FTLcruisers

We just returned from a Baltic cruise on July 2 - our ship was in St Petersburg for 3 days. We did a private tour in StP for 2 days and traveled to Moscow the other day. The cities are beautiful and vibrant. Being able to stand in Red Square was quite an experience. I don't agree with Russian politics but I was not going to let politics stand in the way of my being able to visit these historical cities.

BTW, we visited Athens when they were having conflicts as well as Barcelona when they had their protests. As someone else said, the business folks are the ones that suffer when tourists stop coming.

Marianne

Stockholders' OBC is not always the best deal to take - sometimes a coupon, balcony discount or other discount gives you more $$ than the stockholders' OBC.

Also - if you are buying 100 shares at $50, it is going to take you a long time to get enough OBC to justify that $5,000 expense since the most you can get is $250 per 14 day cruise. We do own RCL stock but bought it maybe 20 years ago. Back then we could get the stockholder OBC in addition to other offers so it was really worth it to own it.

Marianne

They are just trying to encourage people to come at different times rather than everyone showing up early. They will not prevent you from boarding no matter what time you show up.

Marianne

You just need to make arrangements with the cruise line. Friends of ours just did this in Stockholm; there was some sort of form they filled out on the ship prior to disembarking. I believe they made the arrangements prior to the cruise.

Marianne

Global Entry saved us recently when returning from Stockholm -- if we hadn't been able to use it we would have never made our connecting flight. Unfortunately, as others have said, they cannot be used at cruise ports. :(

Marianne

Not sure it is 'exciting' but I'd recommend Bernard's Tour in St Martin - he does take you to the nude beach on the other side of the island, to Maho Beach to watch the planes plus a few other places. bernardstours.com

Marianne

My husband and I have never had any problems using those small pill bags for domestic, Caribbean and international travel. Last year we were on a 32 day international trip; we each take several meds plus vitamins - so lots of little baggies!

Marianne

Can I ask why do people want all the stuff removed from the mini bar?

We were just on the Legend and did not have a refrigerator in our cabin - our "mini bar" was the desk! There were 6 cans of soda plus 2 big bottles of water taking us space that we needed.

Marianne

depends on the tour and the destination. If its a tour that we really want to make sure we go on, we will book it a few months ahead - this really just applies to European cruises. Can't think of any excursion in the Caribbean that would be a must do since we've been on dozens of cruises there.

Marianne

as far as the mini-bar items being hidden under your sofa, we learned on our last cruise that the cabin attendants are not actually allowed to take the stuff out of the cabin. There is someone else responsible for those items who the attendant would have to notify and wait for them to come and do that - it's probably just easier for them to do it themselves and put it out of the way.

We'll be on the Vision at the end of September so thanks for the review.

Marianne

Try a different browser if you have the problem again, I found that some things won't work for me on their site on Firefox.

I also have that issue - we normally use Chrome but sometimes I have to use Internet Explorer to pull up certain documents or access certain websites.

Marianne

we have done so many Caribbean cruises (we live in South Florida) so we have a different attitude on those cruises - more about relaxing/the ship than the ports. We still get off the ship but don't go on excursions. We have cruised numerous times in Europe, but would never think of just staying on the ship. Even if we don't do an excursion, we get off and explore someplace we haven't seen before or go back to someplace we really liked.

In general, we have learned that we don't have to do every single thing there is to do - that it's ok to relax!

Marianne

we're sailing out of Copenhagen on June 18th-- but didn't realize temps would be so warm. Thanks for posting - now I have to change the wardrobe I originally was going to pack!

Marianne

printable luggage tags are included in the guest vacation documents. We have never booked a suite and always gotten the tags

Marianne

we have 3 booked!

6/18 Legend of the Seas

9/29 Vision of the Seas

10/18 MSC Divina

Sometimes the gifts 'get lost'.

 

Last time my TA said 'enjoy the bottle of wine' but I didn't get one.

I emailed her from the ship, she followed up & they had misplaced the order.

 

So it's good to ask 'I'm missing the bottle of wine you usually give me'.

I was thinking the same thing - the gift might have been ordered but lost someplace.

didn't have that problem but, for a while, my husband and another woman's name were listed together on mailings. I finally got rid of her and got my name attached to his! :)

Marianne

Ask when you are at check-in; they can check with their supervisors. I wouldn't wait until you get on the ship

unless the excursion is one where there would be a need to limit the amount of people (i.e. helicopter rides in Alaska), it is usually safe to wait until you are on the ship to book it. They do save some spots on the excursions exactly for that reason since not everyone books on-line. I think you are definitely safe on Caribbean cruises to wait until you get onboard.

Marianne

you are definitely too early!

You MUST ask the manager the first night if you want to use it for a different night. The coupon must be applied the first night in their register or they can't do it period. You won't have to pay for the one meal until the night you eat but they somehow have to post the "coupon" that first night.

On the Independence, we had to pay for our second visit on the first night of the cruise -- they said that was the only way for them to post the coupon correctly. Didn't matter to us whether we were billed on day 1 or day 5 of the cruise! We are going on Legend next month and hope we can take advantage of the 2 coupons again.

Marianne

kind of strange since it seems the incident occurred during the day (says authorities were called at 2PM) when you think there would have been plenty of folks in the pool area.

Marianne

Hi everyone, sorry to bother you all but I've experienced dining onboard at Speciality Restaurants and I've also read a lot about some of the other restaurants I haven't been to personally but I did have a question about Giovanni's in particular.

I know that the usual dining experience for these sorts of restaurants (aside from Izumi or Johnny's Rockets) is, where you pay a cover charge, you generally can have:

Starter (or Starters, some have more than one)

Main Entree (one only)

Dessert (or, I suppose occasionally, Desserts, although I can't imagine managing that!)

Thanks very much for your time and responses.

I cannot imagine any of the specialty restaurants would restrict you from ordering more than 1 starter or main entree. They are just like the main dining rooms except you're paying a fee - so order what you want!

When we were on the Celebrity Silhouette in Nov, they did not sell stamps. they told me they would use their postage machine to apply the postage. Since I'm all about getting the stamps from the country where I'm sending the postcard from, I mailed them on my own and had no problem finding stamps. We were in Europe and found that most of the tobacco shops sold the stamps but also many of the shops that sold the postcards also had them.

Marianne

I usually email a scanned copy of my proxy statement, and the OBC is applied in a few days. If you don't have a proxy statement yet, you can send them a scan of your brokerage statement.

 

Note that there are many restrictions on getting the shareholder OBC in combination with other perks or promos.

I've had the same experience - emailed the required info and gotten a response within a few days. We've been shareholders for more than 10 years and have never had a problem with getting the OBC.

If you are using a TA, you should let them know you're using the shareholder credit. Ours was removed on a past cruise because our TA applied a coupon (thinking she was saving us money). Luckily because it was a short cruise, it didn't make a big difference but you wouldn't want to lose $200 shareholder credit because your TA applied a $75 coupon!

Marianne