Hyundaigirl

We've only done 1 Azamara cruise and that was this past October on Journey and prior to that only 1 previous cruise on HAL's Noordam. Other than Prime C, we didn't find the food to be exceptional. We thought he MDR food was average compared to HAL as was the food out at the pool deck.

We sailed on the journey in October, 2014. We are Elite status on Celebrity and were given ample free minutes on the Journey. The service was excellent and frankly we could not possibly use all the minutes provided. If you sail fairly frequently on either Azamara and/or Celebrity the perks are rather generous.

We had just the opposite experience on Journey in October - we paid for our minutes and the WIFI was horrible - thankfully we had a shipboard credit we were using.

Our first cruise was on HAL Noordam in 2010 and we loved it. Sailed on Azamara Journey in October and we were not wowed. I mean it was fine but we didn't think that the food was as good as HAL and for us the ship was just too small. But thats just our opinion. I know lots of people love Azamara but we didn't feel it lived up to our expectations.

Hi Midwestchick too bad we missed you at the meet and mingle - we would have loved to meet all the roll callers on the 27th sailing but as I posted earlier we didn't get the invite with the info and not having sailed ACC previously wouldn't have thought to look for it in Pursuits the very first day.

Hi all - turns out it was in fact held on embarkation day at 6 pm. Spoke to Cindy and apparently our invite never made it to our room. And because our previous experience on HAL was to get an invite in the cabin it didn't occur o me to look at the schedule i Pursuits on embarkation day with everything else happening. On HAL is was held several days in to the cruise. Oh week - maybe next cruise :)

Well after months of a pretty active roll call courtesy of Midewestchick we had more than 25 signed up for the meet and greet but its now the 3rd day into our Sept 27th Malta and Sicily cruise and no info on a meet up. We asked at guest relations this aft and the woman I spoke to didn't know what I was talking about so she asked someone else who said nothing had been set up for this cruise. Disappointing that we won't be able to meet the all the folks we've been conversing with over the last number of months. :confused:

if anyone else on board is connected have you heard anything ?

Carol and lorrie in stateroom 6020

Thanks everybody! Panic has subsided and the countdown has begun in earnest! Flight to Rome tomorrow night and then on the Journey on Saturday for our 1st Azamara cruise!

Ok I'm in countdown mode and a bit panicky. We added some stress to all of this by moving the week before our cruse which leaves this Saturday the 27th. I've printed the tags and I can't for the life of me remember when I put the cruise tags on the luggage the last time we cruised back in 2010.

Should I put them on just before we head out to the port? We're arriving in Rome a day early and will head out from our rome hotel on Saturday morning.

Thanks

We will be in Rome in May. I emailed them 2 days ago and was SHOCKED to get a reply confirming our tour the very next day. I wasn't expecting a reply so soon. We were only able to give them 2 dates and were delighted one of them was confirmed.

Shocker - I opened my e-mail this morning and the confirmation from the Scavi office was there! Based on everyone else's timing I didn't think we'd get a reply until June. I had submitted my request on January 11th for October.

I had given them 3 dates and got 9am on October 7th (my birthday :)) So excited! Now I can start planning the rest of our Rome stay around that date/time.

So it does look like the time frame for confirmation is about 3 months in advance. Our request is for October so I'll be watching my email and hopefully will get our confirmation in June.

I agree...great advice!

Thats exactly what we intend to do on our cruise in September.

If it helps to know ... our data points for the Scavi tour:

 

We traveled off season (late October). I was unable to get an email to them with my home email, but using a gmail account it went through with no problems (not sure why that happened).

 

Sent my request (the one that finally went through) on Sep 1 and had a confirmation on Sep 2 for a tour on Oct 28.

 

As I understand, it helps if you can give them more than one date to check, and use your finest pleasantries in the correspondence.

 

Best of luck - a highlight of our trip!

Thanks - I did give them 3 dates so hopefully it won't be too too long before we hear something.

I need help! We are docking in Civitavecchia, want to spend the day touring Rome, and ending up at a hotel near the Airport since we leave the next day. Any advice on how we can do this? Are there any companies that will pick us up at the dock, give us a tour, and take us to the hotel? Or any other ideas on how to accomplish this?

I believe that Rome Cabs (http://www.romecabs.com) will do this sort of tour for you. They have quite a detailed website and they do airport/port transfers in addition to private tours. We have used them in the past for transfers and they're excellent and we have just rebooked them for our cruise in September.

Check them out on Tripadvisor - great reviews.

I received my reservation with tour time and instructions Tuesday for the tour on 2 May 2014. I sent the reservation request in June of 2013.

