cnktodhunter

We asked the Blu Maitre'D on a previous cruise if friends could join us and it was a very firm, but apologetic, 'no'.

We are officially at top speed!

We are waiting for further news from Captain George this morning once we know how bad the weather in the Bay of Biscay is. That will dictate if we can get to Southampton any earlier. They’ve offered to reimburse hotels up to £200 on Sunday night.

I am onboard. We haven’t been told that we are staying on until Monday morning. It’s just speculation.

We haven’t had any official confirmation on that. It’s just speculation right now.

It’s been agreed that we can leave at 17:30 today.

We don’t know any more at the moment, but they will keep us updated. I’ll post if I can when on the wifi!

We are onboard Silhouette. Stuck in Lisbon until at least 5pm but that is dependent on a call with the port who may or may not re-open. We weren’t able to get away last night before it closed as crew and guests were still off thinking they had all night. We’re told arrival in Southampton on Sunday is likely to be 9pm.

You may be right, I've just looked at our 11th October sailing on the Silhouette and it definitely feels like there are more items on the menu and some that I would order! I was starting to think about contingency plans when I looked last week.

That's just standard BA policy - they charge a fortune for seat allocation prior to check-in. We were able to select seats on Delta a couple of years ago through their website, even before ticketing.

We are in our mid 30s and have only sailed with X. We chose it specifically to avoid things like the water slides etc. as, as others have said, that's not for us and we want to relax! I'll never forget the 'older generation' Zenith couple who were on our table at an officers lunch on our first cruise. Firstly they were astonished that we'd 'somehow managed to get an invite' to the lunch (only Celebrity could tell you that!) and couldn't believe that we could possibly enjoy a 13 night transatlantic as we were so young we would just be bored. The next cruise we were up until 3am one night drinking with two 'older' couples. Let's just all enjoy our cruises!

We're also on Silhouette in October, so I'm going to assume you're sailing out of Southampton. When the ship is sailing out of the UK the menu prices must include VAT and so the allowed limit for the drinks packages is the equivalent 20% higher (eg. $12 for the Classic Package and $18 for the Premium). I've been confused by this in the past! Hopefully that means there will be a few more wines available to you without upcharge.

There were fees for shuttles at some of these ports when we were on our Scandinavia cruise in May 2022. They’re provided by private companies so I guess unless the port / city / Celebrity want to pay then they charge passengers. In most cases we used public transport instead which was cheaper. We even got into using eScooters and bikes!

We're just off Silhouette and both the Solarium and one of the outdoor pools had chair lifts. We saw one young guy being assisted into the Solarium pool by a couple of the pool attendants.

There was no control on Silhouette two weeks ago, we just borrowed and returned. Also, I saw mention of the card room earlier - during the refurb the card room was removed from Silhouette in favour of more inside cabins unfortunately! It looks rather odd now from the atrium with some strange shiny silver wallpaper where the view to the card room had been.