Cruise till you drop

On 11/28/2023 at 6:43 AM, SargassoPirate said:

That's how they fill those known to be less desirable cabins. Then they can "upgrade" an unsuspecting passenger into one of those cabins and then sell the newly vacant one.

This is exactly what happened to us in Jan 2022.  We got “upgraded” to a room that we truly felt was a downgrade.

I am of the opinion (based on a bad experience ourselves) that Princess would prefer that no one have a pre assigned cabin and they can just assign you a room at the last minute.

It is very frustrating and honestly has soured us from Princess to the fact that we’ve sailed or have future bookings for 4 cruises on Celebrity since that bad experience.

I was in the system this morning and the only payment option available was pay it all up front.

This has to be a mistake doesn’t it ?

I just received the cancellation email and contacted Celebrity customer service by the chat function and learned it was supposed cancelled by the tour operator.  And I have the credit issued already.

This excursion was for a Jan 2025 cruise

I guess we are now on plan B

Thanks for everyone’s feedback 

15 minutes ago, Giraffes said:

50 min.

I’m just getting a black screen with no video or sound.  Am I doing something wrong ?

It says I can view it by Dec 27th

1 hour ago, Midpacpl said:

We reserved our open dining times - is that what they are referring to as Select nowadays? I’m so old and have been

cruising for years - can’t keep

the name changes straight.
I do my reservations online very early as we like the early dining times also. 
Do you happen to have a personal concierge assigned to you or your group by celebrity? I would reach out to them. Otherwise- make your first stop onboard the dining room- good luck and happy journey 

We haven’t boarded as yet (not till Jan 8th) so I assume to early to reach out to the concierge.  We booked early as well but our group has grown from 2 to 8 people since then and some of the group have had dining booking issues so we’ll just figure it out once we board. 
 

Thanks for the suggestion about using the concierge.  We’ve never had concierge but makes sense they can help figure this out for us 

38 minutes ago, Paula_MacFan said:

I got this email yesterday about Caribbean and other bookings for 2025 & 2026.  I was able to book a Panama Canal cruise this morning.  When I did a search for 2026 Caribbean cruises I get 26 results open for booking, as per screen shot attached. 

I see them as well

Glad to hear it worked out.  
 

Was there anything special about the link?  Often the main issue with such problems is doing your web work in Chrome as opposed to Safari

No because I don’t think the added benefit versus a balcony would warrant spending that extra money

8 hours ago, Devo12 said:

We are doing this cruise in March. According to the itinerary we go through the gatun lake locks early in the morning. 5am or so. If I get up that early, will I be able to see anything? Any good spots to go and watch? We are on the beyond. Deck 12 in the concierge class, no retreat for us. I do have the ferry booked to go through the old locks and out to the Pacific Ocean. 
 

thanks. -Devo

Likely the best shot at this is either going early to the magic carpet against the glass where you can see forward of the ship or wait near the retreat area and just sneak in when people are coming and going 

5 minutes ago, Midpacpl said:

You don’t have to use BLU if you’re in Aqua - we were just in Aqua in June - we used open seating and I reserved those time slots ahead of time online 

1 minute ago, Midpacpl said:

You can reserve your MDR time slots online You don’t have to wait till you are onboard 

Thanks.  It appears that due to only being 19 days from sailing, the earliest select dining time available is 8:30pm which is way too late.

We understand that it’s likely there’s only limited spots to book in advance of the cruise and more opening up when we board.  Crossing my fingers

9 minutes ago, kwokpot said:

Despite having made pre-cruise fixed early dining reservations for my parents the Beyond was all anytime dining and no one was honored a set early or late seating times. Blu is also no reservations so just decided on the fly when we wanted to dine in Blu vs joining my parents in one of the MDRs.  

Thanks.  We’ll be on the Equinox and also on Anytime (Select) Dining.  Since we’re a bit larger party, we may try to get this done once board the ship

Thanks again

5 minutes ago, Margio said:

Here is the notice we received:

There's been a change to some of your cruise plans

Dear Guest, we’ve processed an excursion cancellation on your reservation for one of the following scenarios:

You’ve requested for an excursion to be cancelled

There’s been a change to your itinerary

Operational reasons

If you didn’t cancel the excursion yourself, we apologize for the inconvenience.

A refund will be issued to your original form of payment. Please allow 7 to 10 business days for this transaction to be completed.

To select a new excursion, please log-in to your account at https://www.celebrity.com/account/ to review your shore excursions.  

Wow that’s kind of a vague and useless explanation.  Thanks for sharing this

2 hours ago, We_like_to_cruise said:

Well, we spent almost four months on her and enjoyed it very much.  You can read and see more details on the ship and our experiences on my "live from" post linked up above.

