cardiffman

On 11/5/2022 at 10:00 AM, Mike45LC said:
 

Out of two orders I have placed using the Medallion App, zero have been delivered.

Made 3 attempts to get a cappuccino on deck 5 of Piazza. First two got canceled, even though I didn’t remember canceling them. 
 

Third attempt was masterminded by @abbydancerwho has more experience with the medallion than I do. The difference was, she caused the app to move to a different screen after the order, whereas I clicked the submit button and let it sit on the same screen. The third order was delivered.
 

I don’t think it SHOULD have cancelled my first two attempts, but I will be more careful based on this experience. 

They were testing the website with an ideal "spherical cruise ship in a vacuum" 🙂

I can't imagine them naming a ship "Spherical Princess" 😞

On 7/27/2022 at 1:57 PM, martincath said:

Safe flights, hope your bags arrive here when you do so they get on the ship with you!

We got to the hotel just fine. Thanks again for the information.  The Canadian Govt  decided to randomly test one of us, and the email didn’t get through until we got to the hotel. So we had to find one of the contracted drug stores and get tested. That was a scene. 
 

Honestly, I don’t think it’s an advantage to test at the near-airport site. It just locates you away from the airport after your test. There probably are taxis and such there, but I don’t know if there are as many options. Could have done without that step if it were up to us. 

21 hours ago, martincath said:

Safe flights, hope your bags arrive here when you do so they get on the ship with you!

Thanks for the response.

Fortunately we have a nonstop flight to YVR so the bags won't have a tricky journey and our arrival timing leaves us some margin.

Once in Buenos Aires we had a 10pm flight out and the ship kicked us out at the usual time. We took a ship excursion to the airport by way of some attractions and we were at the airport at ... 12:30pm. And the counters didn't open until 5 or so because the planes weren't leaving until 8. So we dragged our bags around to two different eateries within the land-side concourse. And it seemed like the entire girls softball (I think) community of the city was going out on our flight, to Miami. Fun.

DW and I are doing this on a different schedule so my questions are different. 

We arrive on the morning July 29th for a cruise on July 31st, and return in the afternoon of the 7th to San Diego.

1. Backup plan for COVID test-- We are planning to bring a tests with us and use them at the hotel. Is there a place near the Pan Pacific to get a test while we are there?
2. Does anyone know if it is convenient to print paper documents in the vicinity of Pan Pacific?
3. Cabs from Airport -- We are used to taking cabs from JFK into Manhattan; once also within FLL. It doesn't look like the train will work for us because putting luggage in our laps would not physically suit us as it would suit most people. How are the cabs? I assume that "signs will direct" us to where the cabs pick up. Is that accurate?
4. Cabs to Airport -- Where to get a cab and when for 5PM flight on a Sunday?
5. Private Car instead of Cab on either end? We did this once in 2017 and while it was a nice way to see part of Vancouver, any thoughts about cab vs car would be welcome.
6. Our airline schedule on the 7th appears pretty loose so as long as we get to the gate on time it should be okay.

18 hours ago, rdsqrl said:

I've not complained, but I have mocked.  Pure entertainment.  What can I say, I'm a Mean Girl. 

 

I love how rank-and-file passengers always seem to know The Truth.  And the ship's officers are always in a conspiracy to Hide The Truth.  P.S.:  Don't forget about the Communists under the bed and the aliens in Area 57. 

Did you write Area 57 or was it Area 51? Sometimes in cursive 7’s and 1’s look similar. The place where the CIA keep the aliens 👽 is Area 51. 😎

I hope all the unhappy people find happiness and/or are mistaken. We just boarded Discovery P. and we have some trepidation because, knowing we paid less, we wonder if we’ll miss the Celebrity retreat life. 

On 8/14/2021 at 7:55 AM, abbydancer said:

Once they confirm it, it's important to screenshot the QR code that's there, you need that to check in.  We didn't and had to screenshot it from the confirmation email.

When I got the email I was able to poke at the QR code image and save it to my phone’s photo album. This was great for me, because I seldom make screenshots and I have trouble when I do. 

21 hours ago, abbydancer said:

What's Signature Service?  I think we just dealt with Jet Blue people.

I think I misremembered their name. The people who corralled the passengers into the AA counters, and managed immigration and customs once we were through AA ticketing, and acting as gate agents for AA flights, were all wearing polo shirts in shades of blue with “Signature Flight” or “Signature Services” logos (one of those names). There were no personnel in AA uniforms (dark blue, business-like suits) until we got on the plane itself. 

