beachseeker

Oct. 22 is sold out and it looks like the 14 only has wait list.

When they're sold out, they usually disappear.

We are booked on the 14th in 2017 and it has disappeared from our "My Azamara". It wasn't close to being sold out when I checked a couple of weeks ago. I have been watching this cruise closely and the one prior because we wanted to use our 4 free days on the October 4th cruise and do a b2b. After our Panama Canal cruise in March we will earn the 4 free days.

Are you talking about the Sept. 26 sailing?

October 14, 2017 through the end of the year have been removed from Azamara's website. Bonnie responded on another thread that the cruises will be back online soon and that the cruises out of Miami will still be there. Very concerned about our cruise since it is the first one missing.

This article will make you want to visit Italy this year! I know I'd love to be wandering the countryside of Florence and stumbling upon a fabulous trattoria.

 

"Beyond Florence, Finding Fiesole" by Kristen Olivier, a guest blogger.

We have an October 2017 cruise booked and the biggest reason was the overnight in Livorno. We were seriously looking at the cruise prior with many stops in Croatia. The two cruises together would have checked off several places we want to visit. However, the cruise has disappeared from our "My Azamara" and from Azamara's website. Fingers crossed that it will reappear.

DH does because of the very limited choices of beer and it is not much more to upgrade the drink package than to buy the beer package. The upgraded drink package includes most beers. I did not because I mostly drink wine and have been very pleased with the complimentary wine. Will see if the holds true on our upcoming cruise.

In checking daily for our luggage tag link to appear for our Feb 29th Panama Canal cruise I noticed that our October 2017 cruise on the Quest was no longer listed in My Azamara. Figured it was just a glitch so tried to add it back. No luck. Then checked Azamara's website and there are no Quest cruises listed after the October 4th sailing through the end of the year.

Wondering........

Disappointed to see this change. After our Panama Canal cruise in March we will earn 4 free nights. Our plans are to book a cruise that will be a b2b with a cruise that we already have booked for October 2017. It will be our first b2b. One of the things we appreciate about Azamara is that once on board we really don't spend a lot of money and don't need OBC. With our room choice we get internet minutes, laundry, and specialty restaurants. No way would I wait until we are onboard to plan excursions. Our cruises with Azamara are bucket list trips and will be well planned. The possibility of an excursion being full or cancelled due to not enough interest is too great to chance. Azamara, please reconsider.

I'll see if I can find out when the Land Discovery tours for Huatulco will be available for you.

Thanks, Bonnie.

We are on the Feb 29th Panama Canal cruise on Journey. Our cruise calendar is still showing both Ixtapa and Huatalco on two different days. We did receive an email saying that our excursion in Ixtapa has been cancelled and we would be receiving a credit. However, no shore excursions are showing for Huatalco. Hope we see possibilities soon.

I've heard the reason for the port change from our Director of Itineraries...

 

"Zihuatanejo sustained hurricane damage over a year and a half ago and they still haven't made repairs to the tender dock. Thus we are unable to call there at this time. Huatulco was the best alternative replacement in our schedule.

We are hoping that they (Zihuatanejo) get their tender dock repaired so cruise ships can return in the future."

Thank you for the explanation. Looking forward to seeing our excursion options soon. As of today, Ziuatanejo and Huatulco were both listed on our cruise calendar but only excursions were available for the old port. I find it interesting that our new port is farther south, yet we arrive 30 minutes sooner but leave several hours earlier. Hated to see the shortened port stay of 8 to 2.

Also, the Stellenzicht Pinotage has been replaced with an inferior brand.:(

DH will be very disappointed. He really enjoyed the Pinotage on both of our previous cruises.

I like to know after all these months if anyone in the UK has booked a cruise using the comp nights.. I do not know any other American as they are not posting any info . So far my June cruise is a go in the price cabin I always book

We will earn the four free nights after our Panama Canal cruise in March. We have already booked a cruise for 2017 and are planning to use our free nights on the cruise prior to the one booked for a b2b.

Will we be able to book onboard or will we have to wait to receive an official notice of the earned "free nights"?

The CC meet & mingle was held at 6pm the first night aboard. I didn't count but I don't believe there were even 20 guests in attendance.

In retrospect, especially on a voyage with so many sea days right up front, we should have organized a second gathering a couple days later. (Maybe an afternoon tea party?)

I find I'm not entirely present on the first day aboard.

What do you think (of the idea...not whether I was 100% present!)

We have sailed on Azamara twice and both CC meetings were during sail away. I hate missing sail away but wanted to attend the CC meeting so we could meet the fellow passengers with whom we had private excursions booked. On our first cruise the CC meeting was in Looking Glass and there was a good turnout with lots of mingling and people staying long after the meeting was officially over. Second cruise was in the library with a huge turnout but everyone was seated and very little interaction between passengers. Definitely, preferred Looking Glass as the venue but hoping on our upcoming Panama Canal cruise that the meeting will be on the second day since it is a sea day.

That said, hands down Azamara hosts the best CC meetings!

I would book Coral Princess for this itinerary. Princess and Holland have licenses for Glacier Bay, which few other lines can get -- and Glacier Bay is a must-have site for an Alaska cruise [iMHO]. People will tell you that Hubbard is just as good -- but Coral Princess goes there too! Also Coral Princess has many public viewing areas that are perfect for these glacier scenic-cruising days. [island Princess used to, but its recent drydock has added cabins where there were public balconies.] Coral is also fairly small for a mass-market ship, and she has a full promenade deck -- so the ambience is closer to Azamara than you might expect.

