Desertbelle

I used to feel that way too, until someone took our luggage by mistake. Now we get off with the earliest luggage tag numbers.

The only time we ever lost a piece of luggage was when my husband and daughter were very nearly the first people off the ship rushing to a very early flight (my parents and I were heading elsewhere for a few days and got off much later) and he couldn't couldn't find one of his pieces of luggage. He called me to say to look for it when we got off the ship because he was rushing to the airport.

When we got off we looked and looked. A couple of cruise line people helped. I filed the claim and headed off with my parents to Bradenton. At about 3 am that night I got a phone call from a Greyhound bus driver in Mississippi.....she just off-loaded her busload of people who she picked up in Ft. Lauderdale at around 8 am, and found my piece of luggage left over. How our piece of luggage got put on that bus is anyone's guess!

My cell phone number was on the luggage tag...so it was easy for her to contact me. She shipped our very large rolling duffle bag to us by Greyhound....it arrived about a week later, intact and in good condition. BTW the cruise line never called or followed up with us, which made me a little upset.

We carry a hole punch with us so we don't have to wait in line for a simple hole punched in our cards. :)

The Navigator is gone and the Liberty of the Seas departed November 13 for its first sailing, which is a 9 night cruise.

The first 7 night cruise will be the Thanksgiving cruise.

Heading to Galveston in two days! Woohoo!! :D

We tried being the last ones off one time, we sat by the pool, relaxing, and they called us by name (and a few others) and asked us to please proceed to the exit to disembark. It was around 9:30 am. It was so nice to walk off without a hassle and finding our luggage couldn't have been easier, as there were only a few pieces left in that huge luggage area.

Didn't hear any big band Sinatra stuff at Martini Bar on our last three cruises. Mostly 60s-70s-80s middle-of-the-road rock. Beach Boys, Eagles, Steely Dan. No Black Sabbath. It was loud but we like it that way.

That's what I like!

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Observing? Dress codes vary, by itineraries. Cruises in Europe are usually very formal.

 

And Alaska cruises traditionally are very casual.

 

Whatever Celebrity's methodology, it will interesting to see how passengers like this new policy.

We have been on several European cruises and I feel they are very much less formal. Probably because those cruises are longer and travel is further and very few people want to pay for extra luggage and to lug around tuxes and ball gowns.

I am confused. Is the problem the volume of the music or the type of the music? :confused:

I am 64 and I am plenty tired of having my parents big band, Frank Sinatra type music being the prominent music on cruise ships. I am a girl of the 60's and 70's and I love my Rock n' Roll. I also like most of the new music out there. My husband and I have often discussed that most ships seem to be catering musically to a much older group than us....would it kill them to throw in some Beatles and Rolling Stones in the mix? :)

I do enjoy some of the string quartets that are often onboard, but I don't want to hear that all the time.

Now, if we are talking volume, I am not deaf and I don't need music blasting at a level that doesn't allow any talking in a somewhat normal voice. I would be quite upset if that went on every night all over the ship.

The poll is showing that only about a quarter of folks don't like the policy and the rest like the new policy or don't care. It would seem that Celebrity knows their customer fairly well.

Denim is just a type of material. I am not sure why it seems so many people find it offensive.

I love saying goodbye to formal nights! Well done Celebrity!

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This makes me and my man happy. Thank you Celebrity!

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The electronic poker tables aren't all that bad. They are better than 21 dealers trying to be poker dealers on a 21 table with 7 people. And the machines calculate the rake down to the penny, which helps a little when the rake is so high on ships (10% up to $10!!) The learning curve takes about 5 minutes. Most cruises we have had a solid group of 10-20 players each night, but the games seldom get started before 10 PM. Generally the games are small limits, almost always 1-2 no limit.

The tournaments are turbos, and don't take long. I've won a few, because the play is fairly soft.

In my experience a photocopy is only useful as a convenient recording of passport number, etc. I can't imagine it being accepted in place of the real thing by any government official.

If you needed to go to an American Embassy having the photocopies would help in getting you the proper documents to return home. Other than that they have no purpose.

WooHoo! We will be enjoying our first sea day on the Liberty in three weeks....I can't wait!!

