sndral

I booked my first RCI cruise last summer on the phone w/ an RCI person. There were chocolate dipped strawberries & a bottle of champagne in my cabin from her.. Don't know if this is the norm.

On my cruise in Nov. It would have been nice if they'd offered some documentaries about the ruins & the civilizations that built them near the ports we were visiting - Croatia (twice,) Rhodes, Venice & Ephesus. These days there are so many documentaries out there & a little refresher on the history/natural history of the Adriatic would have enriched the experience of seeing those places.

Hi ~

 

Thank you for sharing your experience. I see you are from California, too. That was a brave first solo outing with both flying all the way to Europe and cruising. It sounds like it was a very interesting trip. I loved that you brought your embroidery project and didn't even pull it out! I hear Royal Caribbean is a good line. Will you be cruising on RCI again or trying a different line? Enjoy your upcoming fall cruise!

Most likely it'll be RCI again, although I'm also considering NCL. A group from Britain that I met on the cruise and ended up dinning with each evening thought I was brave to travel alone, but that thought never occurred to me. I don't know how many years I'll be able to travel & there's so much I want to see - so I decided to just do it. I had moments of apprehension before I left, but I have those even when I'm traveling cross country w/ or to meet family. Once I am on my way my attitude is if any problems arise I'm perfectly capable of solving them.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bow lines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade wind in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain

I am female/62 & decided last summer that I was tired of staying at home using up vacation time (since I was maxing out on saved time) just because no one else had the time or $$ to travel. So I renewed my expired passport & started looking for some place to go. I ended up booking a Nov. RCI cruise from Venice. I chose Venice because at least I'd been there a long time ago & the cruise was reasonably priced.

I took along an embroidery project thinking if I found myself alone a lot - at least I'd accomplish something. I didn't even pull the project out.

I really enjoyed myself, I'm an archeology geek, so the chance to see so many medievel towns & Roman/Greek etc. ruins was great. People were friendly, it was nice to not have to find a place to eat, schlep luggage around, etc..

Unlike others who've responded, I hadn't cruised recently (last time was w/ family 15 years ago) but I'm so glad that I did, the cruise offered a great balance of adventure w/ security for this solo. I'm now busy deciding whether I want to cruise from Rome or Barcelona this fall! I have leftover € that I need to spend :)

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So I get that a private water taxi to our hotel is probably the best way ($$ aside.) Is that the only way door to door or can one take a regular Taxi as well. I see very little mention of regular motor vehicles / road taxis. Are they not common use?

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In Venice proper - all wheeled modes of transport (buses, taxis, trains) can go no further than P. Roma. So for 99% of traditional Venice you must use some form of boat and/or your feet to get around. In fact police 'cars' and ambulances in Venice are boats.

Regarding getting to/from the pier - the People mover from the pier stops at P. Roma. I used it to get from my ship to my post cruise hotel.

Regarding where to stay find a hotel near an Alilaguna stop & it's pretty easy to use them to get to your hotel from the airport & then from your hotel to the pier if you want to pay less than the cost of a private water taxi (they leave from the same place by the airport.) Or find a hotel by P. Roma and take a taxi or bus from the airport to P. Roma and walk to your hotel, then use the People mover to get to the pier.

Then you need to call C&A because it was a mistake. Happens sometimes. Just call and they will look up your reservation and correct the issue.

Thx, I'll do that, it was my first RCI cruise (and my previous cruise experiences were 15+ years ago) so it's all new to me & I just assumed they gave me the right # of points!

If c&a points matter, I'm pretty sure he will get double points if sailing solo in a non studio

 

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FYI, I cruised solo w/ RCI in Nov., paid 2X the per person rate for an OV cabin & did not receive double C&A points.

January 22, 2018 to be exact. If the date is not extended again.....

Oops, correct - that'll teach me to rely on news articles w/out digging deeper:(

I see OP is from Pennsylvania which is one of a couple of states* which just became non compliant w/ federal RealID requirements. Federal agencies aren't supposed to accept DLs from non compliant non extended states after 1/30/2017.

If it were me I'd pay close attention to whether port authorities (and TSA if flying) stop accepting DLs from residents of non compliant/non extended states after 1/30/2017, or if the new administration changes things.

