Vagabond Knight

It's mostly a Carnival and Royal Caribbean thing since those cruises tend to have more kids on them. EDIT: Oh, geez... just realized I replied to a 2021 thread that someone resurrected!

Well, that's interesting! I guess it's our bonus for booking. 😉

We're booked on cruises on four different cruise lines over the next year and so I've looked at other forums as well as the Celebrity forum over the past few months. Honestly, you can find complaints regarding reductions in food quality, cutback of services, and additional fees with just about every line... it's not just a Celebrity thing, it's a cruising survival thing. It's actually a wonder most of the cruise lines are still around post-Covid, so I assume this will be the cruising status for a while. Will things ever go back to the pre-Covid days of cruising? Who knows. For the most part, I think we just need to readjust our expectations. Stop comparing to the pre-Covid days and instead just compare what's available NOW on Celebrity and on other lines and choose what suits you the best. You can have a wonderful cruise experience if you put your mind to it, and some of the changes only affect those who get kind of ridiculous anyhow. Carnival, for example, is now charging for the third entrée in their MDR if you order more than two, and this is upsetting some of their customers. Your THIRD entrée? Is this REALLY a problem for most of us? We now pay for a second lobster tail on Celebrity, but although I admit to having two in the past, do I really need that second one after multiple delicious appetizers, a salad, my one lobster tail and sides, and before my scrumptious dessert? I did a Mexican Riviera cruise on Celebrity by myself a few months ago and ate in the MDR every night. There were some options missing from past cruises that I would enjoyed, but I found something absolutely delicious to eat in there every night. If you look for the fun activities and delicious options available to you on your cruise and don't concentrate on what you may have had a few years back, you'll have a wonderful time. The ships are still the same, the service is certainly not lacking on Celebrity, and there are many wonderful food experiences to be enjoyed.

I just logged into my Celebrity account to see if I could change the frequency of emails, but it seems like all you can do is turn notifications and offers ON or OFF. I don't want to turn them off because I appreciate getting an occasional email (weekly would be fine) about a new special offer, but I feel like Celebrity has gotten to the point of spamming me. I'm getting 2-4 messages a day, and most of these "exciting deals" are the same "sale" that they've been running for months and months and months.

I know that's an option, but not one I'd like to use since we're in each location for such a short time.

I guess you mean no NCL ship has it. I've had this done on Celebrity ships.

Sigh... can you come on my cruise with me? 😉 Well, this is a bummer. I've got B2Bs lined up with Carnival, NCL and Royal Caribbean and I can't find this on any of them. They do acrylics and acrylic fills on Celebrity, which is what we've been sailing for some years now and was disappointed that I couldn't find those services on any of the ships we have booked for our upcoming adventure.

Did not see acrylic nail fill listed as a service that I can book ahead. Any chance it's available on the Symphony of the Seas even if not listed for pre-booking? I've got multiple cruises booked B2B on different cruise lines and I'm not seeing any of the cruise lines showing it. 😭

Did not see acrylic nail fill listed as a service that I can book ahead. Any chance it's available on the Dawn even if not listed for pre-booking?

Did not see acrylic nail fill listed as a service that I can book ahead. Any chance it's available on the Freedom even if not listed for pre-booking?

Thank you, all!

Thank you very much, @fruitmachine.

I believe we've decided on doing the Scotch Whiskey experience and wandering to a few local pubs before and/or after for some food and drink during our stop in South Queensferry. I am having trouble finding private transportation options such as a taxi from the South Queensferry cruise port to that area of Edinburgh (354 Castlehill, Edinburgh EH1 2NE).

OK, thanks!

Thank you, @GeezerCouple and others who recommended Steve at TripInsuranceStore.com! We called him today and were extremely pleased. He is very easy to talk to, great at figuring out what's needed, and doesn't try to sell you stuff you don't need. That was a great recommendation!

I didn't mean "Along the way" as "in a straight line," but rather "between the time I leave Point A and arrive at Point B." 😁

Sorry about the misspelling of Southampton. I hate the way CC locks out edits after a short time.

We will be disembarking the Norwegian Dawn on Saturday, October 14 and have a 4:00PM flight out of Heathrow back to Barcelona. We would like to book a transfer from the port (guessing we'd be able to be off the ship around 9:00AM or before) to Heathrow, but with a mini tour of some of the London sights along the way and arriving at Heathrow around 1:00PM. Does anyone have any recommendations on services that do this for a somewhat reasonable fee?

I always say that with Carnival, it depends heavily upon the length of the cruise, the itinerary and the time of the year. In addition to the food and service, the other guests on the ship will also set the mood and affect your satisfaction with the voyage. This is probably the case more so with Carnival because they have so many short Caribbean cruises. With the short cruises, you have many groups of people intent on doing nothing but drinking and partying... groups of friends looking to "let loose" for a few days, bachelor parties, bachelorette parties, and spring breakers. However, take Carnival for seven days or more, with a non-Caribbean itinerary, and especially when schools/colleges are back in session after a break or heading towards a break when students can't really take off due to exams, and you'll probably see a much different crowd. This obviously won't affect food and service, but I'll bet the experience will be a whole lot better. Of course, some would consider themselves "too cool" to ever admit that a Carnival Cruise might actually be good, but we've had great times both on Celebrity AND on Carnival.

FWIW, they will not cover any trip on any of their plans that are over 45 days long. One of our trips is going to be 47 days.

We're looking at Travel Insured International's Annual Multi-Trip Protector. Has anyone used them? If so, what are your thoughts?

Ha-ha, trust me... I can most definitely live without access for a day.

Thank you, @ReneeFLL. I think we'll skip it then since there's only one day at sea and our cell phone plan has data in all the ports.

New to Royal Caribbean. What's "The Key?"

This will be our first RCL cruise (Symphony of the Seas). Looking at what we can add to the cruise, we see a VOOM SURF + STREAM internet package. Some of the other cruise lines have different level internet packages, one for more basic needs and a faster one to support streaming. We have no need for streaming. Has anyone seen multiple levels of internet packages offered on the Symphony? Might RCL offer different options at different times (for example, if we don't bite on the streaming package, might we see a lower level package offered closer to the cruise date, or is it a case of "What you see is what you can get"?).