intr3pid

I don't really consider 'Black Friday' cruise deals actual deals.  You see, most businesses create Black Friday savings by producing in bulk, knowing the consumer demand will be there in those dates.  But, there is really no such opportunity for cruise lines - they can maybe discount some slow-moving excursions/packages or a last-minute sailing, but that's pretty much it.

The best time to find cruise deals is in the first 3 or 4 months of the year when everyone is tapped out after their holiday spending - while the cruise lines still need the cash deposits to continue trickling in.

All the main restaurant and shopping areas are by the beaches.  If you want a safe area away from a beach, look up Barra da Tijuca.  Hilton Barra is an example of a hotel in this location.

Two words.  Shower curtains.  Can't imagine vacationing two weeks in a cabin with unhygienic, cheap curtains every day.  

Might give the new Sun / Star Princess a try.

3 hours ago, K12Guy said:

Interesting. Do you recall if Silhouette was pushed out of dry dock early due to Covid or a dock damage issue?

 

That was Equinox.

Millennium and Summit were 'revolutionized' first, and they showcased those modern staterooms (plus all the re-done public areas).  That created the marketing hype.  You know, the 'luxury resort at sea' kind.

Silhouette and Equinox got Celebrity's version of what RCL would call the 'amped-up' ships.  They would redo the public areas but not touch the staterooms (other than maybe the TVs or phones). 

That expensive modern stateroom reno is exclusive to Millennium and Summit.

Just now, Saab4444 said:

It does not make sense to update all cabins after just 10 years.

2 minutes ago, Saab4444 said:

Millenium Class ships are about ten years older than Solstice Class ships. Hence the need for „full revolution“ is different.

Shrug.  The discussion is about which ships got the 'marketed' revolution.  Whether age or economics prevented the full/marketed version for others doesn't change the answer. 

3 hours ago, K12Guy said:

Actually Silhouette got the entire Revolution process, including some new staterooms and a Retreat Sundeck, with hot tubs (no room for a pool, unfortunately). You may confirm this by going to the deck plan, if you care to.

Retreat sundeck and some additional staterooms don't make the 'revolution' that they marketed. 

Every one of Millennium's roughly 1000 staterooms, for example, was redone - to bring it on par with the modern look of the Edge series.

Here is the new verandah stateroom on Millennium and Summit:

https://www.nuvo360.com/3d-model/veranda/fullscreen/#

And here is that verandah on Silhouette:

https://www.nuvo360.com/3d-model/veranda-2/fullscreen/#

Which is pretty much the same as that on Eclipse:

https://www.nuvo360.com/3d-model/nuvo360-virtual-tours-celebrity-cruises-veranda-stateroom/fullscreen/#

You can compare rooms across the fleet in this link:

https://www.celebritycruises.com/ca/things-to-do-onboard/staterooms/veranda-stateroom

4 hours ago, njsmom said:

How is a drink package a slow death sentence?

Elsewhere I'd quote:

https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health

or:

https://time.com/6248439/no-safe-amount-of-alcohol/

But, you should simply dismiss it.  As a morally onerous RCL shareholder, I encourage everyone to get these drink packages.  It's one of the best innovations to come out of the cruise industry.

The flyer in this link will give you the specifics of the pros:

http://www.cruisingpower.com/content/en_US/PDF/CEL_Passages_onboard_form_revised_8_2_13.pdf

The con is the $100pp deposit you now have to make.

Kauai would be great.  Better than an extra stop on the big island or along the Pacific coast.

Some of the Royal ships are now including a Napali Coast sail-by if they can't fit into the harbor. 

11 minutes ago, neverlaysup said:

It could but if you did want a few drinks it is still a pretty good deal since both passengers are already on the hook for daily gratuities of $17.50 each. Once you subtract that mandatory cost (yes I know some cheapskates will go to customer service and remove them), the net cost of drinks and WIFI is only $30 a day. For US, that is a great deal and only amounts to a coffee or two, some water and a glass of wine or two at dinner. For those that do not drink and are happy with Oceanview drip coffee, it may not be the deal we find it to be. We have cruised with and without drink packages and in the end, it all comes down to math for me. There is a price point where I find AI to be the better value than a cruise only rate.

For us, drink packages = slow death sentence, and the included Wifi mostly unusable for anything beyond basic messaging.

But, we love these packages for the reason I stated above.

11 minutes ago, neverlaysup said:

The AI rates can be an incredible value on some cruises. The AI pricing is all over the place as we have seen it at over $120 a day to less than $40 a day on some cruises. Our Alaska cruise had AI for $48 a day per person. That is a killer deal!

At $100 per day for a cabin of two, this would probably double the cruise fare for some cabins.

TBH, the marketed 'Revolution' was only done to Millennium and Summit.  Silhouette and Equinox got somewhere between a paint job and the marketing.  And then the likes of Eclipse just a paint job. 

