terrydtx

I agree and you thoughts are close to mine. We are Elite and will be Elite plus after our 3 upcoming cruises, but I no longer care about loyalty programs when the cruise line no longer cares about their most loyal customers.

We have a Boston to Montreal cruise booked in August next year for 11 days, but we will spend another week in Montreal after the cruise.

I can see the large amounts of OBC going away or being reduced for Sky Suites before the Luminae and lounge go away. We seldom book any Celebrity sponsored shore excursions and our OBC is usually spent on clothes in the ship's shops. I have some very nice Tommy Bahama shirts I bought on our last two cruises. We have found small private tours to be so much better in value than what the cruise lines offer.

Considering that the E Class ships were built and designed to handle the larger number of SS compared to M & S class ship, with a larger Luminae and Retreat Lounge, which would become ghost towns. This would totally devalue the SS and all that would be left is a larger cabin in size. SS's are selling out on almost every cruise and there would no longer be a reason to book one. I cannot see it happening but with the new management anything is possible.

That is my fear as the new CEO seems intent on the Royalization of Celebrity. The website is being changed to reflect the change as noted above in this thread.

By your 2025 cruise there may well be more changes in the Retreat product, and it could be entirely different from today. My TA talked with her Celebrity rep yesterday about the butler changes and her rep said there will be more changes to the Retreat product by the end of this year, the rep would not say what they are. My TA's cruise business is over 50% with Celebrity so she is very concerned about these changes.

It will be interesting what people booked in a SS will have to say after they are on a cruise departing after Aug 15th. I hope you have a positive one but also hope you post back here on the experience. We board the Apex September 14th in a SS.

We have looked at MSC Yacht club, but they just do not have the longer cruises with itineraries we want. Not all of their ships have YC which is also an issue on the couple of cruises we found in the past.

Up to now the Retreat product has kept me from cruising on other lines with butlers, so I can't answer that. RCL has a "Genie" sort of butler on the highest end suites, but very little information is available on how a "Genie" works.

For us canceling our next 3 Celebrity cruises, September and January, is not an option, we have already paid for very expensive BC airfare to Europe and Australia. But we will no longer book with Celebrity after these 3 cruises. We only book SS with them and there are better, more premium and less costly cruise lines we can cruise with, like Oceania and Viking Ocean. Since customer loyalty means zero with Celebrity our customer loyalty with them is also zero.

I just got off the phone with my TA and she discussed the butler changes yesterday with her Celebrity rep. Her rep said there are going to be more changes in the Retreat product by the end of this year, the rep would not say what they will be. I suspect the Team concept may go to all suite levels, just my hunch. So now it begins, Celebrity is going to mess with a great product, that IMO sets them apart from most mainstream cruise lines.

How have the meals in Luminae been?

Or the non-suites cruisers who are irate over having to pay for room service, something that was included and free when many booked their cruises prior to January this year.

Yes your analogy is much better. We will see next month if this works, my gut says it won't, but it is making walking away from Celebrity after our 2 cruises in January much easier.

Well that covers it for me, thanks

We will be in Australia next January for 30 + days, are you saying tipping is not necessary or expected? I know tipping is different in most of Europe.

I agree we need to do this itinerary, after a month of 100+ Temps in South Texas we are looking for cooler weather cruises in July and August.

The new gratuity increases went into effect when they raised the daily gratuity charge for cabins, around July 23.

We will need the Retreat priority tendering for our Bay of islands port stop in January, we booked a private small group wine tasing and lunch tour.. We have to meet at the wharf at 10:00am that morning.

Too many in this thread have missed the whole point of the thread and topic. It doesn't matter if you use a butler, don't use a butler, feel uncomfortable with a butler, don't want to over burden a butler, don't book suites or don't book a suite because of a butler. Hundreds and maybe thousands of Celebrity customers have booked Sky Suites believing that they will have a dedicated personal butler not a team of pseudo class butlers. They are now after booking and for many like us, who have made final payments, are NOT GOING to get what they booked and paid for and in most US civil courts this would fraud. Imagin if you bought and paid for a new Lexus and when it came time to deliver your new car the dealer said you aren't getting that Lexus, but we have a nice Toyota in its place and by the way you get nothing back for compensation. Then the dealer says you are still getting what we promised, nice transportation and a new car, it just won't be a Lexus. How many of you would put up with this? How many would be taking this dealer to court?

Good to know as we booked a private tour that day, and I thought it should work like any other tender port for Retreat Guests. Thanks for the confirmation.

He must have pi**ed off finally the Mods here.

You still do not get the point and I bet never booked suite and had a butler. Not once in 5 cruises have, we had a useless or terrible butler. This service we are losing when we get a team of inexperienced lower paid pseudo butlers. Good bye

Sounds like you are drinking the Celebrity Kool-Aid. The point is we booked and have paid for an advertised service that Celebrity is taking away, a dedicated butler. We didn't pay for a team of pseudo butlers.

We are doing the NZ cruise in January on the Edge in the Retreat. Our experience in the past with Retreat priority tendering is the Retreat Lounge hosts escort you down to the front of the tender line, did this not happen on your cruise?