snowmaiden

Thanks, you not only helped the OP, you've helped me too.

 

So, I'm adding select dining reservations on the Celebrity web site...how annoying! I want to do it for every night of our cruise so I have to select 1 night to place in my cart, put in the details, and check out -- and repeat for each night, so 7 times for a 7 day cruise.

 

It would be much easier to select each night, fill in the details, and place in my cart 7 times and check out once.

 

Oh well, at least it can be done without contacting their customer service. :rolleyes:

I discovered totally by accident that on the dining page in the cruise planner, there's a little tiny link that says "plan all cruise dining." If you click on it, you get a calendar showing every night of your cruise. You can make reservations for each night and then just check out once. It's made my life a lot easier since I stumbled upon it!

The ones I've been using for reference are at http://www.thepreismans.com/pan_can_menus.htm#mdr. They're from a 14-day Panama Canal sailing last winter. But I don't think there's anything that says they'll be in exactly the same order on another cruise.

It looks like it was the Mercury. http://www.cruising.org/vacation/news/press_releases/2005/02/alaskas-awesome-scenery-and-wildlife-are-best-showcased-ship-2005

I did call the number for Celebrity website questions, which I had to dig for. (It's 1-800-722-5941, in case anyone else ever needs it.) They pulled up the account associated with this booking number and didn't see my email address anywhere, so they don't know what's going on. There's no way to unsubscribe without unsubscribing my email address from all Celebrity communications, and I do want the emails that are supposed to come to me, so I guess I'm stuck being an armchair traveler from now on! At least this person has really good taste in expensive cruises that I could never afford. Maybe if I can track him down, he'll adopt me and take me along on his adventures in the future. :D

Celebrity has a grand total of 14 menus which change very gradually over time and are virtually identical in all regions where they cruise. The first and last night menus are always the same; otherwise they mix and match from the set for each cruise.

The best link I've found for almost current menus is from the Preismans at http://www.thepreismans.com/pan_can_menus.htm#mdr . They've posted all 14 menus from their Panama Canal cruise last winter, and even have photos of some of the dishes they tried. When you're done looking at the menus, their site is nice to browse in general. Much to my husband's consternation, I've gotten many, many ideas for future cruises from looking at their photos!

lovetotraveltx, with these to jog your memory, maybe you can tell us which menus you had on your recent sailing, and how many changes you saw.

Ok, now I got a booking confirmation for a 7-night cruise leaving from Barcelona next June. I checked to make sure it wasn't on My Celebrity, and it's not. I'm starting to wonder if someone entered their email wrong and it happened to be the same as mine, but that doesn't explain why this never happened before the last few days. Do you think I should call and try to straighten this out? It seems like opening a can of worms, but if it will be an ongoing problem, it's probably better to call earlier rather than later.

In the past few days, I've gotten several emails from Celebrity asking me to complete a survey on my recent 14-day Iceland and Fjords cruise. The problem is that I haven't taken such a cruise, and I haven't even taken my first Celebrity cruise yet! (I've got 83 days and counting until my New England cruise on the Summit.)

It's kind of bittersweet to keep getting asked about something this awesome that I haven't even done. Now if they could just accidentally put the points for this cruise in my Captain's Club account, or even better, implant the memories in my head a la Total Recall, I could really get on board with that. :D

I'm just wondering if this has happened to other people, or if it's something peculiar to me and my account.

Pure buckwheat flour is a dark, dark brown, almost black. (It usually makes me think of chocolate or licorice when I see it.) I've tried making gluten-free pancakes with all buckwheat flour, but the flavor was so strong that I could barely choke them down, and no one else in my family would go near them with a 10-foot pole. All this is a long way of saying that while some crepes are called buckwheat crepes, they actually have only a small percentage of buckwheat flour in them, and the rest is plain old wheat flour. I don't know what gluten-free crepes are made of, but now I'm curious!

