dl13

Thanks Cotswold Eagle!

You are correct...I am getting confused :(. Some days it doesn't take much :)

I went to south western railway's website and tried the booking for 4 off-peak tickets for November 2 at the £120.40 price, but if I chose any type of seat preferences I get this message: Please note there are parts of your journey where reservations were not possible. You can buy this ticket without a reservation or you can change your service or ticket selection and try again.

Without selecting a seat preference, I am able to continue the booking.

Obviously we would like to have four seats together or close to each other.

How do we do this?

Are some routes just open seating and that's why I cannot put in seat preferences?

Or does that option become available closure to travel dates?

Is Groupsave only available online or would we see the same pricing if we were to buy tickets at SOU on the morning of travel?

Thanks for your patience with my questions and for all of your advice.

Sent from my iPad using Forums

Thanks so much for the prompt replies.

I registered on loco2 for the alert.

More questions...

I hope we will be ok with the cheap tickets as we should have no problem getting to the train stations in time at either end of the journey...I always plan to arrive 30 mins prior to departure.

Are the offpeak tickets the cheapest? I've read that the offpeak tickets are good for any offpeak train. Is this true...just in case we miss the one we planned for?

So for purchasing the tickets once tickets are released, is there a preferred method to doing this? direct with train company or via a third party site? Ive only ever purchased tickets for a train in Italy and then I bought in person at the train station just prior to boarding.

diane

Hi.

I'm trying to navigate the process of how to buy cheap return train tickets from Southampton Central to London Waterloo. We will be spending the one day sightseeing...hoping to arrive in London in the morning and catch the return train around 20:30.

I'm seeing very high prices when I use the trainline site for 4 adult off-peak return direct train journey tickets on Friday, November 2 (£338 or $605 Cdn). A few months ago when I was looking for tickets from Gatwick to Southampton the off peak fares were so much lower £16 pp (we have since book a private car transfer instead due to luggage issues).

Is there a better option for purchasing train tickets to London?

Is it cheaper to just show up at Southampton Central in the morning and purchase return tickets?

Where we live the train options are limited to one service provider and one fare type regardless of travel time so very simple...feeling a bit overwhelmed with UK train travel :(

All help is greatly appreciated!

Diane :)

For our cruise last May on the Equinox we purchased two of the premium celebration packages...one for ourselves and one as a surprise for our best friends. We were celebrating our 30th annniversary and our friends were celebrating their 25th.

I called the Captain's Club prior to our sailing to secure reservations for four in Murano as part of the celebration package.

Upon arrival the dozen red roses and Dom Perignon were waiting in our cabins. We brought the champagne to the maitre d of Murano the day before our special dinner and they had it chilled and ready for us when we arrived for dinner.

As for the chocolate strawberries and cake, we told our stateroom attendant which dates we wanted them delivered. We opted to skip the breakfast in bed portion of the package and just told our attendant our plans.

Just a note about the cake...IT WAS HUGE...easily could serve 12. For the cake in the other package, we went to guest services to inquire if instead of the next cake being a large one, would it be possible to have two different smaller cakes on different days. To our delight the pastry chefs gladly accommodated our request and we had much smaller cakes that still generously served four.

Hope you have a fantastic birthday celebration!

Diane

Thanks for the quick replies. Yes, we will be prepared for rough seas...our friend has all her seasickness meds ready...but we will hope for smooth seas

hi

We are taking our second transatlantic cruise on the Silhouette this November. Our first was on the same ship back in October 2015 and the sailing conditions from Rome to FLL were perfect. Even the captain would comment in his daily address that if conditions were any better it would be illegal.

This fall we sail from Southampton back to FLL but we sail across much farther north with our first stop being Boston.

I'm wondering what type of sea conditions were experienced by others sailing this route.

Thanks so much Cotswold Eagle!

This really helps.

Hi.

This will be our first cruise out of the UK. We have arranged a pre-cruise flat in Southampton and plan to fly into Gatwick Airport arriving around 9am on Thursday, November 1st. Train schedules don't seem to be available this early in the year, so I'm hoping someone can give me some advice.

