CruisingWalter

The only thing I would recommend is to avoid Le Petit Chef and the gimmick of an animated dinner, and find the World Class Bar if they have one on board. I know Beyond has one as do all the S Class ships, not sure about Edge. Our favorite Celebrity restaurant no longer exists, the original QSine with the endless tapas Celebrity is very much a resort feel with the white glove treatment but without the stuffy attitude. The crew are usually fantastic and fun. We are looking at a Beyond sailing in 2023 as our first E Class ship. They are stunning ships and you should have a fun time onboard!

As others have noted, you have to call into VV or a Travel Agent. I recommend a travel agent over VV, that's what we did and we always use TAs for our cruises, going back 20 years now. It costs you nothing to use a TA (good ones) and if you need changes or anything else, they are advocates on your side, not just a call center. Sadly I can't recommend some folks we know who are among the top 100 VV TAs because Cruise Critic won't allow us to do that. CC is owned by a major travel website company. 🙂

Bar Tab is ONLY for drinks. Alcohol, coffee or anything else. Sailor Loot can be used for anything, that is your on board credit. Shops, drinks, excursions, etc...

I assume you're looking at the April 2024 Scarlet Lady TA to the Med while it looks like the Valiant will remain in Miami. Central Sea Terrace should be fine, just avoid Deck 14, that's directly below the pool and the gym. I don't really think there's a bad spot on the ship to be honest, the balconies and hammocks are lovely. There are certain cabins up near the front that don't have a hammock due to the design of the ship, but central should be fine.

@NJRonbo based on my experience, that USB hub should have no issues in your cabin. In general they draw very little power. Now it's entirely possible at some point the cruise lines will tell us they are banned too, but right now I have not see anything that would prohibit a USB charger like that. I have my 10 port USB Hub that I also use to connect to my computer that I currently use.

We really enjoyed our 5 nights on Scarlet Lady, though that was not near enough time to try everything. Still looking at booking an 8 nighter on Valiant before she heads back across the pond. If Virgin replaces that net with a new pool and maybe swim up bar, that will be a darn near perfect ship. That's really the only complaint I had onboard was the tremendous wasted space on the back of Deck 16 with that net. Great photo op, but that's about it. If anyone wants to see it I have a 5 part vlog series on my YouTube channel with a food tour, cabin tour (Cheeky Corner Suite) and overall review of the ship. CC doesn't allow me to post directly links but you can find the Where's Walter Travel on YT channel easily enough. 🙂 I'm really about curious your experience with the dining rooms and the crowds of late. We sailed with 1100 in July and everything was fantastic, but I have seen some posts saying the ship has gotten a little more chaotic as the ship has filled up. Long lines to wait for dinner, the "Grab N Go" not being replenished throughout the day and the like. The only real crowding we had in July was the pools because they're so small. But otherwise we had no issues with dining, Grab N Go, the shows and everything else. Did you find any issues with crowding and wait times onboard?

Shaq's Big Chicken. Rudi's Sea Grill (Mardi Gras) Shaq's Big Chicken Serenity Retreat Salad Bar for lunch Shaq's Big Chicken Pizza del Capitano (Mardi Gras) BUT don't get Shaq's egg and chicken sandwich for breakfast, there's something weird about the eggs and the biscuits are dry. But the chicken sandwiches are addictive. 🙂

That's because it was 150 degrees that day (or at least it felt like that) with no breeze and there were many people, including my wife, hiding in the small indoor 'lounge' with A/C. The tour was sold out though. 🤣

Good call. There are also plenty of USB-C to USB-3 converters as necessary. I love that Apple is being forced to come into compliance with standard charging ports vs. the lightning thing.

Not sure where you're pricing your insurance these days, but most third party insurance is cheaper or at the same price as the cruise lines. The coverage offered through the cruises lines is not nearly as good as the third parties. For example, a cruise line might offer $50,000 in emergency medical transport and $10,000 in emergency medical while the third party offers $500,000 transport and $50,000 emergency medical for the same amount. We never pay what the cruise lines are asking for insurance and we get better coverage elsewhere. If anything insurance rates have gone down since we started cruising with more competition. We're both 56.

