Honolulu Blue

I'll talk about your questions both from a Princess perspective and also about charter cruises. Sadly, the other cruise lines I've been on have little or nothing available on their app schedules before embarkation day. I have found that Princess schedules change a lot on the app from initial release to embarkation day. They change less after embarkation. And yes, you can attend an event that shows as completely full. No events on Princess require reservations and seating is first come, first serve. If an event shows as full, I certainly would consider arriving earlier than I would ordinarily. I'll defer to others about exactly how early to show up. And now on to those charters. They usually release a tentative schedule between a week and a month before the cruise. I have found them to be much more consistent than what Princess offers early, but they too can change for all the usual reasons.

First of all, thank you for the post and your kind words. It's true that Michiganders can be kind and friendly, and I've met bunches of each. The screen name has a simple story... I've been a fan of the Detroit Lions for a very long time. Their team colors are silver... and Honolulu Blue. P.S. WiFi signal at the hotel is stronger now. 👍 Breakfast soon. Don't expect food pics. ☹️

It's good to be here. 👍 I'm glad I was able to get ahead of everything. Thank you for sharing that story. I hope you and them make it to the ship safely. 🙏

I noticed DTW wasn't very busy when I passed through. I don't know how smart I was, but I had the time available to do this, the funds, and the ability to make changes. So far it's working out well. After a 3 1/2 hour flight, I made it to Houston. I proceeded to ground transportation and a friendly shuttle driver guided me to his bus, since he was heading that way. The shuttle offered to go to several different hotels in the same area. Mine was the second one we stopped at. The shuttle was full when I was crammed in, but somehow we added another couple. Thank goodness we're not worrying about stuff like this anymore. The front desk told me about the procedure with the return shuttle - go down tomorrow and pick a time for Saturday, then be ready downstairs 15 minutes beforehand. Seems reasonable. The room is nice, no nonsense. There were some signs of wear, but not too bad. I've stayed in worse, and this is definitely not a fleabag motel. One minus is that so far I'm using 5g because the freebie wifi network is too weak for consistent use. I'll attach a couple of pictures.

I made it to Detroit Metro. Things should get somewhat easier from here. No rain or snow here now. Flight still shows as on time. The plane is close, should be landing soon. It's a bit over an hour until we take off. Attached is a picture of the shuttle I took to get here.

I'm on the road and can't talk much, but I got an email with some details about the 2025 edition of TBE Rock and Romance Cruise. It's March 15-22 on the Celebrity Summit, which will be sailing out of Fort Lauderdale. The ship will visit Cozumel and Costa Maya. They didn't say if those were the only ports. From Port Everglades I know you can visit one or two additional ports if you want to. Maybe StarVista doesn't think we want to. Also, no performers were listed, but I'm sure that will come later.

Random comments: Every house in Michigan is built for cold, of course. It's not predicted to get TOO bad here while we're gone - lows in the single digits is the worst I've seen. I'll turn the heat down to 55 or so. That should be good enough to keep me out of trouble. It has been in the past. My definition of a "fleabag motel" - a motel that's seen better days with outdated and/or broken furniture and furnishings, old and sagging mattress, random stains on the walls, usually priced cheaply for penny pinchers. When I checked Galveston hotels near the port, I found them quite expensive for what they provided. So your hotel there probably qualifies. Let us know how it goes. Thanks for the welcome. I'll appreciate it more when I get there in a few hours. I'm big on convenience this trip. I have a Carnival shuttle to Galveston that I didn't want to throw away, so staying near the airport is what I wanted to do. Maybe I'll come visit Houston for a more extended visit sometime to explore the sights. Yeah, it looks like the Jubilee will be joining us in Galveston. I'm not looking forward to it. 🤬 It doesn't look like we share any ports with them on this trip.

2 days to go. Before I pack, I want to make a couple of notes: Earlier I accused my shuttle company of chartering out the buses for Friday and Saturday. That's not what they did. They canceled bookings for those days for weather reasons, in an abundance of caution. They plan to figure out what to do about bookings for those days this afternoon. Too late for me, as I've already done what I needed to do, but it'll be interesting to see what they decide to do. Here's the weather forecast for most of our stops: Falmouth, Jamaica - sunny, mid-80s Aruba & Curacao - sunny, mid-80s Cartagena - sunny, low-90s Colon, Panama - storms possible, mid-80s Limon, Costa Rica - sunny, mid-80s Cozumel - too early for a forecast The weather looks good for our cruise, though Galveston is going to be a bit chilly on embarkation day.

