cruizinfools

On 4/26/2024 at 4:39 PM, Host Jazzbeau said:

We DIYed Arenal after a similar cruise on Azamara that ended in Puerto Caldera.  It was great, and we didn't feel a need for the hand-holding of a package tour.  Details are in my blog:  jazzbeauxcostaricacruise2018.wordpress.com

 

Such an approach can easily be tailored to suit your needs, starting with pick-up at SJO and ending at the ship in Puerto Caldera.  But the Azamara tour also looks very good and includes all the things you would want on an introduction to Costa Rica.  If we had had that option we probably would have taken it.

  

Thanks so much for your input and the link. At most we will only be able to extend this trip by the 4 days included in the package, maybe only 3 if we DIY. And the first day will most likely just be traveling to SJ. The package is $4600 for both of us. I have looked a bit at prices of a few independent providers for Monteverde full day tours ranging from ~$750 to ~$900. Could be a more personalized experience. I would hope that the Windstar experience would not be far off and with small groups. 

We are on the 7 day Puerto Caldera to Colon cruise departing 12/7/2024. Windstar is offering a 4 day pre-cruise extension upgrade which includes among other things, tours & experiences in the Monterverde Cloud Forest and Arenal Volcano areas. It is a bit of an investment so was hoping to find out if anyone has done this and if you thought it was worth the expense. Or should we attempt to DIY? Think I could arrange some of it myself, but probably not in its entirety. My TA has said that the included hotels are nice. All meals are included, except the day you fly in. Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated. 

Windstar Cruise tour itinerary.pdf

1 hour ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

Have you never seen other cruise lines with such offers?  I have - Scenic, Silversea.  Does not imply financial problems per se, there needs to be other evidence.

No, I have not until I read this thread - several others have already pointed this out, primarily high end cruise lines it seems. Although Azamara is a step above some of the main stream lines, I wouldn't equate them with Viking, Silversea, etc. I haven't cruise with any of the lines previously mentioned, only Azamara, so what do I know.

1 hour ago, lisiamc said:

We have recently cruised with Viking and Holland America (both December 2023) and have just booked with Saga for March. We are also booked for five cruises in the next 18 months with Azamara. For each of these cruise lines, and pretty much every other cruise line out there, there are posts on various social media with people speculating “Ooh, prices have gone up, must be proof that things are not good financially”, “Ooh, they’re having a sale and prices have gone down, must be proof that things are not good financially”, Ooh, they’re offering a discount for paying early, must be proof that things are not good financially”, “Ooh, standards have declined, must be proof that things are not good financially”, “.

Absolutely have seen such posts, especially post pandemic, except as I mentioned above, I was not aware of cruise lines offering OBC for paying in full early. I have seen offers for paying in full at the time of booking but not midstream. Our previous Azamara cruise was booked 15 months in advance - no such offers - that cruise was pre pandemic, so a different time - they were still a part of RC then. We booked this Azamara cruise March, 2023 - this email simply took us by surprise, probably overreaction on our part. But, given the known issues with customer service, their website, etc. makes one speculative. The itinerary of our upcoming cruise on the Azamara website finally ALMOST matches what our cruise contract indicates (seasoned cruiser here - I understand the itinerary can change, but we have not been notified of any changes). For a long time, the website itinerary was very different and even the map, the description, and the day by day itinerary were not in sync.  We have also booked with other cruise lines, more mainstream (Holland, Celebrity, Princess...), over a year in advance - again not seem this type of offer before.  And that's why I headed to CC - and as expected, there was already a thread created on the subject with other cruisers chiming in on being unfamiliar with such an offer.

Thanks for the info and enlightening us! 😎

22 hours ago, lisiamc said:

I got the email, and I booked through an agent. I think I’m going to pay on Monday, since 5% OBC is a better deal than I’d get leaving the money in the bank for a few more weeks. 

We also received this offer this week for our December sailing - does make us a bit concerned about Azamara's financial solvency. 🤔 We did book this with our TA and she has confirmed with Azamara that our booking qualifies and the amount of the OBC which is definitely tempting. But we will also need to up our insurance coverage now to cover the full amount (only have our deposit covered).  I have reached out to our insurance agent for that cost. If we should decide to cancel prior to 8/5/2024 (our current final payment date), this is a cost that we would be out unless we book another cruise within the time window our insurance company will allow us to move the policy to. 

On 8/15/2022 at 11:48 AM, wendyatpml said:

We d on't like large amounts of people in a tour group.  Any recommendations would be appreciated.

I reached out to a tour operator that I used many years ago to see if he was still in the business. I just heard back from him and I highly recommend you reach out to him. He provided a tour from Colon to see both the old and new locks (at that time they were still under construction). This was a large group from the CC roll call for that cruise, but he definitely works with small groups as well. The tour that I worked out with Roberto just happened to appeal to many of the folks on our roll call. His contact info is:

Good luck!

