Constellation Ultimate Caribbean Review- Jan 28/08 LONG!

[SusieV]

Blondie- I am really surprised about your Ocean Liners comments. We never had any difficulties and did indeed get the service we are supposed to get. If you look in our photo album you can see that we got several dishes flambeed without asking. I wonder what the problem was? Who was your chef de rang?

 

Did you go to the Cruise Critic party on Constellation? I don't think I remember meeting you. Hopefully we will on Mercury!

 

My husband absolutely refuses to let them get away with the conversion. Our Seapass was not as large as yours but it's still at least a few hundred dollars more than it should be. He is planning to call the Resolutions Center tomorrow.

 

If Celebrity won't fix it, we are going to try todispute the charge with our credit card company. It makes me so furious that they do this! On neither of our previous cruises have we had this problem!

[SusieV]

Update: Celebrity is claiming that they did charge me in $US, but I've verified with my credit card company that they did not.

 

The interesting thing is that they are actually using a fair conversion rate of 4% if the amount charged was accurate. Unfortunately it is not. Our account was at approximately $200 less on our final sheet printout than it is now, and all we bought were a few drinks in the Cova on the morning of disembarkation.

 

I think this is going to be difficult to sort out. We've asked them to email us a copy of the updated Seapass so we can try and find the discrepancies.

 

But at least it looks like Celebrity may have switched to a fair conversion rate. My credit card company was charging 3% the day the bill was put through, and I wouldn't have bothered arguing over 1%, especially with the amount of time I think this is going to take.

[Blondie007]

Susie, loved your blog and pics! Think I learned more about the cruise from your blog than we did on board! We didnt go CC thingy, we kind of like to do our own thing. We were in a party of eight and had a lot to catch up on in our reunion. I think thats why we didnt get the best service at oceanliners as there were eight of us.. although, that should not affect the service. We didnt have the same team as you did.

In the end, as I said, it was fine, but still didnt think it was as good as Millennium's Olympic.. nice though and hey, we are going back on the same cruise later in the year so it wasnt that bad!:)

 

Going to call my cc company and see what they say, but for us, its probably too more hassle than its worth but I was annoyed as I made a specific point at check in, of stating again, that we wanted to be charged in US$ which we werent.

That aside... who cares.. it was an absolute blast and we loved every second of every minute! Would do it all again in a heartbeat!

Roll on the next one!:)

[SusieV]

Blondie, thank you!

 

Maybe you'll consider coming to the CC party on the Panama Canal trip, the roll call link is in my signature.

 

We have never sailed on Millennium, but maybe in the future!

 

Our problem has been taken care of and the errant charges have been removed. They issued us a credit in $CDN to go along with being billed in $CDN (although for the life of me I can't understand why the rep still insists we were billed in $USD when I can see from my statement and verified with the credit card company that we were not) but since the exchange is only 1% higher than it would have been, it's not really worth arguing over.

 

For our next cruise, we are printing out two copies of the Xpress Pass and having the checkin agent and Guest Relations initial that we have asked to be billed in US dollars.

[SevenSeas70]

I agree with most of SusieV's report, with these exceptions and additional suggestions. I thought the food on this cruise was somewhat better than that on the Millennium Round-the-Cape cruise 2 years ago. There were more appetizing selections this time, and the preparations were tastier. Of course all comments about food may become irrelevant as the new Executive Chef makes her impact, which should be very soon.

 

Not all the dining staff were disappointing. We had Malen (Table 510) who was bright, entertaining, and totally competent, as was his assistant. An added treat was the presence of Malen's twin brother, who was equally wry. (When asked which brother he was he said he didn't have a brother ;-) )

 

The sushi service every evening at 5:00 pm was a delight. Food was fresh and well prepared. OK, it wasn't up to many mainland restaurants, but it was a fine way to enjoy a beer or glass of wine.

 

Regarding ports, Cristobal's shopping was a happy surprise for an otherwise dreary location. There were many handcrafts available at very reasonable prices, including some finely woven basketry by indigenous people who appeared in their customary dress (or lack thereof). There was no bargaining on price, but we were told that the prices reflected the time involved at the rate of $1 per day!

 

My only serious complaint was the unavailability of deck chairs. This topic has been raised many times, but seems to be getting worse on each cruise. People had "reserved" chairs as early as 7:45 AM, and were incensed when their book-and-towel was removed after 90 minutes by another guest. At one point, two men were about to move from verbal to physical confrontation ("I'll punch you in the nose!" versus "I'll throw you overboard!"). Celebrity as well as other cruise lines must develop a system that fairly distributes these scarce resources.)

 

I think that Celebrity is doing a good job of offering value for money with this cruise.