johno1234
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Posts posted by johno1234
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In displacement (non planing) hulls, the longer the waterline length, the faster (and more efficient) it becomes. Unless the handing and sea keeping drawbacks outweigh this, I expect to see most new cruise ships designed this way.
I think they look weird, and those Aida ships... lipstick on a pig comes to mind!
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A friend of mine can't seem to say "Ovation of the Seas"... it always comes out as "Ovulation of the Seas" !!!
Still funny, even if a RCCL ship rather than Carnival.
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We missed that show 😞
Did catch the Motown, Divas, magic and a couple of comedy acts though. All pretty good entertainment but the music ones were the highlight for me.
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7 hours ago, happy cruzer said:
Thanks for the review. See you had the Classic package. Did you have any trouble with the drink service? Especially wine with dinner.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi, no trouble with wine at dinner. Generally just drank the house Chardonnay with my meals and it was ok. There were premium wines available by the glass, you just have to sign for the price difference. Our sommelier was omnipresent and topping up everybody's glass. If you ordered a cocktail it could take a while for the order to get to the bar., made and delivered back.
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1 hour ago, davekathy said:
What ships are you sailing on that there's that kind of room between the loungers on the pool deck or even the deck above? Bumper to bumper on our Celebrity cruises.
Agreed. There's not even space to put your drink down between the loungers.
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On 5/4/2019 at 8:30 AM, Birdie And Sue said:
Except that washy washy does nothing to a virus. That is just a last ditch fail safe for people who do not wash their hands sufficiently with hot water and soap. I never use the washy washy. I do not like how slimy and nasty it is on my hands. If you really want to comr into the bathroom with me to watch my wash my hands to your standards, feel free to do so. It is not my job to assure you that I do anything.You should be happy that people use the hand sanitizer as it reduces the chance of you picking up a bug from something they touched such as a handrail.
But yeah, norovirus is quite hard to kill.
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7 hours ago, shipshape sam said:
Do not remember a bar with that title on the Carnival Paradise. We were at a bar called Rotterdam Bar per the deck schematic. Never even close to the activity and vibe of the Martini Bar on S class ships. No bartenders making flights of martinis or creating the pouring glass lines.
It is a subjective thing that we each like, dislike or are neutral on that make up our experiences. I love the Martini Bar on S class ships and that is my gold standard.
Ah, no Alchemy on the Paradise, too bad. The newer ships have it. They do a nice Grey Goose VX martini.
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On 5/6/2019 at 11:39 AM, shipshape sam said:
Just back from a 5 day Carnival cruise and it was great. Missed a number of things I liked on Celebrity, but all in all not a bad cruise!
Interesting, what I missed the most was the Martini Bar and enjoying top shelf vodka! 🙂
It was an older demographic, I think, due to time of year and going to Cuba. Not a party cruise, but we did have fun on pool deck on both of our sea days.
Didn't the Alchemy bar meed your martini needs?
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New to Celeb, but I noticed they are dealing with chair hogs.
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On 5/4/2019 at 7:21 AM, hcat said:
That's the irony of increasing the gratuities on the bevs.....hardly anyone comes around at the pool, and even in the clubs you have to go up to the bar, edge your way in and hope someones takes your order. Seems there are fewer sommeliers per dining rm as well, thus slower service.
Servers in the theater are an exception...they have a limited time to get the orders and drinks out...and collect empty glasses. They deserve battle pay! I also assume specialty bartenders like Martini Bar Stars...get an equal share of the grats but more cash tips???
Question : Will the grat increase when you get a drink priced over your plan? So the diff would be between the allowable amt and the drink price plus 20% on the diff.?
Never had any problem on our Apr cruise. If the pool bar was busy I'd just go upstairs to the mast bar where there's usually less people. Even just sitting by the pool, someone would come past often enough and ask for any drink orders.
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On 5/3/2019 at 1:25 PM, johno1234 said:
matter. S
Oh, and I forgot to mention: the "Silent Disco". When I saw this on the activities list I though "Lame-o".
I was basically forced to go along to this and what do you know - it was an absolute winner. Lots of fun, and for people like me who cannot dance or sing for nuts... it doesn't matter! Ended up going along to this one whenever it was on. Tip: have a couple of martinis first - makes it even better.
Come to think of it, a couple of martinis first makes just about anything better!!!!
Hmmm, martinis....
