mtnman100

On 6/16/2019 at 2:20 PM, ghstudio said:

We have often seen the on-board offer include an extra perk if you book concierge or above....but of course, offers change so check to see what your cruise is offering. 

 

A couple of important notes:

 

1) If you don't ask, they will assign the booking to the travel agent that booked you on your current cruise.  You can ask that Celebrity hold the reservation and you will be asked to sign a form.  Just sign it...it only tells the TA that you decided not to rebook with them....net..it protects celebrity...no risk to you at all.

 

2) Understand if you are booking a refundable or non-refundable fare.  See 3 below

 

3) Once you have made a reservation on-board, you can change that reservation to another ship, different time and keep the same reservation number.  That's important because the on-board OBC offer stays and you will still get the additional OBC.  If you change a non-refundable booking, you will be charged the change penalty.  Go through all that with the on-board TA.

 

 3a) if you book a longer or shorter cruise, the on-board OBC offer $'s may change either up or down because the OBC is based on the number of days in the cruise you finally take.

 3b) Be careful with Travel insurance if you change the trip....if you have a pre-existing condition and want that waived, your purchase date is the date you pay on board...not the day you book the new trip.  OTOH, check other posts to understand if you really do have a pre-existing condition AS DEFINED IN THE POLICY.

Having just booked a future cruise while on the Reflection, this is helpful to understand here...thanks.

Based on the current June promotion and the cruises we looked at, something to consider is the extra cost of 2 or 4 perks.  I found it is quite high, and am considering switching to no perks.  The no perk option does mean the $100 deposit per person is non-refundable, although one could still change it to another ship, time and place I would think.  I'll need to ask that question the next time I speak with them. 

We did a Celebrity land tour in December 2013 after disembarkment on a Sunday morning.

We took the ship all day tour which was a driving tour through run-down downtown Valparaiso and Vina del Mar all in the fog and light rain. Then a drive for lunch at a vineyard banquet center (nice but too long) and then a driving tour through parts of Santiago with too few stops, including a way too brief stop in the center of the city at its plaza cut short by the tour guide because we had spent too long at lunch. And she did well to scare the heck out of you regarding repeated cautions about pick pocketers. And then getting us to the airport at about 4:30 when she knew no one had a plane before 8 PM and all we did was wait in lines and confusion. Can't recommend the ship tour.

But in short, if you don't see Valparaiso when there are actually people downtown, i.e. business hours, the downtown is depressing due to all the grafitti and earth quake destroyed buildings not rebuilt. I can't tell you about the hillside, but from comments above sounds like we missed something.

I think Santiagio would be worth seeing but not if you only have a single day to tour it from Valparaiso.