I'm sticking with my choice, because I've never had an inside cabin before, and so the idea of being able to pop up one flight of stairs and be on deck anytime I want is very appealing to me.

I've also been scouring the net for this issue, which leads me to believe it's not really a problem, or I would have found some complaints by now. The only thing I did find is a complaint from someone on an S-class ship, who said half the equipment in the fitness center was roped off before 9 am because it was directly over cabins. My husband and I are always up by 7:30, so that's good enough for me!

Thanks! It looks like that thread is a false hit. Someone did mention 9010, but later realized they meant to say 9110. The cabins they're discussing in that thread are farther back and not located under the fitness center. Anyone else?

We've booked 9007 on the Summit, and I've been wondering the same thing.

Just to note, there's an even faster way to do it. If you follow the above process but click on "Plan all cruise dining" instead of "Make a reservation," you get a page with all the days of your cruise listed and can make all your reservations at once. I stumbled upon this once by accident, and now I know to dig around for it every time. It's so much easier than putting each day into your cart one by one!

This is one of those cases where I wish it was possible to delete your own post. I quickly realized after posting this that I hadn't paid enough attention to the terms of the new offer, which only gives extras to verandas, not oceanviews. So my question doesn't even apply to my immediate situation. Still, I'd be curious to know what the experience of other people in this situation has been.

We are already booked in an inside cabin on a New England cruise on the Summit this fall. I've never had an inside cabin before and would strongly prefer an oceanview, but at the time we booked there was just too big of a difference in price between inside and oceanview, even when we factored in the 123go incentive we could get with the oceanview stateroom.

With the new sale starting today, it looks like it's starting to make sense for us to pay the extra money to upgrade to an oceanview, but only if we'll be able to get the free beverage package with it. When I look in the fine print for this offer, it says it's for new bookings only. Since I've had problems getting consistent answers from Celebrity customer service in the past, I thought I'd ask here before making any calls. Have you changed your stateroom from an inside to an oceanview in the recent past, and if so, did they let you add the beverage package (or one of the other 123go incentives) at that time?

I just got off the phone with someone from Celebrity who contacted me after I sent an email to the address in the above post. I'm getting my $300 off, and I don't have to take it as onboard credit! I'm feeling a lot happier now. Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to comment and following along.

Hi, it's the OP here. First, thanks to everybody for your great advice. I looked today and saw that the prices were the same as yesterday, so apparently the sale on inside cabins that Cruise Junky mentioned didn't apply to this sailing. I did call back again today and got a much friendlier and more experienced person. We were still on the phone for 20 minutes, but at least she sounded like she knew what she was talking about! She did see right away that there was a $150 price drop on our cabin, just like I thought I saw. Unfortunately, she says that they're only allowed to refund money for price drops if you call within 48 hours of the original booking. (That seems to conflict with reports I've heard here from other people; can anybody speak to this?) She did say that she thought she could get me the $150 pp as an onboard credit. She put me on hold for quite a while to figure this out. She finally came back and said my name, and the next thing I heard was the dial tone! I'm not sure if she accidentally hung up on me or if my cordless phone dropped the call, but I figured she'd call back, since my phone number must be on my profile, but she never did. So now I'm more confused than ever, and I guess I'm just going to give up at this point.

From my experiences working in customer service, I have a strong suspicion that this kind of run-around is deliberate on the part of management in order to try to save themselves money. I think this policy is short-sighted. Sure, Celebrity has managed to save themselves $300 in the short run, but unless the service we get on this cruise is exemplary, I think I'll be taking my future business to one of the other lines that has treated me more professionally in the past.

It doesn't seem like anyone has answered the OP's question, so I will. I've tried the Cruise Critic price drop feature once, for a cruise that I decided not to take but is still far in the future, and I haven't gotten a single email about it, even though I can see that the price has dropped several times since I set it up. Since I decided to go with a different cruise anyway I haven't thought too much about it, but it certainly seems from my experience like it's not working.

