WILL PRICES EVER COME DOWN?

[TeeRick]

19 hours ago, ChucktownSteve said:

 

Wouldn't you agree that everything about Celebrity flows from the top down? Starts at Fain and rolls to LLP who was put in her current position because of the great job she did cutting costs at RCL.  She has continued that at =XX= very well.  I judge people on their actions not their rhetoric.  So I know her from her actions.

 

Once the FCC's get devoured by the higher cruise pricing, do you believe she'll be able to keep her ships full and profitable?

Please go back and look at my response in post #50 of this thread.

[HMR74]

A friend of mine in Reno just told me about the California Quarantine. He was supposed to go to CA to visit other friends and family, and had a hotel room booked for a week. The hotel just contacted him and told him that he has to extend the reservation to 10 days to be quarantined at the Hotel due to state rules. As my friend said there is no way he goes there to spend 10 day in quarantine.

 

This does not bode well for Cruises from California. Possible the entire west coast. Of course the governor there is subject to recall as over 1 million signatures are on a petition to start the process.

Its not easy to keep up on this all.

 

Can anybody from CA shed light on this confirm or deny. Its not especially good for the hospitality business. (no kidding sherlock).

[flora_123]

1 hour ago, HMR74 said:

A friend of mine in Reno just told me about the California Quarantine. He was supposed to go to CA to visit other friends and family, and had a hotel room booked for a week. The hotel just contacted him and told him that he has to extend the reservation to 10 days to be quarantined at the Hotel due to state rules. As my friend said there is no way he goes there to spend 10 day in quarantine.

 

This does not bode well for Cruises from California. Possible the entire west coast. Of course the governor there is subject to recall as over 1 million signatures are on a petition to start the process.

Its not easy to keep up on this all.

 

Can anybody from CA shed light on this confirm or deny. Its not especially good for the hospitality business. (no kidding sherlock).

 

California is a big state.  With lots of different people.  It's a complicated situation and anyone who thinks otherwise is naïve.

 

Lots of people think the lockdowns don't go far enough.

 

Basically, the younger and poorer people who's jobs are at risk are the ones who are most at risk at contracting the disease are the most supportive of even more stringent lockdowns (that are actually effective).

 

The older and richer people and business owners who are more able to isolate and are less likely to get the disease are the ones who are upset at their business losses or upset at not being able to go out and play like normal are the ones against lockdowns.

 

Of course the quarantine is temporary.  It will have no effect on cruising.  By the time anyone even thinks about letting cruise ships depart there will be no more quarantine.

 

What doesn't bode well for cruising is the low acceptance rate of the vaccines.

[UnorigionalName]

1 hour ago, HMR74 said:

 

Answering your issues  is not simple--too bad we could not communicate "off line".

I wish the vaccine clearly worked as that could fix things in a hurry, however, I do not think its going to.  My opinion.

 

Hole # 1 and a big one--where does it say anywhere that participants whether in placebo or real vaccine groups were exposed to covid and to what extent.

 

If you can point that out to me I would appreciate it.

The counter is the Danish are doing a trial now with participants actually being exposed to covid. It was controversial but they got thru it. That's how I found out this important part missing in the US trials. The Danish issue was not publicized much at all.  If people with the vaccine in the US went home for 6-8  weeks,  what did they  learn in the trial--not much ? Why was this issue not raised.

 

That will tell us a lot.  But I do not know who would want to be intentionally exposed. Apparently the Danish found people.

 

However, if a trial does not expose people to covid, or worse, not control that and thus not know the real results of the vaccine vs placebo groups, the test is a waste of time and money. It could be criminal if the people involved knew they should have had a better trial. Think about Boeing and the 737Max. The FAA did not do its testing job.

 

#2--as it is, 8 vaccinated people under those conditions were infected, while 162 in placebo group were inflected. both are small percentages -8 out or 20,000 is .04% and 162 out of 20,000 is .8%

 

We still do not know the extent to which people in either group were exposed, and that means these numbers might  have no meaning.

But lets say they do.

The percentage s for each group are relatively close. (not the 95% Pfizer says but both groups are higher). did we actually go thru this to come up with a vaccine that is less than a half percent difference between groups  and both very high? But again we do not now the extent to which people were exposed. or if the groups were different-thats a back hole.

 

#3-How  to measure the severity if testing positive. There is a cycle Threshold test , thats in process of being changed because the threshold set was wrong. To explain this simply, when they do a test, they measure the number of sub testing cycles are required to get to an identification of covid in the body. The CDC or FDA set this at 40 cycles, the lower the number the more severe the infection is. The number could in theory go up to 100, which means a rather small trace, but it took a lot of cycles to find it.

