Vista 7/1/16 8 day Med Review - a Vista like no other

[darth frosty]

More coming today, I did not see Tandoori

 

Thanks!

[jimbo5544]

Enjoying your pre-cruise planning. How did you find a travel broker?

 

 

They are out there, but to be honest most would not find them. We know of them (the wife and I) because we are both travel agents.

 

 

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[jimbo5544]

Enjoying your pre-cruise planning. How did you find a travel broker?

 

 

If you would like I can give you more information on this offline. Let me know.

 

 

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[dogbert's mom]

Enjoying your review. We booked our Vista cruise in January 2015 and have spend many months planning and hoping we made the right decisions on airfare, hotels, excursion etc. Looking forward to your words of wisdom.

 

Janice

[Micahs Grandad]

If you would like I can give you more information on this offline. Let me know.

 

 

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What is the difference between TA and travel broker?

[jimbo5544]

Enjoying your review. We booked our Vista cruise in January 2015 and have spend many months planning and hoping we made the right decisions on airfare' date=' hotels, excursion etc. Looking forward to your words of wisdom.

 

Janice[/quote']

 

LOL, according to my wife I don't have any words of wisdom..... In reality, you can plan to the nth degree and it could come to down to getting lucky (or not) on some items.

 

Excursions - in the past we mainly stayed with ship offered, especially in the Med (not so easy to get from one port to the other and adding in language issues in times of stress, why do it (we might me in the minority on using this logic). We differed on this trip for two specific reasons. The first was that our group really wanted to customize the excursions (both in terms of itinerary and time spent at some things). Ship based excursions everyone drinks the same Kool aid. The second reason is that I think the excursion companies have become very smart in the way they market, provide high level of service for the product. On our roll call for this cruise I was shocked at the number of people advertising their groups for others to jump into to (there are incentives that the companies throw out there for the people who want to coordinate this (it is a significant effort in doing so). We passed along the savings to people in our group, but my guess is (and it is only that) that others kept the incentive for themselves for doing the work (I have no problem with that, its just not us).

 

Airfare is a crap shoot. You can wait and get lucky or just as easily get burned. You also need to look at what you (or the group in our case) are willing to sacrifice in terms of service/price/stops etc for savings. We wanted direct and from certain airports, so that limited the field down. The one factor with airline cost is that when you see a deal (or perceive it as such) is to jump at it. We noticed significant price swings in really tight time frames.

 

Hotels - for us it really came down to where we wanted to be (near the airport, near downtown etc.) and what we wanted from the hotel in terms of level and service (example does it offer an included breakfast, is it 4 or 5 star, could they handle the number of rooms, were they near mass transit etc.). Hope this helps

[jimbo5544]

What is the difference between TA and travel broker?

 

Good question. TA's use travel brokers. A travel broker may have the option of "packaging multiple items together and getting a price break (usually tied to multiple rooms' date=' but not always) and potentially adding in additional services (baggage transfers are an example in our case. Brokers may have better pricing for the companies they deal with (but not all hotels as an example).

 

Make sense?[/size']

[Micahs Grandad]

Good question. TA's use travel brokers. A travel broker may have the option of "packaging multiple items together and getting a price break (usually tied to multiple rooms, but not always) and potentially adding in additional services (baggage transfers are an example in our case. Brokers may have better pricing for the companies they deal with (but not all hotels as an example).

 

Make sense?

 

It does and someone we have used who calls herself a TA now sounds like a broker.

 

She contracted for a bunch of cabins, purchased some affinity items (cocktail party, better prices) and than set up group pricing for hotel (and cocktail party at hotel) and transfer to ship from hotel.

[jimbo5544]

It does and someone we have used who calls herself a TA now sounds like a broker.

 

 

 

She contracted for a bunch of cabins' date=' purchased some affinity items (cocktail party, better prices) and than set up group pricing for hotel (and cocktail party at hotel) and transfer to ship from hotel.[/quote']

 

 

Maybe, a TA could do the same thing with effort.

 

 

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[Micahs Grandad]

Maybe, a TA could do the same thing with effort.

 

 

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It would appear she does this as sort of a hobby and always comes on the cruises herself so perhaps this is how she pays for her cruising.

