elena7seas

When booking my last few cruises, only Select dining was available, no matter how far out the booking. In the case of two cruises, after Final Payment I was able to get my preferred (and waitlisted) time.

Blessings of the season to everyone. My wish is for health, happiness and good fortune for all, and may peace be in everyone's hearts (and oh, how I hope for that).

I am taking a quick coffee break here (wish it was a wine break, but I still have to finish the borscht for Ukrainian Christmas Eve (which we celebrate tonight, and not on January 6, which would be the proper date). I still have presents to wrap, but that is pretty standard for me, and is not just because I didn't get home until December 22nd. My goal for next year is to be away for Christmas...taking the whole family with me. :)

We had snow on the ground here this morning, but the rain that came later has removed most of it. Katie is so excited that maybe we'll have a white Christmas.

Lois, I will include your friend in my prayers. They can do great things with Leukemia now and I hope the very best for him. Have a happy, restful holiday from work.

You guys are all a really terrific group, and I kept wishing I would see some of you around every corner on the Equinox. Maybe in 2016....if not, there is always the Mardi Gras cruise in 2017.

Again, blessings to each and every one of you, and to your families this holiday season. Joy to the World, Peace and Goodwill to All.

Eileen and Gerry

Happy Holiday season to you too, Andy and please give our best wishes to your beautiful mother.

Heartfelt thanks for all that you do on this board. May 2016 bring you, your Mom, and all of your family, health, happiness and good fortune.

Fair winds and following seas to all in 2016.

A friend received the following notification from Celebrity yesterday:

Celebrity Equinox Itinerary Modification

12 Night Eastern Mediterranean Voyage: May 19, 2016

• The overnight call to Istanbul, Turkey has been replaced with an overnight to the existing Athens (Piraeus), Greece single day call.

• The call port of Chania (Souda), Crete, Greece has been added and the call time is 7:00 AM - 5:00 PM.

• The port order was also revised.

• These changes were made at the request of brand leadership.

The Istanbul overnight was a mid-cruise port on the itinerary, not an embarkation or departure port.

Would appreciate an update for Equinox...staff, bands, shows etc. Last posting was fairly recent...Nov, ; not sure when contracts begin/end...We are sailing Jan 2nd..

 

Great thread

Hoping Arno will start one for 2016, using same format...it is very helpful and much appreciated!

Hi Hcat:

We are just off the Equinox on December 21st, 2015 and the main staff were as follows:

Master: Captain Leonardos Palaiokrassas (wonderful)

Hotel Director: Christophe Belaubre (ship as a "hotel" is very well run)

Chief Engineer: Evangelis Saliaris

Cruise Director: Alejandro Tortorelli

Staff Captain: Charalampos Theocharis

Food & Beverage Director: Vlado Momiroski

Guest Relations Manager: Migle Zukaite (great GR staff)

Executive Chef: Javier de Jesus

Captain's Club Hostess: Rossy Anguelova (sp?)

I will go through the Celebrity Todays that I brought home and get the names of the musical entertainers, etc. (and the correct spelling of Rossy's last name) and post that later tonight.

Hello to Everyone!!

Back home from our Equinox 10-night cruise yesterday at 2:00 am. The cruise was great, and I will add some more details later.

Katie, sorry to hear about your back injury, but glad to hear you are on the mend, and that there was no lasting damage. Give our love to Jeff.

Lois, that's a great thread that you started, and I'm kind of shocked at how many frequent posters are not signing up for future cruises with Celebrity. I booked a cruise for 2018 while on the Equinox, but don't expect to take it as it's too expensive, but I like to have a FCC available as it's the only way to get OBC for the repositioning cruises that we like to take. I'm planning to post on your thread when I get a bit more time, maybe tonight.

Just wanted to say a quick hello to everyone before I run out for a few last minute errands. I did virtually no shopping at all with our sad Canadian dollar while on the trip. Thank goodness my daughters are doing Christmas this year, and all I have to do is show up with borscht for Ukrainian Christmas Eve dinner.

Big hugs to everyone.

We are following Jenna's (need2bespolied) great live review of Infinty /SA...

 

She included post of another new Bistro menu....daily soups but no lamb or other daily specials...

 

Has anyone see this menu on other ships? Esp Equinox?

 

Looks like they have fewer "cooked" meals & more salads, perhaps to speed delivery time to tbls, desserts, soups, crepes and paninis still there....but don't think it will be a good dinner option without the specials that were recently added but now gone. We were looking forward to the lamb!