1 hour ago, abbydancer said:

The gates are in two different areas.  The first has gates 1-7.  If you’re at one of those, you’re taking a shuttle bus to your plane.  If you’re in 8-10 (as we were) you go to the second room, and walked to your plane.  It’s important to note that the second story of the airport has not been rebuilt, so there are no jetways, just stairs and ramps if necessary.

...

By the way, our friends had their flight later, so they went on a private tour, and arrived at the airport about when we boarded.  They apparently had a not so great experience.  

Our gate was gate 5 and we had to walk from the gate 5 door to the plane. We got to the airport at a time that would ordinarily have been suitable for the original 2:30-ish departure time, but when we got to the gate area there was maybe 20 minutes until we were walking to the stand where the plane was waiting. We ran into friends from this cruise who were on the same DFW flight so that was nice.

The Signature Services staff maybe had been on shift too long. Newbies of the staff were making errors which veteran staff had to fix. Do not recommend. They worked *all* aspects from "American" ticket counter to immigration and customs. I will say that there was apparently an adequate number of restrooms and some areas had pretty good AC.

I was bemused to see that the FBO at SAN is occupied by Signature Services. The equalizer.

10 hours ago, abbydancer said:

Hello.  The internet appears to be working, so  here's a post.

 

First, as mentioned only one entrance to Tuscan.

 

The hotel quoted us 160.00 for the 3 hour - 130 for 24 hours.  By the way, all of us really liked the hotel.

 

We started with breakfast at the hotel.  They gave us a menu to check off 7 things for our "breakfast included" rate.  It included juices, hot drinks, eggs, pastry and fruit and yogurt and what they called "relish" ie bacon, tomato, cheese, etc.  It was good although we had to chase them down to get our orange juice.

 

After breakfast we packed up, and waited for our prearranged ride.  He arrived at 11:30 and by 11:50, we were pulling up to the cruise terminal.  We were greeted by the porters, and they took us over to a tent, where they made sure we were on the list.  When you check in online, you might want to make sure you like your picture, because they have it.  The porters then took our bags to put on the ship.

 

Next step was entering the big tent.  There were a couple of checkers there, who looked at your vaccine card and your test results.  They almost didn't pass Beth, because they couldn't find where her test indicated it was PCR.  They wanted to send her over to be tested there, which would have delayed us 30-60 minutes.  She took the paper back to scan a QR code, and found where it said PCR.  They marked the test paper and we were good to go.

 

We then headed to the Suite/Zenith check in area.  There were drinks (bottled water and soda) and ice water dispensers.  There were comfortable chairs and couches, and soon after we sat down, an agent came and took pictures of our passports, vaccine cards and test results.  She also gave us two 'tracelets" and scanned those to tie them to us.

 

A few minutes after that, Connie, the retreat concierge, came by introduced herself and told us to wait a few moments.  In the meantime, Mike and Kath were in another area, and had a couple of delays, so they weren't quite ready when Connie collected us to go through immigration with no line.  We handed our passports to the agent, they checked us off, and we got on a golf cart to get on the ship.

 

5 minutes later we were ushered onboard.  First was a crew member with hand sanitizer, then a security check and then a like of cheering crew members.  That was way cool.    We headed up to our room, dropped our stuff and went back down to wait for our friends to come through.  They were going through security when we arrived, so that was good.

 

We were in their room when the butler (Daisy) and room steward (Roman) came to introduce themselves.  They did their explanations, for all 4 of us at once.  We then watched the saftey video (how to put o a life jacket), played the horn, and located our muster station.

 

Next stop muster check in and lunch.  Went to the station, but it wasn't open yet, so we headed to lunch.   Tomorrow, or later i might try to post a lunch picture.  Most interesting thing about lunch was that my sister and I both order what the waiter called "butterflied" Luminae burgers - cut in half horizontally.  

 

After lunch we unpacked, followed by doing a full walking tour of the ship, including a stop for a coffee at Al Bacio.  We met a lot of crew members, and since there weren't that many guests on board at that time.  We talked to a lot of them.  Everyone seemed very happy to be back.

 

We went back to the room, got ready for dinner, and then headed to the Retreat lounge where we talked to a couple that came in soon after us.  We also learned that the internet was down.

 

At 8, we joined Mike and Kath at dinner, and had a lovely dinner.  The vanilla ice cream is very good, and I'm not really fan.  

 

Following dinner, we went to the shops, and then to the lounge for a drink.  We ended up spending an hour with Daniel, the bartender talking.  His wife works in Al Bacio, and served us earlier.  (Beth figured it out because when we talked to her about Portuguese speaking people - she's from Brazil), she mentioned her husband was Romanian.  He told us his wife worked in Al Bacio, so Beth put it together.

 

All in all a great day, and it is so good to be back on a ship.  (I told Daniel I didn't care where we went - pulling wheelies outside of St. Martin for 7 days was fine with me).

