dilbertsdaddy

thanks

Any suggestions for buying wine downtown?

Has anyone booked through AX and gotten a free bottle of champagne? Is it any good, and is it in the room when you arrive or does it come later? The reason I ask is I would like to have it for sail away and trying to plan what to bring for my allotment. Best place to buy wine in Vancouver (downtown)? Also noted anniversary as a celebration, what should I expect? Hopefully more free booze, don't need a cake with all the desserts onboard! In reality this is an anniversary, 60th B-day, and retirement party but I only told them about the anniversary.

Reading all the comments recently has me a little disappointed as I am very much looking forward to my upcoming Alaska cruise. I just started looking at CC; I am a world traveler and frequent user of flyertalk and find great information (and entertainment!) there so I thought CC would be a good source as well. While I'm a frequent traveler, this will only be my third cruise. Having said all that, here are my comments and observations based on what I've learned. Seems that cruise lines are "racing to the bottom" like the airlines have been doing for the last few years. My observation of business in general is that you can raise prices or "streamline" services, but you can't do BOTH at once. I understand why they might cut some options in the buffet if most people eat in the main dining room. Food waste is a horrible thing. However, it seems like they may have gone too far. I've seen a couple of examples - I love Italian but don't eat it often because it is too fattening, so I would not visit on Italian night. By limiting choices too much, they are driving more people to the MDR which in turn validates the cutbacks. Bogus metrics and a vicious cycle! What I am most upset about is the menus in the MDR are different than when I booked. Less high-end entrees, and huge scale back on apps, which I really enjoy. So you drive people to the MDR by cutbacks on the buffet and at the same time cut the MDR offerings? Does not make sense to me, seems like this will backfire. I really don't understand the uproar over room service. Maybe it is because I spend over 100 nights a year in hotels, but the last thing I want to do is sit around my cabin and order from a reduced menu. I also don't understand why pizza is so important! I love pizza but not planning to have that when I can have something else more upscale, same applies to hotdogs by the pool? No judgments here but I just don't get it. The increase in beverage packages also seems like it will fail big time. It was already not a good deal for most people. I plan to drink heavily, but my wife does not drink at all. It was going to be $1000 for us to do all inclusive. Wifi would be nice but it will not hurt to disconnect for a while and I can't drink $1000 in one week! I have $300 in OBC, a bottle of champagne from AX, and plan to take my two bottle allotment as well. I love a diet pepsi each day and I'll get that onshore or pay the freight. I'm a coffee addict, but not enough to pay $1000 for better coffee (El Baccio?), charging for this is pretty lame IMO. I'm sure the staff are embarrassed by all this and this impacts their morale and ability to provide good service. My wife and I recently traveled to Italy on Delta in business class and it sucked; the flight attendants were super embarrassed and they are left to deal with the unhappy customers while the bean counters count their bonuses. Sad Of course everyone has their own preferences and priorities, but one of mine is food. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out. Thanks for listening to my rant!

No vegetables? Sad.

Thank you, very helpful. I just tried that and see that for an upcoming cruise on Millennium some of the entrees are still there and a few are not (beef wellington for example). What seems most concerning is what another poster mentioned about apps - mostly soup and salad, guess I'll be having Shrimp cocktail every night! There were some very interesting apps listed before that I was looking forward to. Maybe the differences I see are based on where the ship is (Caribbean vs. Alaska)?

Thank you! I am not Suite or Aqua - the reason I joined CC is to get the lowdown on bidding for upgrades to Veranda - I won't be bidding on Suite or Aqua because we have a group and I want to eat with everyone else in MDR. I just thought this was timely as the menus just disappeared from the app. Looking forward to learning from the group here, I've found Flyertalk to be very good information for airlines, hotels, etc. But I know what you mean; there are apologists and flamers on all such sites! The truth always lies between...

First time poster, and first time Celebrity Cruiser. I have an Alaska cruise on Millennium in July. I had not planned on eating dinner at the buffet but thought it might be a good option if we get back late from shore days. However, what concerns me about the posts is about the menu in the MDR. I've not read all of them and in true blog fashion it's hard to decipher, but from what I can ascertain they are limiting buffet choices AND reducing MDR menu? Is this the reason all the menus (that sounded awesome) from my cruise were deleted from the app a week or so ago? The sample that someone posted did not contain anything I would want while the choices that were previously on the app had me thinking I would choose from 2-3 really nice options. I don't eat fish but my wife does, and the menus that were on the app had some nice sounding fish entrees.....Tilapia! What? I am a world traveler but have only done a few cruises, so I'm somewhat of a kettle in this regard. What I do know is you can usually get away with reducing service or raising prices, but NOT BOTH at the same time!. Delta and Marriott for example, which are my preferred and on both I am top elite, have me more than disgruntled at the moment. I've gone from being very excited about this cruise to being rather ticked off from reading this string. Can someone please post some more current MDR menus?