On 8/14/2022 at 6:41 AM, wendyatpml said:

Has anyone used a tour company that is not part of the ships tours?  We would like a much smaller groupl

I reached out to a tour operator that I used many years ago to see if he was still in the business. I just heard back from him and I highly recommend you reach out to him. He provided a tour from Colon to see both the old and new locks (at that time they were still under construction). This was a large group from the CC roll call for that cruise, but he definitely works with small groups as well. The tour that I worked out with Roberto just happened to appeal to many of the folks on our roll call. His contact info is:

Good luck!

Thank you for all the info you provided. We are headed to the port right now to board the Miracle, same itinerary as you. Unfortunately a bit cooler this week and 100% chance of rain on Tuesday. ☹️ We’ve been to Ensenada several times, may not get off the ship. Although hate to miss having a margarita at Hussongs! Looking forward to the comedians on board. One thing that Carnival usually does well.

Yes, thank you so much for your live blog and review - the DH and I have been following along - so much great information and tips!

In your last post, there appears to be something wrong with the link for "My dry bag". I have tried it from here and from your blog page and from different devices but it does not work for me.  All the other links (strap, turtle bag, relief band) are good. Although at the end of your post you also mention your 'other website' and it reads as if you meant to include a link in that text as well, but I don't see one. 

Absolutely don't mean to trouble you or pick on you, 🙂 just very interested in the dry bag - hope you are able to repair the link. Thanks again for all the time and work you put into this!

A little late to post but hopefully still helpful to some. Our Celebrity Eclipse cruise ended in San Antonio on 12/6/2019. We took a transfer/tour with Tours by Locals to Santiago where we stayed at a hotel in Lasterria for 2 nights, right next to Santa Lucia Park and 1 block from Lasterria street. It was a great location. Our tour was a perfect introduction to the city - our tour guide spoke of the protests and also let us know how close we were to many restaurants, shops, and bars. We walked many places during the day and in the evening and felt comfortable for the most part. We were amazed at the amount of graffiti, especially on monuments and public buildings. We were very disappointed that we weren’t able to ride the subway - the two closest stations to our hotel were not open due to the damage from the protests. There were also many street stop lights that were not working. We thought the local people were very nice and helpful. Friday evening we did see many people that we believe had dispersed after a protest walking on Lasterria as we were looking for a place to have dinner, some chanting and/or beating on items to make noise. But they were strung out in small groups, some families with small children, peaceful and not threatening. On Saturday morning we took a walking tour with Strawberry Tours (free - pay at your discretion) of the Central Market area - excellent! Have to say that we would not have done this on our own as the traffic and the amount of people on the street and in the markets was crazy! A tour guide was essential and ours was great. If you go, don't be fooled by what is called Central Market. That is just one small section of the markets and not very busy. Our tour started and ended at that location. The "real" markets are across the street where the majority of the Santiago people shop. We also saw and heard some more people that might have been "protesting" - more chanting and making noise. We walked to Plaza Italia on Sunday afternoon. There apparently was a small “protest” going on as we did see water cannons being shot at people, but we were still several blocks away and couldn’t really tell what was happening. By the time we walked the last few blocks, it had calmed down. Quite a few people around, but again very peaceful. It was interesting to see quite a few vendors with small carts hawking drinks and food - not missing a chance to make money!  We are so glad that we did not cancel our plans to spend some time in Santiago. Although we were ready to get home and back to normalcy (16 day cruise), we could have used another couple of days to explore more of the city. Our hotel arranged our transfer to the airport Sunday early evening for our midnight flight to LAX. (17000 Chilian pesos - about $21 conversion rate at that time).

Santiago is having more than their share of problems right now, but like any big city, you need to be vigilant and aware of your surroundings. Many of the bad experiences being reported could happen anywhere. JMHO.  Safe travels everyone.

Anybody have experience dealing with this company? http://www.southexcursions.com/

They arrange tours especially for cruise passengers in Chili, Peru, Brazil and Argentina. 5% discount to cruise critic members, still find their prices a bit high even for a group of 8 or more.  I am sure I am not booking with the vendor actually providing the service but hopeful to find someone that has used them before. I am researching tours for Arica, Chili (repositioning cruise in November). I am finding few vendors and many are already booked.

If you have other recommendations, please share. TIA!

Marilyn

We are on a Celebrity repositioning cruise 11/20/19 which ends San Antonio and are seriously considering taking the bus from the port to Santiago. Check out this discussion on the this forum:

Embeded in this thread are links to other threads where fellow cruisers share very good information including photos of the bus, tickets, etc. Recent experiences are given if you read through all the posts.

