mahdnc

Your comment about scuba excursions not being offered anymore seems to explain what I’m seeing. We just finished a transatlantic sailing that stopped at Nassau. No scuba offered through the ship. Same with our upcoming Transpacific cruise which stops at several islands that would have excellent diving (e.g. Fiji, Samoa, Hawaii). Too bad.

My son got an offer today and I was amazed to see several 10 night Edge sailings listed.

We did not get that feed during our recently completed Constellation TA.

Yes, you can. However you then lose the pre-cruise discount on the wifi and drink packages. If you call the Captains Club in advance of the cruise you will get your CC discount and the discount for booking before the cruise. Same thing goes for upgrading your wi-fi or drink package.

Phone call gets it done and is the only way to do it.

I have not heard of this. I presume it is not the same as "The Bar on the Edge of Earth" concept that Constellation (and Summit?) had some 15 years ago?

Thanks for posting. Celebrity's communication of the change was poor (non-existent). At least getting your booking transferred worked out well.

Congratulations.

Thank you. I just booked 2 newly released sailings last week and the Apr 2024 Summit Panama Canal sailing does not have its shore excursions released yet. I tried out your hack to see the shorex offerings for the Apr 2023 Millennium Panama Canal cruise and it worked perfectly. Again, thank you. One irony is that the other cruise we booked--Solstice Transpacific waaay out in Apr 2025--has its shorex offerings loaded!

Thanks for doing this thread during your cruise. It looks like you had a great time. I hope embarkation goes smoothly for you. David

You’re welcome. A couple of other comments. Check often to see if the shore excursions finally appear online in advance of your sailing date. It is possible that they are being loaded late since Australia just opened back up to cruising. Even though I said Arlie Beach was the worst diving of the 4 GBR days, your avid diving husband should try it anyway unless he chooses to skip it for other reasons. i hope your GBR cruise goes well. Are you doing the 9 night GBR sailing on Splendor?

Have an awesome cruise!

When we pulled into Tampa aboard Constellation on Nov 6, we used Terminal 6. The Port of Tampa schedule shows Terminal 6 for today. In fact, she’s there now. Enjoy your cruise! https://www.porttb.com/cruise-schedules

We booked two newly released cruises so the Black Fri sale was useful for getting the price reduction and extra OBC. My guess is that the released sailings already had their prices set with the Black Friday sale in mind.

We got stuck at Tampa (fog) on Horizon on embarkation day many years ago. We ended up leaving the port the next morning and we lost Grand Cayman when our itinerary was adjusted as a result.

We used FBC for our Constellation GA (Rome to Tampa). As previously said, a big advantage is not having to put money up for the airfare until you pay for the cruise. At the time Celebrity was offering a discount on airfare purchased through FBC. We ended up buying our ORD-FCO (nonstop) & TPA-ORD (nonstop) air fare for $647 pp for Economy class seats which was $100 pp cheaper than if we bought them directly through United. We also received 5 Club Points each through a promotion that Celebrity had at the time for using FBC. We did our purchase through the FBC website. We did have to call FBC four separate times after making our reservation to get seats assigned, get our freq flyer & KTN numbers added (it didn't take when we made our booking on their website), and to get a favorable price adjustment. Call wait times were 45-60 min. There were some disadvantages with buying our air through FBC. First we were unable to get credit for a free (second) bag from using my MileagePlus Visa to buy the airfare. This apparently only works when you buy directly from United with their Visa card. That cost us $100 pp which pretty much wiped out the air fare discount we got by booking through FBC. The second disadvantage is that the fare class for our tickets, K, only earns 25% of the frequent flyer miles that we would otherwise get. All of our flights occurred without any issues so I could not evaluate FBC's performance with handling problems.

Well, it was nice while it lasted. Ironically, I used both of my rare 18 month certs within 18 days!

On one of the earlier nights of our TA Connie cruise, I noticed that the menu in the app did not completely match the entrees listed in the physical menu presented at the dining room. After that, I stopped looking at the app menu.

All the shore excursions through the ship could be purchased ahead of the cruise. And we did exactly that for 2 of our 4 GBR diving days: Airlie Beach, Cairns (2), and Port Douglas. We purchased dive excursions through the ship in advance of the cruise for Arlie Beach and our first day at Cairns. As far as one stop being better than the other, I have these comments. The diving and snorkeling was the worst at Arlie Beach by far. Cairns is the diving and snorkeling commercial hub of the GBR. You have the most choices there. So Cairns is the stop I would recommend as the answer to your question. If I didn't answer your question, please let me know and clarify.

