Suzy Smith

I agree with previous posters; unless there is a particular issue on your ship (like a deep clean because of norovirus) the times are just advisory to try to minimise waiting time. We usually have a few days in Southampton pre-cruise and then check in at around 11.00 a.m. and have never had a problem. We have always found boarding Southampton to be quick and easy.:)

Come on. I doubt if any of the people who want to cruise on a ship where she is the captain would make such a fuss about being on her ship if she was not female. There are lots of very good and personable captains who do not get as much press as she does.

 

I am not questioning her competency. She is probably actually better than most of the male captains considering the barriers that she broke to achieve her position. However many if not most of her want to cruise on her ship because she is the first female captain of a major cruise ship.

DON

But she is nowhere near being the first female captain of a major cruise ship. There have been women captains since 2007:

http://www.cruiselawnews.com/2015/07/articles/weird-cruise-news/finally-first-us-female-to-captain-cruise-ship/

I did think Celebrity's description of her appointment as their first American woman captain was badly worded and they should have simply described her as the first American to captain a Celebrity ship. In this day and age, her gender should be irrelevant.

Hey.. I hate to burst your bubble, but Americans & Canadians are not the only tourists!!! What has happened is dreadful, but for the rest of us, life has.... IT HAS to go on...or thy win. But please.... do not think, not even for one minute... that the only tourists are American/Canadian. Europe is a fantastic place to visit and it will be visited by European tourists.... but you are more than welcome to join us

So true. We may see a dip in numbers of tourists from North America, but the majority of tourists in Europe are actually other Europeans - and in general we get more annual leave than folks from the USA, so we have more opportunities for travel. I live in a tourist area, (which is also an occasional port of call for cruise ships) and the majority of our visitors are Brits, followed by other Europeans. We do get tourists from further afield (often tracing their roots), but their numbers are not significant, although probably more of them do visit the most well-known tourists sites. As you rightly say, Europeans will continue to travel: we have long experience of these kind of events in various countries and have a realistic view of the risks. Anyone who is fearful of coming here should, of course, stay at home, but those of us who live here will continue to enjoy the great experiences that Europe has to offer and that we enjoy sharing with our very welcome tourists - from all parts the world.:)

I have never considered a British Isles cruise and wonder if this is an itinerary that appeals mainly to North Americans. I don't think large numbers of Brits would fly to Amsterdam to tour the British Isles when they could just jump in a car, and most other Europeans would probably consider the British Isles to be somewhere for a land trip rather than a cruise. Reading some of the recent posts on CC, many North Americans are nervous of flying to Europe at the moment and this could explain the lack of bookings and perhaps large numbers of cancellations.

I don't know if this is the case, but wonder if anyone else thinks it might be a possible explanation.

Thanks all for your advice so far. It's exactly what I was thinking that most Brits tend to dress up and enjoy formal evenings which is why I specifically put Southampton in the question.

 

I suppose it really depends of the percentage of Brits onboard, when we sailed on RCI out of Southampton there were about 90% Brits but when we sailed from Harwich (to Norway and Iceland) there were only about 50%.

I think you will find similar numbers on Celebrity. We have cruised the Med five times from Southampton on X and, on each cruise, the vast majority of the pax were Brits. We have done the Baltic once with Celebrity, and on that cruise there were still more Brits than any other nationality, but there was more of an international mix. We have a photo of our table in the MDR on formal night on the Baltic cruise and, true to form;), the four Brits are in formal wear, but our German table mates are not wearing dinner jacket/evening dress, although still very smartly dressed.

I don't think there have been any sailings from Southampton since they changed to the new dress code and if I was sailing on Eclipse this summer, I wouldn't have a clue what to pack. On sailings from Southampton, pax always seem to dress up more than on other Celebrity cruises. We were on Eclipse in September last year, and at the time of night that we went in for dinner, probably 90% of the diners in the MDR were in formal dress on the formal nights - but then we Brits just love an excuse to dress up!:) I think the majority of folks sailing from Southampton will still associate a cruise with formal dress, and the great adverts featuring Rob Brydon that P & O are currently running show everyone looking very glamorous in formal dress in the evenings, so they obviously feel it is something that Brits enjoy.

I am sorry that I am being absolutely no help to you at all, but I hope that CC members on the first cruises out of Southampton this year will report back. We are cruising with Cunard this year - so will definitely pack the posh frock!:)

Booking a higher cabin category, while it may be more expensive, if booking this way, gets your perks back, the value may be worth it. It becomes a value based decision rather than one based on absolute pricing.

Celebrity UK are currently only offering drinks packages and OBC on new bookings:

"This promotion applies to the first two adult guests making a new booking of an Oceanview stateroom and above between the 01st March 2016 and 3rd May 2016 on selected 5 nights or longer sailings departing between April 2016 and April 2018."

