canderson

9 minutes ago, doghog said:

So??????

So why a difference seemingly noted between the condition of Summit and Millennium, or is there one?

Will be on Constellation again this Fall.  Looked good after the 2021 extended dry dock, and got an additional refresh in April 2024.  Will be interested to see how she's holding up. 

26 minutes ago, doghog said:

The Summit was also revolutionized in 2019. 

Millennium was only about a month and a half earlier, so ...

???

Look, folks...

There's a reason that they want cases of liquids carried on and especially not stashed in a backpack or soft side as luggage.  Surely you've all seen the way luggage is stacked in those open metal rolling 'crates' and moved aboard ship. 

I'd like my clothes to arrive in my cabin dry.  How about you?

1 hour ago, Pennstatedj said:

They replaced it on the Beyond with several new game shows in the Club. 

Fleetwide.  A review of any 7 day or longer cruise in the app will provide a fair sampling of what they're doing now if anyone is curious.

As long as one of the original occupants remains, X is OK with switching out the second.  If I understand what you're wanting to do, make the swap official through Celebrity if you have a preference for which 2 people get the SS perks.

56 minutes ago, Andy_P said:

If that's the case, rather than do a "MoveUp" maybe the stateroom categories higher than yours have gone down too and you can do an inexpensive upgade.  I went from Sunset Verandah to Sky Suite Guarantee (category "W") for about $500.  I lost the little bit of OBC I got when I booked, but gained Premium Drinks and WiFi which I was going to use the OBC for.

Good strategy, Andy.  Hope you score a good SS.  What would it have cost to pick your own SS, or was that an option?

14 hours ago, goldsmip115 said:

We were on the next cruise after Randy and Connie sailed.  We finally met them on a Millenium cruise from San Diego to Vancouver where we had both Penthouses.

If we ever hope to see the inside of another one, we're going to have to start booking a whole lot sooner again.  There's nothing left at all in Retreat, and hasn't been for a while, for the Fall 2025 Connie WB TA.  Will probably jump back to Silversea.

26 minutes ago, goldsmip115 said:

Anu was an absolutely amazing butler.  We still talk about him to this day!  Our first cruise after Covid in the PS on the Constellation.

Were you next door to Schmoe on that one?  This was the first two Connie cruises out of Tampa after the restart.  I waited one day too many to drop the hammer on the cabin you got!  We were just down the hall.

Here's my own contribution.  Who was that masked man??? 😄

Just checked, and such as it is, there is ONE date on Constellation for a 12 nt, Nov 30, 2024, and nothing like this at all scheduled for 2025 of this nature on any ship.  Suite only offered as "Guarantee".  Nothing else in Retreat.  Aqua = sold out.  Concierge (all 3 classes) = 3 left.  Veranda (both classes) = 2 left.  Ocean View (both classes) = 32 left.  So OK, everybody wants a veranda for a deep Caribbean!

So it certainly doesn't seem to be a huge problem with bookings that's preventing Celebrity from running the longer Caribbean cruises.  Why NONE for 2025?  Beats me.

32 minutes ago, Iamcruzin said:

Those 14 night itineraries must not be selling because I don't see them offered on any line.

It certainly didn't used to be a problem.  I remember fondly when Constellation got all of the true deep Caribbean / ABC (usually just AC) cruises of 13/14 nts.  Most sailed at capacity, and if you wanted a decent cabin, you needed to book early.  I think they called them "Ultimate Caribbean" cruises.  Now the only way you can get 14 nts is to take a trans-canal trip or one of the 'slower' transoceanic cruises.  Seems like they're even speeding up the TAs now, and those tend to book full as well, and the slower the better. 

Try getting a suite on the 2025 WB TA on Constellation.  A glorious 16 nts, but fully booked, and has been for a while.  You can still get the odd suite on other, shorter WB TAs in 2025.

Side note:  Well bummer -- Celebrity just quit showing ALL prior cruises with them in the "Points History" section of the CC portion of the site.  That's why I couldn't confirm the expression "Ultimate Caribbean".  Anyone know when that started???

32 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

Good point.   There are still a lot of old pictures. on the site.   BTW not sure people are aware but if you upload pictures they send you money for each... don't remember the amount but something like 25 cents per picture and more for a video

It's 50 cents for pics now, and can be used to offset the membership cost as I recall.