What they did to Millennium probably no longer passes the cost/benefit muster.

This is great!  Let the gullible keep splurging on these drinks packages and AI rates - and subsidize the cruise for the rest of us. 😁

This is one of the several reasons why we steer clear of drinking the tap water on board most ships - but this would have been awful just to even look at.  Thanks for reporting it here on the board!

On 4/27/2023 at 10:55 PM, luckybecky said:

What a clusterf***! 

 

I'm so sympathetic to all of you who have been cancelled. What a disaster, especially when you have a lot of other expenses (air, hotels etc) invested. 

 

For many reasons, we decided our Japan cruise just isn't going to work for us right now. We have (had?) a concierge veranda and an inside, both with rooms assigned since September of 2021.

 

So as I posted previously, we were willing to be voluntarily cancelled on our Sept 30, 2023 cruise which would be good for us but also hopefully be good for Celebrity -- that would be two less cabins they would have to involuntarily cancel resulting in very unhappy passengers, as many of you understandably are. 

 

I made a call on Tuesday. Bottom line is this: we know Celebrity has oversold this cruise. We are willing to cancel our two cabins, which would open those up for customers who do not want to be involuntarily cancelled -- but we don't want to lose our deposit. We asked our TA, is there anything we can do to make this work?

 

This seems to us a win-win. Celebrity has the opportunity to make some other customers happy by not involuntarily cancelling them -- especially when many passengers have invested a lot of money in travel expenses. And it would make us happy by not losing our deposit. Those cabins are still filled with paying customers, and Celebrity still keeps our money as FCC. It does not seem to me to be a difficult calculation.

 

Now keep in mind, we have not reached final payment date yet. Under the terms of our booking, we could choose to roll that deposit over to a different cruise as long as we do it before final payment -- we would only have to pay a change fee of $100 per person. 

 

So that was a viable option for us, but if we can just voluntarily cancel now and get the FCC, even better! We can take our time choosing how to spend the FCC -- but Celebrity still gets our business -- and someone on the current cruise is happy because our cabin can be assigned to them. Honestly I don't see any downside for anyone here, especially Celebrity.

 

And on Tuesday that was the option that was offered to us and we accepted.  Cancel our Japan cruise and receive an FCC for the full amount of our deposit.

 

But 48 hours later I had never received any confirmation. So I called back our TA. What a mess! I was on the phone for 2 hours. Big Box C travel agent says they show that our concierge veranda was cancelled, but the inside cabin was not. They had no information about any FCC.

 

They got Celebrity on the line. After much back and forth, bottom line is this:

 

1. Our concierge veranda was cancelled in the TA system, but is still showing as active with Celebrity. So we really aren't sure if we have that booking or not.

2. That concierge veranda on the Celebrity website has been downgraded from a confirmed cabin number (reserved and confirmed almost two years ago) -- to a guarantee cabin.

3. our kids' inside cabin appears unchanged and still active. We are a family traveling together. No way would we agree to cancel one and not the other. This was made VERY clear in our conversations.

4. Neither cabin is eligible for an FCC -- even though they told us the EXACT OPPOSITE and we accepted two days ago.

 

When I repeatedly pointed out that this is not what we were told and accepted, the Celebrity rep said, "I'm not saying you are lying, but...."

 

Ooohh boy. It is NEVER good business to say to a customer, "I'm not saying you are lying, BUT"  😡

 

My blood is boiling. As it is for so many others who have so much time, money and effort invested into these cruises. 

 

When we ended our call today, nothing was resolved. Arthur from the resolutions department at Celebrity says they are going to pull our phone call from Tuesday and listen to it to see what they actually offered. No matter that the Costco contemporaneous notes from the call describe exactly what I said above.

 

Once they listen to the Tuesday call, they will contact us with their decision. OMG

 

Sorry for the long post. I'm just venting. I know there are many of you who have it much worse than we do. At least we had not yet purchased air fare, for example. 

 

But the point is, there are SO MANY  ways that Celebrity could have/ could still handle this better, and they just are not.

 

We have only cruised with them twice and loved them: loved the food, the ships, the decor, the crew, the entertainment, everything. Really wanted to make them our favorite cruise line and become dedicated customers. But now....

 

This should not be difficult to resolve.  Big box TAs record all their calls, and we have had a few pulled in the past to make the cruise lines play ball.  Stay on it.

10 hours ago, HMR74 said:

I have also heard that if you book on board and have a lower deposit, now if you transfer it to a TA it switched to the higher deposit.

Not true.  No issues transferring an OBB to a TA within 30 days and keeping all the perks.

1 hour ago, mahdnc said:

Here is a Celebrity flyer that compares the onboard booking options among other cruise lines: link. Most of it is reproduced in the screen shot below:

 

 

 

It was 12 months on our holiday Eclipse sailing a couple of months ago.