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1 hour ago, wpgcycler said:
Surely these are all exceptions? Everyone knows the typical Celeb cruiser is a flip flop treading, wife-beater wearing, french fry sneaking, finger licking, cigar smoking, chair hogging, auto-tip removing, theatre seat saving, passenger insulting, staff berating, elevator barging, wine smuggling, child hating, plastic straw sipping, beverage package sharing, multi use tonging, over-eating, disgusting, obnoxious boor, no?
ROTFLMAO! OMG what a great read to start my Monday morning!
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PS our cabin 6170 partial obstructed view balcony. There was a post from the lifeboat launching mechanism in the way but that didn't really matter. Some POV cabins didn't even have that. The lifeboat top was about at the cabin floor level so only obstructs the view looking down at the sea.
Cabin was plenty roomy. Being on deck 6 means a good workout if you take the stairs to the pools! Our cabin attendant Ninga was super unobtrusive and kept our cabin perfect. There was one gripe though. There was some sort of duct in the window corner of the cabin and when the ship was moving about in a sea way something in the duct (a loose cable?) would clang against the duct. Drove me nuts. CCL never did anything about it.
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*We* were the nice people on our cruise!
Half way through the cruise one of our group of 8 noticed a nice looking slightly older gentleman was dining by himself in the MDR, so she asked if we should invite him to join us. We agreed so she asked him over. Fred is from Germany and a very experienced cruiser but his wife passed away only 5 months ago. He decided to go on the booked cruise by himself anyway to continue their tradition. Fred's English wasn't strong but our German was almost no existent. We enjoyed his company and he's a great dancer. It was a privilege to adopt him for the second half of our cruise and was a warm and fuzzy feeling to do so. A small kindness pays both ways and we have a new friend.
Interesting note: we saw a couple of German Aida ships in port. Fred said he never went on the German marketed cruises as the he reckons the Germans complain all the time!
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Hi all, better late than never, I hope!
Boarding on day 1:
Piece of cake. The queue formed inside Celebrity's nice new cavernous air conditioned terminal so no baking in the midday heat. Through the line and on board in about 20 minutes.
Lifeboat drill. Again, this was easy. Our station was the Celebrity Central mini theatre. Plenty of seats so no standing required. The drill was mostly watching a cheesy video.
Port 1 - Grand Cayman. Beautiful island and beaches. We jumped on a bus from the tender dock This wasn't a great option. Jammed into the bus like sardines, and instead of the far end of Seven Mile beach they dropped us off at Camana Bay in the parking lot of Royal Palms Beach Club, who charged us $2 to walk through their security check to the beach and they take away any food or drink in your bags. Could have just walked through the public beach access 20 yards away and avoided all that. We rented beach umbrella and chairs from the resort. Although the beaches are gorgeous, they are a bit over-developed with resorts for my preference. I like a natural quiet beach best. We found plenty of those in the ABC islands - see below.
What I learnt: I would next time get a taxi rather than the sardine bus with it's grumpy driver, to further along Seven Mile Beach and just use a public beach access. Camana Bay is walkable from the tender dock in about 30min. Across the road from the beach there are some shops including a good dive shop for dive and snorkel as well as beach gear.
Port 2: Cartagena
This was the only disappointment of the cruise. Cartagena old town and fort is beautiful and fascinating. However it was oppressively hot and humid and we were constantly hounded by beggars and hawkers. There were terribly sad crippled polio sufferers moaning at us and hopping along with their home made crutches. I felt bad for them but I am trying to have a nice holiday, not feel guilty. A UK couple from the ship had their bag stolen including passports (do not take these ashore!) which meant they had to leave the cruise and find their way back to the UK as CCL were apparently not allowed to take them back to the USA. Next time I would not select a cruise that included this port. Would much rather stop in at one of the other islands.
Port 3: Aruba.
Sensational. We did the https://www.agwtoursaruba.com/ tour with Leroy as our guide. I cannot begin to explain how much fun it was driving these ATVs! The lady at the base told us that there was to be no racing, fishtailing or drifting. But Leroy set a cracking pace and we just raced along and did plenty of drifts and skids. First through streets, then beaches, then rocky coast, up a volcanic slope and along a high speed road back at the end of the day. We visited beaches, caves add rock pools. The terrain included scrambling over some very rough rocky terrain and these amazing vehicles gobbled it up. Several of our vehicles (16 people and 8 ATV's in our group) got punctures on the sharp rocks but Leroy repaired them on the spot in minutes. A word of WARNING about this tour though. Some of the couples found the driving too fast and struggled to keep up. The natural rock pool was potentially extremely dangerous and people have drowned there. Large ocean swells crash into it and you can't seem them coming. There's a risk of being swept out. If you are elderly or a child or not an adventurous capable swimmer, consider sitting out the rock pool or stay close to where you enter the water.
