Squadra03

With the ships always trying to out do each other with new features and novel ideas why not have a few escalators?

 

I would think that it would eliminate some of the elevator congestion and help get passengers to trivia and bingo faster, 🙄 or the buffet. 🤗

 

Happy cruising 🌊🚢🇺🇸🌅

NCL EPIC has escalotors!

Hello, Celebrity friends,

DH and I will be sailing on the Equinox in July. We'll be in AquaClass dining in Blu. Since my last X sailing in 2012 I've been diagnosed with celiac (gluten allergy). Has anyone had any experience with X accommodating a gluten-free diet, particularly in Blu and the Oceanview Cafe (buffet)? Also, if I were to order cheese and crackers in the afternoon, would I need to bring my own GF crackers and other snacks?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Ted

 

 

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Hello,

I must eat gluten free too, my opinion is that X does a great job in supporting you at breakfast and dinner in Blu (we always book aqua class). I don't have any experience in the MDR.

Oceanview, I went my own way and looked what i thought was safe, sometimes asking questions but on my 3 gluten free cruises I had, I experienced never any problems.

In Blu, go speak with the headwaiter the first time you enter the restaurant. From than on they showed me the menu for the after and let me already pick my meal and they made it gluten and lactose free for me.

I agree that surely this is the problem - a lot of the booking rules are different when applied to Europeans, especially when it comes to deposits, promotions, cancellation and price drop rules.

We had two similar situations when trying to book onboard ( other bookings went perfectly well): Once we booked a cruise with lots of perks included and OBC on top. A day later the cruise sales representative shamefacedly told us that he had made a mistake because the promotion only was offered to American and Canadian residents. When he tried to make the booking complete Miami denied him doing this. As the price without the perks was definitely too high we cancelled the booking when still onboard.

The second time the cruise sales rep noticed himself that it was not possible to give us the reduced deposit offered when booking onboard because again it was something only possible for the US market.

Ok, this can be the case but in the end they granted what they promised.

On the papers we have there's nowhere mentioned that it would be only applicable to US or Canadian citizens.

The rep knew we were Belgians and our Belgian TA is even mentioned on the papers.

If this would be the reason there is need for a better training of their sales people and to mention these conditions on their contracts.

I hope you have learned a salient lesson here. Before coming to an online forum / blog to complain about action or lack of action of a company go through the process of resolution first and then if it unresolved express your concern.

By raising this thread you have caused some degree of dissent and bad mouthed a company when there was no need.

You engaged a Travel Agent to deal with your bookings and they appear to have done their job no thanks to your unsubstantiated ranting and raving

Dear Beanb41, I disagree with your comment.

X has first turned down multiple times our request before I posted this. Than it took another 3 weeks to finally give what was stated on our papers and what we booked and paid for! In total it took them 5 weeks... .

If you call this unsubstantiated ranting and raving!?

Next to this each answer took days to get it, between the verbal agreement and the written agreement there was also 3 working days... .

In the end we were just asking if other people had the same problems!

Thank you for your comment.

Talking about going off topic ...

I just got the news from our TA that they managed to solve the problem with "X".

We get the cruise at the promised prices AND with the promised extra perks!

Alaska, here we come!

I would appreciate some information regarding how well gluten free foods are handled, particularly in the buffet. Are the staff well versed in knowing if particular items are gluten free or are the items labeled etc?

 

I'm also interested to know how room service and the main restaurant handles the same situation and what gluten free items are freely available.

 

Thanks.

I'm also not celiac, but I am intolerant for grains (wheat) and lactose.

We did 3 cruises with Celebrity and all went great!

I am even choosing more and more cruises instead of land based vacations because the care on the ships is much better than on land based vacations.

So "X" is doing great on this side and you can really see their personnel is trained. Because we choose all the time aqua class they have me the menu for the next day every evening, i could already choose my food and they prepared it wheat/grain free and lactose free.

Couple of things spring to mind. Did you transfer your booking to your TA within the 60 day allowable time frame in order for you to keep all your benefits.

 

You might try sending an email to concerns@celebrity.com This email goes into head office in Miami

Even better, my TA is mentioned on the papers I got from X while booking on board!

Sorry for your experiences with this booking.

 

We never had a problem with our on-board booking, but we never changed sailings as we understood that the potential for loss of 'perks would happen (the fine print on our contract'.

 

We also understood that using the offered OBC for current sailing would cause us to lose deposit on the future cruise should we change or not take the original new cruise, again fine print.

 

We chose not to book right away on-board until we understood the 'pitfalls', if any, as the on-board sales people are just that, sales people who are in some cases, looking to make the sale for their commission, I want to emphasize that NOT all X's OB sales people are that way, and has NEVER been our experience.

 

I trust you find someone at X who can further help you out in this situation ....