We are a party if four adults with manageable luggage travelling from Toronto.

How long should we expect it to take to collect luggage, clear customs and navigate our way to the train after our flight lands at 9:15am...ie what is the earliest train we should expect to catch?

We want to take the lowest fare non stop train. Is it recommended to just arrive at the train station and purchase tickets or do we need to do an online advance purchase?

When doing a mock search from LGW to SOU on a Thursday morning I find many varying fares...some as low as £5 and some over £40. All very confusing to me (here we pay the same fare regardless of the time of travel). Do I need to be leery of the £5 tickets?

Basically we just want the best deal for seats on a direct train (no transfers) with the ability to keep our luggage in sight.

Any advice and tips are much appreciated :)

DL

Sorry. I just looked it up. We actually booked the Barbados Hilton at Caribbeandaypass dot com for $55pp. You can also book the Marriott St Kitts on that site for $50pp. I gave you the wrong info. So sorry.

Thanks for clarifying TeeRick!

:)

Go to resortforaday dot com and book it there

Hi TeeRick.

That's where I went based on your post and that is where I got the information I posted. Am I'm missing something and the $70 price listed on resortforaday is for two people?.. don't see that indicated anywhere, so assume it is a per person cost.

D.

:confused::confused:

This past December we visited these islands on our cruise. In Barbados we went to the Barbados Hilton and got a beach pass ($35 pp) for the day which gave us to chairs, umbrella, towels, a welcome drink and lunch. The beach there is outstanding. You can get your beach pass in advance at resortforaday. On St Kitts we went to a beautiful beach at the Carambola Beach Club. No entry fee but you rent chairs, umbrella, etc and there is a pretty good restaurant there for lunch. They have a website.

Hi.

We've been to Barbados a couple of times and have either visited the beach by the Boatyard or taken a driving tour. The resort option sounds good for our visit in May.

I checked resortforaday and the price for Barbados Hilton is $70 pp ($30 when booking and $40 payable upon arrival at the resort) and includes:

What's Included

• Enjoy Barbados Resort For a Day shore excursion at the Hilton Barbados Hotel while your ship is in port
  
• Arrive as early as 9am
  
• Lunch and a soft drink at the Water’s Edge beach bar
  
• Beaches, pools, whirlpools
  
• Lounges, umbrellas
  
• Towels (no need to bring the ship’s towels)
  
• Non-motorized water sports. These activities include introduction to scuba diving in pool, kiddie snorkeling lessons (kids 8-10) in pool, snorkeling mask, snorkel, fins and vest, boogie boards and kayaks.
  
• Tennis
  
• Fitness center
  
• Outdoor showers are available for casual clean-up
  
• Bathrooms are available for changing
  

I'm guessing these are the same inclusions you had when you went in December. Curious how you get the $35 pp deal? Direct with the resort?

Thanks. D. 😊

It should not be a problem. There will be a form to fill out at guest services.

Thanks very much!

I will be travelling with my brother and his wife. We will be in separate cabins with separate sea pass accounts. I have purchased OBC for myself and I am wondering if I will be able to transfer some of my OBC to my brother as a surprise.

Has anyone recently been able to transfer their refundable OBC to someone else onboard?

Many thanks for any answers.

:)

The only charge we incurred was cashing out our non-refundable obc in the casino. If we hadn't spent it onboard we would've lost it so the 5% was a fair price to pay. I definitely wouldn't want to put leftover refundable obc back on the cc since you may not pay a foreign tx fee but would prob lose out on the conversion to Cdn$. We also saved the refunded US$ for a future trip.

 

Question for you though, is TA-gifted obc non-refundable? I thought that anything purchased by anyone other than Celebrity would be refundable. Our obc was from a Celebrity promo, not from our TA.

Thanks for your reply.

My thoughts exactly with regards to not putting refundable OBC back onto the credit card.

I should have specified that the OBC we are getting from our travel agent is actually from a Celebrity promotion ($75 non-refundable). I'm sure we will have no problem spending that! :)

If you purchase the OBC then it's refundable in US cash from Guest Relations. If you have non-refundable OBC (from a promo or onboard booking) then you can cash it out (in US$) from the cashier at the casino and pay the 5% penalty. We just did this on our Solstice cruise last month.