This tour alone was worth the 14 hours of flying from New Zealand! Notwithstanding the warnings above it is a must for adventurous thrill seekers.
Plenty of good shopping and bars in the town.
Port 4: Curacao.
Beautiful. We did the Max Taxi tour. Max was very knowledgeable and took us to great spots in his nice van. He didn't stop talking though, so for the long drive back to port, plug in your headphones and zone out. We toured the Curacao distillery and visited a several beautiful un-developed beaches. We swam at one beach with literally dozens of sea turtles. Plenty of good shopping and bars in the town here too.
Port 5: Bonaire.
We did the Woodwind snorkel tour. Lots and lots of people here and at TripAdvisor have raved about how fantastic this tour is. They are not wrong and it really is as good or better as everyone says. I am an experienced scuba and snorkel diver and I loved it. My wife previously has not enjoyed snorkelling and even she loved it. Dee and her team do such a good job of making snorkelling easy for anyone. They provided great gear - they even had +2 prescription goggles for me. Plenty of food and drink included. This tour is a bargain, a must do, and on ship visit days sells out months or even a year in advance. I can see why. We say plenty of turtles again, and it was like snorkelling in a giant tropical aquarium. Every single person on this tour (about 26 people) really enjoyed it and felt safe.
Aside from that Bonaire is really nice. All the ABC islands are under Dutch sovereignty and the ports are so clean and friendly.
Celebrity and the Reflection:
My first CCL cruise. Really impressed with the ship and the crew. As everybody has said, the food and service was first class. I was surprised how good the shows were. Loved the Divas and MoTown music shows. Loved the comedy shows. We mainly ate in the MDR with William and Jomar as our main men and they were excellent. We had buffet dinner and one meal in each of Murano and Lawn Club Grill and enjoyed both. On an 11 night cruise the MDR can become repetitive so you need to break that up. The MDR has a stricter dress code than other lines - no shorts! I didn't know and had only packed one pair of long pants! Everyone seems to talk about the captain and the CD. The captain we hardly saw but he got the ship from port to port safely and on time and that's really all I care about. The CD I personally found annoying but who cares - It's not like I was required to sit and listen to him.
Drinks package. We had Classic package included. Not financially worth upgrading to premium for us despite getting through a huge amount of poolside cocktails, pre dinner cocktails, dinner wine and post dinner cocktails! HOWEVER some of the bars (e.g. World Class cocktail bar) only make premium cocktails so you have the irritation of having to sign for $1-$3 charges. That was a little annoying as I specifically wanted to avoid this tedious task that gets between me and my martini. They don't know how to make a sloe gin sour properly but I'll not quibble about that.
The pools. These were busy as expected on sea days and CCL are working to deal with chair hoggers. It still happens, and we routinely removed towels and other personal effects from chairs that had been unused for 30+ minutes. We even had some glaring idiots complaining to us that they had "reserved" chairs! Told them that wasn't allowed and they could go complain to the pool butler. We were a group of up to 8 so not much they could do about it. Really enjoyed the pools - swimming, reading and sucking down those pina coladas. Got sunburnt though!
Kids. Hardly any on the ship and CCL don't cater that well for them. No Flo-rider, no water park, no climbing walls etc so kids would probably get bored on this cruise. Suited us as we (4 couples) left our poor kids at home !
Overall I give this cruise an 8. It would have been a 9 but for the Cartagena port day.
Cheers!
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On 3/23/2019 at 1:09 PM, lisiamc said:
Of the many bits of plastic, including straws, in the ocean, an infinitesimal number of them got there because someone dropped or lost them overboard from a cruise ship.
From what I’ve read, the usual route for plastic to get into the ocean is for it to be put in a landfill which gets flooded because it’s on low-lying ground, and the rubbish gets carried out to sea. Some countries or regions within a country contract their rubbish and/or recyclables to be carried across the ocean on barges for disposal in other countries. Sometimes the rubbish is swept off the barges in a storm, and sometimes it is just dumped in the ocean by unscrupulous contractors. Sometimes it gets to the landfill in the other country, but is swept out to sea by a flood/hurricane/cyclone.
