TMLAalum

Not a ship tour which is why I am wondering about arrival time vs. actual disembarkation time.

Celebrity Eclipse is scheduled to arrive in Portland ME at 9:30am after visiting Canadian ports. I am thinking about booking a boat tour that has a 10:30am departure. When we arrived in Portland via the CAT that holds 866 pax/200 cars from Yarmouth NS it took nearly 90 minutes to get through Border/Customs before we were able to drive away! If you've experienced returning to the US via Portland by cruise ship, please share your experience, thanks!

It's looking good! Just did a dummy booking and Aer Lingus has posted flights to/from CLE up until mid-April 2025!!

We are hoping to do this from CLE next year crossing our fingers that Aer Lingus will still have direct flights to DUB. However, we will spend several days in Ireland before we head to Southampton. Depending on pricing, we may do multi-leg booking Aer Lingus to London and then National Express to Southampton. Return from London since we plan on spending several days there after our cruise. The other possibility is fly direct to SOU from DUB. End of September this year will probably be the soonest to begin searching airfare for next year's cruise. We have flown from ORY to SOU in the past spending the night before the cruise in Southampton.

The bigger consideration will be your adding-on the Canadian Rockies! Too early in May will mean that hiking trails, if open, will be muddy. Mountain lifts will not yet be operating. This website covers many of the highlight activities in the Rockies: Your Complete Guide to the Pursuit Pass (banffjaspercollection.com) Therefore, I recommend the May 28th cruise. P.S. We drove from Vancouver to Jasper, down the Columbia Icefields Pkwy, and onto Canmore in September 2022. Flew home from Calgary. You can do a one-way car rental. Highlights for us were a private hike to Mt. Edith Cavell, stargazing experience and cruise on Lake Maligne (Jasper/Patricia Lake Bungalows), frequent photo stops at waterfalls along the drive to Canmore (vrbo) with the skywalk and glacier adventure enroute, and Lake Louise gondola, and a walk down to the Bierstube and Bow Falls from Banff Springs Hotel.

Blees your heart, D.B.! As Elite Plus just like you, we are comfortable with Celebrity! So yes, your comment was snarky because basically that throwaway comment is one often made to other Celebrity thread posters who list complaints about their cruise. It is an insult, kinda like the one with which I began this post As an investor with RCCL, I was concerned to hear "random cruisers" say one and done with Celebrity. Unhappy Summit cruisers will not hesitate to complain about this cruise line ot friends and on social media. While bottom line may not be significantly impacted, their "never again" statements do bother me.

@D. B. My Comment about random people did not imply I put stock in them, although as an RCCL stockholder it is a tad concerning. Your comment about me finding a cruise line I am comfortable with was an assumption on your part since there was nary a complaint on my part- merely a question about refund of Catalina Island port fees. Did you check my signature before you misinterpreted my post? Please reread my post carefully and then kindly repost with a less snarky comment, thanks. Mea culpa for not adequately conveying my appreciation to you for the information you provided re: the harbor master’s decision to delay Summit’s arrival as that was the part of the Captain’s announcement I had missed.

Since I was in a "secret" space on Deck 3 playing MahJongg with roll call and FB players, we missed the part about the harbor master being the person responsible for our delayed arrival into Victoria when we went into the hallway to hear the Captain's announcement around noon. Happy for your win at the casino. I did pretty well with 3 little piggies. I do wish that port fees were refunded for missing Catalina as was done in the past if a stop had to be abandoned. The random people we spoke to blame Celebrity for missing Catalina and barely docking in Victoria and will likely not book this line again. Lots of lost revenue for RCCL due to zero ship excursions in those ports. That being said, every desk at Future Cruises was filled when we walked by the evening of the 9th!

I had both app pass and paper at the ready! It was so much easier to have a paper boarding pass on hand vs. holding my phone along with juggling my purse and carry-on. Same thing with airline boarding passes.

FWIW- The 5 Cinque Terre Villages are so crowded that a day trip is not as enjoyable as if you stayed in one of the towns for several days and visited the others from there. Portovenere, a world heritage site is an easy trip by public bus or boat from La Spezia. While there you can take an hour long 3 island boat tour (https://www.porto-venere.com/en/three-island-on-boat) Perhaps there will be an excursion offered to here, but we used the bus r/t. The stop was maybe 5 blocks from the pier.

Thanks so much!

Favor Request! If anyone has the time, could you please find out if there is a complete MahJongg set aboard? We are on Summit's next cruise. I just bought a travel set that I am bringing aboard, but we have a total of 8 possible players so another set would be wonderful! Thanks!

