Ipeeinthepools

Keep an eye on your reservations. I wouldn't be surprised to see our reservations disappear.

I find it best to work with HAL during normal weekday business Pacific Time. Yes, once you book your trip, your TA will talk to Club Orange Reps to book Club Orange and then you can do your TA can do the upgrade on the spot. You will also need to pay for CO when you book CO.

I feel your pain. The only solution I have is to plan some sort of shore excursion for Fort Lauderdale. Don't stay on the ship and wait around, treat it as just another port. Grab a taxi and go explore the beach and restaurants in Fort Lauderdale or go on an alligator tour. There's a car rental place at the port exit, rent a car for the day and explore on your own. Good luck.

I really wish all of this discussion about the CO benefits would stop. 😉

The Aqua class concept at Celebrity is brilliant. Someone at Celebrity figured out how to sell some of the least desirable cabins on the ship at premium prices. Most of the Aqua class cabins are located under the pool deck, exercise facility or other noisy common areas and most experienced cruisers would never book a cabin in those areas by choice. Although the smaller Blu dining room is nice, a noisy cabin is at a higher price is not really desirable to me and the Blu menu is an acquired taste. In any case, it's great marketing concept but it's not for me.

I understand how supply and demand works. The vacation budget for many people has not increased as fast as cruise prices and this will price some people out of the market. Although land-based vacations have also increased in price people have more control in the cost by choosing different modes of travel, types of accommodations, destinations, etc. The customer simply has more variables to reduce costs for land-based vacations. Even for people that have cruised a lot, perhaps cruising is becoming repetitive, and the price increases are an additional incentive to consider other options. I'll suggest that a large part of the current surge in bookings is due to the pent-up demand from the pandemic and the tolerance for price increases is really nothing more than a sugar high for the cruise industry.

Not really. People don't have to take cruise vacations. Ultimately customers will compare the value of cruise vacations to other land-based vacations and if the cost of cruise vacations increase too much or the cruise lines cheapen the cruise experience, they will explore other options. It is supply and demand, but the customer also has land-based vacations as an option.

I asked Meta Ai 😃 and that's what came back. I have tried to redo the search and can't get the same results. Maybe I should terminate my use of Meta Ai 🤔. In any case even if I take your numbers, it's a lot of debt. It's $18B in additional debt which maybe the cost 30-36 new cruise ships, except you don't have the ships.

Not really. The cost to service the debt will ultimately be paid by the customer.

I look forward to the discussion 😃

I'm not sure I would describe the cruise industry as "resilient" given the huge amount of debt that was acquired just to survive the pandemic. The cruise industry had to borrow billions just to survive. For the Carnival Corporation long term debt increased from just under $20B to $43B from 2019 until 2024. Does Carnival really have a plan to ever reduce the debt to pre-pandemic levels or are they just going to carry this debt forever? For reference the Rotterdam cost between $500 and $600 million. So just to survive Carnival had to borrow an amount similar to building more than 40 new cruise ships without the benefit of more income from new ships. It shouldn't surprise anyone that cruise industry needed to cut costs and raise prices. I'm not a financial guy, but this looks like a long-term problem to me. Long-term debt and debt-to-equity ratio for 2024: Long-term debt: $43.08 billion Debt-to-equity ratio: 6.45 Long-term debt and debt-to-equity ratio for 2023: Long-term debt: $42.24 billion (as of November 30) Debt-to-equity ratio: 6.14 (as of November 30) Long-term debt and debt-to-equity ratio for 2022: Long-term debt: $44.64 billion (as of November 30) Debt-to-equity ratio: 6.32 (as of November 30) Long-term debt and debt-to-equity ratio for 2021: Long-term debt: $41.20 billion (as of November 30) Debt-to-equity ratio: 3.39 (as of November 30) Long-term debt and debt-to-equity ratio for 2020: Long-term debt: $33.04 billion (as of November 30) Debt-to-equity ratio: 1.61 (as of November 30) Long-term debt and debt-to-equity ratio for 2019: Long-term debt: $19.69 billion (as of November 30) Debt-to-equity ratio: 0.78 (as of November 30)

Me too.

You're correct. That will be one of us on the thread that are currently registered to receive a notification of PUP activity. No new subscriptions are required.

I think Celebrity is depending on this thread to notify everyone when a PUP opportunity is available.

Me Too

Yep

It's terrible when this happens.

When you make your reservation there will be a "Complimentary" box that you need to check.

I just want to see if I understand you correctly. Are you saying that you just walked up to the specialty restaurants and you were seated for dinner? What ship was this? What time were you going to dinner? 5:30? 8:30?

For whatever reason, the NS appears to have opened reservations for early 2025. I'm sorry the Eurodam didn't.

Thanks for the Heads Up. We just booked our specialty dining on the NS for April 2025.

Someone will be denied boarding.

You can't at the Sea View Bar if you want clean sea air.

This can really be a real PIA. Yesterday I spent 2 hours on the phone with my TA and HAL to get my desired cabin on a Collector Voyage. The cruise was just released and nearly all cabins are available, but for some inexplicable reason HAL only allocates connecting cabins for Spa Verandah cabins on the Rotterdam on Collector Voyages. This requires a call to Ship Inventory and request they swap a conventional 2-person cabin for one of the connecting cabins. No one seemed to know what to do. I was just about ready to cancel when my desired cabin suddenly became "available". This can also be a problem when you are booking a B2B with a Collector Voyage and another non-collector itinerary and you want to remain in the same cabin. There are separate blocks of cabins for Collector voyages and conventional itineraries.