Croooser

FWIW..You might want to rethink Budget. We rented from them in April but when we got there, they said that the shuttle was "not running". They also insisted on charging a minimum fuel charge although we returned the car full. It's a poorly run satellite office.

I was just telling my wife that....

Experiencing a price increase is always disappointing. But is Celebrity's higher pricing really outrageous and should they be "ashamed"?

An inside can be had for around $1500 + $195 for gratuities. A conservative valuation of one way transportation to Europe from the USA is $500/person. That leaves $1195 or about $80/day/person for other things.

Let's see what we get:

- a small but nicely appointed room on a floating resort with twice daily housekeeping service for 15 days

- all of the food that you can eat for 15 days

- a variety of entertainment at no additional charge

- use of many (not all) of the resort facilities at no additional charge - i.e. pools, whirlpools, solarium, library, an occasional movie, inside and outside lounge areas, game room, guest lectures, etc.

And if you are elite or better, you get some free drinks almost every day, some free laundry and dry cleaning, some free internet and a few other things.

All for about $80/day/person when traveling double occupancy.

So..... was it an even better deal in prior years? Of course it was. But does that mean that Celebrity (or other lines) should be ashamed of the value proposition?

The Me First - It's All About Me Syndrome will get to you sometimes if you are not careful.

We will be aft on the Equinox TA in April. It will be our 4th spring TA in a row in an aft cabin.

Soot depends on which way the wind blows - sometimes none and sometimes we need to wipe down the chairs.

Movement is negligible.

Breeze on the balcony is much less as you are sheltered. The closer to the middle, the less breeze. There is some noise from the wake but we like that. Little traffic in the hall outside your room.

No shelter. In the spring the mornings are shaded as the sun is rising over the ship. Somewhere around midday the sun shines directly onto the balcony for the rest of the day if there is no cloud cover. The upside is that it is very warm back there even when the ambient temps are in the low 60s. I expect the fall would be the opposite.

The middle balconys are wider than normal. Check out some pics and you can see this. They sell early.

Sail aways are terrific views.

HTH

I don't know when it was officially cleared. We just walked of at 8:00. The process of getting our luggage and walking to the exit took at most 10 minutes.

 

Celebrity advised strongly to get a ship-shuttle to get to Schiphol Airpoirt because "we are advised that there are few taxis available outside the terminal". The shuttle is priced very reasonable (I doubt a Dutch taxi would be cheaper) so if you need to get to the airpoirt, do book this very last excursion. If however you need a taxi to get somewhere else and there isn't one at the terminal (I highly doubt it, there were plenty), Central Station is 5 minutes away and it has many taxis.

Walk offs are around 6:30 am.

If you take a X transfer then first of this off is 7:00am to AMS airport.

 

Plenty of taxis by the port.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question. Sounds like we do not need to individually clear customs which is a good thing. We are cutting it close, so will line up early and grab a cab.

We are on this trip on Aug 22nd. Do you by chance know what time the ship was cleared for passengers to disembark on the last day in Amsterdam?

We have had no problem requesting and getting a 2 top but....many of the 2 tops are only inches away from the next table and that can make it feel like you are dining with the folks seated there.

It used to be no problem but seems like it is getting more difficult based on our experience:

- A few years ago in Blu the sommelier did exchange it but we waited until we had ordered and paid for wine from him for several nights

- April 2014 the sommelier in MDR had to call the head sommelier and he somewhat reluctantly agreed to do so again after we had bought a bottle very other night on a 16 night TA

- April 2015 our room attendant flat out refused as did guest services. After commenting on the mid cruise review (making sure not to rant but just to mention), the Hotel Director responded affirmatively.

One gets the sense that someone at corporate decided that if they turn down your request, that you will purchase that bottle that you wanted to exchange for.

Should they do it? Of course. Will they do it. Maybe.

YMMV

OP,

I think that you did a very good job of objectively evaluating and reporting. Too many reports on here are emotion filled rants or cheerleading reports - neither of which we find helpful.

We made the move from Princess to Celebrity a few years ago after a couple of disappointing trips on the Emerald. IMO Princess really hurt the Grand Class when they expanded it for the Ruby and Emerald.

Individual tastes do vary, but you presented the info in a way that I can evaluate based on what is important to me.

Thanks for a thoughtful and well presented review.

We were a party of 2 and asked our waiter if we could order 2 or 3 things at a time and then order more if we still had the appetite and he was willing to do that. We shared each thing we ordered and were able to sample 5 or 6 items and a couple of desserts.

We enjoyed it very much and would go again.

We take two of these 4 packs in carry ons. Once a security guard wanted to take them but the supervisor overruled. We have boarded with them in both Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.

Thanks very much for taking the time and effort to post an informative and balanced review.

She gave a great interview a few days ago, you can read it here

http://www.travelagentcentral.com/cruises/conversation-lisa-lutoff-perlo-celebrity-cruises-new-president-49962

 

I was lucky enough to meet Lisa when she was Director of Onboard Marketing for Celebrity quite a few years ago. I thought I remembered her saying she started with Celebrity as the regional sales manager, and have followed her career ever since. In my mind she was the obvious choice to succeed Dan Hanrahan wen he left, since she is the most well rounded executive in the business (with titles in Sales,Maritime, Hotel, and Launching, Designing Ships), glad Mr Fain finally reached the same conclusion.

 

So happy for her and can't see what ideas she uses to put her own mark on Celebrity

Thanks for posting this link - lots of good info there, unlike many of the "me first - my opinion is the only one that counts" posts on this thread.