Highly recommend the Coral Princess for all the reasons Host Jazzbeau mentioned. We did the southbound with a land tour at the beginning. After a very busy, active land tour it was nice to cruise on the second leg of the trip. To start the trip, we flew into Anchorage and took the Alaskan Rail to Fairbanks. It was a 12 hour trip but scenery was so beautiful that the time flew by, plus the sun was out and we saw Denali from our observation car.

I like a Bloody Mary on my balcony. Our butler on our first Azamara cruise brought me the ingredients to make them with the vodka that was included.

Nina I read your reply so I called Celebrity today and they are still saying nothing has been cancelled, this is very frustrating, I have left a message for my celebrity travel agent to get in touch with me.

Our TA called Celebrity yesterday and was told that the cruise is still on, they were just adjusting inventory. How do we ever believe what we are told in the future? Is it incompetence or just plain lying?

I dress on Azamara the same as I dress on Celebrity except I don't have to take clothes for formal night.

Our third cruise on Azamara is in February and we have not had a busy roll call on any of the three cruises. I have struggled to find others to share an excursion. On the last two cruises, there were last many posters wanting to jump on excursions that were already planned.

You will love Azamara!

As difficult as this is for those affected, there really is no alternative than to wait for Azamara to make a final decision and post the information authoritatively (through Bonnie and/or on their website). The more we continue to feed this rumor dragon, the more it will breathe fire ...

I agree but don't understand why they just posted new deck plans if they are not correct. Sometimes, I wonder if the left hand knows what the right hand is doing! If I don't have a tub the world won't end, but for those of us who plan our trips over a year out, not having all the facts is frustrating.

Has anyone thought the port choice might be very deliberate to encourage new cruisers to Azamara? They could be targeting a certain type of regular Caribbean cruiser perhaps one disaffected with Celebrity. At a strategic level, they know the cruiser does not now fit the direction they are taking Celebrity but they need to keep it in the family.

 

Offer them most of the ports they are used to so they are confident to take the Azamara chance. Once they've enjoyed onboard, they are very keen then to try Azamara further afield. Result!

 

For those of us who are not so near to the Caribbean the itineraries are certainly interesting as we have not been so often.

 

For the few of you who are lucky enough to to be serial cruisers, it's inevitable you will start to say same old same old. The only way you will get different is with extra ships and a more stable world which will open up far more destinations to everyone.

 

As I said before my problem for 2018 is choosing as I cannot have all I want ;)

Another first world problem!

Just my opinion, but if Azamara is going to stop at the same Caribbean ports that the major cruise lines are visiting and is hoping to attract new cruisers then the cost is going to have to be drastically reduced. For us, we think Azamara's price puts it in a different category. For the extra cost, we want itineraries that include new ports, ports less visited by the main stream cruise lines and certainly not Royal Caribbean's private islands.

When looking for a replacement for our January 2017 Summit cruise that appears to have been chartered, we looked at Azamara but cannot justify spending twice the amount for two less days and going to exactly the same ports that we visited on our last Azamara cruise.

We always look at Azamara first when starting our cruise search and just booked a Mediterranean cruise for October 2017 but disappointed in their Caribbean cruises.

I'm still struggling with the first world luxury problem of what to book for Christmas 2017... Journey is doing a 'standard' Hong Kong to Singapore run, which I've done before, and Quest is doing a quite boring (I'm sorry to say) Eastern Caribbean cruise. Decisions, decisions... :( Is anyone else of the Azamara regulars booked on any of these two cruises? Thoughts?

 

Thanks :)

Floris

When I saw how many times Azamara was stopping in Miami and San Juan I was excited but it didn't last long. I was really disappointed in the ports. There are so many ports that Azamara could go to that the larger cruises can't and yet they stop at all the same ports. I'm sorry but adding Coco Cay, Samana and Labadee doesn't excite us. We really enjoyed Virgin Gorda but enough of Dominica, Nevis, St Thomas and St. Martin. Would love to see Anguilla, St Vincent, Tobago, Jost Van Dyke, Grenada, Tortola, Grand Turk just to name a few. We have been trying to get back to Grenada. Our cruise on the Summit that was going to Grenada in 2017 has been chartered. Oh well.

I, for one, am so sorry you felt that you had to waste your valuable time over something so trivial. All that you do is very much appreciated.

 

Simply, thank you!

 

Bruce

Ditto, thank you Andy for all you do.

I have not received it. Also checked spam. I have repeatedly requested emails from Azamara, to no avail. I rely on Cruise Critic to hear of specials. Amazing.:(

Mine was in spam. Found it last night.

NCL has "Dress up or not" evenings. It was 50% dressing up and about 50% not. There were photographers set up on these evenings with long lines waiting.

For our Alaskan cruise and land tour last year we skipped formal nights so we could get by with less luggage. I thought we would miss not participating in formal nights, but we didn't miss it at all.

 

I rarely complain about cruising as its a privilege, but Celebrity seem to be on the make.

English Tim, as a follower on the Azamara boards as well, I did chuckle at your comment. We cruised on the Eclipse last February and had a great cruise. Celebrity is not in my good graces right now as our Summit cruise in January 2017 has been chartered and Celebrity won't admit it yet. Has us in limbo and we are losing a great price and intinerary.

Our last cruise was on the Eclipse and was our best cruise overall. That said, we have cruised on Princess several times and many of the cons that the OP mentioned I think are unique to Royal and Regal. In comparing lower end suites on both cruise lines I give the nod to Princess. Our favorite Princess ship was the Coral. We prefer a smaller cruise ship.

In Rome we stayed at an apartment in the city center. It was very nice and very reasonably priced. We had a group of 6 and walked to many of the sites. http://www.icapocci.it/welcome.asp

We used Rome in Limo to pick us up at the airport and take us to the apartment and again from the apartment to the port. We also used them for a private Vatican tour. Highly recommend them.