mahdnc

I wonder if this service reduction would be limited to CL/RCL/NCL and that the premium lines such as Princess, HAL, and Celebrity would retain it.

I actually would miss it.

When we went on this trip in Dec 2016-Jan 2017, it was cool at Cape Horn, Ushuaia, and Puerto Madryn. Pretty warm at Punta del Este, Montevideo, Valparaiso, and Buenos Aires. Here is my trip review which has links to the Celebrity Today which had the weather temperatures printed on it.

I found it difficult to arrange for independent tours for this cruise and so we bought several of our shorexes thru Celebrity (Puerto Montt, Ushuaia, Puerto Madryn) back in 2016. Be sure to read your Celebrity Today (Ushuaia) to see the exact early morning schedule for when Infinity passes the glaciers along the Beagle Channel.

We were on Constellation last month for a 15 night sailing and had Early Seating (6 pm). We would show up between 6:00-6:15pm. No lines for us. I did not see if Select (Anytime) Seating had any lines since they entered the MDR one deck below.

My expectation is that you should be getting a reduction in price and not OBC since you are not past the final payment date. You should be evaluating that vs the loss of the Elevate Package.

We took this Infinity cruise six years ago over Christmas and enjoyed it immensely. None of us on this board expect you to sacrifice your enjoyment of the cruise because of live posting responsibilities. Have fun.

This is a great question to ask on the Italy forum.

Port schedules are not a great indicator on whether a cruise will happen or not even if you are looking the schedule on the official port website. If you see your ship listed, yes, that's a good thing. However if you don't see your ship listed, it could mean anything.

I meant to post this earlier

The name changes but it's still Cat A1 at least according to Celebrity's deck plan

Since this is before final payment, you should be able to get the price change. One exception to this is if your category is sold out then it is difficult to get the price change (often there is no price to see if the category is sold out). Obviously what is confusing is that A1 is Prime AquaClass, so it sound like Celebrity and your TA disagree on whether your cabin is sold out or not. However when I go to Celebrity's website and look at your Eclipse 2023-2024 holiday sailing, I see that there are many unsold A1 cabins. I would press this issue further with your TA because I think she is wrong about the sold out status of your cabin category.

We used Marisa for the Roman Forum tour and our day trip to Ostia Antica. Those tours were excellent. I booked our Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel tour through Livitaly. I booked that tour as a semi-private small group tour. My wife and I were part of a group of 6-8 people. The tour got us into the Sistine Chapel early. That worked out well as it was not crowded at all. However if I had to do it all over again, I would spend the extra money and booked it as fully private to have more control on what to see. David

We were able to make FaceTime calls (Wi-Fi) aboard Infinity when we were sailing around Cape Horn on Jan 2017.

Hi. Congrats on your upcoming European cruise. I would definitely encourage you to consider booking an independent private shore excursion. There are a lot of advantages including a smaller group size, you have control over the shored itinerary, and it is way more time efficient. We just finished a wonderful transatlantic cruise that started in Rome. We spent five terrific nights in Rome and I posted our experience in this thread: We hired Marisa as our private tour guide for two days in Rome which was great. I highly recommend her and there are additional details shared in them Live thread that I posted. Her web page is https://www.romewithmarisa.com/ Good luck with your planning!!

However, there is this (at least for now): https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/28/us-will-require-airline-passengers-traveling-from-china-to-test-negative-for-covid-.html

My guess is that they can do this however I wouldn't be surprised that they will honor the mistaken cruise fare for those that politely but firmly stick to their guns. This is where a travel agent who directs business to the cruise line could have some clout (if one was involved here). As a last resort, you should be able to negotiate something in exchange for giving up the mis-priced booking since the cruise line wants to salvage what little customer satisfaction is left at that point. https://consumerrescue.org/cruise-fiascos/cruise-line-mistake-pricing-error/

We have done VRBO here in the USA and it has worked out well. I looked into it doing this in Rome but I couldn't find anything I liked partly because I think I was shopping too late. To me there are a couple of drawbacks with doing VRBO in a foreign country. First, the cancellation terms may be less favorable than a hotel. The other drawback is that it may be more difficult to work out issues if there are problems (language/culture barrier). It would not deter me from booking thru VRBO if I found something I really liked. The right travel insurance can help minimize consequences if you have to cancel your VRBO booking due to unforeseen circumstances.

Ok, change that to, "1st week of January 2022 many of us received a gift. Many did not".

I used FBC for our Transatlantic cruise on Constellation last month when Celebrity was offering a modest airfare discount. After making my initial non-refundable air choices when I booked the cruise, a week later air fares dropped by $100 and I was able to rebook the air to take advantage of it with no penalty other than waiting on the phone for 40 minutes. At the time I had not paid for the airplane tickets as I chose to wait until I paid the cruise in full. A couple months later, Celebrity offered a $500 airfare discount. I was unable to take advantage of that because it required me to rebook the entire cruise which had become more expensive by then thus offsetting any air savings. The reduced airfare was considered part of the overall cruise promotion.

Or I found it on this thread. Two observations when you scroll back: 1. The Cruise Critic members that were unimpressed with the 20 PUP gift last Jan were folks who were Elite Plus. Based on their remarks, I deduced they wanted a gift worth around 20,000 PUPs. 2. From what I could tell, there was no gift sent out in Jan 2021. Maybe we were all naughty in 2020.

I understand your stumbling block. Still, I think all three are worth trying once.

1st week of January 2022 everyone received a gift, when opened, was worth 20 PUPs (2 Club Points).

Very nice.