 

The crew is masked, but are able to pull their masks down to talk to us.  They're all vaccinated, and have different ones - some J&J, Pfizer and AZ.  We are not required to mask, and so we're not.  There are somewhere between 450 and 490 passengers.  So far, I've seen no children.

 

On to sea day 1. 

 

 

At the airport I put my passport in my jacket pocket. At the hotel I put my jacket in my checked suitcase. Obviously at the cruise checkin this situation was a challenge. I assisted by port people, bless them, who got my suitcase to me so I could recover from this. But something else must have gone wrong because it took until about an hour and a half to get my bag delivered to our cabin. Somehow the tag came off. It all worked out. 

13 hours ago, phoenix_dream said:

Regardless of pro or con, I am also cynical about the reason.  They are cutting down to reduce cost and staff.

I don't think staff are as eager to return as they might have been before, so I partially disagree, because I don't think cost is the only reason. Labor is a reason.

1 hour ago, Bruin Steve said:

So, for about 15 months, the back kept growing unchecked.  By the time the hair places re-opened, I had what  I called a "Covid Mullet"!  Short and well trimmed on the front and sides, way down my back in the rear.  Good thing  didn't go out much...I looked danged funny...

In California, some of the counties opened up briefly in the middle of the 15 months, and I was able to get a couple cuts in before they had to lock down again. And I had worked out a haircut to get that could grow without attention without looking bad. So I didn't get tempted to go George Clooney's route.

Cut to: "George Clooney? Is he a passenger on this ship?" (Think of Mr Ishmay on Titanic)

I got directly notified by Celebrity on email, even though I have a TA. I think there may be a question of what your email preferences are. Also the change is supposedly just a ship change, supposedly when all is said and done it's the same cruise and same cabin on a different ship.

We have done a few Princess Cruises and one long Celebrity Eclipse cruise. We enjoyed all of those. The thing is, we were in a suite for our Eclipse cruise and most of our Princess cruises have been CC-mini suites. So we did come away with the impression that X is better than PCL but we can’t say we were doing an apples-to-apples comparison. We are looking forward to more cruises on both lines, though. 

On 10/7/2019 at 2:59 AM, chengkp75 said:

And, depending on when Princess' ships go into drydock over the next couple of years, there will be no Princess ships even doing "drive by" cruises to Antarctica.  The total "drop dead" date for passenger ships not Polar Classed is early in 2021, but when a ship has undergone their statutory drydocking since 2018, the ship loses its certification to operate south of 60*.

This is interesting. I was on Celebrity Eclipse down there. I think we got down *near* Paradise Harbor which is beyond 60. The Eclipse was said, by the cruise director in particular, as the largest ship to have gone down there. I have read a lot about ships going down there. What little I know about the Eclipse doesn't include its ice rating. What you're saying here implies that there could be fewer ships rated to go as far south as the Eclipse went come the end of the 2020-2021 season.

If you want a place where people can't buy a higher level of service, there's always the DMV.

Anyway we are all welcome in Cafe al Bacchio and we can all have coffee there together.

On 5/3/2019 at 6:23 AM, n2wdw said:

Also, for real Bond geeks, Seabourn makes another mistake.  They list Lillet as vermouth.  But Bond makes a point of saying that Lillet is not vermouth.  Seabourn's martini is good; is just not a Vesper.

I'm not that much of a Bond geek or a cocktail geek, but I regularly geek out about the Vesper. The Kina Lillet in the Vesper has a bit of quinine in it, which current Lillet Blanc doesn't have. So if you just use Lillet Blanc you're missing the quinine flavor, which in times past was a desirable flavor. The gin and vodka should also be strong, because due to the needs it was invented to meet, the Vesper has to be strong. When one of the new-run Bond movies was shown at a very nice cinema, they presented a version of the Vesper and that got me interested in this. 

16 hours ago, koalapanda said:

I contracted measles. I was  Immune compromised.

To me, "immune-compromised" would mean that antibodies might not work as they should, and so your prior history of measles would be less of a factor in preventing the virus from taking hold. If this is right, then you're not an example of a person who had the disease in childhood and who would have been expected to carry immunity forward. Does this make sense? It sounds unpleasant either way.

On 2/25/2019 at 6:07 AM, Anita Latte said:

IDK if, for the Alaska sailings, they will open up the retreat to all passengers for Hubbard Glacier or if that will be a special place, just for suite guests.

On our recent cruise in Antarctica they published, in the daily journal, just such a plan. They planned to be doing scenic cruising of the Gerlache Strait and so forth at the time when they would normally have the evening Elite gathering in the Sky Lounge, so the gathering would be canceled, and the Elite guests would have free drinks added to their accounts, so that all passengers could view the scenery from that lounge. So there's a precedent.