My reading of that is that while pax with existing bookings may be able to upgrade, they will not be eligible for the current perks on offer, so they will not get their drinks package back. There are recent threads started by UK cruisers who have found that if they have perks included in their fare, they are effectively locked in to their original reservation, unless there is such a big price drop that it covers the cost of purchasing their own drinks package, as X are generally only making the drinks package available for new bookings now,

And just to muddy the waters for you even further, lovescarborough, Celebrity are currently offering drinks packages on European bookings, but the Ts and Cs say it is for new bookings only, so it won't apply to anyone adjusting an existing reservation. It does get complicated!:eek:

I am also confused as to whether any perks included in the original booking ie drinks package would be transferred to any paid for upgrade ? We are in the UK.

When we have paid for an upgrade or taken advantage of a price drop in the UK, they have given us whatever their current deal is. You are not able to pay the current price but keep the perks given with a previous promotion. It can work both ways - the last time we had a price drop, we had booked without a drinks package, but when the price dropped, they were also including drinks and extra OBC - so we were very happy!

If prices go down, you just have to work out which is the best deal for you personally. In our case, the drinks package is nice to have, but really has a small monetary value as we don't drink very much (apart from coffees) and already get the Elite+ perks, but if you feel you would get good value from a drinks package you may decide you are better off paying a higher fare or not upgrading so you can keep your existing perks.

Bogofman - We have upgraded by paying a little extra, but have never tried to upgrade for less money and suspect they might not want to let you do that. We have also taken advantage of price drops and paid less for the cabin we have already booked, but there have been suggestions on CC that Celebrity UK are no longer allowing this (the last time we did it was a couple of years ago).

Celebrity UK were running a promotion at the beginning of this year that if you booked by a certain date, they would honour any price drops up to 31 December 2016, so if you booked recently, that might work out well for you. I would suggest phoning them and saying that you would like to upgrade to Aqua (rather than asking if they will allow it) and see what happens. If they don't want to do it, you could then ask them what options are available to you in these circumstances. I have always found them to be very helpful and understanding, so it's definitely worth a try. Hope you get a nice upgrade!:)

The last time we cruised from Southampton was six months ago and they run a very slick operation there, which is really geared up for pax arriving with their bags already tagged. The taxis stop in front of the terminal, the drivers go round and open the boot (trunk) of the car and, while the passengers are settling up with the taxi driver, the bags are just whisked away! We have also walked to the ship from the nearby Grand Harbour Hotel and, before we got to check-in, baggage handlers just took our cases out of our hands and added them to the bags already on their trolley. The baggage handlers are not looking for a tip, they just want to get everyone processed as quickly as possible and anyone arriving without tagged luggage is just going to slow down a very efficient system. We liked to get real luggage tags posted to us, but if Celebrity are now specifically advising pax to print their own, why would anyone deliberately choose not to do it?:confused:

Up until recently I would have agreed with you but now we are not getting that option - just have to print our tags.

Wendy

Thanks for the update, Wendy. It is six months since our last cruise and I am sorry to hear that X have made even more cuts since then!:(

If you check in online, once your edocs are ready usually 45 days before you sail, a button will appear to order your luggage tags. They do deliver in the UK and the tags come from a UK address.

That has been our experience as well. You log into "My Celebrity" (which takes you to the Celebrity US site) and click on the button to order your luggage tags (which are then sent from a UK address). The button does not show up until your edocs are available. This is one of the things that does actually seem to work well on the X website.:)

It may be strongly encouraged but I'm happy we don't have to. I would be very disappointed and likely stop picking Celebrity if I had to have a reservation with Select dinning.

 

From our experience (only 3 cruises on Celebrity) we were seated just as quickly without reservations as those that had made them.

I am also surprised to see that we are strongly encouraged to book - I thought the whole point of select dining is that you don't have a set time and can just go the dining room whenever you are ready. We are always happy to take the next available table and, in the four two-week cruises where we have chosen select dining, we had just one night when there was a slight delay. We did notice that on our European cruises, the dining room starts to get busier after around 7 to 7.15 (but different timing on cruises with a majority of US citizens who tend to eat earlier), so I guess making a reservation is a good idea if you like to dine at the busiest time of night. We like the freedom of turning up when it suits us, but if X is encouraging all pax to book, we will probably not be able to continue to do this.

Good luck,

Remember if you get no joy, then get onto the Captain's Club host.:D

Calling Captain's Club may work well in some countries, but the OP is in the UK and has already tried that without any immediate success (see post 8 above). She has also tried booking through a TA and booking online (neither of which was successful) and is understandably becoming frustrated with the whole process, but the one thing she has not done is call Celebrity UK reservations, who are the people who will be able to sort it out for her. We have successfully used a FCC for £1200 in the UK without any problem. It is true that it can't be used on certain sailings or discounted fares, but these are stated on the certificate. If the OP checks that her chosen cruise is not on the list of exclusions and then calls reservations, I am sure she will finally get there!:)

I don't know how often UK cruisers use FCCs, as our reservations agent was not familiar with them, but we emailed her a copy of the letter we had received from Celebrity, together with a copy of the certificate, and from then on it was plain sailing!

Can you give me a number to ring the appropriate department please?

Thanks

Jen

Celebrity UK reservations number is: 0844-493-2043. Our future cruise certificate listed the particular cruises and types of fares that were specifically excluded, so it is worth reading the small print and making sure you will be able to use the certificate for your selected cruise before calling them.