We are sailing on Equinox next month and very excited for it.  We’ve learned not to overpack so I’m not too concerned about storage.  And we’re happy they brought back the old menu items so there should be plenty of choices for dinner.

21 minutes ago, kwokpot said:

One thing I would suggest is allowing this couple to at LEAST try Blu for dinner on their own one night. If they enjoy steak the Ribeye in Blu is delicious and isn't available in any MDR. They should checkout the nightly menus and decide which night they would enjoy the Blu entrees better. It would be ashame for them to pay for Aquaclass and not experience at least once dinner in Blu. So you all should make them feel it's OK to do that. In any case it isn't an issue for them to join you. When we were on the Beyond last year we were in Aqua and my parents traveling with us were not, and we had no problems switching back and forth. I think of the 9 nights we dined in Blu 3 times, the rest in the MDRS with my parents. Photos of the ribeye steak from Blu on the Beyond. . 

Thanks for sharing your experience and advice.  And believe me, we have been encouraging our friends to do Blu at least once since they paid for it.  We’ll see if they do that or not.

Question about switching back and forth.  Did you do that on a whim each night or did you prearrange it on the first day on which nights you were dining in MDR?

Since there are 8 of us with Select Dining and not wanting to eat late, we would like to secure a reservation for each night once we board the ship

3 minutes ago, countess5 said:

Have not used them, I normally use tours by locals which I am using in Japan next May. I looked at them for Tortola and didn’t see anything of interest. Our TA uses this vendor as an option. 

 

Cheers 

I’ve never heard of them but when I went to my travel agents website and clicked Shore Excursions, this site popped up

23 hours ago, Margio said:

Anyone know why excursions to Jost Van Dyke are being cancelled by Celebrity?  Going on cruise in March and just received notice.  Thank you!

Do you mind posting the notice you received ?

We have this booked for Jan 2025 on Beyond and just checked the Shore Excursion list and didn’t see it shown anymore.  Didn’t get a cancellation email but something is definitely up. It’s interesting that more than a year in advance that this excursion was already sold out

The reason I booked this cruise was for Tortola and JVD so if it’s gone, I will surely be looking to just fly to Tortola for a land based vacation

So I have an odd situation.  8 of us cruising together (4 couples) and one of the couples booked late and had to book Aqua Class so could be on our deck (11th) on Equinox

They have access to Blu but want to dine with the rest of us.  When we board, will we have any issues getting them moved to MDR with the rest of us ?

PS - they also may want to try Blu on 1 or 2 nights but majority will be in MDR

3 hours ago, go fish 44 said:

We were on the Equinox for B2B starting Nov 21tst for a Thanksgiving cruise then on for the next cruise.

We had a great MDR team of waiter and asst.  Our food, even soup was always nice and hot in MDR

 

 

My only complaint was on day 4 of the 10 night cruise the ship ran out of the only wine I like Pinot Grigio   I was very disappointed in the fact that I could not get a glass for dinner of this wine.

For me it was a waste of the drink package 

Come on Celebrity you can do better.

Only Day 4.  That seems preventable and inexcusable

On 12/12/2023 at 1:44 PM, PTC DAWG said:

My attempt at dark humor went over some heads..

Maybe it was too smart a joke for this crowd 😂 

5 hours ago, dogsdogs said:

We saw a lot of this on our Eclipse cruise last month.  One woman was playing cards with her bare feet up on the table.  Ewww.  Thanks for your review.

That’s disguising.  I wonder how these people act at home

13 hours ago, zackarykeef said:

You don't happen to know another company other than these two, do you? I contacted both, and although they both have availability, neither work with our port time 😢 we don't arrive until 9:00am, so they both told me it wouldn't work. Extremely disappointing, as we are the only ship in port that day, but oh well. Any other suggestions would be appreciated!

We are taking a Celebrity excursion in January to a place called Harbour Lights.  It sounds a lot like the Boatyard and seemed interesting

1 hour ago, grandgeezer said:

I recall many complainers that still sail but don’t recall any that said they would never sail again, but did.

Our last cruise on Celebrity was August of 2019 and here we are in December 2023 and the streak is still in tact. That was in a suite on the Equinox and though nice, grossly overpriced. We did it to see what all the hype was about, and after a couple of days we had our answer.

Our last regular cruise on Celebrity was in December 2016, on the Silhouette, and that was the final nail in the coffin.

Before that we cruised alt mostly on Celebrity and RCL. We have almost 1300 points on Celebrity and 85 on RCL. Total 47 cruises and 494 days at sea, which includes Princess, Holland America, Norwegian, and MSC.

If you click on the complaining posters profile, you can see from past posts that they’re on roll calls for several future Celebrity cruises.  I find that hilarious that they say never again and they have 3 future cruises booked