The ship will let you know when it is necessary for you to carry your passport with you off the ship. In all our cruises, many in Europe/Africa, I can only think of once or twice that we were told to take our passports off the ship. In some countries the ship collects your passport and keeps them while you are off the ship.

We do carry a photocopy of our passports with us in case we have a need, such as left behind or injury.

In Las Vegas any slot machine win over $1199 gets you a W-2 form....that's over $1199 on one pull/spin/game, not over the course of play. For poker tournaments it's $5000.

I find it hard to believe that they would give a W-2 form on a ship in international waters. Sounds very strange to me.

As for your taxes...we always claim losses equal to our winnings and we have never had any issues. Being a poker player I keep all my tournament entry receipts....they don't keep track of cash play.

I recommended Royal to someone yesterday. They want to take their first cruise, so I asked them a few questions about who is going and what they think they'd like to experience on the cruise.

 

 

 

Their answers prompted me to recommend they try Navigator eastbound out of FLL.

 

 

 

It was what I thought best fit their wants. If it had been any other line or route or ship, I would've honestly recommended they try that instead.

 

 

 

I try to be truthful to my friends instead of pushing one line regardless of what my friends would probably like. They know we cruise a lot and actually seemingly value our opinions.

 

 

 

 

 

ETA:

 

I know an 8 night cruise is long for a first cruise, but it matched their needs/wants really well.

Our first cruise was a week long and we knew immediately that a week isn't long enough! They will most likely feel the same way and thank you for the advice!

Cruising is such a great vacation, but for people who don't like it, 3 days is too long, and for those who love it, the longer the better! [emoji41]

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September 2016, Freedom

Sorry, that photo is too small for me to read, is that $4800 per person or for two people?

Find the Roll Call for your cruise and find out what group activities the others on your cruise will be doing. Transatlantic cruises offer a lot of sea days so things like trivia groups, slot pulls, pub crawls, cabin crawls, card games, etc. will most likely already been planned. So jump in there and get included, you won't regret it! Have a great cruise....I can't wait for my TA in April! :)

We feel pretty extravagant, and lucky, buying a regular balcony cabin! :D

Ha! My first thought, too! Or the other one who did his own thing.

 

But, seriously, there is a time and place for complaining and causing a scene in the theater is not the way to do it. It's not like the captain is going to suddenly say "You're right! We're on our way now!" Decisions like this are made at headquarters. Even if you feel the need to rant at the captain as a representative of the company, don't make everyone else uncomfortable with a public outburst.

Yep! I agree.

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Would love to read that article, can you post a link?

I did a Google search and came up with THIS. It does mention a cruise ship with missile debris on deck. Pretty scary stuff.

I don't believe anyone is unsympathetic with the OP about missing an important port. That sucks. Anyone who has cruised frequently has missed a port or two along the way, some of those important (ours was Paris, cancelled because of a strike of some sort....found out at check-in).

I think the problem most of us have with the OP is putting the fault on Celebrity. The cruise lines do what they need to do to protect their billion dollar ships and the thousands of passengers on the ship.

The cruise lines WANT people to have a good time, they want people to come back again, they want people to feel pampered, their whole thing is giving people a great vacation. What they don't want is anyone dying or a ship being targeted by terrorists or being caught in a war. I have no doubt they would prefer to err on the side of safety. And I am OK with that. I appreciate that they are looking out for my safety even when I am not paying that much attention to it.

We prefer MTB....My Time Boarding. :D

It's just like MTD....you have a reserved time but there is no obligation to keep that time, and you can show up whenever you want and they will still feed you.

I imagine that if we lived in Florida and a short car ride to a port, we would be doing the same cruises and ships over and over also. Even though we are in landlocked Nevada, we have still managed to do more than one cruise on some of the RCI ships. We book mostly for ports but the ship does come into play if there are two similar cruises on different ships.

We used to be a Radiance class fan, but we are now leaning towards the Explorer, Freedom and Oasis class ships. We find that they are just more fun! My husband's favorite ship so far is the Freedom, so we can appreciate that there are many repeat cruisers on her!!