PH2

That's what we did. Got on the ship, grabbed our sea pass, went to sign up for our class to make sure we got an appointment for the first sea day of our sailing, then went to grab lunch.

It was a lot of fun. Also, be sure to wrap it well but if you're taking it in your carry-on, make sure it's accessible. When we went through airport security my piece alerted (the jellyfish which, in fairness, looks like a small warhead on xray). We had it overly wrapped up and buried in our carry-on and spent 15 minutes with security while they took everything out of the bag and unwrapped it to examined it. Security guy thought it was pretty cool though!

Looks like Celebrity is scaling back in the Galapagos, selling its 2 smaller vessels to Lindblad.

We were on this sailing! Loved it. We came from the US and did this quick trip sandwiched between 4-day visits in London and Dublin. It was really interesting to be in the minority compared to US-based sailings - especially given it was a short cruise and over a long UK holiday weekend. I believe the cruise director or comedian said over 2000 of the 2900 passengers were from the UK. The comedian's first 10-15 minutes were geared toward the local crowd. Now I know what's it's like for internationals cruising out the US to listen to north/south US jokes, ha! I think the only Americans we met were on our excursions.

You guys definitely dress better than we do over here, which I expected. I felt under-dressed the entire time in jeans and (mostly) short-sleeve shirts, sometimes a zip-up sweater. I broke out the business casual attire (slacks, button down shirts) for dinner, but that seemed to be the norm for most people just lounging around the ship.

50 minutes ago, Silent Penguin said:

I agree.  In my opinion, the same is true on other cruise lines.  

It's so true! The wife and I joke that they just take the same cake and change the color of the cake and icing to make different "flavored" cakes. It's like the fruit loops effect - your mind convinces you of the different flavors because of the different colors, but they all actually taste the same!

On 6/3/2024 at 1:44 PM, BuckeyeMark said:

Yes, Int Friends is who we used for Bath and Windsor. Great tour. And they took us right to our hotel in London.

The pre-cruise trip to Stonehenge is something Celebrity did for us because we had a large group all needed transport from London to Southampton and we were able to convince them to add in Stonehenge. That took almost an act of congress to make happen but it did - and it was marvelous.

I think Int Friends does that Stonehenge-on-the-way-to-Southampton thing - you might check. Full disclosure: Stonehenge isn't really on the way but it's close enough to make it work.

We were on the Apex for the 4 night sailing immediately following this sailing. Loved the ship.

I thought International Friends did a fine job on our trip back to London, but the one thing I'll caution is that the Salisbury/Stonehenge/Windsor/back to London around 5pm tour (which we took) was majorly rushed. Now, we disembarked on the 27th which was a bank holiday and so maybe it was more crowded than normal, but we spent so much time waiting for the bus to go to the Stonehenge site that we literally only spent 5-10 minutes at the site before immediately getting back in line to catch a bus back to the parking lot so we weren't late for our departure. And at Windsor, no one had time to stand in line to see the doll houses or the cathedral. We basically were able to walk through the state apartments, walk around some of the grounds and take pictures from the outside of the cathedral, then do a bit of souvenir shopping/grab some food before leaving. We all agreed that as cool as the Salisbury cathedral was (we couldn't go in as it wasn't open when we stopped), we would rather have had that 30+ minutes at Stonehenge or Windsor and just skip it.

That said, the tour bus and guide/driver were all great. But I just offer that as a word of caution lest you think you're going to get to do anything more than a bit of sightseeing before needing to get back to the bus. YMMV on less busy days, since this was our one and only experience I just know how hurried the entire day was from place to place when we did it.

From our singular experience, if the original bids are too pricey (for us to move from Concierge to Sky Suite would have cost as much or a little more than just booking SS straight off the website), wait until a week or 2 before your sailing and see if the bids have dropped. Ours were cut 50% so we bid and won a SS at about $1300 less than the full booking (which is fair because there's no drinks, WiFi or club points upgrade).

Also, we don't drink much and didn't add a drink package at all, but all drinks in the lounge were free so we got our fill of Coke/San Pellegrino to take back to the cabin and a couple alcoholic drinks for free. So while drink package isn't included with Move Up to Retreat, we still got free drinks in the lounge.

We're on this sailing. As we were leaving port, the captain said if permitted, he was going to do a 360 to give everyone a view of the Isle of Wight. I'm pretty sure that's why we took that route, spun around and headed for Amsterdam.