 

Not sure my attempt to attach will work..

We just got off the Equinox on December 21st. This is not the menu that we had when we ate in Bistro on December 11th.

The menu that we had was the more extensive menu that we had on Infinity in September.

Bistro on Five was full at lunch time on embarkation day. Service was faster than usual. The food was all very good, service was very friendly.

We are doing a R/T from Seattle September 2016 on the Explorer. September 2015 we Cruised on the Jewel leaving Vancouver and ending in Long Beach. We tendered at Monterey and Santa Barbara. We also would like to see Celebrity and RCCL do a few more West Coast Cruises. They don't need to be the so called Mega ships (Oasis and Allure). Even in the Caribbean those ships are limited to where they sail to.

In 2013 we did a 10-night Pacific Coastal on the Solstice, leaving from Seattle. It was an awesome cruise, except for having to be bussed back from Ensenada. That wasn't completely awful, but perhaps not the best 3 hours I've ever spent. :p

I love the S-class ships and a Vancouver to San Diego itinerary on Solstice would be perfect (or vice versa). The Solstice has been retrofitted with a retractable mast so that it can fit under the Lion's Gate Bridge.

I get on every Pacific Coastal that I can manage.

I love the temperate weather, and we find all of the ports interesting. Bottom line is, sometimes I just want to get on a ship, float on the ocean, and be pampered. I also like to get off in the West Coast ports and get some exercise, and the west coast ports are some of the loveliest to walk around.

I'd like the itineraries to be at least 10 nights long (12 is better), and if they are adding Cabo San Lucas (for San Jose del Cabo) 14 nights would be great.

I would also like at least one Pacific Coast itinerary that teachers and kids could sail on.

It's not that I am afraid to go to Europe, or almost any itinerary, but the West Coast itineraries are the most relaxing for me and without having to fly to the east coast or even further, we can afford at least one more cruise per year!

Anne, I am so sorry to hear that Lou was hospitalized again. I hope that things are going well for him now. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Suzanne, I heard about the shootings when I was out picking Katie up from school today. So difficult to believe, so hard to hear. CNN has some bizarre details. I can't even imagine how you cope with something like this. Why would private citizens ever need to have an automatic assault weapon in their possession? Another sad, sad day.

Mine used to do that but now I find I'm constantly switching it back to Canadian. It's weird.

Hmmm, weird. It's one of the few things on the Celebrity website that always works the way I want it to. :)

Mine defaults to US. Maybe delete your cookies and don't log in.

Mine defaults to whatever I last set it to, with Explorer, and stays there until I reset the country.

Saw a pretty good price reduction on one online TA's web site but not another's. They both price in US dollars and I booked the cruise in US dollars.

 

I want to verify the Celebrity price so I can ask for a price reduction.... but I keep getting prices in CAN $$$ on their site

 

There 's got to be a way.:confused:

Go to the Celebrity Cruises HOME PAGE.

If you look in the bottom mid-to-righthand section of the home page, you will find a label that says COUNTRY (in grey font). You will probably see CANADA in a blue font beneath it. Click on CANADA and that will bring up a drop-down list of countries. Using the SLIDER or the DOWN ARROW, zip down to the bottom of the list of countries and select UNITED STATES. All of the pricing on the website will now be in USD.

Wow Katie, I would have been a basket case at the point where the power went out, and would have been wondering how I could build a turkey out of rotisserie chickens!! Good for you for maintaining your cool! Keep Calm and Turkey On!!

I couldn't pass up today's $25 deposit sale on Celebrity so I booked the Eclipse for an October 28, 2017 transatlantic from Southampton to Miami, via Boston, New York (overnight), Bermuda (overnight) and Nassau. It was the only decent price I have seen on a Celebrity cruise lately...I booked a 1A for the 1B price of $1,769 pp. No perks, but with our Elite Plus benefits, it will be fine. I'm hoping that there will be a chance for a suite upgrade after final payment. In the meantime we have a nice hump cabin on the port side. The seas out of Southampton in late October might be kind of iffy, as well as the weather in those ports in early November, but we wanted to spend some time in Britain and Ireland, so will do that first. At least, that's my long range plan. :)

Sorry, double post.