Don't want to scare anyone - it's not a pure member site.  But membership does get you access to more.  Definitely well worth a look.

11 minutes ago, CaroltheB said:

Oh, that is so funny. In March 2022 we also had Anu! And you are right, he was great. Very professional. He was our first Butler experience and there has only been one since that even came close.

That on top of seeming to be just a genuinely nice human being.

Where did you run across him?  Which ship?  He was on Constellation for the restart, but we've lost track of him.  Wonder if he's 'retired' from the business or moved to another line?  We do periodically put out a call here to see if anyone has seen him, but have had no word for a long while now.

2 minutes ago, Tigermad said:

That did it all online while I sat by them. No calls were made. 

Then if your TA could see it (and my agent tells me she thinks the FBC site can be fiddly about what it shows depending upon how you slice and dice things), you should have been able to see the exact same thing if you were concurrently logged into your own account sitting side by side and providing it with the same input. 

However, we know two things.  FBC will never show you all of the possible itineraries because they don't support them all, sometimes even at an entire airline level (as noted above) since they haven't got contracts with them all.  That said, the filters they use against the Expedia database in an attempt to limit the flights shown for those reasons and others also causes the public (including TA) online FBC site to not show certain flights that a phone call to FBC suddenly makes possible (who knows if it's an algorithm problem or intentional).  It's a 'rules based' algorithm for filtering, and apparently not perfect.

Again, my recent experience with an upcoming cruise in November was case in point.  Neither I nor my TA could get the FBC site to generate a specific obvious and very agreeable one stop itinerary choice from DEN to BCN, and she's even better at manipulating the site than I am.  She then called FBC and landed the exact itinerary I had wanted to book. 

8 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

 

 I do not know either.  I know bartenders get a cut of the gratuity for any packages or upgrades they sale. I expect it is the same for the sommelier's.  I honestly do not know. I do know that the sommelier in Luminae does not share in the added gratuities and so we always tip the sommelier individually. 

 

If we haven't ordered enough paid-for wines from the Sommelier, and he/she is doing a really good job, I've been known to ask the sommelier for a net $0 receipt to which I add a tip if we're not carrying cash.  I'm sure it looks really goofy to the accounting department, but it works.  Normally, though, we're ordering enough of the higher end stuff by the bottle that the sommelier is getting good money that way every day or two. 

12 minutes ago, alexandria said:

 

... the TA won't see it on the FBC site either.  
 

Yes, a TA sees the same thing we do on the FBC site (it's all a filtered front-end through to Expedia anyway, which is what most of the big lines have switched to now - they've quit maintaining their own schedule links to the airlines), but a phone call by the TA can have different results, same as by pax.

2 minutes ago, the penguins said:

Where do you get the increased cabin count figures ftrom?

 

Notice that I typed 'new' and not new.  It's relative and has been incremental.  And the point made was that while wages are higher, part of the cost of operation would be there and paid for whether they take cruising pax along for the ride or not, which would keep that side of the cost lower.

The exception would be if they were using the cruising side to subsidize the mail/ferry side, in which case, the somewhat higher cruise fares make sense.  For a cruise ship, ALL of the operating expense has to amortized across cruise passenger $.  Not so with the cruise/mail/ferry approach, especially given the space allotted per passenger aboard is even less than a river boat.

One would think, as I noted, that the evolution from mail/ferry to cruise/mail/ferry would have begun as a way to enhance revenue on itineraries that had to happen anyway.

5 hours ago, alexandria said:

They don't.

If I understand the original post, yes, they do.

FBC has access to a great many flights that don't show up on the online FBC web site.  My next cruise is an example of that.  If there's a real desire to book flights through Celebrity, it's always best to do your own search for a couple of itineraries you like, and start your live conversation with FBC with those if you don't find them on the FBC site.

The only thing to be careful about when viewing photos and videos on cruisedeckplans is to be mindful of the dates.  They've amassed an incredible gallery there over a considerable length of time, but as a result, you have to pay attention to whether a particular photo or video is current when viewing them. 

If a person is wondering what a Royal Suite looks like on Millennium, there's quite a difference in appearance pre/post Revolution, and CDP has plenty of photos both ways.  Is the current layout for a given M class a combo of bench seating + chairs around the dining table, or all chairs?  How big is the table?

It was just noted a couple of days ago that the use of space in the Millennium M class PH changed due to the Revolution in addition to the appearance change (no more vanity area outside the master bath - just another closet now - for example). 