* Kentucky, Maine, Montana, Pennsylvania & S. Carolina

(Missouri has been con compliant for awhile)

The private water taxis and the Alilaguna boats are right next to each other at the pier that you walk to from the airport terminal. The trip from the airport to Venice on the Alilaguna is €14 each (pre purchase on line) & kids under 6 are free. Once you leave the airport you ride through the various stops until you get to yours - from airport to the Riva Delgi Schiavoni stops takes at least an hour, but it's nice to see Venice from the water. One thing I noticed was that unlike the first time I stayed in Venice these days the bridges along the Riva have ramps on one side enabling you to wheel your suitcases over them. Most of the bridges around the P. Roma don't have that.

The morning it's time to board your ship you can catch the Alilaguna boat where you got off to go to the cruise port for another €7 (online pre purchase price.)

I stayed at the Hotel Garibaldi pre cruise & they must have upgraded me as I only paid for a single/no view & I had a lovely corner room overlooking the water. The included breakfast was very impressive as well.

Post cruise I stayed near P. Roma 3 nights. I had a very early flight & needed to be close to the airport bus. The Hotel Gardenia was 2 bridges from P. Roma (or 3, depending on route) but very easy to find and it was nice & reasonably priced for my canal view room, but I preferred my pre cruise hotel.

Do make sure that your hotel has a lift/elevator - some don't & hauling luggage up a few flights of stairs isn't much fun.

Update: Booked Hotel Campiello in Venice and Doubletree Hilton somewhere North of Venice.

If any of these made sense[emoji846]

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Which hotel are you staying at pre cruise & which after?

Hotel Campiello is on an alley way right off of Riva Delgi Schiavoni, which is near where my pre cruise hotel was last Nov.. It was a great location, an easy walk to St. Marks and as it wasn't really tourist season not terribly busy. I especially enjoyed an early morning walk to see the Aqua Alta coming in to St. Marks. I also happened to see my ship The Vision OTS quietly gliding in that early morning from my hotel room window - it was magic!

If this is your pre cruise hotel the cheapest option is to bus from the airport to P. Roma then schlepp your luggage over to buy your vaporetto passes then find the correct vaporetto to get to your stop - San Zacharia. I ran into a couple of hopelessly lost people from the ship post cruise trying to figure out which vaporetto to take and where to get off to find their hotel.

It really is confusing if you've never been & P. Roma is especially hectic w/ buses, taxis, trains, pedestrians & vaporettos all converging in the same general area.

If you do the bus/vaporetto route you can get a 24 or 48 hr. vaporetto pass and be set to jump on and off as you like

I used the Alilaguna boat (blue line) to get from the airport to my hotel & then from the hotel to the pier the next day last Nov. and my hotel was on Riva Delgi Sciavoni near the Arsenale stop which is a short distance from where your hotel is. The Alilaguna costs more than grabbing the bus at the airport and then shlepping w/ your luggage @ P. Roma to catch the right vaporetto, but it was a nice relaxing boat ride into Venice w/ lots of stops, but since it was raining I was happy to sit back and look out the window & it was an easy way to get to the ship the next day. I saved a couple of euro by buying my Alilaguna ticket online from home. I redeemed it down by the pier by the airport (a bit of a walk but well marked pathway) & then bought the next day's ticket to get to the cruise port there at the pier ( I wasn't sure which ticket I needed for that trip so waited to buy it.)

I was there on the Vision OTS in late November.

Like you I was concerned about the Kusadasi stop, particularly as other lines had dropped all Turkey stops & the state dept. had evacuated embassy families from Istanbul a week or so before the cruise.

That said, I am so glad I had the chance to see Ephesus. I did take a ship excursion (the one that included the terrace houses @ Ephesus.) There was nothing about the stop that was any different than the other ports, other than the regret of the Turkish people that their troubles had reduced the number of visitors to their land.

You're lucky enough to take the whole family including your grandchldren on a week long cruise over Christmas. And you're "in tears" because a show reservation didn't work out. And you think you need to make YOUR BIRTHDAY special?

 

Wow, you are indeed very special....

IMO there's nothing entitled about expecting a venue to honor a previously made commitment, or if unable to do so to contact the guest and offer workable alternatives.

Making plans for large groups is a huge challenge.

The reservation for 12 people was made months ago. A week before sailing in the midst of all the packing & Christmas madness OP checks their planner and discovers that without notice that previously made reservation is gone & has been replaced with one she didn't ask for and which is unworkable for her.

