Mark_T

Jim, no, from the reports on the Japan thread it wasn't guarantee cabins, it was the result of several botched 'Lift & Shift' operations which failed to take the cabins out of inventory resulting in double or triple booking the same cabin...They had cabin numbers assigned... Monumental error on the part of Celebrity obviously.

I can't help thinking that they did not do this as it was more likely that those volunteering would be more recent bookings at higher prices, whereas the path they have chosen gives them a good chance of being able to refund a majority of much older bookings at much lower prices...

It does feel like the implementation and communication to their Agents was patchy and poor... the letter does seem to suggest there were other Asian options, not just the listed Japan cruises... 'select' implies there was a list, 'suggested' and 'include' implies those 3 were not the only options, but it doesn't seem like people calling in were getting too much aside from those being offered...

All 3 2025 sailings currently have Veranda cabins marked as 'Sold Out' and Concierge has sold out on March 27th sailing, with only a few cabins left in that class on the other 2... They may have just blocked out Veranda to preserve the inventory for L&S, but if not then there are not going to be many/any options left on the 2025 cruises by now...

Either should get you Gold, neither will get you Diamond.

It is notable that on the 2025 spring Japan cruises, all the veranda cabins are sold out at this point.

It confused me for a moment as well... The '9 into 3' bit is a reference to 9 different cruises being impacted by the overbooking problem, but only 3 cruises being offered for L&S, not directly related to the unfortunate family on one of those 9 impacted cruises with 6 cabins booked and 3 cancelled out from under them.

If you pick through the later pages of the thread linked above, that is a good summary of where we are now. There were still people reporting receiving emails earlier this week, but they have tailed off now, and they all had the same May 1st deadline. Nobody knows if Celebrity have any other problems to sort out of course, but these Japan cruises are ones that traditionally book up early so hopefully it was just these few that they messed up so badly...

Based on what those unfortunate enough to have been dumped by Celebrity have been told, I would wait until after May 1st, as that was the deadline for them to 'Lift & Shift'. If you booked direct, you should have received an email by now if you had been cancelled, the greater unknown is for those booking through a TA as the emails will have gone there, for the TA to relay onwards, and those have not always been handled promptly...

Agreed, and it has been handled horribly, it was simply that the opening post of that thread have the impression that the ship was not going to be in Japan at all, which as it later became clear, was not the case.

If you use the Vietnamese ports to access Cambodia, then yes, the tours are going to be long, but on our Millie cruise from Hong Kong to Singapore there were also plenty of much shorter coastal tours including Hạ Long Bay of course...

I suspect that Celebrity are mindful of the rates at which these cruises were originally booked and the yawning chasm of the gap between that and the current pricing of these cruises... ... any excuse to simply refund the original payment so they can sell what inventory they have left on these Japan cruises is going to be taken by them... Shabby, very shabby...

That is an unfortunate post to quote as it perpetuates the myth that the cruises next year have been cancelled. They have not... ... what has happened is that celebrity have monumentally messed up the numerous 'Lift & Shift' transfers from the previous couple of years of covid cruise cancellations, and ended up with large numbers of double or triple booked cabins which has resulted in having to cancel reservations that guests thought they had confirmed many months ago... Some have been able to 'Lift & Shift' once again, others have not and are dealing with the fallout from non-refundable air fares etc.

One side effect of all of this is that our April 2025 Japan sailing now has no verandas available at all, and prices for whatever is still available have gone up considerable...

Divina, just a short cruise mostly down the west cost of Italy, but enough to see if we like it.

This... ... and this... ...is why we will not be sailing on the 'E' class ships. With the way the Retreat prices have been heading it just doesn't make sense any more, we'd rather cruise 2-3x as often in a real balcony cabin on 'S' class ships and treat the speciality dining as our MDR. (... or possibly MSC, trying Yacht Club in June).

I have done it, but the original booking was also made after the final payment date, and the agent referred to that fact when agreeing to upgrade as my current cabin price had not changed since I booked it. On other occasions with UK bookings they have always referred back to the relevant cabin prices at the time of the original booking, not the current price vs the original price. Good luck though and do let us know how you get on...

Don't want to derail this thread, but this isn't a '1st time cruiser' issue, it is, presumably, a lateral flow test of the type that has been commonly used for some time now even by people who do not travel at all... Glad you are having a good time down there, we certainly enjoyed our visit and cruise on Eclipse back in January this year. People are always surprised by just how large the Black-Backed Gulls are, especially when compared to what looks like juvenile Red-Billed Gulls.

Was there something unusual about the test kits they provided? Hard to imagine any international travellers that need instructions for this sort of thing any more...

It is entirely possible that the error is at a level where there are duplicate reservations assigned to the same cabin, easy to miss that if you are primarily searching by reservation number... This should have been highly visible at the revenue level for the cruise, or even just total number of reservations on the cruise, but again, only if they get those numbers from the individual reservations rather than looking at inventory... Either way it is inexcusable, but given a sufficiently major IT error it is sadly believable.

After millions of miles of business and vacation air travel around the world, the only place I've had to carry my passport with me was Russia, all others it stayed safe in the hotel/ship.

I suspect they do have the historic rate tables relatively easily available as the topic has come up a couple of times for me when talking to them about upgrades. They seemed to be able to refer to the other cabin prices at the time of my original booking with great ease.

Agreed, at minimum they should be comparing the 2021 rates for both cabins. We are booked for the April 2025 cruise so we are watching all this with some trepidation, but hopefully no impact that far out.

It was however true on Eclipse in January with Starlink. Never once managed to load a page on this site using the 'Surf' package.

The E stands for EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution), but it is only 'enhanced' when compared to GPRS, it is part of 2G.... it has a maximum download speeds of up to 384 kbps, but is often a lot slower than that. Personally I read EDGE as 'don't bother'... wait until you can get a better connection.