As mentioned by @mz-s, questions are answered by Mr. Heald on his FB page. But there's a little more to it than that. He rarely replies to his own posts except the one post per day where it says (in summary) "Post your questions here". And if it says something like "this post is closed", he's done answering questions for the day and won't monitor that post anymore. I've had good luck getting answers from him to my trivial questions, but YMMV.

I was on the Magic in November and embarked on deck 3. Good luck on your cruise and hope you can get around well enough, and with a minimum of pain. 🙏

I had to make a lot of schedule changes in the past couple of hours. Thankfully, they all worked out one after the other. First, United opened up schedule changes for DTW and some other midwestern airports for tomorrow through Saturday. I found a nonstop flight to IAH (Houston) for tomorrow that had a few seats on it. I decided that was my best option, so I swapped my seat for space on it. The ride may be a little bumpy on the way in, but at least I won't have to deal with too much snow. Having done that, I had to change my shuttle time to 12:15 PM. That was easy to do online. Then I had to cancel that fleabag motel some of you were horrified by. I was kind of looking forward to staying there. 🙃 And finally, I had to book two nights in Houston. I found a La Quinta by the airport that had (relatively) cheap rates, a free shuttle, and a free breakfast. Sold! I'll pay $169 for it when it's all done. The forecasts haven't changed too much around here - 2-4 inches of snow and some rain near DTW, and 6-12 inches of snow and maybe a bit of rain here at home. I'm glad to go before the weather gets seriously bad. I really should check the forecasts for Houston and our ports, but I haven't done it yet. I'll get to it. Thanks for following so far. It won't be long before I start packing and head on out.

Not only will I be at the airport before the storm, but I'll be a lot closer to the ship by then. I'll explain what happened in my next post. I'll keep the name of that fleabag motel to myself for now. I think I may have exaggerated how bad it is or was going to be. 😮 I had a real fleabag motel last year in the same area, which I'm also going to keep to myself. It was a free one-night stay, and it was almost not worth the price of admission. During that stay, I would have had a bunch of movies and books loaded onto my tablet to go through. It wouldn't have been much different to me consuming them on the ship or consuming them at the motel. I wouldn't have needed to count the snowflakes, though I might have done that had I felt the urge to.

I fly all the time during the winter. It usually works out OK. Sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, I try to make the best of it. I'm sure I would have made the best of my time in that fleabag motel, but I canceled it. Long story. I'll explain it in a couple of posts.

I think it's more like the hospitality industry doesn't understand solos and what they really want. I know in the U.S. that single rooms in hotels/motels are scarce and I've never had a problem booking a regular room solo. The one nice thing about excursions with the cruise line is that there's (almost) always room for one at a single person price.

@Hydro ergo: I'll go through your questions and answer the questions that I can. Keep in mind that my opinions are no more valuable than anyone else's - perhaps less, because I've sailed less than many here: I try to make time for the port lectures. I pay more attention to the ones that are held by actual experts or residents of the area rather than the ones from the shopping department, but both can be informative and valuable. Celebrity shows and entertainment can be hit and miss. The shows I've gone to in the main theater have been good, but I don't often go to them. YMMV. I'm always on the search for good spots to read and relax. On the M-class ships I like Cellar Masters and the area immediately past the shops in the mornings. I'll defer to others on good spots on the other ship classes (like yours). I can't think of anything in particular to avoid on Celebrity... maybe the buffet early on days in port? I still do this, so perhaps I haven't learned my lesson yet. 🙃 Enjoy your upcoming cruise!

I value the opinions here, but I value the information that's shared here more - the more recent and relevant it is, the more I value it. I weigh all this stuff along with my wants, needs, likes, and dislikes, and form my own opinions.

Three days to go. I'm closing in on this cruise. A few notes, mostly of interest to yours truly: United released a travel alert on those Max-9 aircraft and are now allowing free flight changes for those scheduled on them through the 13th. Unfortunately (or fortunately), my flight to Houston is not on one of them. It's the flight from Houston after the cruise that is. We'll see how long the grounding and the inspections take and if it affects that flight on the 27th. United has already released some travel alerts for certain Midwest airports for Friday and Saturday flights. It includes O'Hare, but curiously does not include DTW. Or perhaps not so curious - most of the other airports affected go through ORD and use commuter jets that can't fly too high and are especially likely to be knocked around by the expected high winds. Also, the expected snow for Detroit is around 2-4 inches, as opposed to 6+ inches for most of those other airports (and here, BTW). We shall see if DTW gets added to the list in the next couple of days. My favorite shuttle service to DTW is apparently completely booked for Friday and Saturday. I should have seen this coming and take responsibility for this. Apparently, there's a big game on Saturday night and either they chartered all the buses, or they really are booked for fans. Thursday is available and I booked a shuttle for tomorrow afternoon, along with two nights at a fleabag motel by the airport. So it looks like this adventure is going to start extra early. Yay?