We have purchased OBC for our cruise plus we will have some OBC from our travel agent. So if I understand you correctly, we can go to Guest Relations at any time during our cruise and request some of our purchased OBC in US cash, but for the TA gifted OBC we have to get the cash from the casino by paying the 5% penalty.

Did GR charge any type of service fee for a cash withdrawal from your account?

We have set up a cash account for our sea pass expenses (done via express pass process). We also have a Sears MC with no foreign transaction fees but I would still rather take any left over OBC home in US cash to save for a future trip.

I called Celebrity this morning about this. If you are using a Canadian Credit Card to pay for the OBC, they will charge $25.00 U.S. and the bank then in turn will charge the going rate, which is closer to 1.36 They do not charge your credit card $30.60 Canadian. If you hear anything different let me know. But this is what they told me.

I am Canadian as well and booked our cruise through a Canadian travel agent. A few months ago I puchased OBC by calling Celebrity.

Back then under Gifts by Celebrity, $25 USD cost $27.20 CDN. :):)

I purchased 40 units for a total of $1000 USD and my Canadian credit card (which DOES charge a fee for foreign exchange) was billed $1088 CDN. So the price listed by Celebrity was what I was charged...there was no conversion.

On our last cruise we had an aqua class cabin with the bed by the balcony which we preferred as it made access to the closet easier. This time we have an inside cabin.

Does the bed location alternate in inside cabins as well? If so does anyone know where it will be in 9150 and 9154 (on the silhouette)?

We've done it on our own, never with a group. If you purchase it you get 6 small martini's of different types, standard, apple, cosmo, etc. as part of the tasting. They are not quite "small", maybe 2 ounces each, and the 6 give you a lot of alcohol.

Hi.

Do you recall the cost for the tasting? And if it is available anytime?

Thanks.

This will be our first time in an inside stateroom...silhouette 9150.

I'm not sure if the celebrity photo of an inside depicts all cabins or not, so hoping some one can help. I checked the sticky but nothing listed for this cabin.

Does anyone know where the bed is located or if there is a sofa (as depicted in the celebrity photo) or just an arm chair?

Many thanks.

For our upcoming cruise on the silhouette we will have a large refundable obc.

Is it possible to obtain cash from our account at guest relations (for extra tips, taxis)? If so, is there a charge for this service?

Or do we have to go to the casino to obtain cash and incur the extra 5% charge?

Thank you very much Hank! We will try your strategy. Much appreciated!

:)

Diane

Thanks euro cruiser!

We now just have to figure out the best way to the Livorno train station...not looking forward to that scramble :(

Hi. I will apologize in advance if I have posted this question in the wrong place. I see that both Hank and cruisemom (who have a wealth of knowledge) are posting here so thought I'd take advantage.

We will be stopping in Livorno on November 1st which is an Italian holiday. We are planning to make our way on our own to Pisa. I had read somewhere that we can get from Livorno Centrale to Pisa Centrale using a regional train ticket that we can buy in advance in Rome and validate in Livorno just before we use it. This would save us the long line ups to purchase our tickets at the Livorno station. Does anyone have experience doing this and if so which train ticket do we purchase etc?

I've also read that getting from the port to the Livorno station can be chaotic...no taxis willing to drive us the short distance and shuttle bus only goes to city centre requiring us to find our way to the train station.

Any tips on how best to make this journey? There will be four of us.

Your help is much appreciated.

Diane

:) Thanks!

Hi.

We are travelling on the Silhouette this fall with friends...can't wait:D

We are Canadian and are also planning to buy some OBC before we travel.

I've read here on cc that the answers you get from Celebrity may change depending on who you speak with when you call, so I'm hoping you won't mind clarifying based on your first-hand knowledge :)

• Was there a specific reason (benefit) to purchase your OBC using a different credit card than the one you registered your account with?
  
• Were you given US cash back from the remaining pre-sail purchased OBC or was the US dollar refund converted to Canadian and then credited to your credit card?
  

Many thanks for your help and I hope you enjoyed your cruise.