AlbertaCruisers

It took over 2 weeks to be validated for our July 30 cruise. No notification, just one day I went in and it had changed to a check mark.

Hi! This is Susan from Canada. Are friends on board are super fun and are some of our favourite people! We met them on the Equinox in 2019 and have been lucky enough to sail with them a few more times. I’ve really enjoyed following your reviews and I’m glad you guys met. Beyond on Nov 8 unfortunately doesn’t work for us - we are on the Equinox back to back - Oct 24 and Nov 3!

This is 3112 on the Summit (Oct 2019)

I have also seen where bartenders write down the drinks and room numbers and if they are too busy they don't key them in at that time and instead I have seen them later with their list keying in a bunch when they have time, at whatever bar they are at, at that time. So, if for example, you were up at the pool bar and it was one of the martini bar guys serving you, he may actually key in your drink later at the martini bar. The interesting thing is that the 0 entries didn't show up in your account in the app before. For our cruises last August, October and December, none of those entries showed. We were on the Equinox at the end of April and for the first few days no 0 entries showed and then near the end of the cruise they started to show each day. I actually hope that is a mistake that they can change again, I like keeping track of our account to make sure everything is correct and having to look through a number of 0 entries is annoying, but not the end of the world. I did just double check and none of the 0 entries ended up on our final account that they emailed to us.

I posted screen shots of the health questionnaire questions from our April 24 Equinox sailing in the thread below (post #2):

I suggest asking your TA and getting them to check. We were on the Equinox in April and had all included. I didn’t notice my edocs docs said no to prepaid gratuities (I saw it after the issue). On day 2 of the cruise, gratuities started showing up on our account. I called guest relations and he said we didn’t have prepaid gratuities, even though I told him we had all included. I had to take my invoice down to show them the All Included promo and there is nothing they can do, they had to call head office to see why the promo wasn’t added to my account (ends up it was just missed by mistake). They did get ahold of head office and got it fixed. I wish I had saw that before the trip and fixed it instead of dealing with it on the cruise.

I agree this used to work. For my next cruise in July, the cruise planner looks different, updated, and it no longer shows that information. There are items in the order history but it doesn't say what they are. It is not as useful as it used to be. I had an issue on my last cruise and they said that I did not have gratuities included (the gratuities started showing up on my account on the second day). I took the invoice down that showed always included, and they had to call front office to find out why the right codes hadn't been added. It was fixed, but I strongly suggest having paper work with you that shows something that says "Always Inc" - normally under the line that says Promotions Applied.

We normally choose Westjet over AirCanada based on pre-pandemic experiences. For our flights last year, Aug, Oct and Dec (to Fort Lauderdale and the last to Tampa), relatively last minute for all of those flights Westjet changed our flights so we were flying the day of the cruise, which I don’t do (too much risk with the Edmonton connection), so for all 3 we ended up flying with Air Canada. Everything was generally fine and I’m now less worried about booking Air Canada in the future. We had delays, but we also just had that with Westjet (AirCanada flight delayed 3 hours waiting for people to load our bags and then our flight crew timed out. Westjet delayed over 2 hours because of flight crew issues). I like the experience connecting through the Air Canada terminal in Toronto much better. For the way down to Florida, there is a separate security area and customs area for connecting passengers so we were not in the huge lines that the people starting in Toronto airport were experiencing. Also, on the way home, US to Canada, the connecting passages go to a separate customs area and never leave the secured area, so you don’t do security again. The lines in the connecting area in that terminal weren’t that bad. Even without Nexus, the connection time was not too bad. We just came back from the Celebrity Equinox in Fort Lauderdale on Westjet. On the way down, in the Westjet terminal on Saturday morning at 6 am, you leave the secured area and are out with all of the passengers. There is no separate connecting area. We had Nexus, so we were fine and everything went quickly, but the regular security and customs lines were huge. Without Nexus I would have been concerned with only a 2 hour connection. On the way home on Friday night around 5:25 pm, there was a customs hold and only connecting passengers were able to leave the plane. I’m not sure how long the others were held on our plane. There is no separate area for connecting passengers in this terminal, you go to the main customs area, through baggage (we did not have to pick up bags Westjet US to Canada but some flights do), then out, upstairs and through regular security. The first line to get into customs was one line, they didn’t care if you were Nexus or not. We waited in that line for about 40 minutes. You then go to the customs hall where the regular passport line was huge (I’m not sure how long that took, but it didn’t look good). There was no one at the Nexus machines so we were done and out of there in minutes. The regular security line was also huge but again Nexus was fast. Again, on Friday night without Nexus, US to Canada, I’m not sure that a 2 hour connection would have been enough time. With Nexus the entire process took us right around 1 hour.