My one Panama Canal crossing was from Miami to LA (Long Beach) back in January 2018 on the Carnival Splendor. I don't remember it being especially rocky on the Pacific side, but perhaps I put all those bad memories out of my mind. I'd like to do a west coast to east coast crossing of the PC sometime. It's not on my bucket list, just a "nice to do" when I find the time and $$$. Here's a picture from one of our stops on the Pacific side on that cruise back in 2018:

You're welcome! I was not sent this video by e-mail. It was linked on their FB page and is also on YouTube (where I subscribe to StarVista).

I watched a YouTube video with discussion and a Q&A for the upcoming UDC from cruise director Jason Venner and Executive Producer Alan Rubens. It was very interesting, but at about 43 minutes long, it's not for everyone. Here's the link: These are the points that I thought were of most interest: Alan acknowledged the community of UDC cruisers were instrumental in bringing it back, though he's a disco fan and originally designed the cruise On cabin sale progress... it's "so far, so good", but more needs to be done What's the best thing we can do to help things along? "Bring a friend!" Why did they move to the NCL Pearl? The Pearl is a veteran of many music cruises, including some on StarVista. They want to create a better, more unique experience for us. For example, the pool area is larger than on the Summit, so that could lead to bigger pool concerts They added "and Beyond" to the name because there's still a stigma to "disco". Alan noted that disco never really died. They're interested in soul and funk music from the era and near it. Alan and Jason agreed that they would love for the cruise to eventually go to 7 days. There are more choices available in 7 days - more ports, more acts, more shows. R&R and Flower Power started out as 5 days, but demand for those cruises was great enough for them to morph into 7-day journeys. Jason said there's a different pace on 5-day cruises - more manic and more immersive. It's cheaper for StarVista to not change home ports for their charters, so that's why they don't switch those They're already working on itineraries for their 2026 cruises They noted that they can only go to so many ports in 5 or even 7 days Cozumel is a popular choice, especially for 5-day cruises They shy away from tender ports, which make a less than ideal experience for the guests StarVista (including Alan) and Jason do extensive scouting on potential performers. They note which ones are solid performers and are friendly to their fans. Tribute acts are used to fill in gaps when the original is not available (won't cruise, too expensive, no longer touring, deceased). Bee Gees music is very important to the disco era and Bee Gees Gold is the best representation of that. They also like it when the original performer endorses a tribute act - Rock & Romance's Hotel California was mentioned as an example of this. Alan said there will be more exciting additions to come. Sometimes it takes a long time to seal the deal.

Comic-Con has now branched into its own cruise, with its first sailing in 2025. P.S. Thank you for all your comments!

I don't think the poster I mentioned opted into Go Green. I haven't heard this. Turndown has always been a lighter cleaning than the full service in the morning/afternoon. For those who don't make much of a mess, it may not look different. And for all of you I haven't mentioned, I thank you all for putting my mind at ease about this. I knew I could count on you. 🥰

Greetings veteran Celebrity cruisers! I'm following a thread for another cruise line where one of the posters insists that he was queried by his cabin steward about his choice of morning or evening service on three of the four of his Celebrity cruises this year (they weren't sure about the one they did in a suite). On my cruise on the Summit tin February-March I received twice-a-day service - no choice, no conversation with the steward needed. And I wasn't in a suite. Have things changed in the past year? Are the stewards on Celebrity moving back to once-a-day cabin cleaning? I know Royal and NCL did. I figure if they did it on X, I would have heard a lot more about it. But perhaps other issues have taken priority to talk about and I missed the ones that discussed this? I have a Celebrity cruise in March, and I'd like to know what to expect. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity!

Interesting. The fact that you were asked about morning or evening service on Celebrity is news to me. On all of my Celebrity cruises (granted, the last one was in March 2023), I've never been asked this; they always provided cleaning in the morning and turndown in the evening without it being discussed with my steward. I haven't seen such discussed on their message board here among the many things they have to discuss that have changed there. I wonder if it's localized or merely very recent.

Maybe, but it was not (at the time) untruthful. If I were on a cruise where we were at sea and all engine-powered forward motion was stopped, I'd be alarmed. Maybe enough to drop a gratuitous exclamation point or two!!!! 😁