From what I can tell, loyalty programs on cruise lines are really simple, but not well-aligned with what the holding companies need from the programs, and not very much like other loyalty programs in airlines or hotels.

The cruise line programs are based on accumulating a point total or cruise-day total over your lifetime and then when you reach each level you are there permanently. You could do 15 nights over a period of 25 years on Princess and be Platinum. How is that what Carnival wants? I'm not as well briefed on Celebrity's program but it sounds like it is similar and similarly ineffective from RCI"s perspective.

The most important feature of the airline and hotel plans is that the levels that you can attain that you never lose, like United Global Services, are very hard to attain. The rest of us get status levels that expire in those programs. For example I made "silver" in the Marriott program, with exactly the minimum number of nights, and I'm unlikely to stay at that level based on my plans this year, and forget about attaining a higher level. I made the "premier" level on United in 2001 because they lowered the threshold that year, and I didn't ever qualify for it again. Clearly these programs reward recent customers, not loyal but infrequent customers. If Celebrity modernizes their program I would not be surprised if the permanent levels that remain are very hard to attain and the lower levels will become temporary, and might be based on your most recent business with Celebrity.

Some of the comments here suggest that RCI's four brands have a unified loyalty program. While most nights within Marriott earn the same benefit points, not all do. If RCI unifies the loyalty programs, I wouldn't be surprised if some weighting gives more benefits to a dollar on Silversea than a dollar on RCI. Or if not weight of dollars than weight of cruising days.

1 hour ago, Boatdrill said:

Regarding life boats...remember the crew has to get in too.  🙂 

Some ships have special provisions for the majority of the crew other than the lifeboats the pax would be in. The link is to an Instagram from one of the captains on Celebrity. She happened to post some pix and video of a drill they did for the MES that takes care of the crew on her ship. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvXPQHdHA6x/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

She included video of herself evacuating during the drill. 

The broader point of evacuation capacity is, yes ALL souls get a seat on something when the ship is evacuated.

I am almost done with my first cruise on Celebrity. I'm in a Celebrity Suite, not PS or RS and I am wondering what you folks used to expect. I have other experiences in cruising and hotel stays that calibrated my reaction to the service we got and space we occupied, and I feel that the CS is as good as it gets. Can you kindly share some notes?

@gretschwhtfalcon 

Nat'l Geographic/Lindblad and Hurtigruten also do landings on Antarctica. I haven't looked at any recent quotes to compare, but I seem to recall they are not the same style as Seabourn or Silversea.

There is also an outfit called Quark Expeditions that does some really hard-core expeditions in much less comfort (the comfort level is based on my reading of their website and others may disagree). They also offer a package that flies over to the continent and then you explore by boat.

The internet has been a slight disappointment on this cruise. I have done less instagraming and facebooking than I expected.

On ‎1‎/‎28‎/‎2019 at 10:55 AM, abbydancer said:

 I had previously challenged Mike to eat the Luminae burger without a knife and fork, as it's very thick.  I told them I wanted it and was going to cut it in half.  When it arrived, I noticed mine was a smaller burger.  For dessert, three of us had the oil oil custard with fruit which was wonderful, and the only thing I remembered to take a picture of.

I watch a lot of "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" where Guy Fieri demonstrates a technique for eating large sandwiches. I did not think the Luminae burger requires the full power of his technique.

I thought I'd post a few words about my experience today, Jan 16th, going to LAX. The destination of our flight is not relevant except that it's international: Buenos Aires.

Southern California has experienced a lot of rain and Wednesday morning was expected to be, at best, a lull.

And with all that's been said about TSA screeners needing to get paid, I was concerned that there could be a lack of staff at the checkpoints.

And then the icing on the cake is, we needed to collect boarding passes at the airport because of an issue (that I created) causing a lock out for us on the website.

None of the above affected us and in fact, we reached the airport loop with very little delay on the drive, arriving a little before 11, I think. Overall the time it took us to reach the concourse was low, without a lot of standing in lines.

We had a car take us instead of driving ourselves in some fashion, and the driver knew a way around the bulk of the traffic. Probably known by natives but we're from San Diego. So we arrived in less than two and a half hours at the doorstep of the international terminal doors for our airline. The rain did slow down during the morning but by 12 it was going for real again.

Then we had a quick schlep to the ticket counter, and our situation was handled in stride by the agent.

We then made our way to the TSA check point pre-check line. That process went very well. The staff were efficient and curt but not mean, and really kept things moving. 

So if you're going somewhere via LAX in the next few days, I wish you the same good luck we had.