[jimbo5544]

It would appear she does this as sort of a hobby and always comes on the cruises herself so perhaps this is how she pays for her cruising.

 

Very possible. There were a couple of posters here (somewhat notorious) who now mainly reside on some media sites who do this (and do it all the time).

[jimbo5544]

Travel Insurance I post on the main page a lot about travel insurance, the need for it and how so many run into problems and say, I did not get insurance but what can I do...... On our group cruises we strongly recommend insurance and on one of this cost and complexity we actually require a waiver if someone opts out.

 

Sadly, one week prior to the cruise, someone in our group developed a medical issue that prevented her (and her travel companion) from sailing with us. We assisted as much as we could before we left, worked with them on the required paperwork and answered and counseled as best we could. It saved them thousands of dollars and much anguish..... it's a great deal.

 

OK, enough of the prelims, on to the cruise!

[jimbo5544]

Travel day

 

We were flying Delta out of JFK. We had booked most of the seats a long time back. During the interim period, Delta changed the time and equipment for our flight. It ended up being later (not so good) and we had to re-juggle seat assignments with the change in equipment. All but 4 people in our group were flying on the same flight (all but two on the way home....) so it made our coordinating that somewhat easier. We had the lion's share of Delta Comfort seats in the red eye over to Barcelona. The flight was scheduled for 9:50 PM and landing around 11:20 the next morning. We arrived at the airport and soon enough we were boarding for the flight to Barcelona. I did not sleep at all (did watch 3+ movies.....) but most did.

Edited July 12, 2016 by jimbo5544

[jimbo5544]

As is the case whenever I fly a red eye, I am in a fog for a while the next day. This was to be no exception. As we exited the plane, pretty much everything was moving in slo mo to me. We stopped before we got to the customs area for people to use the facilities (big mistake) and then moved on to customs. While I had not heard of it before, it seems that a lot of Barcelona go on strike (pretty much whenever they want), for us it was to be the customs officials. There were two handling all planes.... To make matter worse the area was a convergence from what I expect was two separate terminals and the lines merged together. It ended up taking up two hours to get our passports stamped...... not off to a good start.

[jimbo5544]

Luckily we had exchanged contact info with the people who were picking us up and I had texted them of our delays in customs. One of the things we had done in advance was turn on my phone for international with Verizon. There was several options but I chose the one which basically meant my phone was working like home for a 24 hour period for $10. Each day that I turned the phone on again, we got another ten dollar charge but we needed to have the phone for excursion contacts and emergencies.

 

As we made our way down to baggage claim there were three people waiting for us, two guys for the baggage and our main contact. Our bags were ready (probably for about an hour and half, but we showed the guys which ones they were) and headed out into the fresh air and the bus for the ride to the hotel.

[Podna's]

Not even to the cruise yet and enjoying as usual. Thanks for taking the time to post your reviews Jimbo.

[jimbo5544]

Not even to the cruise yet and enjoying as usual. Thanks for taking the time to post your reviews Jimbo.

 

My pleasure!! We are almost to the cruise ;):D I thought people might enjoy how much from a planning perspective a Med cruise is from a Caribbean cruise.

[jimbo5544]

The ride to the hotel was about a half an hour long. We pulled up and went inside. Our room keys were ready, handed out (as part of this service we had taken care of check in in advance knowing that people would not want to wait around and then have to wait for rooms). I was def impressed with how smoothly this all happened, a significant improvement over the customs debacle.

[maryann2]

Very possible. There were a couple of posters here (somewhat notorious) who now mainly reside on some media sites who do this (and do it all the time).

I know who you mean.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this review. I will also be doing the B2B in October.

[kybluecruiser]

Yea!!!!!! I've been waiting for this!!!

[jimbo5544]

I know who you mean.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this review. I will also be doing the B2B in October.

 

I am enjoying doing it (the review), enjoy your B2B

[jimbo5544]

Yea!!!!!! I've been waiting for this!!!

I don't think you will be disappointed in what we have to say about the Vista.:) Still want to cruise with you some day.

[jimbo5544]

As we made our way up to our room, I was reminded we were just dropping things off and then heading back out. We really wanted to adjust to European time ASAP. The rooms were actually quite nice. Here are some pics from the room.

[jimbo5544]

and another

[jimbo5544]

and another