markeb

I wonder about that. They were under contract, so the ships were probably already sunk costs long before they took delivery. The close out penalties might have been less than the final bill on the ships, but they received assets by completing construction and taking delivery and ultimately generated cash flow. It would be interesting to look at the books.

And I'll say this again: If Royal hadn't bought them, who would have? Whether you knew they were on the market or not, they clearly were. They could have simply killed the brand instead of selling. For most of the ensuing 26 years, RCCL/RCG provided the financing and infrastructure for Celebrity. I suppose Carnival could have bought them...

It's one on one in the working zone. It's too small otherwise and would be unsafe. Your actually time slots will be booked once you're on board, so it's a little unlikely you'll all be back to back. Each piece takes about 15-20 minutes of work with one of the professionals.

They'll probably clear for boarding around 11:00. We arrived around 10:30 for Equinox in early November in the Retreat. That seemed about right. Definitely no need to wait until 12:30.

I was going to just edit, but this is too crazy not to point out. There are a lot of people on CC, maybe not in the "real world" who don't buy drink packages. If you DON'T HAVE A DRINK PACKAGE and there's a wine you like available both by the glass and by the bottle, until someone wakes up, BUY THE BOTTLE! They'll hold it for you. It'll be fine for 24 hours. It's a different calculus if you have the package, and you may well have the package for drinks other than wine. But $60/bottle with gratuity for approximately 5 glasses of wine versus $19 + gratuity = $114 for the same 5 glasses! In simple math terms, $114 >>>>> $60... That can't be an anomaly. Check other wines by the glass and by the bottle. For the record, I've never seen anything like that at any land based restaurant. Frequently they don't sell their by-the-glass wines by the bottle. If they don't sell the bottle, the by-the-glass is usually based on 3-4 glasses per bottle to make up the margin where the bottle should hold about 5 6 oz glasses. With that pricing, you're going to come out ahead at 4 glasses, not the house...

Do you have a package? It's only $50 a bottle. Without a package, buy the bottle. Roughly $10/glass. $19/glass would be roughly $95/bottle. Everything is based on the beverage package. Crazy...

The bottle lists, until on the ship, are at the bottom of the lists of wine in the app for each venue that sells wine by the bottle. That's mostly the dining rooms and restaurants. It's not user friendly, and not necessarily accurate. The better lists will be in the specialties but those may or may not be available in other venues. And I believe even onboard the lists are venue specific. For the dining rooms, the sommelier will have them and should be able to tell you what is or is not available on the list. I'm not sure the previous bottle packages are still available. We've never done one, and that's my memory of the last thread on this subject

I think they do know their consumer. And those of us commenting on this thread don't make up a large volume of their current wine consumer base. Maybe in the day when they were winning all those Wine Spectator awards... The shipboard system revolves around package sales. You walk into a venue and your card says "Classic" (is it CLL?) and the system revolves around providing you drinks, including wine, within that package price. Bonus points for selling classic package wines at the very top of the classic package price to make them seem better. And people go for it to a much larger extent than we want to admit. Same at the premium package limits. And almost no one compares wine prices by the glass in the packages to the price of a bottle of wine. They have a package and don't care. If they didn't sell packages and wanted to keep the same prices, they'd have to raise the bottle prices. And it's even more apparent for high volume/high margin fruit drinks at the pool. Or the martini bar. Sorry, but I wouldn't fire the person. I'd probably give them a raise. If the consumer ever catches on to a degree that impacts alcohol sales (yeah, right 🙄) then you sacrifice them for the good of the corporation. Don't see that happening.

A little nuts for me. Traffic will "probably" be fine southbound, but who knows. It's Friday. Book a room near Pike Place, spend the day in Seattle, and have a leisurely trip to a 10:20 flight on Saturday (assuming the same flight schedule on Saturday). Tons to do in the area if you don't want to do downtown Seattle. That sounds a lot better than stressing over an early flight or wasting the day "homeless" for a 3:00 pm flight.

That's the thing, isn't it? I just thumbed through the wine lists in the app (not thorough; I'm not that into this question) and finally found Decoy (presumably the Cab) by the bottle. It's showing $19/glass on the current Equinox sailing. It's a $19/bottle retail wine. IF they're offering it by the glass, it should be $85/bottle ($19 * 5), which would be truly outrageous. Even crazier, it's actually $70 a bottle (again, the app only says Decoy, so I'm making the assumption that's the Cab) which makes no sense whatsoever! It's not that good of a wine to begin with, and that's a crazy stupid markup. The packages really skew the wine prices! There's no way I'd spend $70 for a bottle of Decoy when Freemark Abbey is $110, or even better, Penner-Ash Pinot Noir is $100. But if you have the premium package, Decoy is "free" and the much better Pinot Noir is $100, less 20% discount for the premium package plus 20% gratuity, so really $96 that you're actually paying. There is a level of insanity here! Just returned from an amazing week in Napa visiting wineries and tasting real wine. Need to breathe deep, calm down, and avoid wine threads on Cruise Critic...

Uber. No need to mess with a shuttle.

Asking about food allergies has become pretty common in many if not most restaurants. This "may" have been your comment, but we were asked both times we ate at Sushi on 5, and maybe Tuscan. I don't remember if they did asked the first day in Luminae. We get asked all the time eating out in DC and NYC. Sometimes sarcasm can get you in trouble... 😱

It's been awhile, but a lot of the better Lodi producers were very small and you'd be hard pressed to find them outside of California. Some of them, sure. Michael David, for instance (7 Deadly Zins, and a number of much better Zinfandel based wines). But the ones we enjoyed when living there were mostly very small. Had no idea Josh marketed a Lodi wine. Don't know that I've ever had Josh and don't know that I would. Wente makes some pretty good wines. No, not top tier California, but better than a lot of the $15 bottles out there.

Why? Have you had Lodi wine? For decades it’s been the other percent in Napa and Sonoma wine. Many of them are very good. Some are excellent. Maybe North Carolina wines are good. Never had one. I’ve had plenty from Lodi, Amador County, and Livermore.

Try something unoaked or neutral oak from Russian River or Carneros. Totally different animal than Monterey (or the heavily oaked 100% malolactic chards from Napa).

That’s the Steel. It tastes wonderful. Crisp, clean, some nice fruit notes. It does not taste like a stick of butter left in a wooden churn. Which is a good thing.

I’d agree. The big shopping enters will probably take anything but the smaller vendors usually don’t take AMEX. And you need Visa/MC for the transit system.

Definitely in Singapore. Be prepared to switch to Visa/MC if you normally use AMEX. ApplePay, Google Pay or contactless cards work on all public transit. The only place I remember using cash was at the true Hawker Markets. But $10 US will pretty much buy you a meal there.

Yeah. I still have an a6500 with the notorious NP FW-50 battery. I need multiple batteries charged. May move to FF for an Alaska cruise.

And there are a ton of aftermarket USB C chargers out there for Sony batteries…. (And Canon, Nikon, Olympus, etc.)

No. French. And it’s Steel.

Steel Chardonnay is as stated French. No oak, no butter. Perfect for food.

Why? They’d almost certainly use an underpowered USB A port in a world of USB C. if you have a newer iPhone you’d have to buy a separate cable just for that purpose. And it would be slow. If the really wanted to do this they’d install a USB A/C hub that plugs into a power outlet so they can easily replace it when the technology changes. Hard wiring a USB A charging port in 2023 makes no sense whatsoever.

Exactly. You can mute that as well.

Many of us have had plenty of great RCL cruises. No idea why you haven’t.