Mr. Click

The whole cruise world has gotten crazy from what I see. Our upcoming Iceland cruise has dropped dramaticly in price, likely due to the volcanic activity in Iceland. A few weeks ago I had to change the cruise date so I had to pay $200 change fee but the cruise price went down $2000. Nice. Last week I checked the pricing again and it was down another thousand so I emailed my TA with an apology and asked for a repricing. Within a few hours it was done. Total cost is now down over 50%. Celebrity OBC is pretty much the same but the OBC from the TA went down because it is based on their commission that has gone way down. All it all a big win for us so it does pay to price watch and ask, especially before final payment.

Are your reservations linked? If they are it would show all 6 names and have you choose who you are booking for each night. Just a thought.

Without St. Petersburg I would pick Iceland BUT that is biased because I just found the other cities interesting but not stunning. We also did a cruise through the fjords of Norway out of Southamption and that scenery was just stunning. Iceland has been on my list for a long time. We were supposed to go in 2020 but that did not happen and now I can go without flying all of the way to Europe. Bottom line is they are are good so get out your coin....

We did The Best of Scandanavia pre pandemic, pre Putin invading the Ukraine so it included an over night stop in St Petersburg and it was a great trip. Yes, Berlin is a very long day with all the travel so we opted to stay in Wernamunde and we enjoyed the day. I don't think I would go back without St. Petersburg but that is just me. Oh, we are doing the Iceland trip this summer.....Flip a coin and go and save the loser for next year.

If you are happy with the price grab it now. If the price goes down between now and your final payment you should be able to get it re-priced, if not you have your cabin locked in. S class vs E class, I pick S any day. I really do not like the idea of paying for a veranda that is not a real veranda..... We are on the Eclipse going from Iceland this summer and I have already had my TA re-price it twice as volcanic stuff has scared people away...

We usually get one unlimited package and have no trouble activating it. DW uses it for the most part and I use my 90 minutes until they run out. The annoying thing to me is even when we don't use her discount to buy the package, once we log into to the package her "free" minutes vanish and I can't use them. That is another story for another life time I guess.

Thanks everyone. I just was not sure if there was an Elite benefit but right now there is a one day flash sale going on so I am off to book some dinners.

Search gave me over 187 thousand answers and nothing in the first 100 worked so, is there a Specialty Dining benefit for Elites? I thought I read we got some kind of discount. If so, do I have to call in to get it like we do with wifi?

My understanding is if you use the 90 minutes you no longer have a discount. People are saying use the 90 minutes first and then the purchased package. I ask why??? Why bother, if you paid for a package use it. I have had some success stacking the pre-cruise discount and the CC discount by calling the CC number. You cannot do it online, you have to call. Flash sales are just that, They come and go in a flash and are marked as FLASH SALE. The best times for them seem to be Black Friday and July 4. There are others but the discounts don't seem to be as big. The real rip off comes when you both have Elite status but you only buy a single device package during a flash sale thinking that "oh, I can use my 90 minutes and they are gone, I can use hers because we did not use that perk during the Flash Sale". Nope, once you activate the package your other perk is gone whether or not you used the discount.

and yet years before COVID I had success getting upgraded on price drops after final payment. Oh for the good old days.

So now I need to think about putting the GoPro back in my bag for Iceland this summer......Great work Topkatz

Frozenpegger, I just finished booking our hotels for pre-cruise and found some good deals with centerhotels.com. They have number of hotels in Reykjavik with different levels of pricing. Use the code BOOKDIRECT on the web site you get a discount and some extra perks. One nice thing is you don't have to pre-pay. We are there our first night and the night before we board the ship. Middle night we are staying in Vik so save some driving.

Check out Albergo dela Senato. Very nice hotel right on the Pantheon Square so it is easy walking distance to most of the other sites other than the Vatican. We have stayed there in the past and loved it. Great staff, good included breakfast. Rome Cabs (romecabs.com) is great for getting from the port to the city. They are always on time, always smiling and waiting. Check out your roll call and make your own group for that transit, it saves money and time.

Thanks Mangrove Snapper. We do have a car and prefer to avoid group tours. To be safe I did change our travel dates so we have an extra day in Reykjavik just to make sure we get to see all we want to see.

Your plan has merit because I am well acquainted with jet lag but day 3 gets cut up because we have to transition from a hotel to the ship and day 4 we have to turn the rental car by 2:30pm to insure that we are back on the ship by 4pm for the 5pm sail away. The devil is in the details. Seriously thinking about just coming in a day sooner.