Yes, we attended mass there in 2021. It was just when cruising had re-started post-covid. Unfortunately the shuttle aka port-to-pew wasn't operating due to an outbreak in Alaska. DH and I walked from port to church. It was a good mile+ and we were shocked to find that Jackson St off of the main drag was nothing but steps! After mass, parishioners offered to bring all cruisers back to the Millennium in their cars. We lucked out as our host was headed to Cape Fox Lodge, where we happily left her and walked down Married Man's trail to port!

Our Cruise Critic friend, who is from Hong Kong, initially recommended Yank Sing, but when I mentioned a few other options, she endorsed the Pallette Teahouse. When I was last in SF, Rebecca from Cruise Critic met my friend and I and took us to dim sum somewhere. It was a Sunday and my friend and I were the only non-Asians in the restaurant. I loved it, but not my friend. Luckily, DH ❤️dim sum! We do have a Chinatown in Cleveland and have had dim sum at BooLoong several times, most recently with a friend and her daughter from Wuhan, pre-covid. They are back home in China now and in her guarded emails, life remains difficult for them.

@Scottishclover I agree! We are looking at private tours and as you mentioned, even those are quite expensive. Could you please provide me with the car hire agency you've booked for Honningsvag? For Flam, I plan on booking the railway independently with an immediate up and down to Myrdal and back.

@Buckybee We too are a group of 12! My friend who sailed the Constellation in February booked our next year's Apex fjord cruise for us all the day she boarded. If you or one of your group have a Celebrity or Royal cruise coming up, I suggest booking aboard for everyone because of the reduced deposit of $200 per cabin and the OBC of $200 per cabin. The total deposit for all cabins will go on that cruiser's credit card, so they will need to be reimbursed. Each couple has the option to move their reservation to a TA within 30 days of booking. My friend had a bit of a challenge because 5 couples wanted bed by bath IV cabins and we wanted porthole veranda #7123 because of the ease of quickly stepping outside when a perfect photo op occurred. She and the Future Cruise Consultant did great for us all! If no cruise is in the near future, find websites that will show all available cabins. Look carefully at the deck plans for jut outs/ magic carpet tracks, etc. that will affect forward and aft views. Have some cabins port and others starboard so that if there is a something exciting on one side of the ship vs. the other you won't miss it. Know your choices when you call Celebrity or your preferred TA.

I've been through the Soo Locks and Yangtze River locks plus river locks on the Danube and Rhine, but I gotta say, the transit through the Panama Canal has a bigger wow! factor thanks to seeing them via this thread! DH has sailed through the Panama and the Suez canals back when he was 3rd officer on various merchant ships.

For peace of mind why not fly into SEA, the day prior to your cruise and then take the train eastbound back to Chicago. That way any delays won't impact getting to the ship on time!

Too bad! I will try the kid's sirloin, if not on next month's cruise, then perhaps on our longer August cruise.

Thanks. Upon further review, Yank Sing will not be open on our port day in S.F. Instead we will head to Pallette Teahouse, 900 Northpoint St, B201A. Looks like Muni Bus #30 from the Presidio Transit Center should get us there? And then the F streetcar back to Pier 27?

How about the kid's filet mignon?

Especially for @sfpd3000, but others who know San Francisco well, please chime in! Current plan is for us to take the historic streetcar along the Embarcadero ffrom Pier 27 to the stop closest to the Bart Embarcadero stop where we will catch the 9:15 or 9:30 Go Presidio shuttle. We will either catch the noon or 1pm shuttle back to the Davis/California stop. From there we will head to Yank Sing (101 Spear St.) to meet our Cruise Critic San Franciscan friend for Dim Sum. She warns us not to take public transportation due to muggings, etc. and has offered to pick us up and drive us. I hate to ask that of her, but it's been over a decade since I've been in San Francsico and at that time used muni busses, the F streetcar and cable cars without a worry. But should we worry now? Thanks!

That is sweet that you wish to accompany your traveling companions. If their hearts are set on Berlin from Warnemunde, perhaps they should bite the bullet for the cost of the ship tour and go there without you since you've been there. As a person who coordinates private port excursions for us and our friends cruising with us, I know that I try to find a cost-effective alternative to cruise excursions when feasible, but sometimes the alternatives such as DIYing it to Berlin for a day just don't make sense.

@mahdnc Hope everything is OK with you and the Summit since you've not posted since you boarded!

@mahdnc Bon Voyage! Looking forward to following your Summit sailing live thread. We board her in L.A. after she traverses the Panama Canal, so please keep her shipshape for us, thanks!