What they found out long ago but are just making the change now, is anybody above 32 is pretty much safe. Mild case if they even know it. Singapore, which is a leading country in results in covid had 35 as a threshold.

So going forward we will see better numbers (lower positives)  for number of cases.

However, we have also a number of false positives where upon retest, the result are negative, so the tests are a loose end. Elon Musk of Tesla went thru 4 tests, first was positive, then second negative, third was positive and 4th negative--so since he did not feel bad , it was dropped, however the two positives were reported.

 

#4-the protocols say the trials will go thru Jan 2023. Cutting to the chase by then we will know side effects and whether this will protect people past 6 months.

 

You can do what you want with the info but you might be more effective in discussing things if you did not use terms like anti vaxxers and lies.

You have the right to believe what  you want and I have the right to believe what I want.

Its as simple as that but it would be nice if people discussed issues rather than shouting.

 

That way people could actually teach and learn at the same time.

In the meantime, my original comment was that the lockdowns are being proven to be ineffective, or not working.

 

The cost to society can and should be measured in lives and I was not talking directly to that.

But now with Cruises down another 2 months, it further affects cruise lines suppliers who probably have laid off people already. and now that gets longer. of course, perhaps the least of our problems is the cost of the cruises.

 

Fain already said last summer they could survive til March 2022 on cash flow (which is 275 million a month in cash burn. It is not easy to work in a company wondering how long till it closes down.  Just look at their or any cruise line balance sheet. The creditors are getting nervous and we are technically creditors with FCC's and deposits on cruises (or cruises paid in full)

 

Unemployment is going back up, and that's not good . And govt subsidies, funded by debt are at alarming levels.

 

This is not a simple problem,

 

The lockdowns delayed a lot of health care doctors visits so health deteriorated. Elective surgery became non elective and more of a problem. What I am saying is that the cure has become a problem.

 

Blaming anybody does not solve the problems. What mid course changes have to be made is the question.

But I have my questions  about the vaccine, and I have signed up for it. . Its no slam dunk.

 

good luck

 

 

Okay, so this thread is now so off-topic that I am pretty sure the mods are going to nuke it when they wake up in the morning.  I don't want to spend the effort writing a nice pretty rebuttal and have it get deleted before you or anyone else can read it.  So here is what I propose.

 

I am going to answer your points in a short abbreviated fashion, that is high in technical terms.  If you are not satisfied with my responses, I propose you cut and paste and reply in a thread that is more on-topic, such as the vaccine-light-tunnel-end thing.  

 

So here we go:

#1) You don't understand how a double-blind randomized clinical trial.  Both groups got exposed the same amount to the virus.

#2) The groups are the same.  That's because it's a double-blind randomized clinical trial.  That's the point of Table 1, to prove to you the groups are the same.  The differences are not small, they are actually very large by scientific standards.  the 95% CI for effectiveness is 90.3-97.6%.  The chance that the vaccine has >30% efficacy is 99.99%

#3) Please don't talk about PCR cycle numbers.  You are way over your head.  Ct is not a good proxy at this time.  And you don't need a proxy for this study because you have the actual effect you want to measure: infection, hospitalization, and death.  The data is not sufficient for hospitalization and death, but is sufficient for infection.

#4) Yes, no one is saying we know what he long-term side effect profiles are.  This is a very valid concern, but this one concern doesn't mean all the other data and short term-efficacy are null and void.

 

I go with ridicule and sarcasm because it is scientifically shown that rational arguments do not work with anti-vaxxers.  Anecdotal evidence and peer-pressure works better.  I am trying for the peer-pressure approach.  "you cannot reason with someone who wasn't reasoned into an argument."  Generally people who hold contrarian viewpoints to science will not be swayed by the science, because they already didn't believe it the first time.

 

edit: too late. 

Edited January 13, 2021 by UnorigionalName

[tserface]

 Might be true that it's about $$$, but it still simplifies their business.  If gratuities are included, you can't remove them.  If drinks are paid for, you pay whether you drink a lot or not.  Their booking is easier since there will be fewer choices.  They will also get loyalty customers to pay for drink plans when they may not otherwise.  In our case, we almost never buy a drink package since we get enough at the parties, but this would make us pay some price regardless.

 

Either way, automatic bundling will make them more $$$ so you are right.

 

Tom

 

On 1/10/2021 at 12:57 PM, ChucktownSteve said:

 

tserface,  I don't believe =XX= is doing it to simplify it for themselves.  IMO I suspect it's about the

all mighty $$$s coupled with the smoke and mirrors so the financially challenged cruiser won't be able to determine the real cost.

