arealcheapskate

Customer service literally makes stuff up on the fly, I wouldn't trust them to tell me what colour the sky is.

Same thing happened to us. Had to reset the password to get back in.

I’ve had this issue many times, switching to incognito usually helps. Not sure if it is a residual cookie or cache data or perhaps a plugin like Adblock. But it is an inconsistent problem.

1) I brought up the percentage thing because another commenter mentioned that they allocate a fixed percentage of the overall cruise to tip above and beyond. We tip neither a percentage nor the automatic gratuities. You could say we don’t tip anything but again as I said, we pay for the cruise fare. Whether this includes enough to pay the staff is not my problem, it’s the CL. And perhaps the staffs’. 2) don’t really have a choice there because it becomes a fee and not a gratuity, as you can’t remove that.. What I will not, however, do is keep any removable amount on my account. If I could remove the “gratuity” on those purchases too I would do it on the spot. We usually book AUD fares instead of USD and find they are not only cheaper, but include the service charges (read:gratuities (described this way by Celebrity not me) in the fare.

A few points to make here - I don't need an excuse. I'll let someone else pay my way. I will flat out just tell you that each cruise (if it's a USD booking) we go and have them removed from the account. I don't even do it at the end of the cruise to try to get the "benefit" - just straight at the beginning or perhaps Day 2 to get it out of the way. No shame and no guilt. If the cruise line can't pay a fair wage - it's not my job either. If the employees aren't being paid fairly, they will speak with their feet and if they don't that's okay too - I'm not going to lose sleep. Same reason I don't lose sleep when I buy cheap clothes, or an overpriced Apple product made in China with less than questionable labor sourcing. Just because I spend x amount on the cruise doesn't mean I want to tip a certain percentage. I always find these threads so amusing because they always devolve into some sort of lecture on ethics and morals. I'll be the first to say if not tipping makes me unethical or some sort of pariah, I'm happy to wear that label. After all, my username checks out.

We wait 30 minutes, then move towels or books whatever onto the next chair over. If someone has a problem we tell them to take it up with guest relations. Have never had an issue. People are too meek. Seriously, if you aren't using it - you lose it.

I'm not talking about the country it's in. I'm talking about a USD booking - issued through the Miami office with no gratuities included on the confirmation. When you check-in and provide your country of residence those terms take precedence. For example, with our Casino booking only the Miami office was able to book it. Ordinarily you need to provide your address / country at the time of booking. This matters because promotions can be different, and pricing as well.

Thought this might be good to know for some of you - if you have made complimentary or discounted bookings in other countries etc. We just discovered today that whatever country of residence you set on check-in overrides the default booking currency terms. For example we had a USD casino fare that would ordinarily auto-charge gratuities daily, but it turns out that if you choose Australia - this automatically tells the system not to add them. Regardless of whether you purchased the cruise fare with gratuities inclusive. Nice way of not having to go to the customer service people and remove them. We are resident in Australia and the law basically says the fare has to be inclusive of that. Additionally the liability for luggage delay, loss and damage is not excluded on the Australian terms as it is in the US terms. Basically the US gets shafted. “Primary Country of Residence” means the country where you primarily reside at the time of booking the cruise. This should be indicated by you, your agent, or other representative at the time of booking the cruise or at online check-in. Australian Terms here: Cruise prices include the following where applicable: full onboard accommodation, onboard main meals, entertainment onboard ship, gym, some fitness classes, service charges to stateroom attendants; port charges and taxes. US Terms here: For Guest’s convenience, a discretionary service gratuity (“Gratuities”) will be automatically added daily to the onboard account of each Guest, except as otherwise provided below. Gratuities are subject to adjustment, at Guest’s discretion, onboard the Vessel until the morning of disembarkation. Gratuities will not be automatically added to the Guest’s onboard account if they are included in the Cruise Fare, as reflected in the Guest’s booking confirmation, if the Guest pre-pays them, or if the laws of the Guest’s primary country of residence do not permit them to be added automatically.

I had premium, wife had basic. Used the router with her basic login but over VPN, same speeds. Around 6mbps down and 1mbps up this was in Australia. In iceland a bit faster - not sure about the caribbean.

That one is like the top of the line one - there are cheaper versions of the same router without wifi 6 etc. I just wanted something future proof. Chances are with your current VPN service you'll be able to just plug those details into the router and it will channel all traffic over that router so your devices can all connect. What I do is connect all on the same router so I can stream to the Chromecast I bring. I am not sure when or if they removed Streaming video services on the television maybe someone else can correct - but Apex had them and edge did not.

Quality of service. 40mbps is possible but not consistently and reliably. It's better to deliver 6mbps to everyone, all the time (all things being equal).

With wireguard can just use udp2raw to get around this - but it does slow the connection somewhat. I too am glad Celebrity doesn't do this or we would probably cruise elsewhere.

Fair enough, sorry I misinterpreted. Although the RA did tell us when they have a party cruise with lots of young people in those suites, they have had to replace the entire bar in litre quantities twice a day. I reckon with the prices we paid for the Massive Suite we more than made up for a difference. Probably the reason the rockstar suites only get a single fill compared to the MRS. 43 sounds like a lot but most are half bottles so like 375ml and towards the back half of the cruise they brought us litre bottles.

Why should anyone change their behaviour based on what a company may or may not do in the future? It's not a charity, it's a cruiseline. Their ongoing viability as a company does not concern me - that is for their accountants to sort out.

Perhaps - but for every one of us there are probably 5 rooms that don't drink anything. TBH I think the regular rooms are probably worse for revenue compared to a regular cruise line - I saw plenty of people not drinking anything except soda. It seems about 10-20% of the ship did about 75% of the drinking.