Thank you TDHill and mpc128!!  Wonderful detailed information. We are seriously considering taking the bus from the San Antonio port to Santiago at the end of our November cruise. Going to bring this to the attention of our roll call and see if we can find some other adventurous folks to join us!

mpc128, I am assuming you were able to buy the bus ticket with USD. Having the cash on hand won't be a problem, but I am curious if you can use a credit card when buying your ticket right at the bus?

On 3/21/2019 at 1:46 PM, riffatsea said:

OK I get it now!

 We like coming in a day before the cruise from San Diego but we didn't drive up since we flew back into San Diego not near San Pedro.

Have you checked prices at the Doubletree in San Pedro which has free parking if you book a room?

Otherwise I have not heard great things about that 405 parking and feel safer at a hotel like at the Westin or the Hilton link I gave you .

Sometimes cheapest is not best. Up to you.

We usually like to come in at least a day or two prior to a cruise, especially if we are flying. We are splurging on this short cruise in May..... we booked our November cruise just two weeks after returning from a cruise in late January.......then this May one popped up.  We have never taken 3 cruises in one year! Anyway in order to trim costs just a little we are choosing to drive in the day of the cruise. Thank you so much for your help. We have reserved with the Hilton and especially appreciate you telling us to scroll down for deals. There was a promo code that gave me an additional 10% discount - every little bit! 

14 hours ago, hoopslover said:

The original intent was just to use the Westin parking, but our flight got changed to early morning and we had to spend the night.  We have used 405 airport parking several times also.  It is on La Cienega just north of Century Blvd.  I would choose the least expensive daily rate and go with them.  If you have any questions feel free to ask me.  We have probably used 20 parking venues as LAX is our nearest airport.  Hope this helps.

We have seen some negative reviews per 405. Elevator doesn't work, no place to park, people double parked. I try not to read too much into reviews as some people just like to complain. I assume you didn't have any of these issues. And there are many good reviews as well.

3 hours ago, riffatsea said:

Are you sure you don't want to actually stay at a hotel the night before with included parking??

The Westin still has its stay n go rate available for November(although it is a bit expensive).

I tried it to see if it was a good spot for our cruise too.

I am not sure I completely understand your plan. You have 2 separate cruises and both leave from San Pedro but you need to fly back to LAX right??

Both cruises are repositioning cruises, not round trip and both depart from San Pedro. The first one is in May, only 5 days, final destination Vancouver. The second one is in November, 16 days, final destination San Antonia, Chile. After both we are flying back to LAX, retrieve our car (wherever it is) and drive home to Palm Springs.

We may stay in a hotel for the longer cruise in November. For the short one, it isn't very economical to stay in a hotel for one night in order to get included parking. The parking lot daily rates would have to be fairly expensive to make a hotel stay a better deal. 

Rather than leave our car in San Pedro, we think the best plan is to park close to LAX and Uber/Lyft to the port, rather than the other way around. We have cruised out of San Pedro numerous times and I think about the only place to park is at the port ($18/day) besides doing a hotel park and cruise package.

Hope this helps. I am trying to find a safe place to park with reasonable rates and good shuttle service that others have used and felt comfortable with.

3 hours ago, hoopslover said:

We use cheapairportparking.com for LAX parking.  Last trip we parked at the Westin on Century Blvd. for 25 days for $7.95 a day.  Great shuttle to airport.  We have also used 405 parking lot near Century.  Not as many shuttles but good covered parking.

Did you spend a night at the Westin to get that price? And for both the Westin and the 405 parking lot you reserved through cheapairportparking.com? For both of my cruises, the website indicates the Westin is sold out. That seems possible for the cruise in May, but hard to believe that they are already sold out for a cruise in November.

We are going on two repositioning cruises this year which leave out of the port of LA (San Pedro). We will be flying back to LAX after both. Since we live in Palm Springs we plan to drive as the port/LAX is only 2-3 hours away. We are thinking our best option is to leave our car at a lot that is close to LAX with airport shuttle service and then Uber/Lyft to the port. We could do the opposite but from prior San Pedro port experience I don't think there are many parking options in the area. Any recommendations on a parking lot? 

Thanks!