 

bon voyage

Hello,

thanks for your answer but just to make it clear.

They said (and we have it on paper) we can change the cruise and not loose our perks. That's why we agreed to pay a little bit more than the web listed pricing, because we understood this.

But to us it seems very strange that one celebrity employee tells like this and the other one tells something else and it takes far too long time to get an answer eacht time. In the meantime the cruise price goes up and than again (because they didn't want to book it earlier) we should pay the difference.

For me this is Kafka...

During our last "X" cruise in 2015 we payed onboard 160 euros downpayment for a next cruise. This after having had multiple "invitations" by letters to our cabin.

The future sails, sales guy told us we only had to pay 160 euros downpayment and for our next cruise we would get:

1) classic beverage package

2) free gratuities

3) 300 OBC for the first person and 150 OBC for the second person

Although we didn't want to link a cruise to this downpayment they said this was necessary and they randomly added a Caribbean cruise to our booking but we got on paper that the booking was changeable.

Now we wanted to book an Alaska cruise with Celebrity and the problems started.

1) Price mentioned in aqua class A1 on the website was around 2.500 euros but we should pay 2.619 a person to also get the things they promised.

To me this sounded awkard, but X told us that we booked at basic prices and we could not use the promotion of their website combined with the already booked cruise.

At the end we said ok and tried to book this cruise via our TA for 2.619 euros but WITH the 3 benefits. This was two weeks ago.

The onboard sales guy of X also told us that booking via our normal TA was not a problem, this was also even mentioned on the papers we have.

2) Our TA gave in this booking but it got refused, the 2.619 + the 3 benefits could not be granted. It took us more than 1 week to get on ok on that one...

3) But in the meantime the price of the cruise has changed to 2.700 and something a person so because we weren't booked yet, we should now pay 2.700 euros to get the 3 benefits... ???!!!

This is already 200 more than the first price mentioned on their website, like this it totally useless to book this future sailings.

Did anybody experience the same kind of things with future sailings bookings or what is going on?

X told us that paying back the downpayment is not an option, like this we feel like held hostage... .

We totally don't understand the slow reaction times of Celebrity, this gives totally no customer satisfaction. Each time it takes 2 to 3 days to get a reaction from them.

We were quite big Celebrity fans in the past with 3 (all in aqua class) out of 4 cruises made with X but when you threat customers like this they might go explore other options... .

Seen that we are still in our 30's, we might still book a lot of cruises with them, but customer satisfaction seems not so important to X.

If you make promises you should keep them...

If anybody would have experienced the same thing in the past or now, please tell us what you did to clear up the situation?

Mostly Scottish passengers that week, so don't expect any footy :)

I heard they asked the entertainment manager to screen the log throwing contests instead of the EC play-offs...

NCL in Europe have a license for a 24 hour sports channel which shows live F1, tennis and premier league football. They regularly show football in bars etc, and if not you should be able to watch in your stateroom.

 

Whether or not that sports channel have license to show the Euro play offs is another matter.

 

Being a Northern Ireland fan I have no such worries... we don't do play offs :)

Being Belgian, the same story here, we just win our group without being in need of play-offs.

Although if you are Dutch, you would still be extremely happy to make in into the play-offs! :-):D

I mis-read this thread title as "Any aqua class passengers who DIED in Blu recently?"!!! I thought " I hope not!!!" Oops.

Just a couple each cruise...:D

The Constellation will dock at Civitavecchia at 5:00 am on a Wednesday morning in April. I know it's about 90 minutes to get to the airport in Rome using private transportation. Need to be there 3 hours in advance for flight to the U.S. If we get ourselves and luggage off the ship, is it feasible to catch a noon flight?

Hello, just did the same thing when coming off the Equinox.

7 o'clock appointment with shore excursions in Italy. Carried our own luggage of board and around 8:15 we where already in the Rome airport.

There was recently a fire in one of the buildings of the Da Vinci of Fiumicino airport (two names for the same airport) but this doesn't influence intercontinental flights. We had to check in in one building and go to another building to board since boarding area of that building was getting cleaned after the fire, but we didn't have any problem to make it to our 11:30 flight.

We are 1 month back from an Equinox cruise, our 3d cruise in Aqua and for us we had the best Blu experience ever!

Nothing weird about the food, but delicious well thought menus.

I've heard lots of people say that they take the ship's excursions because if anything happens to cause a delay, the cruise line will hold the ship. I understand that.

 

However, I'm wondering if anyone on a private tour has ACTUALLY been returned to the port after your ship has left? I'm not looking for a hypothetical but actual experience of it happening.

 

Would you mind sharing the details and how did you meet up with the ship later?

 

Thank you.

