machine for hours yet even for a Ginger Ale they ask for my seapass card (which is obviously inserted in the slot machine on older ships) or my room number. What for??

How does getting or not getting a booster shot (currently not even required by Celebrity) correlate to testing positive something during the trip? Maybe less is more in this entire discussion.

I'm so sorry to hear that, this sounds like an awful experience and the Eclipse crew as well as Celebrity should be ashamed of themselves having such garbage protocols in place. But what to expect, I've been served cold dishes even in BLU all week long as well as overdone meat. F&B quality on the Solstice is the worst I've ever experienced so far - SAD! I have eaten at local restaurants at every port so far because I didn't want to eat on board. The $100 spent at Tracy's Crab Shack (RIP) was actually the best investment of the week.

I doubt it's a policy change. She might just be lucky in the sense that the ship had space and maybe some crew members took pity on her. It might also depend on ship management if they have gotten wind that their vessel earned itself a bad rep for shoddy treatment and it circulates online. I have developed a pretty bad cold after foolishly standing on the windy deck in Ketchikan for a while and been high on Tylenol Severe Cold for two days now (which I thankfully had with me). Obviously I'm not reporting this to the medical team, knowing the origin of it, even though I've casually mentioned it to a few people including officers and they didn't care either. We have to learn how to live with Covid. Locking people up because of it can't be the answer for the years to come.

Hah! 😄 Well on my last cruise a lady indeed won BIG, iirc it was around $70k but she was also playing slots at $40 a spin so it's also not that difficult to lose $70k over time. As far as I'm concerned I'm fine with "losing" ~ $1000 per cruise if in return I get a free cruise offer and can let my bankroll last long enough to generate sufficient points to maintain my tier level (Amethyst). I'm also churning through my daily $3000 no advance fee slot cash that I cash out entirely, charge it on my Sapphire Reserve or Amex Green and get 3 points per $1 charged. This cash I'm depositing either after or during the cruise straight into my checking account (I use Wells Fargo just for this purpose as they have branches in Alaska). These cruise offers are usually either a free balcony cabin or $140 upcharge for Aqua Class which is a no brainer for obvious reasons - AQ any day! On my current cruise I'm down $900 which represents ~ 15% breakage from my coin in. I was able to book TWO cruises, one Greek Islands in AQ for $210 incl tax and a 15 days Panama Canal in AQ for $670 incl tax. Even with the extras I have to pay on top that's a huge discount compared to the regular prices on these sailings, especially in Aqua Class. I'm CC Elite now after taking several comp cruises so the benefits are even better from now on.

Currently on Solstice - There is a Craps table here and it's very busy. Last time on EDGE the Craps crew was out of commission due to Covid quarantine.