We had a future cruise certificate issued as compensation for problems on one of our cruises and I seem to remember that the UK booking conditions were that it was not applicable to certain discounted fares and once we had applied it to a certain cruise, we would not have been able to transfer it to another cruise if we had to cancel the original one for any reason. We typically book about eighteen months ahead of the sail date and because of the restrictions, we didn't want to use the certificate until nearer final payment. However, we were concerned that with such a big time gap, we might book it through a Celebrity reservations agent who told us we could use the certificate and then find at final payment that it would not be accepted - and of course, UK booking conditions would mean we could not then cancel without losing our deposit. The way way we handled it was to select a cruise and then call Celebrity reservations and book it through them. They checked that our certificate could be used towards the cost of that particular fare and, before paying the deposit, we asked them to email us confirmation that we would ultimately be able to apply the certificate to that reservation, which they were happy to do. The certificate has to be posted to them and it can take a while for it to go through, so we sent it well in advance of final payment date.

Sorry if I have made it all sound very complicated and I probably haven't explained it very well, but bookings in the UK are not as flexible as in some other countries. I am happy to say it all worked out fine for us in the end.:)

:):) we are sailing on Celebrity Solstice from Sydney March 20th!!!:p

Here's the link to your roll call, where you can contact other CC posters on your sailing:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2053652

I hope you and your Mum have a lovely time!:)

Please explain to me why you would want to exchange gifts with total strangers that have absolutely no idea who you are or what you might like. I just don't get it. For example, one respondent from NJ suggested salt water taffy. If they gave that to me, I would have to toss it in the trash as I have diabetes and should not eat candy. Another respondent mentioned Canadian maple syrup. Same thing.

 

Get my point? DON

I have to confess that I don't "get" the gift exchange idea either. We rarely bring back souvenirs from our travels, but for folks who like to collect mementos, I can understand them bringing back souvenirs of places they visited on the cruise. But I don't understand why anyone would want a random gift, specific to the home town (which they have never visited) of a total stranger.:confused: We have met some lovely people on our cruises, but the only thing we have ever exchanged is email addresses!;):)

Just watched it on YouTube and most of the advert consists of only two words - "Marco" and "Polo". You have to watch it right to the very end for any mention of Celebrity. Cruise & Maritime (who operate the UK-based cruise ship, Marco Polo) will love it!:)

Why can't they just offer the best price and forget all of the costly free extra's

 

Have put off booking till the new sale which hopefully won't have all of these free extras.

Like you, we find these constantly-changing offers are actually a disincentive to book. We generally book a long way out and have switched from Celebrity for our next cruise because it was getting too complicated to work out which was the best deal for us and whether or not a better deal would come along later and we just became bored with the whole game. UK pax can't cancel without losing their deposit and X seem to be restricting most promotions to new bookings only, so we can no longer take advantage of price drops, and it was impossible to know when was a good time to lock ourselves in to a deal. We are Elite Plus and drink little alcohol, but do like our coffees, so the Elite happy hour and Elite+ free coffees give us all the drinks that we need, but most of the X cruises now seem to be priced to include a drinks package, so they are not good value for us. Even without the Elite+ perks, we don't drink enough to cover the cost of a drinks package. We love Celebrity and may book a last-minute deal with no perks at some time in the future, but for the moment their marketing strategy has only encouraged us to look elsewhere.

Well, it's a good thing they are canvassing opinions from UK pax before running the ad here, as they are likely to find it is totally incomprehensible to almost everyone!:confused:

There are different codes for the drinks, gratuities and OBC perks (and combination of perks) depending on the part of the world that you are sailing. Europe is just coded as "Europe". ROW is Celebrity's abbreviation for: "Rest of the World excluding Galapagos, Transatlantic, Transpacific, Asia re-positioning, and South America re-positioning cruise departing on 13 Mar 2016". So "ROW Drinks" indicates a classic drinks package on a cruise which is not within Europe or the particular exclusions mentioned above. Hope this puts your mind at rest!:)

The entire list of abbreviations is on a UK travel agent's website, but it would be against the rules for me to give the name on CC.

It's worth calling Celebrity, you might be lucky, but if they are running a promotion with perks such as drink packages, OBC, etc. included, you will need to read the Ts and Cs, as it may say that it is for new bookings only.

If you have booked through a TA, they may tell you that Celebrity don't honour price drops, but often they just don't understand what is possible, so insist that they check. We have had Celebrity UK honour price drops in the past (the last time was two years ago), but I believe Elite and above Captain's Club members get one change without penalty, so that might be why they gave it to us.

Did you book recently? Celebrity were running a promotion (I think it ended last month) where they guaranteed to let you take advantage of any price drops on your cruise until the end of 2016, so that might work for you.

It's definitely worth a phone call!:)

The roll calls don't disappear. If you go into "Celebrity Connections Roll Calls" and click on the particular ship you are interested in it will display posts for the last month. If you need earlier cruises, you can click on "Display Options" at the bottom of the page and change to "last 2 months", "last 100 days" etc. right back to posts from the beginning. Select how far you want to go back and click "Show Threads". There are still roll call threads there for Century cruises as far back as 2004. Hope this helps!