Qwltngcruiser

30 minutes ago, laurieb said:

Perhaps the fact that she had her cruise refunded as a future cruise credit, as did everyone on the ship, caused her to have second thoughts about her video.  And what's too many people, 10? 20? Give the new owners credit where credit is due, they just cost themselves a lot of money being so generous as to give these FCC's.

It was a very generous move by the new company to refund. However, it also makes it clear just how many people had to be upset about the condition of the ship and to the level of unhappiness of those people to spark such a refund. 

4 hours ago, lisiamc said:

You may be over-thinking this. I don’t think she can be “made” to take her video down unless she’s in violation of policy for the place she posted it.  I can reassure you that no matter how awful some cabins looked on the maiden voyage, many others, including ours, looked exactly as they should, and they have been fixing the incomplete ones as quickly as possible. 

I’m sure she wasn't “made” to, but coerced into doing so for her benefit or otherwise is quite possible. I doubt she just had a change of heart. From the pictures I’ve seen of other’s vacations on the ship, it doesn’t look like the rooms were “as they should be” to me. There are too many people reporting that Azamara dropped the ball with this one. It’s fine to be loyal to a company, but they have changed ownership and this is the first refurbished ship they’ve put out since…..clearly this new company isn’t giving the attention to detail that was shown in earlier ships. It’s a shame, really. 

I don’t know if anyone else noticed this, but it appears the lady who posted the video of room 6000 took the video down. It’s no longer in my history feed and I can’t search for it on YouTube anymore. Wonder if someone made her take it down?  There’s some pretty awful pics of a bathroom onboard on the fb group…..quite frankly, worse than the video showed. 

I’m getting some crazy results in my trip planner under the shore excursions. Apparently we can tour the Amalfi coast while we’re at sea, Crete is in Cartegena, Ephesus in Malaga, and Mykonos in Gibraltar😂. We were having trouble logging in too. My husband could get in but it kept saying I had the password wrong.  We tried multiple times with the same password my husband was using successfully. Anyone else having trouble with the site?  Are they working on the website or something?

Same thing happened with our cruise on Celebrity. It’s funny because we originally had a cruise with Azamara and cancelled and booked the one with Celebrity. Both cruises got cancelled for the same reason, repositioning to the Caribbean. We wouldn’t have been able to go on the Azamara one either. At least from the letter I saw posted on here, Azamara did a nicer job letting their passengers know their cruises were cancelled. Celebrity really botched their notification up. 

9 minutes ago, Mackdogmolly said:

Azamara Reminiscing 

Thank you 😊 

Can someone give me the name of the closed Azamara group on fb?  I belong to one but it appears to be run by a travel agent and doesn’t get updated much. We’re on the Onward in Nov and would like to follow the work on it. 

47 minutes ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

The ship swaps are unusual and only due to low water.  You can minimize the risk by choosing an itinerary that avoids the notorious low water spots [e.g. start in Passau or Vilshofen rather than Nuremburg/Regensburg] and by choosing a river cruise line that has a good track record for sailing in low water [e.g. AmaWaterways rather than Viking].  You might also want to look closely at AMA's extra-large ship Magna, which would give you greater opportunities to walk around:

https://www.amawaterways.com/destination/europe-river-cruises/2022/magna-on-the-danube-christmas/

 

Thanks we’re already booked, but if we do plan another on the future, we will definitely keep those points in mind. 

No, you haven’t steered me away from anything. I have a genetic problem affecting my back that makes sitting long hours quite painful. My husband and I chose cruising as a method of travel because we felt it would be easier on me. With a cruise, I would be able to get up and move around when I need to vs being stuck sitting on a bus for hours where I couldn’t. I know I will still have to deal with the long plane ride, and to tell the truth, I’m quite nervous about it. I haven’t been on one for more than 15 years and I don’t know how my back is going to react to it.

But that aside, I am concerned that perhaps we have an unrealistic view of what river cruising is like. I’ve been reading about a lot of instances where people are having to switch ships constantly and it involves several hours of transport to the next port. That would make the trip more similar to a bus tour than an ocean cruise, which is fine…..but not ok for my back.  Two days of flying during this vacation will be more than enough to deal with. Fifteen days of bus rides in between would be unbearable for me and ruin the trip for my husband. My disability impacts our life enough as it is. I don’t want it to ruin our 25th anniversary vacation. If that’s really what it’s like to river cruise, then we are better off booking an ocean cruise instead. 

Thank you for the help!  We’re trying to decide if we should shift to an ocean cruise and leave the Christmas markets for another time via land. We would be the first two weeks of December down the Rhine, Main, and Danube via Amsterdam to Budapest. 