 

[zitsky]

Could we go back to talking about cruise prices?

[cgolf1]

3 minutes ago, zitsky said:

Could we go back to talking about cruise prices?

 

Sure we have really good prices on our two booked cruises one on the APEX and 1 on the constellation. If those are cancelled we will likely go back to RCCL based on what is happening with Celebrity prices. Our constellation cruise is 130 a night per person, that includes taxes and port fees, with 3 perks for an inside room. This may be one of the best deals we have ever gotten on a cruise!

[zitsky]

5 minutes ago, cgolf1 said:

 

Sure we have really good prices on our two booked cruises one on the APEX and 1 on the constellation. If those are cancelled we will likely go back to RCCL based on what is happening with Celebrity prices. Our constellation cruise is 130 a night per person, that includes taxes and port fees, with 3 perks for an inside room. This may be one of the best deals we have ever gotten on a cruise!

 

What is your Constellation cruise?  $130 seems pretty good.

[cgolf1]

9 minutes ago, zitsky said:

 

What is your Constellation cruise?  $130 seems pretty good.

 

10 night southern Caribbean with 2 new ports to us. We have had a cruise for 90 a night per person on RCCL but there were no perks and that was before taxes and port fees.

Edited January 14, 2021 by cgolf1

[Iamcruzin]

We have been in a world wide pandemic for almost a year now with no sailings in sight, yet people are still booking cruises into the unknown future. Why would prices come down once it actually starts up again?  If startup is going to be at 50% capacity there well be lack of supply. 

[wrk2cruise]

I booked a Aug/Sept 2022 on Equinox.   The prices were higher but in my opinion still within reason.

[zitsky]

1 hour ago, cgolf1 said:

 

10 night southern Caribbean with 2 new ports to us. We have had a cruise for 90 a night per person on RCCL but there were no perks and that was before taxes and port fees.

 

I tried to L&S to that but X wanted to push me to ABC.  I think our original cruise was 8 or 9 days.

[zitsky]

56 minutes ago, wrk2cruise said:

None of this has anything to do with the topic of this thread.  Please take it elsewhere.

 

THANK YOU!!!

 

There is a vaccine thread that people can post in all day, every day.  Not here.

[zitsky]

Folks there is a vaccine thread.  Please post there or i am going over there to post about price changes. 

[cgolf1]

2 hours ago, zitsky said:

 

I tried to L&S to that but X wanted to push me to ABC.  I think our original cruise was 8 or 9 days.

 

They are overly strict imo with the lift and shift. We tried to get them to allow us some wiggle room with our APEX cruise because it would have overlapped with the Connie cruise in the lift and shift window. They were willing for us to cancel one of the cruises and not expand the window for us. We lucked out and got the same itinerary at an earlier date cheaper on the APEX and got perks for all 3 of us instead of just 2 like was originally set. In a scenario like ours they should have realized they could have lost money by not being flexible with the rules. Just glad it worked out in our favor:)

[ChucktownSteve]

I just now did a price comparison between suites  on a Panama Canal cruise on Celebrity Millennium and Regent Seven Seas Splendor built in 2020.  Booking an aft facing deluxe veranda suite on Splendor for 16 days is $391.02 less than a Millennium S1 port side suite for 15 days. Both include gratuities and taxes/fees.  They are one month apart. December 2022 vs. January 5, 2023.  For point of reference, the Deluxe veranda suite is the second lowest category on the ship compared to an S1.

 

The Millennium includes six ports while the Splendor does eight ports...not including embarkation or debarkation ports.

 

The Splendor suite includes airfare, airport transfers, excursions in every port, premium liquor set up in the suite or anywhere on the ship and all eight eating venues including a steak house with prime aged beef, King crab and whole lobsters. 

 

Another difference is a 2,170 passenger ship built in 2000 and refurbished in 2019 with a guest/crew ratio of 2.17 vs. a 750 passenger ship with a guest/crew ratio of about 1.38 built in 2020. Millennium is 308SF and Splendor is 361SF.

 

So which cruise would you book?  Thus the question really is when will Celebrity realize they priced themselves above a real luxury line without delivering the "luxury" besides the marketing claim?

EXP Pacific Rim Example Dinner Menu.pdf Prime7Menu.pdf

Edited January 15, 2021 by ChucktownSteve

[markeb]

42 minutes ago, ChucktownSteve said:

Booking an aft facing deluxe veranda suite on Splendor for 16 days is $391.02 less than a Millennium S1 port side suite for 15 days.

 

I've seen a lot of folks have been quoting per day fares lately. That's the total difference, right? Which with everything you've listed going for it is quite a difference!

