Transfers with Celebrity - help :-)

[Presto2]

Hi, we don't normally book transfers and flights with Celebrity now, but as everything was 'up in the air' last April 2018 with Brexit we decided to book the whole package with Celebrity for our cruise in August.

 

We have a 3 night stay in Rome before we sail and have transfers as follows:

 

Airport to the hotel classed a 'dedicated cruise private transfer'

Hotel to Port and Port to airport classed as a 'private transfer'

 

We know that we will  not be on a coach but are wondering if anyone knows what the difference is re the 'dedicated cruise private transfer' and the 'private' one.

 

Similarly, re the transfer to the ship can we dictate what time we want the transfer as we are guessing it is by taxi and don't want it to be a silly time like we had once

on a coach transfer when we didn't get picked up until 2 pm. That was the only other time we have booked transfers with Celebrity.

 

Thanks

[jelayne]

How do you know it is a transfer for your party only? If there are a number of others who have booked the same pre-cruise package then I would think that it would be a

van  or coach depending upon the number of people.  

 

We have only done 1 pre-cruise Hotel & transfer with Celebrity.  We were transported from the hotel to the port in a large coach.  We made a stop at another hotel to pick up others that had also booked a pre-cruise stay through Celebrity.

[Presto2]

10 minutes ago, jelayne said:

How do you know it is a transfer for your party only? If there are a number of others who have booked the same pre-cruise package then I would think that it would be a

van  or coach depending upon the number of people.  

 

We have only done 1 pre-cruise Hotel & transfer with Celebrity.  We were transported from the hotel to the port in a large coach.  We made a stop at another hotel to pick up others that had also booked a pre-cruise stay through Celebrity.

 

Hi, it says private on all documentation and when we booked we were told it was not a coach transfer. The first one classed as a 'pre cruise private transfer' is special because there was no one else at all that day apparently.  The other one I am guessing is like we did a few years back where it was a van with just another couple, but who knows, we are trying to find out what this all means on their website and can't find anything.

 

If we find out it is a coach we will sort our own transfers to the ship out with RomeCabs ---- it would cost more but never again will be do a coach transfer.

[ipeeinthepool]

45 minutes ago, Presto2 said:

If we find out it is a coach we will sort our own transfers to the ship out with RomeCabs ---- it would cost more but never again will be do a coach transfer.

 

I'm not a fan of buses but at this point, I'd say just relax you'll be on vacation.  The bus will get you to the port in plenty of time.

[Presto2]

11 minutes ago, ipeeinthepool said:

 

I'm not a fan of buses but at this point, I'd say just relax you'll be on vacation.  The bus will get you to the port in plenty of time.

 

It was our first special cruise. Silhouette was brand new and it was her first proper cruise. We stayed in Rome for 2 nights and had a coach transfer. I think it was 2 pm. Then the coach got stuck in the streets because of cars and couldn't move. Then some locals and the coach driver literally bumped a car off the pavement after a while. We got to the ship just within half an hour of muster drill. Never again. Felt like we lost the first day.

 

After that we always took ourselves, got there before noon and had a wonderful embarkation day. :-)

 

 

[ipeeinthepool]

15 hours ago, Presto2 said:

 

It was our first special cruise. Silhouette was brand new and it was her first proper cruise. We stayed in Rome for 2 nights and had a coach transfer. I think it was 2 pm. Then the coach got stuck in the streets because of cars and couldn't move. Then some locals and the coach driver literally bumped a car off the pavement after a while. We got to the ship just within half an hour of muster drill. Never again. Felt like we lost the first day.

 

After that we always took ourselves, got there before noon and had a wonderful embarkation day. 🙂

 

 

 

I hear you and I understand.  I am also someone who would rather make all of my own travel arrangements and the arrangements almost never include buses.  Given a choice, I will take a private car if it is at all reasonable but things can even happen with private cars.  Last summer we stayed in central London prior to a cruise leaving Southampton on a Saturday morning.  I figured the car would get us to the port in a little over an hour.  However there was a military parade in London and lots of road construction and numerous roads were closed.   Our driver would drive for a while and we would hit a closed road, so we would turn around and try another way only to find construction.  So we would turn around again.  We repeated this several times and it took well over an hour to get out of central London. Our trip was a lot closer to 3 hours.  Is this an everyday occurrence, probably not and neither was your bus problem.  Delays are possible no matter what option you select.   It's all a part of traveling in new places.  Both you and I need to just relax and go with the flow.  If you are going to worry about the details, you should just cancel the Celebrity arrangements now and arrange your own.  Good Luck.

[Presto2]

3 hours ago, ipeeinthepool said:

 

 Both you and I need to just relax and go with the flow.  If you are going to worry about the details, you should just cancel the Celebrity arrangements now and arrange your own.  Good Luck.

 

We will stay with their transfer. The flight times with Jet2 are brilliant and apart from the transfer to the ship they should be ok. We've decided that we will check with the rep. in the hotel when we get there about the transfer arrangements on embarkation day. I suppose we could cancel that one and do our own thing. Thinking back we once did that , told the rep that we would not be on the coach and booked our own taxi.

 

Still don't understand what the difference is between a cruise private transfer and a private transfer. Keep looking but can't find it !!

[Chanbre]

We cruised from Rome to Barcelona in May 2019, including two days pre-cruise in Rome and two days post-cruise in Barcelona. Our whole trip, including flights from and to the UK was organised by Celebrity. They organised four private cars for the four transfers to-and-from the two hotels. My wife and I were the only passengers in each car. All four transfers were great. Three were at the scheduled time, or even a few minutes early. We had to wait about 40 minutes after the scheduled time at Barcelona port, but that was probably due to the traffic as there were three cruise ships in the port. The transfer agent (at the kerbside, outside the terminal building) had our name on his list and said the car was on the way but was delayed due to traffic.

 

There was a Celebrity representative at the hotel in Rome, we spoke to her to check on our transfer. It seemed that she was looking after people who had book through Celibrity's USA office. She had no information about us as we had booked through a UK tour agent and Celebrity UK. Her USA passengers were going to be taken by coach leaving at about midday. Our private car left at 10:30am and we were onboard the Constellation a little before 12:00.

 

We stayed at the Empire Palace Hotel in Rome and at the Hilton Hotel (Avenida Diagonal) in Barcelona.

[Presto2]

13 minutes ago, Chanbre said:

We cruised from Rome to Barcelona in May 2019, including two days pre-cruise in Rome and two days post-cruise in Barcelona. Our whole trip, including flights from and to the UK was organised by Celebrity. They organised four private cars for the four transfers to-and-from the two hotels. My wife and I were the only passengers in each car. All four transfers were great. Three were at the scheduled time, or even a few minutes early. We had to wait about 40 minutes after the scheduled time at Barcelona port, but that was probably due to the traffic as there were three cruise ships in the port. The transfer agent (at the kerbside, outside the terminal building) had our name on his list and said the car was on the way but was delayed due to traffic.

 

There was a Celebrity representative at the hotel in Rome, we spoke to her to check on our transfer. It seemed that she was looking after people who had book through Celibrity's USA office. She had no information about us as we had booked through a UK tour agent and Celebrity UK. Her USA passengers were going to be taken by coach leaving at about midday. Our private car left at 10:30am and we were onboard the Constellation a little before 12:00.

 

We stayed at the Empire Palace Hotel in Rome and at the Hilton Hotel (Avenida Diagonal) in Barcelona.

 

That is a brilliant help as we are staying at the Empire Palace too :-) It says private transfer not coach so we are sure it will be a taxi or van. Great to read you left at 10.30am. That is SUCH good news if this is the same as us. Thank you so much for posting.