Partial Transit goes through the first locks at Gatun Lake, the ship will then turn around in Gatun Lake (it's a massive lake) and go back through the locks into the Atlantic side. Full Transit is the ship goes all the way through the canal either east to west or west to east. We did a Partial Transit on Princess a while back and to see the entire canal, we booked an excursion on a smaller boat that took us all the way to the Pacific. It was actually a very cool way to transit the canal because we were on a very small boat of about 200 so when we pulled into the locks, we were 'at the bottom' looking up at these huge walls around us. And we would have a ship alongside us in the other lock towering above our heads. It's actually a very cool way to see the entire canal and I would recommend this type of excursion if you do a partial transit. We did motor coaches to go back to Panama to meet the ship. Here's a few images. The bridge is the end of the canal and the entrance to the Pacific Ocean. We went under the bridge and the tour ended shortly beyond that. Notice just how little clearance there is for a the big container ship in front of us.

I usually switch my phone to manual date and time settings when onboard for these very reasons. The phone will do all sorts of wonky time things on a cruise just because time zones and such. You should not have any issues setting alarms if you switch the phone to manual mode and set the phone to ship's time. As for the inside cabin, one way to not sleep too late is to leave your TV set to the Bridge Cam so when the sun comes up, you'll get some brightness in your cabin.

I HIGHLY recommend a USB Smart Charger to take on your cruises. I have a USB 3 Hub with 8 ports that I also use to connect hard drives to my computer, but it's also a charger for my GoPros, Phones, Kindles, etc... Something like this image. Just search USB Charging Station on Amazon or other electronics retailer. Super easy and you're ready no matter what each ship has or doesn't have in the cabin.

I used to have all my shirts and slacks pressed the first day on the ship, but have since switched to a wrinkle releaser. Put the clothes on a hanger, spray them with the wrinkle releaser and 10 minutes later at least 90% of the wrinkles are gone. Even the dress shirts. If a collar got messed up in the luggage then I send that out, but wrinkle releaser really does work. I use the Downey brand, but there are plenty of other options out there. We buy the big bottle and keep refilling 3oz bottles to take with us on the ships. Just offering that as an alternative to pressing. 🙂

That's exactly what it is. Looks like it is sent to people who have placed bids on a particular class of cabin. "Before we close out the bidding, you do not have the winning bid so we're going to give you one more chance to give us a higher bid." Pretty standard marketing tactic.

That's honestly pretty standard across the cruise industry. Most cruise lines charge an automatic gratuity on the specialty dining meals just as they do for the cocktails. It might be new to some cruise lines since the restart, but we've sailed 8 cruise lines now and it's been a rather common thing for us at specialty dining restaurants.

If you used a promo rate for your wife to get that second cabin at a better rate and now you want to officially move her into the Penthouse, they could very well drop the promo rate and switch you back to the full rate. Even after final payment. Yes, Celebrity loyalty program rewards more points for higher class cabins. If you want certain people to be in specific cabins you should have them in there before final payment to avoid any potential changes in cabin rates. Talk to your TA about the best strategy to set everyone up in the correct rooms. If you didn't care about who gets what, you can easily just switch room keys once onboard. Yes. Celebrity happens to have a full FAQ page for their casinos. Note that Celebrity casinos are non-smoking across the fleet. https://www.celebritycruises.com/faqs/onboard-casinos You'll want to check with your TA on the terms, but often the 'included perks' are only for the first two guests in the cabin as those promos are designed for double occupancy. We just had that on an NCL booking where a third guest in the cabin did not get the specialty dining included but the first two guests did. It should all be spelled out in your confirmation (probably in small print) but your TA should be able to clarify who is entitled to what perks.

That's not entirely correct. Depending on the cruise line, the cruise itself and the standing of the TA with the cruise line, TAs can hold a cabins up to 60 days out from the cruise. In some cases it's 30 days, but in others, its up to 60 days before the cruise and then the cruise line takes them back into inventory.

One tactic many TAs use with a new ship like this is to reserve a whole block of cabins and then let their clients know "We still have exclusive cabins on that ship!" There are probably a lot of blocks of cabins being held by various TAs and agencies right now. Good luck, I wish we could share TA information on here as well, but since the site is owned by TripAdvisor, it makes sense they don't want us to send business to competing entities. 🙂

VV is the next cruise line to drop all testing and vaccine requirements effective 10/30/22 on Valiant and 10/28/22 on Scarlet. Virgin Voyage’s “Voyage Well” requirements state: “In keeping in line with the rest of the travel industry, we have removed all vaccine and testing requirements beginning 10/30/22 on Valiant Lady and 10/28/22 on Scarlet Lady.” Full statement here

I love all the maritime knowledge you share across all these CC forums. Thanks so much, it's really interesting to read your posts, I learn so much!