Only did 3 cruise but all of them packed with private tours, never missed the ship. We were always minimum 45 minutes for last boarding time back on the ship. So nothing to worry about!

I had many Dragonflies there April 17-27.... So yummmy

Great news, X announce they will close and replace it but I'm happy it will still be there this cruise!

Leaving next Monday on an Equinox cruise I would like to know if the molecular bar will still be there?

I want a dragonfly!!! 😜

Yeah I'm 100% sure we paid it upfront. We were given the choice by the company we booked the cruise through to either pay it up front or pay it once we get on board. She said that regardless, it's a charge we have to pay so we just paid it ahead of time.

 

That's why I was so confused by all the posts that mention tipping even though they already paid this charge. I specifically searched for tipping and read threads about it but it seems like everyone tips for so much on board even when they have also paid this charge. So I have trouble understanding it. Like people talking about tipping the guy that comes to your room for things, tipping wait staff etc. I don't want to be THAT person, the one that doesn't do it when everyone else does, but... we already paid for it.

 

It's so confusing. haha

 

So it's just extras that you tip for, things that aren't included. For example, if we get coffee delivered to our room in the morning, we tip the guy... because it's not something that just automatically comes with the cruise.

 

Also, what about that guy, I forget what he's called... the guy that is in charge of doing things for you in your cabin. I see a lot of people talking about giving them something at the end of the cruise, and that they pretty much expect it. Is that the norm?

 

We are moving to the US soon, so I guess we really need to get used to this tipping business! :P

Hey,

here's my advice from your neighbouring country Belgium so also here we don't have a big tipping culture.

We pay the tips or gratuities upfront and than we don't tip extra for every single thing we do.

Where do we tip extra:

1) where we receive extra ordinary service

2) we tip always our stateroom attendant in the beginning of a cruise and when he was really good we leave some cash on the bed at the end of the cruise and also sometime each couple of days, really depending the service they give you

It's all up to you and how you feel. These guys, most of the time, don't earn really much and give you a very good service, that's why we, now and than, give them something extra... .

I have my main tickets booked for my upcoming cruise, but I will need a one-way ticket for an internal European flight.

 

The price for a one way ticket is 20% more than the price for a return trip ticket for this intra-European flight.

 

Does anyone have any experience with booking a return ticket, and then not showing up for the return portion of the flight? Will there be any problems if I phone and cancel the return portion of the ticket after I have completed the outbound leg of the trip? Will the airline try to charge me for the difference in price, i.e. charge me for the extra 20% the one way flight would have cost.

 

Does Choice Air ever sell tickets for an intra-European flight?

 

I appreciate any help or suggestions you might be able to provide.

 

Thanks!!

Living in Europe and flying quite a lot for the job, I do this all the time. Never had any problems. I never cancelled the return flight.

Another trick you can use because tickets tend to be cheaper when you stay longer and there is a WE included and when you have to go twice in a short period to the same place is buying two tickets in reversed order. EG:

You buy one return ticket Brussels - Rome and a return ticket Rome Brussels.

You go with your first leg of your first ticket (brussels - rome), you return with your first leg of your second ticket (rome-brussels). You go the second time with the return of your second ticket (brussels - rome) and than you return with the return ticket of your first ticket (rome - brussels).

Also this one can save a lot of money in the strange world of airline tickets price setting... .

Dragonfly is my favorite, my wife likes the coming up roses and lucky cat!

Luckily one more cruise to go to taste my last dragonflies... :-)

Many may laugh at this post, but Connie is currently sailing her annual Big Nude Boat Cruise (Feb 12-21). True story.

 

So all decks are topless, and well, bottomless too. :D

 

Not a bad itinerary, and a longer one too.

 

I wonder what happens when somebody yells "bottoms up" at the bar during this cruise?

I refuse to cruise with anyone that discriminates in this way:p:D;).

rofl!!!:):):)

Third Equinox cruise coming up, no further comments!

binoculars provided are a nice childrens toy... nothing to do with real binoculars...

Hey!

i'm also quite 'difficult' eater mostly due to some food allergies.

We cruised 'X' 2 times and both time in Aqua. It comes so far that Aqua is the only option for us...

You have all the nice benefits you have already read in the previous posts but purely foodwise in Blu it is very very good.

Because they have their own kitchen you can request the menus with no sauce or another sauce or mix some things or leave things away, etc etc etc

Don't be scared, I don't eat seafood myself. I was already dining around 22 times in Blu and I only picked one time the steak because I had difficulties to find something. And as already many times commented you can always fall back to the traditionals (steak, chicken breast and salmon).

I have never been on Carnival but saw many of their ships in harbour. I think personally that X is better for a romantic getaway... .

The only problem that might occur... you don't want to go back to cruising without blu...

Blu is so much nicer than the louder and hectic ambiance of an MDR...