The reason straws have been singled out as a starting point is because they are difficult/unprofitable to recycle, and because they are colourful and they float, so they show right up in any heap of plastic floating in the ocean or washed ashore. Alternatives to plastic straws are pretty convenient for most people, so they make a good starting point for weaning us off single-use plastic. I’m sure plastic bottles are on the target list sometime soon as well.
90% of oceanic plastic comes from 10 rivers in Asia and Africa:
https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/07/26/asia-africa-cause-90-plastic-pollution-worlds-oceans-13233
I don't think we need to beat ourselves up over straws.
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6 hours ago, Cruise a holic said:
I assume best place (perhaps only) for Filet is Murano. Not sure about Tuscan grill. But you can get a great deal the first night at the specialty restaurants! IMO very well worth while!
Was your cabin quiet? Under the gym or pool? Are the "free" martini's from the Martini bar- the same as if you ordered them from the martini bar menu or are they the small limited martini's?
Thanks
Lawn Club Grill will have ribeye and filet mignon.
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2 hours ago, hrhdhd said:
But your mother was taken to the hospital, so someone else was in fact making medical decisions. (And I certainly hope she recovered from whatever the issue was.)
I guess I just see a lot of people identifying things as emergencies that aren't emergencies, and then using them as excuses for needing to have their phones on all the time. I travel with the attitude of jkgourmet's father: maybe something will happen, but I'll worry about it when I get home. If I had responsibility for someone in particular, I'd arrange for a trusted friend or a paid medical aide to keep an eye on things. Not much I can do in the middle of the ocean.
I couldn't possibly take that attitude when I have children, elderly parents and family back at home.
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7 hours ago, yorky said:
I’m not really a spirit drinker but do drink cocktails. We always have the premium drinks package while onboard and given that what are the premium vodkas we should be asking for in our drinks ? A like a particular martini at home that I believe includes Absolute vanilla vodka.
Absolut and flavoured Absolut are included in the Classic package so need to upgrade to get those. I'm not sure I can tell the difference between a quality vodka like Absolute and a premium vodka like Grey Goose once it's been shaken up in a cocktail mix.
If you are going to have one or two drinks a day off the premium list it will only cost you a few bucks upcharge each on your Classic package - cheaper than $11.80/day to upgrade the package.
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sent MoveUp link today for 4/1 Reflection cruise. Best deal is from 2C to Family Veranda starting at $290/guest for "fair" bit.
Royal Suite at $2670/pax for 'fair' bid!!!
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1 hour ago, Redtravel said:
I am a tea drinker...hot and cold. For me, a beverage plan would be a joke. My spouse likes to drink and has bought beverage packages. However, when you get a perk choice, both guests must choose the same perk. For us, we choose the tips or OBC.
Premium teas are $5 a cup so if you have a couple a day and a couple of bottles of water a non alcoholic BP would break even.
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I would think that VHF/UHF radios would be useless on a ship as they don't work at all through obstructions. So curious to know what on earth they would use?
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On 2/24/2019 at 1:24 AM, justcrusn said:
Well....
You cannot order a bottle of wine with a package. It’s by the glass.
you CAN purchase a bottle several ways, just not with a drink package, but you are free to share a bottle any way you choose.
If you have a BP you get a discount (I think 20%) off wine bottle purchases. Once bought, you are entitled to share with others.
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4 hours ago, jelayne said:
You are not required to use one of your dinners on the first or 2nd night; that changed awhile ago. The not so spiffy Celebrity IT system still requires a night and time selection to process the transaction. We have purchased dining packages 3 times in the past year but once on the ship never had a assigned reservation for the first or second night.
In fact in the Cruise Planner they now offer a discount on dining in the speciality restaurants on the first night, you book and pay and pick your dining time. So the speciality restaurants are being filled on the night by these reservations.
Ok that's good. Was thinking about grabbing a 1st night discount but it's cheaper to add one extra day to your package (~$20) so realised that didn't make any sense! 🛳️
Just back from 5 day Carnival Paradise cruise
in Celebrity Cruises
Posted · Edited by johno1234
typo
Never managed to exceed the 15 a day limit myself when we were on Carnival. I'm pretty sure the 15 limit applies to alcoholic drinks only - your coffees and water bottles do not count.
Also there is a significant upside to Cheers vs the Celebrity bev pkgs: Cheers has a drink price limit of $20 whereas Classic/Premium on Celeb has a limit of $9 and $15 respectively. So if on Classic and buying $13 top shelf martinis, you have to sign for the $4 + tip upcharge.
Cheers also cheaper $50 vs $59/$69 on Celebrity.