Hertz, Blue and Lotus all have offices in town that are near the port. I believe that Europecar has an office at the port.

We are also on the August 24 cruise and I am a bit behind on planning because we just recently swtiched from the Aug 4 trip...I posted this question on another thread here bur I am going to repost it here... Trying to make the most of the 4 days we have in Reykjavik before our ship sails...We arrive at KEF about 8:30am and I do have a rental car arranged for the 4 days. My original thinking was to do the shorter South Shore loop on day way because we are flying overnight and then do the Golden Circle the next day and save the town touring for the next 2 days since we have to check in at the ship on Day 3 and then be back to drop the car and get back to the ship by 2pm on Day 4. Then I read about Glacier Lake....and I really want to go up there so is is reasonable, doable to start the Golden Circle on Day 1, do an overnight out towards the end of it and then combine Glacier Lake and the rest of the Golden Circle on Day 2 and just do one hotel night in Reykjavik? Night 3 we are on the ship. Not thinking about ice caves or glacier hikes, those days are pretty much gone but a chance to do a boat tour up there appeals to me.

Trying to make the most of the 4 days we have in Reykjavik before our ship sails...We arrive at KEF about 8:30am and I do have a rental car arranged for the 4 days. My original thinking was to do the shorter South Shore loop on day way because we are flying overnight and then do the Golden Circle the next day and save the town touring for the next 2 days since we have to check in at the ship on Day 3 and then be back to drop the car and get back to the ship by 2pm on Day 4. Then I read about Glacier Lake....and I really want to go up there so is is reasonable, doable to start the Golden Circle on Day 1, do an overnight out towards the end of it and then combine Glacier Lake and the rest of the Golden Circle on Day 2 and just do one hotel night in Reykjavik? Night 3 we are on the ship. Not thinking about ice caves or glacier hikes, those days are pretty much gone but a chance to do a boat tour up there appeals to me.

Those IVs are why I will avoid the E Class ships. I need to be able to sit out or quickly step out. One of my favorite Norway images was made at 11:20pm when the setting sun bathed an island we were passing in stunning orange/gold light. You just never know when that moment will happen.

We did a Norway cruise a few years ago and I spent most of my time outside just enjoying the scenery. It is spectacular. As a photographer I wanted to see the light of the early morning and late evening, morning meant 4am, sunset was around 11pm so an afternoon nap was often in order. Seriously, find some out door locations and just watch the world go by.

It is not unusual for some of the larger TAs to make deals with cruise lines for blocks of cabins at discount prices and then try to sell those cabins to their customers at a better price than the cruise line or other TAs so it is quite possible that at the time you asked your TA about a change his group/block deal for a Sky Suite was better than the rack rate for Aqua. As far as changing TAs in midstream, it is not easy. You would need a really strong reason to make a change without incurring penalties/costs. If you do want to make a change to your booking talk to your TA and see what the current options are. We had to change our Iceland trip for this summer and had to pay a $200 fee to make the change. I needed a different date so I paid the fee, luckily for me the new cruise priced over $2K less......

If the passengers in the cabin are linked then the charges all show up in one name. That is what we have found in the past. One suggestion, get a "final" hard copy of your statement right before you disembark so you are ready to dispute any surprises like mini bar charges when you get your final bill in your email.

DingoMom, after looking at your x-rays I am never walking a dog.....but I am glad modern medicine got you back together. When I broke my femur right above the knee it was complete and they were initially talking about 12 weeks of traction or 12 weeks in a cast that would cover my whole leg and then go over my hips...12 weeks flat on my back eiher way. Thankfully my regular orthopedist came in the next day and looked at things and said he had some thing new to try...said it was a 10 day risk. If it worked the cast would only cover my leg, if it did not work, 10 days lost and into the OR and traction... we fook the risk and it worked but still 7 weeks in plaster all the way up my leg that was bent at at a 90 degree angle and then 4 weeks out of plaster but no weight. By the time he said "Ok, you can really walk on it" it had been 14 weeks... So, everyone be careful out there so we don't have to fuss about Celebrity's rotten policy on points ever again....

Just read your policy before hand Some do cover them some don’t

Every policy is different. I had to submit documentation for EVERY THING. I got the gift cards for credit card points and the carrier would not cover that.