“Flights By Celebrity” I don’t think they have a stand alone website. If you have a cruise booked, you can access FBC either through your Cruise Planner or Manage my Reservation (I forget which). If you’re interested in FBC air pricing for a cruise you haven’t booked, there’s a way to get there to have a cruise plus air price. On the mobile website you have to scroll all the way to bottom of the web page for the cruise you are interested in until you see this:

Here was last year’s published decorating schedule https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w1PgTFx-Y2l6hdspi0TtqcBrco6m6vHB/view?usp=drivesdk Solstice, Christmas Day 2019, Tasman Sea

Yes, it’s 18 months. Here’s the ad in our Constellation newsletter earlier this month.

Try calling Guest Relations and tell them what you are trying to do. When I had a problem getting our PS4 connected (the problem was with getting the TV input source changed) during our 2016 Infinity cruise, I called Guest Relations and they sent a tech to our cabin who resolved the problem. I believe it was someone from their audio/video department.

same fate as my in-laws who live in Asheville although I don’t think Asheville was directly in the path

Yes, of course, you can quote me on anything I have posted and anything afterward. Here are some details of our Jubilee sailing: Originally Jubilee was scheduled to dock at Mazatlan on Jul 11 from around 8 am to 5 pm or something like that. The cruise started at Los Angeles on Jul 7. We would spend two days at sea before we docked at Puerto Vallarta, and then the following day we would arrive at Mazatlan. This cruise was not a custom scheduled cruise, but rather part of Jubilee's weekly Mexican Riviera sailing. Two days before we docked at Mazatlan, the various tour leaders for the groups that bought up cabins on Jubilee held a private meeting with Captain Giovanni Gallo and told him that we need to take advantage of Jubilee's mobility and be out to sea to watch the total solar eclipse which was to occur at around noon. Being out to sea would increase our chances of evading cloud cover and it is a compelling argument. He agreed. All the passengers that evening received a notice in their cabins announcing an itinerary change. The notice said that the ship would dock at Mazatlan in the afternoon after watching the total solar eclipse at sea. Make sense. As well intentioned as the change was, this upset a large number of passengers who were intending to be on land at Mazatlan to watch the eclipse. These people were planning to photograph the eclipse using telescopes or telephoto lenses. Because of the magnification involved and the longer exposures needed to record the detail of the sun's outer corona, the movement of the ship on the ocean would make getting sharp photographs impossible. So another meeting with the Captain was held the following day. During the meeting, I am sure he was thinking about the adage, "you can't make everyone happy". From that meeting, all the passengers that evening received a superseding notice announcing that the ship would now dock at Mazatlan at 8 am (or something like that) to let the passengers who wanted to view the eclipse on land to get off the ship. Jubilee would then leave Mazatlan at round 10 am (or something like that) and head out to sea to watch the total solar eclipse with passengers that wanted to stay on board (that included us). Jubilee would then come back to Mazatlan at around 2:00 pm (or something like that) and dock for a few hours to pick up the land passengers and allow us some time to see Mazatlan. Twice the docking costs for no extra charge to us passengers. Nice. And that is exactly what Jubilee did. The weather at Mazatlan was nasty that morning--overcast and stormy. I even saw two waterspouts before we pulled into port (I had gotten up real early to stake out our viewing spot on deck). When we left Mazatlan to watch the eclipse at sea there was heavy cloud cover. Using weather data that the ship had, Captain Gallo was able to maneuver Jubilee to a spot where there was a sizeable hole in the clouds just in time when the eclipse started. Whew. I still remember the gasps, roar, and cry from the passengers on deck the moment that last bit of the sun was covered by the moon. It was amazing. We had nearly 7 minutes of totality. Because we were out to sea with full view of the horizon, you could see the so called 360 degree sunset. There were two bright neon pink spots/areas of light around the darkened moon's circle--those were solar prominences that are only visible to the naked eye during an eclipse. A couple planets were visible. When the total eclipse portion was finished, Captain Gallo started up the engines to head back to Mazatlan. A pod of dolphins joined us and swam along the ship's bow wave--each one of them leaping out of the water as if to celebrate the event. It was a very cool sight. When Jubilee went back to Mazatlan to dock, word spread that many (or all?) of the land passengers got clouded out which, if true, would be very disappointing. I know that many people on this Celebrity board poke fun at Carnival but that cruise is a special memory for my wife and me. It was our first cruise and it made me realize that I enjoyed cruising. So I have Carnival to thank for that. And even though I did not have the experience to appreciate it at the time, it is amazing to me in retrospect that the ship changed its docking schedule (twice!) at the request of passengers. I have Carnival and Captain Gallo to thank for that. Some other links to that special cruise: https://ne-np.facebook.com/DennisMammana/posts/july-11-30-years-since-the-big-oneim-sure-that-in-everyones-life-theres-a-date-t/4335244179830291/ https://www.eclipse-chasers.com/article/history/tseByShip.shtml