Historically, do the sailings in December usually run well, or does it vary year to year less predictably?

Thanks for the updates!  I look forward to learning all I can about River cruising!  This should be an interesting thread to read 😊. 
 

Stay safe with the upcoming storm!

Just replied to the Danube thread. Very excited for our upcoming cruise. Hope it happens and the Christmas markets will be open this year!!

No tips as we are first time cruisers, River or otherwise. But, we will be doing the Grand European Tour so we’ll be down this and the Rhine and Main. Looking forward to hearing from everyone 😊

We just booked with them for a Dec 2022 and our final payment is next month. 

1 hour ago, hiccups said:

I've been checking their CC board, and one of the ships (Journey) has just cancelled three months' worth of cruises (Feb-May), supposedly due to low sales.  So far no cancellations on the other ships.

Someone posted they had been quarantined in an ocean view cabin, but that is only quarantine story that has been posted so I'm not sure if that is the company-wide plan, or just because that cruise didn't have any available balcony cabins.

I had noticed that too about the journey. One of the cruises we’ve been looking at doesn’t currently have a roll call set up. Not sure if that’s a lack of bookings on the cruise (although rooms look to be almost sold out In two of the categories) or simply because it’s still nearly a year away. 

1 hour ago, phe8800 said:

Could anyone please post the list with sailings offered in the lift and shift option, thanks.

We were told by celebrity, that they will be announced some time on Thursday and to call back. 

4 minutes ago, hiccups said:

We've done this itinerary on Azamara and really enjoyed it--my husband signed up for the PerryGolf option and played some amazing courses on the trip.  The smaller ships and longer time in port create a different experience from Celebrity.

I was just looking at a few on Azamara’s site. We were originally booked with them for a med cruise until our daughter decided she wanted to take a cruise with us and Azamara was out of her reach. Since our cruise with her would be duplicating too many ports, we cancelled and booked our Spain and Portugal with Celebrity instead. 
 

Do you happen to know how things have been going on their ships and if they’ve been having many cancellations like the other lines?  

7 minutes ago, mahdnc said:

I also think that in this particular case the standard compensation for a COVID affected cruise (Lift & Shift or 100% refund of the amount paid) is not enough for a change that Celebrity decided to make to please itself.

I agree. The window for the lift and shift is way too narrow. For those of us on the tail end of the year, if that’s when you can travel, there’s nothing left. 

Spain is now requiring booster shots. Not sure if that will affect fall sailings or not. Waiting to hear more for our Oct cruise. 

1 hour ago, HMR74 said:

I just looked at shoreexcursiongroup,com-they show the April 2 TA from Rio to Lisbon on April 15,

 

as well they show the April 15 cruise ending in Barcelona on April 24. the barclona on April 15 ending in Porto Corsini on May 5,

 

That was not the infinity itinerary back a year ago, except for teh TA part and had that been the itinerary I probably would  have taken it. with a pre cruise stay in Rio-assumining all is ok and a post cruise stay in Venice, Florence and Rome.

 

That said, its still on the website of a large shore excursion company  FWIW.

 

Just a few minutes ago CDC put out level 4 travel warnings to 22 countries due to covid.  Cannot cut and past from that news source.

 

They still list all the Eclipse sailings that have been cancelled up through April so I’m not sure that it’s indicating anything that the Infinity listings are also still there. My guess is that they haven’t been able to keep up with all the cancellations lately. 

16 minutes ago, frankh1969 said:

Just checked Celebrity web site and the Celebrity Infinity cruise on April 15th is no longer on the web site. Either it's cancelled or it is at full capacity. Which one do you think it is?

Oct. 20th is sold out or further limited in capacity. It was still there this morning but said that “no rooms fit your selection” and all I had chosen was 1 room for 2 people. 

56 minutes ago, davekathy said:

Explain, "But if you want to search all cruises except certain areas"...

 

Ok so the search function on there now requires you to put in a town, country, etc. If I want to look at all cruises for a given set of time everywhere but the Caribbean, I have to list a bunch of places. Before, I could just click boxes to include the regions I would like to look at. To me anyway, this is much more inconvenient. 

3 minutes ago, davekathy said:

I just put in our travel dates and departure ports. 

But if you want to search all cruises except certain areas, you would need to list a ton of places. It’s fine for when you only want to look in one place, but not so good otherwise. The boxes to check made that portion of things easier. Changes in a website should make things easier for customers, not more limiting. Just my opinion. 

I personally don’t understand why they recently changed the search function. I don’t want to type in every place I might like to go. It was easier checking some boxes. Small complaint, but I do wish they switch it back.