wrk2cruise

I have also notice the obvious reduction in staff in many areas. I don't believe it has anything to do with "customer demand", just blatant cost reductions. Having worked in the computer industry in the 80's and 90's I'm very familiar with this corporate short sighted behavior to boost shareholder price. I guess it's working as RCL share price has been over $120. In my experience every time we went through these cost saving staff reductions, the middle management would be all but eliminated. I'm not seeing this on Celebrity. Bar tenders and Bar servers are cut way back but on Summit (smallest ship) there were still 4 assistant bar managers. You still see many many1-2 strip officers eating in the buffet that you never see passenger facing.

All Celebrity ships have Starlink now. Calling generally works well but there are some geographic areas that seem to be problematic. We had no problems on TA but had some issues on ABC sailing for a day or so. I've always had premium wifi, I believe most say WiFi calling doesn't work with the basic included in the AI package.

When connected to a wifi network either at home or anywhere else your provider will be listed as "Verizon WiFi" and any calls you make or receive will be via wifi, not your cellular connection. I know most of us have unlimited voice calling time on cellular now but I still find using WiFi calling at home transparent so leave it enabled all the time. At times one the ship I will notice that my carrier doesn't indicate the WiFi version. I presume wifi bandwidth is not suitable to support calling. At times if I reboot my phone it will re-enable. In addition to wifi calling you will be able to send/receive SMS texts as well. iMessage and WhatsApp texts will work with just wifi (don't need WiFi Calling).

There are always cabins that aren't released to general inventory. Remember guest entertainers and some crew members, crew member families also stay in passenger cabins.

Actually the oldest ship in the Celebrity fleet Millennium was built in 2000 (ok I guess technically built in 1999 but joined the fleet in 2000).

Hope to hear more about your trip. We are doing this itinerary in March. Leaving next week for first Windstar sailing on Star Breeze Auckland to Tahiti.

Have you cleared cookies or used a different browser? Or try incognito mode.

Did you get an email confirming your original bid? It should be from Celebrity Moveup with subject We received your Celebrity MoveUp Request. If you can find that email there is a button to cancel/modify next to your original bid.

^^^ This ^^^ You certainly get access to all the "Retreat" venues and activities.

I've never seen a drink menu in the Retreat/Michaels lounge.

The cynic in me read this as they will not be serving anything which would not be covered by the premium package in the Retreat lounge. I would expect Luminae and Retreat sundeck to charge per the packages as they always have even though she said otherwise (I suspect she might not know that those venues have always been different than the lounge wrt drinks).

Just turning it off works for me. I usually use the VPN app to do it but to make sure you can go to settings and make sure it is off there. The app has different functions when it detects the ship wifi than it does when you are connected via the internet. I always remember to disable vpn when I look at my onboard account and see 0.00.

I use a pre-paid service Visible which doesn't have international service. I have bought travel esim to be able to have data while off the ship. They have ones that work globally, regionally or per country. I recently used the Europe regional one which is $13 for 30 days and 3 GB and works in most European countries. www.airalo.com

Airplane mode with wifi enabled.

There is a quote button at the bottom of each post. If you click on that it will open a new post and populate it with the quoted post. If you wish to only quote a part of a post just highlight the desired text and a Quote Selection button will appear after the selection. To like a post just press the heart on the lower right of the post.

Correct. Whatever triggered the suspicion (right or wrong) all they had to do was exercise a bit of extra scrutiny on the required documents (passports and Xpress Pass). This could have been done without asking a single question.

Yes you always keep the drink package and wifi that you had with your original room. One thing being discussed here is for RS and above does the room come with Premium Drink Package and Wifi as room amenities like laundry, 2 bottles of spirits, specialty dining (It definitely used to and was in the moveup description for those suites) is still provided. At one point it was explicitly stated in the moveup text for these upper suites that it was included. But thinks have been changing......... Those things as room amenities really don't make any sense now that they include them in all Retreat bookings (yes some casino comp rooms don't). Before All Included I would book senior rates which didn't come with perks or wifi. When in a RS I'd get premium drink package and wifi. Of course this was before the shutdown when they still offered Senior rates.

Usually beverage packages on Xpress Pass are CALL or PALL for Classic/Premium respectively

They may place the small roll aboard in the compartment under the bus as most buses don't accommodate luggage.

Yes just the difference

Nothing wrong. Their IT systems just suck. You were smart to not just complete your booking online and to review your reservation with someone and verify the inclusions with someone on the phone and written invoice before placing the deposit.

Yes the change fee. $100 pp. From the limited information provided it does seem like the higher price is indeed correct if it reflects the price/promo in effect at the time of the change that you seemed to understand at the time. But it appears you pushed back challenging the lower price and the lower price quote was confirmed by the agent and backed up with the written invoice. If this is all the case I suspect they will fall back on the "errors will not be honored" fine print as they have done several times recently. But hopefully they will listen to the call and verify the situation. At minimum you should be given some goodwill OBC for your inconvenience caused by their poorly trained agent.

I think you will be tendered most days as the watersports platform will be available all but 1 day. I think Raiatea would be the only place where you possible dock.

And since you have to pay in full 30 days in advance the tour leader can contact TBL and have the other participants pay TBL directly. I found people more comfortable paying the supplier in advance vs paying me in advance. I'm not going to risk no-shows on day of tour and get stuck with the extra cost.

Just quoting T&C. There is a Offer Period defined and it clearly states flights must be booked during the Offer Period. Sorry I used the term booking window instead of Offer Period. I don't have direct experience but have read here others who have been denied the discount when flights opened. You evidently had a different experience. Big surprise that Celebrity is inconsistent! That's why I advised if they are looking to use the flight discount promo that they call FBC and get confirmation from them as I believe the discount is applied to the air invoice.