phoenix_dream

Totally agree. It's kind of even port-wise but I would pick Sillhouette for the reasons you mention.

the gold cart rental office is within a block of where you get off the tender boat (Catalina, as is Santa Barbara, is a tender port)

Thanks for the suggestion - it doesn't hurt to try. Although if the vaping test goes fleetwide I may not be doing any more gambling in the casino anyway! (which may cause them so send me an offer next year LOL).

I'm more surprised at the comment about the bed size. IMHO none of the 'king sized' beds on Celebrity are as big as my standard king sized bed at home. Is it just me? Am I imagining it? I will say, though, that I find the beds very, very comfortable so not complaining, just surprised.

We had no issues with internet on our cruise this past winter. Sometimes you can encounter issues depending where you sail, but we didn't have any in the Caribbean.

No, the included package is classic, so you get classic water in cans.

I do that as well. I also take one of those round rubber jar openers as I have cut myself trying to open their sharp tops.

I only partially agree with this. Yes, ports have to give permission to have ships dock and perhaps went overboard due to greed. But it's the cruise lines themselves which are sailing towards their own demise in my opinion. They keep building larger and larger and larger ships to the point of insanity. Floating Disney Worlds. And there seems to be no end in sight! To me that is incredibly short sighted. We are beginning to see more and more ports refusing to allow ships or significantly decreasing the number and/or size. I am not very familiar with non-US ports, but here we have had prohibitions in Key West, Bar Harbor, and now Monterey. What's next?!?! Ports themselves are no longer as pleasant to visit when you are surrounded by wall to wall passengers (and that's just from our perspective - I can only imagine how the locals feel). How long before even more ports ban ships?? Pretty soon in order to survive the cruise lines will have to limit their sailings to cruises to nowhere, except perhaps one stop at a private island. One has to wonder what will happen to their ability to fill berths at that point. Right now we are still seeing the post-Covid travel surge, but that can't last forever. I can only wonder how the lines can survive long-term with the direction they are heading.

I guess they still consider you a newbie. No disrespect meant to you btw, I’d take advantage of it too if I ever got the offer.

Do you know if this is standard ship to ship(ok, I admit I started laughing at myself as I typed this)? It seems to vary from what I’ve seen, or maybe I just misunderstood.

The infuriating point is that the answer is zero. Those of us with modest or moderate gambling onboard get nothing. High rollers get freebies (no issue with that, they earned it). Newbies or those who haven’t sailed in several years get the freebies too as they’re trying to entice them to sail and gamble onboard.

I agree. If anything, these days it seems the younger (than Boomer) crowd seems to be the ones spending like crazy. For example, recently stayed at Wynn in Vegas, where the crowd normally tends to be 50 and up as it is one of the nicer and more expensive casino/hotels. Couldn’t believe how many families running around, many with strollers and toddlers. And I’m talking about eating there, and in the elevator hallways, so not just walking through. What used to be the norm no longer is. It’s no surprise credit card debt is the highest in history.

Nice response. Thank you

Yes, welcome back! To the boards and to Celebrity!

No need to be insulting. I shouldn't even bother responding, but for the record, when I say "plan accordingly" I mean I want to make sure I know who splits the money when I hand it over at the end of the cruise. That way I can plan accordingly and make sure I brought enough cash so as to give extra money directly to whoever is not included in the pool that is split (in Luminae for example). And if the butler is not included in the included tip money (which by answers above I now know they are), I can make sure that I tip him/her more. I want to make sure I don't tip too little. So at the end of the day, the exact opposite of what you are suggesting is my motive.

I agree. I am talking about extra money above and beyond any included tips.

Traveled on cruises with my son from age 4 to adult. I won't lie and say he wouldn't have preferred Royal ships, but he always had a good time. That's a warm weather cruise so the family can enjoy the pool together. We also always brought a couple of board games with us that were easy to travel such as Yahtzee (just take the parts you need, you don't need the whole box). They sometimes have a few games onboard but I would bring my own as sometimes pieces are missing. He didn't care to go to kids clubs either. He brought books, magazines, comics, handheld video games or loaded games and movies on his laptop (that was before IPads existed!). Not that you want them staring at a screen all day, but the Starlink internet is decidedly better than what they had previously so it's usually easy to stream things. The newer ships also have a better selection of tv movies if you want to watch one as a family. That cruise does have a few sea days I imagine, so hopefully these things will fill their time.

I always ask the hostess so I know for sure. I have been told different things on different ships. The sommelier I think has always been separate. But the maitre d is sometimes included but not always, at least as I've been told by the hostesses. Best to ask to make sure.

Exactly, although I would hope the majority were honest. The person who I was discussing this with said that their butler(s) had told them they were not included in the all included tip pool. Could be anything - the butler not fully understanding the question, the butler deliberately misleading, the person not explaining it correctly or fully, or as simple as someone deliberately posting bad information on the internet, which we know can always be believed🙂(although in this case I don't think it was that based on the history or their other posts)

Once you book with a TA Celebrity will not entertain any discussion or changes to your booking itself. (meaning, for things like perhaps booking extras like specialty restaurants or similar you can do that through Celebrity, but not for the cabin booking itself)

If your abbreviation means what I think it means, then you are able to do a move-up. Some large warehouse stores do not allow it.

That is an interesting point about Royal, which I have wondered myself. At some point the limit of number of potential passengers will be reached. And Royal is soon coming out with the largest monstrosity at sea (my opinion). How do they intend to fill all their ships with all those available berths when they are attempting to move some of them to Celebrity?? I am not a CEO, president, nor marketing executive. But it seems to me that it would make common sense for Celebrity to market towards 40year old+ with grown (or older) children. That would seem a logical progression to me - bring your young kids to Royal, and when your kids are in college or older and may or may not even want to travel with you, join the Celebrity crowd. That allows those of us loyalists to still enjoy our experience and also allows Celebrity to broaden their demographic as we Boomers eventually cease being able to cruise. Win-win. But much of what they are doing (and vaping I think is the strongest example) seems to be directed towards the 20-30 year old crowd. I personally think it is a big mistake. Those of us in the 50+ group still have many, many (hopefully!!) more years to crusie and would like to continue to do so on Celebrity. Why make changes that will drive us away?!?!?

I'm anything but new to Celebrity (30 years and 75+ cruises) and my only honest answer would be it depends. They continually have one type of sale or another. I have to say it's been years since we were able to reprice and find a better deal (or at least one with enough difference to bother). Some have been luckier. In general, the next big sales would be near Labor Day, and then at the beginning of the year during what they call the wave season, when many people are getting sick of the cold and snow and are thinking about cruising. But right now many ships are sailing full, and there is a new person running the show, so it's impossible to predict for sure.

Hard to believe, but some people don't like cruising! Or maybe it was the weather - on our Panama Canal cruise outside it felt as hot as you-know-where, so maybe she just didn't like having to be outdoors.🙂

Good idea to confirm it is as stated. I always ask in Luminae who is included in the extra tip pool there as sometimes the Maitre d is, and sometimes he/she isn't. Same for the sommelier, although I think they are usually able to keep any extra tips given to them.