Milhouse

Wondering if a lack of crew and training new crew, both wait and kitchen staff, is playing a role in ships not pushing the specialty dining too hard with discounts?

We're returning to Los Angeles on Saturday Nov 12 from a Mexican Riviera cruise on X. X seems to have a post cruise 4hr 45min tour of: Beachfront Santa Monica, Malibu, and Beverly Hills with Airport drop-off for $85CDN. Hoping we could kill some time so we can take a cheaper evening flight home. This would address our luggage and drops us off at the airport. Wondering if anyone has any insights or reviews on this tour; maybe anyone that is sailing in the weeks before us? Assuming it's a coach bus, luggage is handled, time at each destination, do they just drop you off and let you go at it until it's time to leave for the next destination, etc. Not sure if I should be posting this in the West Coast Departures forum but I'm assuming this is a Celebrity specific excursion?

What's your recent experience around being offered (discounted?) specialty dining packages during boarding/Day 1? Have you seen a stand/display set up to entice people boarding or exploring the ship to buy a package? I'm trying to determine if I should buy a specialty dining package pre-cruise or during boarding/Day 1. We're sailing on Solstice this November and it's been a while since we've been on X so I'm trying to get a feel for how things are nowadays.

We generally try to travel lighter nowadays so the DSLR with the extra lenses normally just take up too much weight and space for our criteria. Most of the pictures we take are kind of quick snapshots that we find a phone camera good enough for. I like taking pics of food, locations, etc just to document our trip so I can reference what we did. The missus likes taking pics/selfies for memories and enjoys the pop-ups of "This day 10 years ago..." pictures. However, I am more open to taking the DSLR on a cruise because it's easier to grab it from the cabin when I know I want to take some shots around the ship. However, I still don't think I'll bring my heavy telephoto lens unless I have a specific use for it.