Looking at RCL TAs now :rolleyes:

We had an 18-night transpacific to Sydney booked on the Solstice, but have now booked a 25 night transpacific on the Explorer of the Seas for half the price.

I don't see why not. A nice pair of shorts by it name are just not as long as a pair of nice pants.

 

I plan to wear them. It's the new chic!

This wouldn't be the slippery slope they were talking about, would it?

Happy Thanksgiving to all of the lovely people on this thread. Lois, have a lovely Thanksgiving dinner...it sounds yummy!

Two weeks until our cruise on the Equinox...It sounds as if I should have booked the Silver Moon....I wonder if it's too late?

Have a great day, everyone!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American friends. Best wishes to each of you and all of your families.

Great review, love the photos, looking forward very much to the next installment.

We are on the Equinox in mid-December so are particularly enjoying your review.

Hi Katie: our thoughts and prayers are with you and Jeff. Hope Jeff gets great results and that both of you can put all this behind you very soon.

Hi Suzanne:

Our power was out for 12 hours on Wednesday....the storm wasn't anywhere near as bad as the one we had at the beginning of September. In that one, our power was out for 51 hours, and we lost the contents of two fridges and a freezer. I had all that to deal with two days before we left on our Infinity cruise.

Wednesday night wasn't nearly so bad, but I was really cranky about it. We have gas heat, gas fireplaces and a gas cooktop and lots of battery powered lights and candles, but no computers, no TV's, and my power packs to charge my cell phone didn't work for some reason. I still haven't reset all of my clocks. :) We have our big Christmas Marketplace at our Church this weekend so I'm extra busy with that (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it). I have always coordinated the Silent Auction which has 75-80 lots and is a big fund-raiser, but I've stepped back a bit this year as my back is really bad this fall. I CAN'T WAIT to get on the Equinox in 21 days and JUST BE PAMPERED! I think I'll stay in bed and read for the first three days and order room service, then I'll get out and get with my walking programme!!!

I've been trying to unravel how the New Upgrade Perk works, but I've called Captain's Club on three different days and got three completely different answers. Today the Captain's Club agent went away for about 10 minutes and came back with a whole bunch of "new" information... apparently the upgrade email offer goes out to a limited number of people and they have 5 days to get back to Celebrity but it is "first come first served" so the five days doesn't mean too much. According to this agent, in the case of reservations made through a TA, the email defaults to the agency email address, unless a different email address is listed on the booking file (i.e. my own reservations would need me to change the contact email address to my own address (which I actually do). In a first-come-first-served situation, if the email goes to the agency instead of directly to the booking agent, there is little chance of being among the first to call in. From what I understand from this latest Captain's Club agent, once you have called in to Celebrity, you have 24 hours to get your ducks in a row and accept the offer,

Arno....it must have been some kind of mistake as your charts are back. Please don't leave CC...it's bad enough that you and many of the most informed posters on the Celebrity thread have really cut back on their posts.

I have worked from home for years, and my morning protocol is to get up, make coffee, check email, then check Cruise Critic. I really need to have Cruise Critic to look forward to in the mornings!

Hi Lois:

Sorry that they cancelled the cooking class. I did it on the Century once, and it was one of my favourite on-board activities that I have ever done. It was exceptionally well-executed. We learned a lot, and received the Celebrity cookbook as well. I don't think they advertise the class well enough.

Hope the rest of your cruise is great...sorry I didn't get to say "Bon Voyage" before you left.

Hi Lois...so sorry that I missed saying "Bon Voyage" to you. Hope you have a marvelous trip. I was recuperating after Gerry's big birthday weekend which we very much enjoyed, but which wore me out! :)

Hi Suzanne...the news from Paris is just heart-breaking. I don't even have words....

Hi Rich...thanks for your report from the Equinox...we are on her on December 11th...so looking forward to it. I hope you continue to have a great time.

Hi Doctor G...welcome home from your Mediterranean oddyssey...glad to hear that you enjoyed the Equinox as well.

Hi Kathy, Katie and Anne....hope everything is well with you and your families.

Big hugs to everyone.

Elite plus gets free drinks (coffee, tea, hot chocolate) in Cafe Al Bacio. This has changed our onboard habits immensely. Of course if you have the upgraded drink package you already have this perk.

I always seem to choose a cruise that doesn't qualify for a Beverage Package.

I LOVE the Café al Bacio benefit for Elite Plus and really appreciate it.

Ooops, duplicate post!