On 3/5/2023 at 12:55 PM, wrk2cruise said:

 

This is exactly my strategy as well other than I don't do open passages as I find them too restrictive.  In place I make a couple of dummy refundable deposit bookings for sailings as far out as possible that I don't intend to take.  I try to book an undesirable cabin so I'm not blocking a primo cabin someone else may want to book.   If the open passages didn't have time restrictions on selecting a sailing or lose the OBC I'd use them but given the restrictions I use the placeholder booking as it's more advantageous for me.  Then when I move the placeholder to the sailing I wish to take I generally make it NRD.

Totally fine way to do this if you and your SO are sailing.

I should note that open passages is less restrictive than an actual refundable booking.  Open passages gives you a year to select your sailing (or lose OBC) at the end of which you can still switch to a refundable "dummy" booking if you want.  So, it's at least as flexible as a refundable booking.

Where open passages shines is the ability to assign it to someone else - say, to your family members or friends.  It also allows you to carry it for a single $100 deposit - vs a 2x $100 deposit for an actual booking.  Sure, you could book an actual room for just one person, but that increases the risk of losing the OBC if that one person can't travel.

For us, alcohol packages = slow death sentence; yet we love their prices as the sales subsidize the rest of the ship.  Similarly, zero proof package prices don't make much sense either - but they serve a greater purpose.😀

I imagine the soda package was one that actually made economic sense to buy, and hence they had to shelve it.

We have a few bookings out all the way till 2025, and this is the script we tend to follow.

- Book on board (no exceptions) to reduce your deposit down to just the change fee

- Also keep 2-3 open passages in hand for booking new deals (or releases) in between your sailing dates

- Book NRD for dates you are sure of (holiday seasons for us, or less than a year out)

- Book refundable for speculative dates, and secure the cabin or category you want for a minimal deposit.

The NRD fares hardly budge for dates longer than a year out.  Or until the flights are released.  The availability and OBC deals do though.  If you book two years out, you still have a year or so to firm things up and switch from refundable to NRD.  Or drop the booking altogether.

Here is how we view Celebrity's restaurants on a food quality scale:

Specialty restaurants >>>>>> Luminae/Blu >> MDRs

Service in Blu is pretty good, but menus are quite repetitive from day to day.  You will see versions of similar entrees, for example.  On the longer cruises, we get bored.  Same with Luminae.

If the premium over Concierge is small, it works fine.  Otherwise, you will have a much better dining experience if you book Concierge and use the extra money on a specialty dining package.and/or upgrade to sunset verandas.

On 1/25/2023 at 10:49 AM, mahdnc said:

 

Although I have not done it, booking your air through Chase with your Sapphire (aka Ultimate Reward) points gives you the best of two worlds. To you, the tickets are "free" if you are redeeming points.  However to the airlines they are purchased tickets and you are able to earn frequent flyer miles on the flights.  That would be one reason not to book directly with the airlines.

The maximum travel value you can get out of Ultimate Rewards is 1.5 cents per point.  That's just a fraction of what you can get out of airline miles.  We have redeemed airline miles for more than 12 cents per mile in many instances. 

We have also yet to pay more than economy prices for our business class seats.  This is generally possible only if you build status with your main airline and then book directly.

19 hours ago, NutsAboutGolf said:

 

Has the wifi been down at all?  Those wifi speeds are still at least twice as fast what I typically see on other X sailings without starlink

Pretty consistent so far.  Haven't seen any drops. 

The ping is sometimes longer - as expected with satellite internet - but we have been able to do FaceTime/WhatsApp calls.  The overall impression is that the speed is very much the 5G network speed when close to land and still pretty decent when in the middle of the ocean.

So, this is on board the Eclipse in the middle of Tasman Sea using premium internet:

Starlink on Eclipse:

https://www.cruisemapper.com/news/11190-celebrity-eclipse-internet-spacex-starlink-satellite-network

13 hours ago, DirtyDawg said:

But in your original post on this subject you indicated the buyers of those bonds "those tempted" bought at 675 over some LIBOR(OIS) rate. CCL might have swapped it for 675 over a LIBOR (OIS) rate after issue, but did they? I don't follow CCL closely so I might have missed that announcement. Please feel free to post that information from CCL. I'm curious what they managed to do with this issue. 

 

So my apologies for my first post. I was on the buy side for 30 years so that's my perspective. ( Well, actually only 28 years because they managed to lure my over to the dark (sell) side for 2 years).  You were coming from the issuers side. 

Mostly buy side here too - but have been involved in more than my share of private investments and the structuring that comes with it.  

CCL doesn't disclose the details of its swaps.  That their net market value is very low suggests they have been issued more recently.  Most of the fundraising this year has been to dispatch the maturing debt.  The unsecured 10.375%, for instance, replaced the 10.5%-11.5% notes from 2020.  So, investors are biting at a (slightly) lower yield against a higher benchmark rate.

To be honest, CCL's equity raises have been the real problem.  Unavoidable maybe, but awfully dilutive.