 

I think I've only really looked at Azamara in the past, but when you get up to a certain price point, it is time to compare the smaller, luxury lines...

[ChucktownSteve]

8 minutes ago, markeb said:

 

I've seen a lot of folks have been quoting per day fares lately. That's the total difference, right? Which with everything you've listed going for it is quite a difference!

 

I think I've only really looked at Azamara in the past, but when you get up to a certain price point, it is time to compare the smaller, luxury lines...

 

In my comparison, the cost difference is the total bottom line, end price not per day.

[markeb]

4 minutes ago, ChucktownSteve said:

 

In my comparison, the cost difference is the total bottom line, end price not per day.

 

Thanks. That's how I was reading it.

 

What was the total price, if you don't mind? I don't think prices can stay where they are forever, but we all have limits. We had moved an Edge cruise from last spring to Equinox in 2022 for other reasons before the world turned upside down. That one's 12 days in an S1 if memory serves, and around $10K. Which seemed absurd until some of the more recent quotes I've seen posted here. But I don't know that I'd go higher. At some point, we'd just hop a flight to Europe, rent a car, and enjoy Tuscany, or the Alps, or Bordeaux.

 

I enjoy cruising, a lot, but I also enjoy other travel, and at some point, you have to balance that, if cruising stays insanely expensive.

[ChucktownSteve]

21 minutes ago, markeb said:

What was the total price, if you don't mind?

 

The Celebrity Millennium cruise for the S1 is priced at this moment at $9,294.51pp which is $619pp/pd.  The Regent Splendor is priced at $568pp/pd.

Edited January 15, 2021 by ChucktownSteve

[jagoffee]

28 minutes ago, ChucktownSteve said:

 

The Celebrity Millennium cruise for the S1 is priced at this moment at $9,294.51pp which is $619pp/pd.  The Regent Splendor is priced at $568pp/pd.

I cruised on my first Regent Cruise in January.  (Seems like years ago).  Given those two choices, it would be an easy decision for me.

 

But I have never or would I ever pay $1240 a day for a Celebrity S1.  I doubt whether many people would.   I have had RS’s for much less.  I would not even pay the same $568pp/pd for an S1.

[ChucktownSteve]

5 minutes ago, jagoffee said:

But I have never or would I ever pay $1240 a day for a Celebrity S1.  I doubt whether many people would.   I have had RS’s for much less.  I would not even pay the same $568pp/pd for an S1.

 

But Celebrity is a "Luxury" line.  Ask them. 🙄

Edited January 15, 2021 by ChucktownSteve

[jagoffee]

2 minutes ago, ChucktownSteve said:

 

But Celebrity is a "Luxury" line.  Ask them. 🙄

I do think Celebrity is an excellent cruise line, I just do not believe some the current prices are “real”.  It will settle down once the demand returns to normal.  I believe most people on the ships  with these unreasonably high prices are not paying those prices.  They are cruising at prices that they originally booked in 2019 and maybe even 2018.  
 

We shall see in a couple years.  

[zitsky]

Anyone know which cruiselines show you the final price online, like X does?  With Regent and Silversea, I had to wait for a quote.  Not a big deal.

[Ride-The-Waves]

9 hours ago, markeb said:

 

Thanks. That's how I was reading it.

 

What was the total price, if you don't mind? I don't think prices can stay where they are forever, but we all have limits. We had moved an Edge cruise from last spring to Equinox in 2022 for other reasons before the world turned upside down. That one's 12 days in an S1 if memory serves, and around $10K. Which seemed absurd until some of the more recent quotes I've seen posted here. But I don't know that I'd go higher. At some point, we'd just hop a flight to Europe, rent a car, and enjoy Tuscany, or the Alps, or Bordeaux.

 

I enjoy cruising, a lot, but I also enjoy other travel, and at some point, you have to balance that, if cruising stays insanely expensive.

Agree.  last two transatlantics we have toured Switzerland for two weeks as an add-on, first by train (Swiss Rail Pass) to include the Glacier Express and the subsequent time by car.  Both great.  Have two transatlantics booked for 2022 (Spring and Fall) and will do the same: maybe a Chunnel train, Paris, Rome or some combination.  Cannot see paying the exorbitant prices "X" is asking today when you can get better suites on Princess's new ships or Oceania for less $.  Celebrity canceled our 2021 "ABC" island trip out of Tampa do to COVID - Connie was supposed to have gone through refit before that cruise but is still wondering around the Med...  A new booking in an S suite is over twice what we originally booked for the same cruise, same ship and same cabin.  Makes no sense.

Edited January 15, 2021 by Ride-The-Waves