Parkland Hiker

43 minutes ago, patty1955 said:

Is there any chance we can get back on topic? 

We're on the March 4, Northeast Asia cruise that's included in the group. We booked on Celebrity then transferred it to our big box TA. Both the Celebrity website and the

43 minutes ago, patty1955 said:

Is there any chance we can get back on topic? 

We're on the March 4, Northeast Asia cruise that's included in the group. We booked on Celebrity then transferred it to our big box TA. Both the Celebrity website and the TA's show us as still booked. Those of you who have received an email from your TA, did everything look okay until it wasn't? TA's show us as still booked. Those of you who have received an email from your TA, did everything look okay until it wasn't? 

Last week, the Japan cruise still showed on the App for us.  I just looked now, and it no longer appears.  I’m not sure when it dropped off, but likely was after our TA notified Celebrity that we had decided to cancel 

2 hours ago, MandL said:

 

Do you have any idea where they got this list?  Or did someone simply type up this list on an assumption?

 

We are sailing 3/28/2024 (original booking from way back November 2019, lifted and shifted over and over again).  We always book now with Celebrity directly, and stay with them so I don't have to go through a third party to make adjustments.  One mishap a few years back was enough for me.  I just sent off an email to our contact at Celebrity to see what she knows. Should be interesting to get her take.   

This chart was in the letter we received from Celebrity, advising us that our booking has been cancelled.  It was a form letter sent out to all cancelled bookings for all of the affected cruises.  It listed our cruise, and then if you read across, it provided the 2025 cruises that you could lift and shift to. 2025 didn’t work for us, and even if it had, the 3 cruises we were given the option to lift and shift to were already sold out for equivalent stateroom.  We would either have had to downgrade, or upgrade but pay the difference at prevailing rates.  We chose to cancel and get a refund of our deposit and a FCC.  We had already booked our Japan flights, so have decided to just go and do a land tour on our own 

If this issue was a result of the Japan government requiring a certain number of cabins to be set aside for potential Covid quarantine, I don’t think Celebrity would have taken the blame on themselves as an error resulting in overbooking.  They would have laid the blame with the Japanese restrictions 

1 hour ago, Judy Arthur said:

 

There’s a belief by some that the Japanese Government requires a block (or blocks?) of cabins (usually inside) to remain unoccupied as a reserve for possible Covid cases.

4 hours ago, maryann2 said:

 

Not necessarily.

Some people have been upgraded from lower categories. Some cancelled.

We were deck 7, and received a cancellation notice.  We were never upgraded from a lower category- that was the stateroom we had booked all along, over a year ago, on the lift and shift from the 2022 cancelled sailing 

Just now, Parkland Hiker said:

According to the letter we received from Celebrity advising us that our reservation had been canceled, the Sept 30/23 cruise is also overbooked. So, I would hope, that if you want to voluntarily cancel your booking, they should allow you to and refund your money, so that someone who has Ben involuntarily canceled can go on the cruise!

10 minutes ago, Judy Arthur said:

Yes, the randomness of all these unfortunate cancellations looks to be the only logical explanation.    I wonder how/when we can ascertain when we are out of cancellation danger, and resume making our plans? 🚢 

We had just booked our flights 2 days before we got the cancellation notice from Celebrity!  We haven’t done anything about cancelling the flights yet.  Considering just flying to Japan anyway and doing our own land-only tour.  Cruising around Japan doesn’t appear to be a strong possibility anymore 

33 minutes ago, clojacks said:

What makes you think it is “20 or 30” affected cruisers. I believe from just looking at roll calls now a days, that it is pretty easy to assume that the  number of passengers using CruiseCritic is tiny compared to years ago. When roll calls used to be dozens of pages long, it is not uncommon now to participate in a roll call that may end up in single digits by sailing time. I personally believe the number of affected passengers is many times the 20 to 30 you suggest, just from speculating how few people continue to use the this resource. 
 

I, like many others, have been trying to get to Japan since being cancelled in 2021. And then ‘22, and then ‘23. Hoping out loud that we finally get to visit in ‘24 isn’t exhibiting hysteria, but rather sharing similar concerns with others in the same boat, figuratively.

I agree with your comments regarding Cruise Critic.  The number of people who look at Cruise Critic are a very small sampling of overall cruisers.  We find very few people who have even heard of Cruise Critic when we mention it.  So, if there are this many posts on thus forum, then I expect the numbers affected are significant 

42 minutes ago, RichardRahl said:

Everyone on this thread is hysterically assuming that the cancellations are random. It is very unlikely that this is the case. Celebrity is probably cancelling the most recent bookings first, the lowest loyalty level customers, taking into consideration the number of times a passenger has been lifted and shifted for the same itinerary, and other such relevant criteria.

 

Considering the thousands of people who booked these cruises, hearing about 20 or 30 getting bumped does not concern me. Those cruises with cabins available are still showing on the website. Those cruises that are sold out do not show up. That’s how the celebrity website works.

 

And just because one angry customer misheard a representative tell her that “all of Japan is canceled” when the representative likely never said that, it doesn’t mean we should believe it. This is the Internet, after all.

Celebrity is not cancelling the most recent bookings.  We were originally booked on a March 2022 sailing on the Silhouette, which was cancelled due to Covid.  We were then offered the lift and shift option for March, 2024, on the Millennium, which we booked. So, our veranda cabin (not a guarantee) has been reserved since March, 2022.  We received our notification of our booking being cancelled yesterday.  Celebrity provided a chart that shows that all of the fall, 2023 to spring, 2024 Japan sailings are affected.  So it’s some kind of major glitch in their reservation system.  Our TA is reaching out to the Celebrity rep that they deal with, to see what happened.  In the meantime, their offer to lift and shift to March, 2025 doesn’t look too promising since on the Celebrity website those Japan itineraries already show veranda categories as sold out