It would be like making a dinner reservation for 12 people for 8 pm and having the restaurant change it to 10 pm. Booking an early movie/play and having the theatre change it to the late show without notice on land would never be acceptable, it isn't any different on these mega ships, IMO.

To me the true issue is the changing without notice. When I schedule things for a vacation I do it so that I don't have to wait in lines or scramble at the last minute to deal w/ things so that my vacation can be an escape from the type of deadlines/hassles that I deal w/ at work. I do expect the people who happily accept my money for a vacation to fulfill their end of the bargain & deliver what they promised me when they promised to do so w/out sudden switcheroos & if they cancel something they owe me the basic courtesy of alerting me when they do so to enable me to make alternative plans as soon as I can.

I flew using Air2Sea 3 weeks ago. The price was the same as I'd found on Kayak. It was United code share w/ Lufthansa SFO - FRA - VCE and back. The outgoing San Francisco to Frankfurt flight was a United plane & I got FF points for that flight and chose my seat. The short Frankfurt -Venice leg and the Venice - Frankfurt & Frankfurt - San Fransisco flights back were Lufthansa planes and I did not get United miles for those and I wasn't able to pick my seats until 23 hours before the flights. Also, unlike normal Lufthansa flights I couldn't even pay extra to pick my seat ahead of time. It all worked out, the hotel had good wifi to log in and grab my seats and I got decent seats, but a hassle nevertheless. Packed plane coming home, too, maybe because the Lufthansa pilots went on strike the next day. If I'd just flown out one day later I could have been stuck in Venice for an extra 3 or 4 days - darn:cool:

I too will be on the Vision's Nov. 12 edition of this itinerary and your review & photos are a lovely peek at what to expect next week :)

Thank you.

I'm on the Vision in 15 days (not that I'm counting:)) and also have a deluxe drink package that includes still/sparkling water and I like to sip sparkling water at night - if I don't want to wander around collecting small bottles to stash in my cabin is there a place I can just buy a larger bottle of sparkling water to have in the cabin?

Thanks everyone - I'll not worry about the 20 pages just the boarding pass then.

 

I got the Set Sail boarding pass to print fine. Yippee!

 

No luggage tags though. I couldn't see them anywhere.

 

Are luggage tags only available 30 or 45 days out? I am at 56 days out right now.

 

Should I go back in closer to the sailing date?

 

Thanks again - I really do appreciate it.

The luggage tags will be available closer to your sail date in your cruise documents.

I'm new to all of this as well. I printed 2 sets of documents. You should be able to access them by logging into RCI irrespective of if you get an email or not.

When I log into RCI and click on my reservation no. 1234... on the right of the screen are 2 tabs. One says "Online check in" which I completed several weeks ago and was shortly thereafter able to print my set sail pass documents. This set of documents was 3 pages.

The other tabs says "Cruise Documentation" which for a long time said not yet issued. I sent an email to RCI since I read here of people getting access to those doc.s at 49 days & mine weren't issued yet. RCI's response was that the cruise documentation is usually issued at 45 days, but since I had Air2Sea my documents might take longer. They showed up on the website 36 days before my sail date and I printed them out by clicking on the print tab on the screen. This set was 20 pages and titled "Guest Ticket Booklet," the last page was the luggage tags.

I'm having the same issue, but I didn't know if it was because I booked through a TA, but thanks to Bob it could also be because we booked Air2Sea as well. I'll give it a few more days.

I'm new to all this so when my doc.s weren't showing up I sent an email and got this response

"...Cruise documents are generally issued about 45 days prior to sailing. Records indicate the presence of Choice Air on your reservation. At times this can delay the process as your airline ticket must be issued before the cruise documents or Edocs, as they are also known as, can be.

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The docs finally showed up last week when I logged in to check - about 36 days before the cruise.

I don't think there are any trains to/from Marco Polo airport.

If your hotel is in Venice proper the closest a cab can get you to your hotel is the Piazele Roma from there you'll have to walk and/or take a vaporetto if they're still running. If you are staying on the mainland then a cab can deliver you to your hotel.

I'm no expert - I just remember a stay many years ago in Venice and am currently trying to plan my own pre cruise night there.