I had been following this thread prior to our Cuba cruise in January. We had two overnights in Havana and had planned to do our own bar hop similar to what Dawn (KCmomof5) did. We ended up wimping out and booked the free Strawberry Nightlife walking tour. I highly recommend it! There ended up being 10 of us from our roll call in our party. I agree that Obispo is easy and there is much going on, but our tour guide took us to places that were a little more off the beaten path but still lively fun places. We all had a great time. We went to 3 bars. Original plan was to go to 4  bars but the first one was too crowded and didn't have room for our group. Went a couple of doors down to the Art Pub. Really good mojitos, very strong! 5 CUC each. Then to La ReliQuia, free salsa lessons! And the last place was The Tavern which had live music. It was only a couple of blocks from the pier, an easy walk back to the ship. Meeting time was 8 pm at the plaza across from El Floridita (far end of Obispo close to the Capitol building). Our tour didn't start until a little after 8 pm and I am very sure we were out later than 10:30. Maybe places stayed open later on Saturday evening? We tipped our guide 40 CUC for the two of us.

https://strawberrytours.com/havana/tours

Enjoy your time in Havana! 

On 2/19/2019 at 5:48 AM, Wyoming2010 said:

 

Hi, I just wrote to them from another poster's recommendation.  Do they do custom tours, or are you with a group?  Do you mind my asking how long your tour was and what the cost was?  Thanks much. 

Just thought I would add that Out of the Box absolutely will customize a tour for you.  On our cruise late January we arrived in Santiago at 5 pm for an overnight stay and leaving the next day at 3. We really wanted to see the cemetary and the El Morro fort at the entrance to the bay, neither of which are close to the port. I reached out to several tour companies and Out of the Box was the only one that honored my request exactly (didn't try to add additional stops or time to the itinerary). Due to my desires and our limited time in port in the daytime, we wanted time to explore a little bit on our own after the tour. We met our tour guide and driver at 8 am. Our tour guide was great and they dropped us off at Cespedes Square (downtown) at about 11:30 am. They would have also taken anyone from our group (5 of us from our roll call) to the ship if desired. The price depended on the number of people, starting at 63 CUC pp for 2. Our price was 48 CUC pp or 106 USD. We tipped our guide 20 CUC and the driver 5 CUC. Communicating with Out of the Box was easy and their emails were professional. Highly recommend them!

1 hour ago, travelerchris said:

We didn't have an overnight. I think that would have been fun. We were told we would tender and then the day before Capt. Gianmario announced we would be docking. 

Thank you! That is what I wanted to know. I think our White Night will probably be scheduled for that night. Since this is our first Azamara cruise we will elect to experience the White Night event rather than go ashore. If it is not or the White Night party is over early, some of our roll call members are considering going ashore to a nightclub together. 

On 1/7/2019 at 9:39 AM, travelerchris said:

We just returned from Azamara Journey on 1-5. We were able to dock in Santiago. It's a very industrial port but we enjoyed it. We did a private tour with Out of the Box Tours and LOVED it. Several people that did the cruise ship tour didn't enjoy it. Contact for the tour operator is Yoennis Díaz Moreno yoe@outofthebox.zone. He and his guides speak excellent English. 

Curious if you had an overnight in Santiago? The 1/24 Journey itinerary has us arriving in Santiago at 5 pm on 1/30 and indicates we are docked. We do overnight but our itinerary indicates we are tendering on 1/31. Wondering if you had a similar itinerary and then you actually docked for the entire stay. 

2 hours ago, soccersharon said:

 

I think I tipped Cesar $10.00.  We purchased drinks at each stop.  We spent maybe $30.  Sorry, can't remember exactly.

No worries! Thank you!

On 12/5/2018 at 1:50 PM, soccersharon said:

We did the evening "bar hop" Strawberry tour, and had a great time!  Cesar was our guide too, and he was excellent!

We just scheduled this for our upcoming Cuba cruise (in three weeks 😎!). If you don’t mind, how much did you tip per person? Did you purchase any food/drinks? Approximate cost?

Thanks!

1 hour ago, aimee0715 said:

We are leaving on Saturday on Azamara Journey on a Cuba Intensive itinerary.  We have booked Yoennis with Out of the Box for Santiago.  I have been so impressed with how organized and detail oriented he is.  I will try to report back when we get home about the actual tour but so far his communication is about the best that I have had from any private tour that I have arranged anywhere.  

 

We are supposed to tour with Yuri to Trinidad from Cienfuegos.  There is a group of 8 of us from our roll call.  I hope it will work out just fine. 

Eager to hear your report per Out of the Box! I also have a private tour booked with them for Santiago, DH and I plus 3 others from our roll call. We are on the Cuba intensive Azamara Journey late January. Like you, I have been very pleased with the communication with Yoennis. Prompt replies, easy to understand, and catered exactly to my requests.

Hope you have a great cruise!

My TA notified me today that "Amazing Night" will be in Santiago. Still nothing on Shore Excursion page and general itinerary still has ship departing at 3:00 PM. Next day is at sea, so several hours can easily be made up.

Hope this is correct and also applies to the 1/24/19 itinerary which I think is similar/same as yours.

Any news Bonnie? Thank you - I am sure you will be relieved when the Cuba AAE's do upload and all of will stop pestering you. :)