We were on this cruise. Boarded in Southampton. We share the opinions voiced here that the staff folks were hustling but the planning and management was poor.

They could not even keep the right time on the ITV with the daily clock adjustments. How hard is that?

The crowded lines for events were chaotic.

When we were approached one evening at dinner in Silk by a supervisor, we expressed some disappointments and he attempted to blow it off with a joke. We let it go.

The CD was unresponsive when someone wrote in to him about the issues with lack of adequate spave for scheduled events.

etc.

Any individual anecdote may seem trivial but the sum of all of them left us decidedly not "Wowed". IMHO they failed to deliver the experience that they promote and promise. At least for us on this cruise.

We did not pay much, so we did not feel that we did not get our $ worth but I can not imagine that we will use the voucher promised by Lisa Lutoff-Perlo in her email.

Another vote for Park 'n Fly.

Hank,

Thank you for taking the time to respond and for all of the detail that you have provided. It sounds like we can take at least one big bag without too much difficulty. We are both capable of handling the luggage without any assistance. We have never felt the need for a luggage lock but I may just get a bike cable lock based on your comments. The info on the taxis is helpful as well. We will be prepared for that. Thanks again for your response.

This question is for those who have disembarked their cruise early and taken the train from Le Havre to Paris.

We will be disembarking in Le Havre and have already received written authorization from Celebrity. Our research tells us that we need to be able to handle our luggage ouselves (no problem) and that there is some storage space above the seats and some dedicated luggage space at the end of the cars.

We know that getting a cab to the train station will be a little bit of a challenge.

We also know that the conventional wisdom is to travel light and we have done that when traveling to the far east with numerous plane trips (so no need to advise us how to travel light) but we would like to bring at least one large 32" bag so that we can bring formal wear, etc.

1) Is the space over the seats large enough to accomodate a 24" roll on bag?

2) Are the luggage racks typically jammed to the point that we would have a problem finding space with a large bag? Is there a luggage rack in each car?

3) Has anyone ever attempted to take the ship's "Paris on your own" tour with luggage? This would be pricier than the train but the bus would likely have storage space underneath where we could store luggage. See question 4.

4) If you disembarked early at Le Havre on Celebrity, was there a customs process - how long, etc?

We recently took the train from Gatwick to London and there were no luggage racks on the train that we chose so we stood at the door with our luggage. No big deal for that 30 minute trip but would not like to do that for 2+ hours from Le Havre to Paris.

We do it this way:

We use a credit card that includes trip cancellation/disruption coverage for travel purchased with the card.

Then we have an annual policy with GeoBlue (trekker Essential) that covers Medical and Evac. for $179. This covers multiple trips. https://www.geobluetravelinsurance.com/product_overview.cfm

This is probably not a good solution if you only have one trip to insure for.

that's only true if they are running on an old platform that was custom built or has not been kept up to date. Any site using a modern CMS is very easy for the end business user to enter new content, route for approval and push live across multiple URLs and even server farms at different locations. I have lived in both worlds and the difference in ability to manage a website with a modern CMS is night and day vs. legacy systems... make me think one of they biggest challenges is lack of investment in the proper web platforms!

x2 The prevailing standard for ecommerce is websites that function properly with accurate information.

We were on this cruise and became aware of the group when we engaged one of them in a brief conversation. He indicated that it was their annual conference for their global sales organization.

We were on a Princess cruise several years ago where we were consistently affected by a large group.

That simply was not our experience this time. The private functions did not have any negative effect on us and we were in MDR, ocean view and theater quite often.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Ditch your TA-you have been ripped off.

 

When we shopped for our on line TA there were four things that were critical-

 

-no agency charge for cancelled cruises

 

-no agency charge for re-pricing (ie when the price decreases)

 

-no agency charge for cabin re-assignment (when we can upgrade for no money or a better cabin location becomes available

 

-charges to our credit card are ALWAYS done by the cruise line, NOT the travel agency.

 

Never had a problem dealing with a number of on line agencies who all met this list of 'must haves'.

X2. Add to that a competitive OBC.

It is not difficult to find a TA that meets these requirements.

He who owns the decision owns the mistake. :D

X2 for sure.

We are looking for comments on the travel insurance approach that we are considering.

Several years ago we lost $2000 when we were unable to go on a cruise that we had purchased and we were not insured. So now we want to be insured against last minute cancellation as well as medical and evac while travelling.

Up until now we have been purchasing individual policies for each trip we take from Insuremytrip.

But now we have a new approach in mind.

1. Pay for the trip(s) using our Chase Sapphire Preferred Card which provides $5000/pp trip cancellation/interruption coverage as a standard benefit of the card.

2. Our individual health insurance plan (not medicare) from United Healthcare provides coverage for travel out of the country for any emergency treatment. It covers travel to the nearest medical facility but no medical evac. It does have a $5000/pp/yr annual deductible. Don't ask how much we pay for that. Suffice to say that it's out of sight.

3. Purchase a GeoBlue Trekker Essential Plan which will be good for all out of the country travel for one year and provides $50,000 secondary medical and $250,000 evac. It also has only a $50 deductible.

Total out of pocket would be $179/yr for 2 persons for the GeoBlue policy and all international trips taken would be covered. That's much less than we would pay if we bought individual med/evac policies for each trip.

Understanding that we have reviewed coverage amounts and exclusions and they seem to fit our comfort level, am I missing anything?

We used Aziz as well - same itinerary. Great tour. The Kasbah was a unique experience. I would strongly recommend that you avoid any raw fruits or vegetables even in the restaurants.