Verizon does offer wifi calling now but make sure you set it up before you sail. You have to put in an emergency address and lots of screens come up that you have to go through. I just did it on Anthem, wished I had done it before I left. It was just really picky about the address, it wouldn't take my address unless it was typed in all caps.:rolleyes:

 

You will be able to text home and do not need a Verizon international plan if you buy Voom. Just turn on airplane mode and wifi and you will be all set. I also did confirm that my data roaming was off so if my phone came out of airplane mode for some bizarre reason, I wouldn't incur terrible data charges.

 

edit to add: wifi calling is only for iphone 6 and up on Verizon.

How do I confirm that data roaming is off?

Last week I paid for the replenish package which specifically included gratuities.

The FAQ states that the replenish package will automatically convert to the refreshment package.

The refreshment package specifically excludes gratuities.

Am I correct to assume that the terms I purchased the package under will be honored and gratuities will not be added when I order drinks/water/coffees on board despite the 'automatic' language of the refresh package?

Upthread someone posted the replenish/refresh package was up 35-37% but if you add 18% for gratuities which were previously included aren't you really up more like 53-55%?

...Maybe your first day aboard is an overnight stay in Venice? If so, I would have been okay with the first flight.

 

I will be comparison shopping for flights to Venice in 2017 and although I have never used Air2Sea yet - I am interested to see what flights are offered.

The ship sails (how wonderful it feels to type that) at 5 pm that first day, so no overnight in Venice that first night - first port of call Dubrovnik the next day - I looked at how hard it would be to join at Dubrovnik & decided it looked like a challenge.

Regarding the Air2Sea, I'd priced flights on kayak the day before I called to book the cruise & the price they offered was actually a few dollars less than kayak had.

The initial change fee was quoted as $250, but after I said to do it it actually worked out to $97.

The luggage is what I'd be concerned about with the short connection.

Perhaps I should stay in a hotel close to Marco Polo Airport that night, in case I need to return to collect my luggage. I'll certainly pack my carry on w/ that in mind.

I have 3 nights in Venice after the cruise already booked at a hotel in Venice proper so that new night pre cruise I'm mostly interested in what'll be most convenient.

On August 6 I booked my first RCI cruise & my first cruise in 15 years. I did it on the phone and purchased airfare using Air2Sea. Then I started reading here:confused:

The flights booked were an overnight direct from SFO to FRA w/a 70 minute layover in Frankfurt & then off to Venice arriving 12:30 w/ the ship leaving at 5pm that day.

I was concerned about the short layover in FRA as my vague recollection from the one time I connected there before was that the airport was huge. So I started tracking my flight to figure out gates & whether I could deplane & board the Venice flight in 70 minutes.

What I discovered was that for the last 14 days the SFO flight has arrived in FRA on time only twice, 7 times it arrived so late that the connecting Venice flight had already left, for the other 5 late arrivals actually making the connection looked dicey. I checked for later flights - there was one arriving at Venice mid afternoon and one arriving at 8 at night.

I decided the wisest thing to do was to fly in a day earlier - the RCI Air2Sea person tried to talk me out of it citing the 'guarentee' to get me to the ship on time or to catch me up to the ship - but it seemed to me it was worth the change fee and ultimately he rebooked the flights & I now arrive in Venice the day before my cruise.

Now I'm wondering if while I was at it I should have rebooked the Venice flight for the later mid afternoon one and given myself a longer layover given the SFO flight's frequent late arrivals - but I don't want to pay another change fee.

Was I right to change flights & arrive the day before sailing?

Am I ok w/ the tight connection to Venice now? Even if I miss the original connection there are 2 later flights that day & 2 the next day which could get me into Venice in time to board for the 5 pm sailing.

Or, if dad and son can arrange it so they are not on at the same time you can get by with a one device package.

 

 

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Am I correct in assuming that if I take 2 devices (IPad & cell phone) I can use both as long as I only use 1 at any given time? Say the IPad is charging & I want to surf the web on my phone or vice versa that'll work w/ the Voom 1 device package?

You're not confused.

 

THIS GUY is confused: http://www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2388374

 

;) :D

I read that thread - I had the option to book a guarenteed cat for a little less, but opted not to. Since the price was the same I'm fine w/ the H/G thing - just found it odd that the computer hold ID'ed it as H4XXX and the actual booking listed it as G4XXX(same room number.)

Thanks all for the suggestion to keep checking for a better deal - I've been so busy looking for a place to stay in Venice post cruise and sorting through excursion choices and wondering if I should get an Internet package, etc. it didn't occurr to me to check the cruise price again to see if it had gone done!