Thanks for the kind words on the channel. That's interesting about the streaming. Was that turned off during the TA to Miami?

Since this is a true 30 day cruise, and not a bunch of back to backs, they should be working to make the menu more interesting so you're not stuck in a rut for 30 days. In general I would suspect the menu will evolve over the course of the trip, starting out with whatever they were normally doing for the Australia sailings, and then transitioning over to a more "American" menu as you get closer to Seattle. That's the main dining room. I'm not really sure about all the specialty venues because those menus are pretty well set throughout the fleet. But they may offer a few more variety types of offerings. Also watch for 'food events' throughout the cruise like possibly an outdoor BBQ or other things you might not normally see on standard sailings. The number of formal nights should be available in your cruise planner. With 30 days you will probably have 2 or 3 "laundry bag sales" where anything you can fit into the laundry bag is a set price. We've had that on 14 day cruises. Yep, I'm sure they will have plenty more trivia games and things like that, but when you're at sea for that many days, you get the opportunity to try out everything the ship has to offer. Very rare to have many children on any cruise over 7 nights, let alone a trans-pacific repositioning cruise. If anything, you might have some pre-school children, but not many should be on board. No clue on the Casino but yes there will be a repeat in the shows most likely, but they also tend to bring on guest speakers, more comedians and things like that so the entertainment is not entirely repetitive. I've also heard of 'cabaret' style nights where the performers get to simply sing and perform vs. a big set show. You might even see a 'crew show' and those are always fun! But definitely there will be repeats in some of the big set shows. It's definitely a long cruise but a super cool itinerary. I wish we had the time to take that one or the 34 day sail back to Australia after the season. You can definitely expect an older crowd, in general it'll be retirees or self employed folks taking that cruise as they are the ones who have 30 days to get away. 🙂 And for the images of the ship, just Google "Costa Luminosa." It's the same ship, they've just added a few Carnival touches and repainted the hull and funnel. Also the website Cruise Hive did a story recently on the Italian stylings inside the ship that show the amazing indoor solarium pool. Have an awesome cruise!!

I would not pay that upcharge in Gunbae simply because it's thin strips cooked on the grill in front of you. If you want to 'Treat Yourself' to something amazing, pay the $65 for the Tomahawk Steak in The Wake. Both the preparation and presentation are amazing. You can see it on my YouTube channel, "Where's Walter Travel" in the "Scarlet Lady Food Tour" episode. CC won't allow me to post links to my own channel but you can find it easy enough. 🙂

Excellent advice on the Trip Insurance. We never cruise without it, almost 20 years now. Most U.S. based health insurance plans do not offer coverage outside of the United States. And if they do, it's greatly reduced. The poor couple on a Carnival ship recently is the perfect example of why you need trip insurance. The wife developed a bad pneumonia while the ship was in transit to Jamaica. She was evacuated off the ship in Montego Bay to be treated at a local hospital. The medical evacuation flight to the U.S. was $40,000 alone, but they had no trip insurance. So she was required to stay in Jamaica for up to 20 days until her oxygen levels came up for her to be safe to travel. All medical expenses were the responsibility of the couple because they did not have insurance. Another tip, never buy the insurance through the cruise line. It's never as good as what you get through third parties. We get anywhere between $500k and $1M in medical evacuation and $50k to $100k of emergency medical services coverage per person for anywhere from $150 to $400 depending on the overall cost of the cruise and where it's going. In the case of that couple in Jamaica, we would have been able to cover a medical evac flight back to the U.S. if we so chose to do that. Travel Agents are a good resource for independent insurance as is Insure My Trip website. Remember you buy insurance for when you NEED it. Not when you're planning for something to happen. Here's the Carnival / Jamaica story if you have not seen it. https://abc13.com/houston-woman-stuck-in-montego-bay-jamaica-carnival-vista-cruise/12217285/