Due to a combination of my recent ill-health and my indecisiveness, I've booked quite a few more cruises in the past few years than I've actually taken, and that's given me experience dealing with customer service agents from several different cruise lines. I've never had a bad experience until today with a Celebrity agent, and now I'm wondering if my experience was typical for Celebrity, or if I just happened to catch someone at the end of a bad day.

I'm booked in an inside stateroom on the Oct. 4th sailing of the Summit to Canada and New England; I made the reservation myself online last fall. The price when we booked was at the upper limits of what we were willing to pay, but it was the itinerary we really wanted and I know that it's a very popular sailing, so we decided to go for it. I'm not as religious at checking for price drops as some people are around here, but I did check today and it looked to me like there was a small price drop of about $150 per person for inside staterooms on our cruise. It's not that much, but since the higher categories of staterooms are all sold out already, I'm pretty sure the price isn't going to drop any more, so I decided to call and ask if the price could be adjusted.

In the past with other lines, when I've called and said that there was a price drop on my cruise, the agent looked it up, said that she saw it too, and that she would change our invoice to reflect the new price. That's not what happened today. Instead, the agent I spoke to grilled me about where I'd been looking and exactly what price I'd paid originally and what the new price was, and then put me on hold for over ten minutes. Then she came back, told me she needed to look some more, and put me on hold for another long stretch of time. The conclusion she came to is that there was no price drop that she could find, but she sounded really confused about the different figures on my invoice and what they all meant.

Maybe she's right, but since it was really hard for me to follow her explanation of what was going on and she sounded really confused about the whole thing, it was hard for me to take her at her word. I've worked in customer service myself, and to me, she sounded like an inexperienced agent who's been thrown on the telephones before she was really ready. If so, I have total sympathy for her and don't blame her at all, but rather the company put her in that situation.

My question to the Cruise Critic hive mind: is this a typical experience with Celebrity customer service or not? (If so, I have to say it doesn't give me a good feeling about them compared to other cruise lines I've dealt with.) Also, would it be worth my while to call back tomorrow at a different time of day and start over with someone fresh, or is that kind of thing frowned upon?

Thanks for this very informative post. I've recently figured out that wheat is a migraine trigger for me, so while I'm not gluten intolerant and can stand to eat small amounts of wheat with no ill effects, If I want to eat bread, pasta, pizza, etc. on our upcoming Summit cruise, it will need to be gluten-free. Hopefully the better bread you mention will have found its way onto the Summit by next fall. Thanks again for taking the time to write this up. It's much appreciated!

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Wow, it seems I really opened a can of worms here. The first time I started a thread on CC, I was really afraid of getting flamed, but everyone was actually very nice and polite, which made think it would be safe to post this question. I guess my luck had to break at some point!

First of all, I have no intention of using anything but distilled water. My husband has requested some for his CPAP anyway, so having access to it throughout the cruise will not be a problem. (On the last cruise we took, he only used a tiny amount of the gallon of distilled water they gave him over the course of the week, so I'm sure there will be plenty to go around.) I am also not asking whether I should do nasal irrigation or what kind of solution I should use. My doctor has already answered those questions to my satisfaction. I was simply asking if there was an easy way to warm the water without a microwave. If answering that question seems too much like "dispensing medical advice" to some people, then all I can say is that I would hate to find myself in conversation with any of them over dinner, as the list of topics they would feel qualified to talk about is probably pretty small! (The example I'm imagining right now: "How was the weather today in port?" "I don't know. I can't say, as I'm not a meteorologist.")

Thanks to those people who suggested I warm the distilled water by heat transfer. That makes a lot of sense to me, so I'll try it the first night and see how it goes. Sorry to have started such a tempest in a teapot. (Or should I say Neti-pot?)