4 hours ago, IDL said:

Not saying this is the case with cruise lines but if you book a ballroom in a hotel for a wedding let’s say the hotel adds a service charge and it is made clear that is not a tip as the hotel is allowed to add tax to the service charge amount.  I have no idea what amount, if any,  out of the service charge is distributed to the employees who work the event but the expectation is you tip on top of the service charge. 

Yes, that's often done, and is a separate business model - totally opaque, as you say.  But tipping where it's clearly a 'tip' on the receipt is another thing altogether. 

Here in the U.S., it's strictly verboten for a business or a manager to pull any amount from an employee's tips.  The Department of Labor is always interested in hearing about these incidents when they occur.  Here's a decent article on the topic re the law here in the U.S.:

https://natlawreview.com/article/dol-cracks-down-and-opens-cracks-employers-keeping-tips

And yes, before anyone reminds me that these cruise lines don't play by any rules out  there on the sea, no, it's not a legal question for them, just a potential PR nightmare.  I only point out the U.S. situation to provide an example of how the practice is not only considered really bad form in most of the civilized world, it's even outright illegal in some countries as well.

As I say, I really doubt Celebrity (or any of the other well known lines) is doing this. Just too much risk to the brand.

2 hours ago, alyssamma said:

I think the OP logged in as themselves, logged out, then logged in as their spouse.

I am still keyed into post #1 where the OP said "We were both logged into our accounts" which definitely sounded concurrent. 

It wasn't until #4 that it sounded like she had afterwards begun to do her own separate log in/out/in with the two accounts as a test of the pricing differences.

8 hours ago, the penguins said:

New business model?

Yes, significantly more focus on cruising (much increased cabin count).  If you look at the ships now, the bulk of the space above the waterline is taken by cruise accommodations and public space for same.  It started out as a 'sideline' and has now taken over the majority of the GT of the ship.  Then there's the addition of the Signature runs to the original Coastal Express itineraries.

2 hours ago, alyssamma said:

On booking.com, my wife and I see completely different prices for the same hotels. Sometimes, she will even see a cheaper price when *not* logged in. I've also seen different prices when logged in on my phone vs my laptop.

 

On Capital One's travel site, again, my wife and I will see different prices for the same hotels for the same dates.

Yes.  You can look at a hotel price, first while logged on to the site, then while not logged on, and voila, the price has changed.  Certain travel sites have been playing that game for some years now.  The differences are generally small, but in some cases predictable   There have been some interesting and revealing articles written on the subject.

Problem with Celebrity is that you get NO pricing for add-ons unless you're logged in and have specified a particular booking, so they don't even need cookies to play the game for that.  There they could use your account login to differentiate things for you. 

Am still surprised by the ability to open the record for a booking with 2 accounts simultaneously, though.  Even my TA can't update anything if I've forgotten to log out!  Then it takes something like 15 minutes.  It used to be possible to lock yourself out of your own record for 15 minutes by closing down the browser without logging off first!  Couldn't use the site again in a new browser session until it timed out.  Neither could a Celebrity agent.  Used to really annoy people!

38 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

 I always thought it went to Celebrity and that the sommerlier gets some portion of it.  How did you find out they received it all? 

 

Just a further thought upon what you might be insinuating there (or not?)...

If it EVER got out that the company was taking a cut of the tips to add to the bottom line, they'd have a PR nightmare on their hands.  It's more or less universally understood, at least in Western countries, that the company grabbing a share of the tips is EXCEPTIONALLY bad form, and is actually unlawful in many places. 

I doubt RCG would ever risk the fallout from doing that.

That's not to say that RCG doesn't cheat and enjoy the "float" between the time the tip is gained (typically from credit cards) and a somewhat delayed payment to the crew, but it's very hard to imagine they'd take the risk of taking any % off the top.

37 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

 

 I have never seen any evidence that the sommelier gets the entire gratuity.  I always thought it went to Celebrity and that the sommerlier gets some portion of it.  How did you find out they received it all? 

 

Don't know.  Guess one or two people associated with the service might get a piece, but it's the somm's incentive to sell.  The only other two people with actual skin in that particular game (wine sales) are the F&B Manager and Hotel Director, and their incentive plans certainly wouldn't include dipping into the tip jar!

I'll have to check next time.