Thanks for that information - that was good to know. So it looks like they confirm about 3 or so months in advance. And I thought I sent my request early! So I'll expect to hear from them around June.

Thanks again! :)

Thanks - problem is that they don't actually tell you when to send the request, only that you have to send it well in advance. Hopefully we aren't waiting months for a confirmation because it kind of handcuffs you when trying to book other tours.

I did get the autoreply almost immediately and then added that address to my contacts so that any further e-mails didn't get caught up in my junk folder.

I'll let you know once I her something.

Hi all - yes....another question about the Scavi tour.

We are doing a cruise at the end of September and then spending several days in Rome afterwards during the 1st week of October. I had read that you had to submit your request for the Scavi tour well in advance so I sent my email about 12 days ago ( about 9 months in advance). I got the auto reply from them almost immediately but I'm wondering how long I'll have to wait for a confirmation? It sounds like most people submit their request about 3 months in advance and get a confirmation fairly quickly.

For those of you who have done the tour, how far in advance did you send your request and how long did you wait for the confirmation?

Thanks

Can I suggest if you are not in any hurry to get off the ship that you head to the dining room for a lovely peaceful breakfast, you will need to check the opening times I think the latest you will be allowed to stay on the ship will be around 9.45am.

 

Jean

Great suggestion - we always loved breakfast in the dining room!

Thanks - that's about the time I recall from our last cruise.

Can you carry your own luggage off? Or do you have to leave the bags out the night before?

Hi all - we will be staying in Rome for a few days after our cruise and I'm just planning transfers. We plan to use Rome Cabs again as they were excellent when we used them on our last cruise back on HAL in 2010.

I tried to do a search on this topic and couldn't find what I was looking for. Since we aren't in any big rush to get off the ship i.e. don't need to get to the airport for a flight, what time can we actually disembark? Is 9:30 or 10 am reasonable? How does Azamara handle this process?

Many thanks.

Deirdre - fabulous review. Thank you so much for taking so much time to write the review and post the photos. My husband and I will be newbies on Azamara on the Journey in September. If we weren't looking forward to it before we certainly are now. That Welcome Aboard cake looked "azamazing"!

Carol

What is the deadline for cancelling the Azamazing even if you so choose? I believe I read somewhere if you sign up and don't show up, there is a charge. Is this correct?

Hi - this is the cancellation policy on the Land Discoveries site - this was shown as the Terms and Conditions for the Azamazing Evening:

Terms and Conditions

Cancellations: Because Azamara Club Cruises incurs costs for each participating guest, we ask that you let us know by no later than 10:00 PM the previous day if you decide not to attend. Confirmed guests who do not cancel by this deadline and do not show up will be assessed a cancellation fee of $100 per person. Onboard Credits (OBCs) cannot be used to pay for cancellation fees.

"Try" is a lot different than "I had no problem doing this, so you should be able to as well". Which was the message in your post.

 

Locator information is just that....the way to locate the ticket. It is not a) the ticket number, b) the fare basis, c) the fare rules, or d) anything else other than the way to find the reservation. And even then, it's only the locator for one airline/GDS system - I've had itineraries with five different locators, each for a separate airline in the ticket.

Hey FlyerTalker - I'm not going to get into an argument with you. But if the original poster has concerns about being able to book the seats then all I'm suggesting is its worth a try calling the airline. Thats all I meant.

The logistics of the Azamazing evenings and some of these reviews have led us to our decision to forego the one scheduled for our cruise in September in Sorrento.

We will have just returned from a day long excursion to Capri and the ship will be tendered there. We just didn't want to get in to the potential issue of getting several hundred people off a ship on tenders. I hope its lovely for the people who plan to go but we'll just go back and chill on the ship.

WRONG.

 

It depends on the fare basis of the ticket, not if you have the locator.

 

Perhaps it was the correct fare basis in your case, but that is NOT the case for all AC tickets.

I still think its worth a try.

We have a flight booked coming up with Air Canada and we aren't sure if there are seat assignments already for us or not. Does anyone know if we get to choose our seats or when we can find out this info? When I sign in on the website there is no way of telling, and our TA isn't answering any of my questions about this.

Thanks!!

 

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Hi if you do have a booking reference or locator code - it's a 6 digit combo of letters and numbers - call air canada reservations now and ask to select your seats. I did this recently on choice air flights to Rome. Choice air couldn't select seats for me and I couldn't do it on line on their site either. But it was a piece of cake to call AC give them the booking reference and I had my seats in a matter of minutes. Even if you don't have the number trying calling anyway as there might be some other way to locate the booking code.