My doctor has asked me to do nasal irrigation every day for a month to see if it helps me. I need to use distilled water heated up to right around body temperature and then add a packet of saline solution. I just realized that there won't be a microwave on the ship for me to heat up the water. I suppose I could use warm tap water, but I'm concerned that it won't be pure enough. I'm sure out of everybody reading this, someone else has dealt with this problem. How did you handle it?

(The devil on my shoulder is telling me to just skip it during the cruise, since I don't feel it's doing me any good and I really hate the sensation it causes, but I'm trying to listen to the angel on the other shoulder instead.)

By the way, I found this blog post from a gluten-free woman who toured the galley on the Coral to be very helpful. It took a lot of digging for me to find, so I thought I'd put the link here for the benefit of people who find this thread in the future.

http://www.foxinthekitchenblog.com/blogpost/2013/11/blogpost-coral-princess-galley-tour-cruising-gluten-free/

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Since you've been so helpful to me, I thought I should give you a status report. I finally got in to see the allergist today, and all my pricks were completely negative except for the control. I'm greatly relieved to find out that I have no risk of anaphylaxis after all, which has been the main thing plaguing me. I still don't want to have any nasty stomach problems while I'm on vacation, and I still need to see a gastroenterologist when we get back to find out exactly what is making me so sick, but I think I can finally relax and enjoy my cruise. Only nine days to go!

Thanks to all of you who replied so far! I do have an appointment with an allergist for next week; I'm sure he'll give me some advice on what to do if I find myself reacting to something, and possibly an epi-pen, if he thinks I need one. So far, my responses have been largely confined to the GI tract, but last weekend I did experience chest tightness and itching after eating something I later figured out had soy in it. This was my "ah-ha" moment when I finally realized I was dealing with a true allergy and not just a food intolerance. I'd been trying to cut soy out of my diet anyway, since I thought it was probably responsible for the nausea and indigestion I'd been experiencing for the past few months, but once I realized it was a true allergy, I went cold turkey and cut all the sources out of my diet that I can find. (I filled a big box with rejects from my cupboard, which my college-age stepson will be happy to take off my hands!) Now that I'm weaned off of soy, though, I seem to be reacting to even the tiniest amounts, like as a filler in vitamins and in the wax coatings on produce. Fortunately, now that I'm hypersensitized, I can usually tell right away when I'm getting that "soy feeling," so if I eat slowly enough, I can stop before I have a major attack, which involves 18-36 hours of nausea and indigestion. (Not the way I want to spend my time in Alaska!)

If anyone else has anything to add, feel free to chime in.

My husband and I have been planning our cruise to Alaska on the Coral Princess for almost a whole year. Just three weeks before we're due to fly out, I found out I have a soy allergy. At first we were considering cancelling, but once the soy cleared my system, I felt better than I had in years, so we decided to go ahead with our plans after all.

I've marked the spot in the Cruise Personalizer for a food allergy, although the instructions say it needs to be done 35 days in advance, so it may have been too late to do any good. I've also looked through the forums to try to get a feel for how Princess handles food allergies. I've found lots and lots of threads about gluten intolerance, and quite a few about dairy allergies. From these, I got an idea of how the process works in general. But I haven't found much specifically about soy allergies, at least not in adults. (I did find quite a few threads where someone with a soy allergy promised to report back once their cruise was over, but it didn't appear than any of them ever had. I hope this doesn't mean what I think it means. :eek:)

Here's the thing: I'm still pretty new to figuring out what I can safely eat, and I still sometimes mess up and have to face the consequences. (Fortunately, my allergy is not life-threatening, but it does lead to very painful gastrointestinal side effects, which I'd rather not have interrupt my Alaskan fun!) I would really love to hear from other people who've been in similar circumstances and find out how many and what type of modifications they really needed to the regular menu. It's almost impossible to find processed foods or chain restaurant foods that don't have soy additives in them, but my feeling is that Princess makes almost everything from scratch, so maybe I have less to worry about than I think I do. Does anyone have any experience with this?