We really don't drink (we'll have 1 or 2 drinks each for the 4 night sailing, tops) so the drink package has far less value to us than a bigger room and true balcony. I got premium WiFi on sale for $125 for both of us for the sailing already. Looks like I ended up saving $1250 on the SS when adding in what I paid for the Concierge IV and what I could have booked the SS for. That's a decent savings to us since we'd never get our money's worth out of the drink package.

4 hours ago, Ipeeinthepools said:

Did this video cause anyone to call their TA and book a cruise?

No, but I did check out pricing just out of curiosity. Not exactly at the point where I'm ready to drop $15-25K on a cruise and the next 2.5 years are already booked for vacations (including 2 Celebrity cruises and an expected wedding), but I could see it in the next 5-7 years. Maybe not the immediate ROI they are looking for, but I also think there's some long-term value they see in brand recognition/loyalty and informing current customers of offerings.

Nevermind, Celebrity answered my questions - we got upgraded!

At the last minute, on a whim while tooling around in our reservation for our sailing next week, I decided to look at the Move Up offer and saw that they discounted the bids by 50%. When we originally received the Move Up offer a couple months ago, the bidding made no sense - we're in a Concierge IV and the minimum bid to get into a Sky Suite would have cost us about the same if not slightly more than just booking a Sky Suite, which of course would have also given us the drink package, wifi and increased club points. So I blew it off.

However, the ability to bid at a reduced amount where it would actually make some sense financially for us enticed me to give it a try. If our bid is accepted, it will come out to about $1400-1500 less, which I can live with given the lack of amenities and club points.

My question is this - last night I put in a bid for a Sky Suite, which appeared from ghost bookings that they had about a dozen or more still open to book, and a Sunset Sky Suite, which appeared there was only one left. Last night, the SSS bid was modifiable and the SS was not. This morning, the SSS bid is expired but the SS is still pending but not modifiable. Is that an indication they're likely going to accept our SS bid? Should I keep checking to make sure it doesn't unlock to be modified (can/will that happen?), and if that happens, is it an indication we've been outbid and are no longer in queue for our original bid to be accepted?

2 hours ago, stvntra said:

This will be our first cruise on Celebrity. Were you able to take the piece home? My boyfriend and I are going on her in September to Alaska and I want to do this!! 🙂

Yes. For the price of the session, you can pick between 3 or 4 different pieces that they help you make. Or, for an upgrade, you can make bigger, more elaborate pieces.

On 3/2/2024 at 8:08 AM, Georgia_Peaches said:

We enjoyed the glass blowing at the lawn club. You can sign up to make a piece or you can just watch. The artisans are very talented and help you create a beautiful souvenir of your cruise. 

Second this. Except that, if you make the jellyfish one, which ends up being in the shape of a small missile head (especially when viewed through an x-ray machine), make sure to pack it in your carry-on in a convenient place for TSA to take it out for examination. Otherwise, they have to remove everything in the bag and unwrap it to actually see it's what you say it is.

The TSA agent was pretty cool about it and thought it was neat once he saw it, but yeah, we didn't think that one through...

We had 9374 on Solstice last fall in Alaska and loved it. And yes, I was concerned about the pole - mainly, needing to get up in the middle of the night and destroying my kneecap - but it was never a problem.

I've used the chat 8-10 times over the past 4 days. Every time I get through to a person and tell them I want to cancel, they tell me the system is down and they can't help me and to call. 

5 minutes ago, Jnsplace1 said:

I've used the chat 3 times in the last few weeks, zero issues with it myself.  /shrug

 

The website is another matter.......

I suppose that's my point. I tried one more time this morning. System still down. I cancelled by phone, which was fine. But something tells me the chat system issue might be related to the reason I wanted to chat. I can't believe a company as big as Princess would not have resolved a basic issue in 4 or 5 days. 

Thanks for the comments, everybody. I'm most familiar with Celebrity, and they do have online cancellation. They also separate bookings into refundable and non-refundable deposits, so it makes sense that maybe they don't care if people can easily cancel because if it's a NF deposit, they get to keep it!

I made the booking myself online. I will call tomorrow but I don't understand why they can't make online cancellation easy, and I have no idea why their systems would be down for 3 days via chat. 

Thanks! I guess I'll find out how the call goes tomorrow.

We booked a cruise for next year but unfortunately we have to cancel. It's not exactly unfortunate, because my daughter is getting married next year. But that means no funds for cruising...

In any event, we've never cruised with Princess before so what I thought would be an easy online cancellation process is anything but. I don't see any way to cancel a cruise through the reservation (which is honestly sketchy), and I'm just not interested in calling in if I can help it because I assume the only reason they force this method is to put on a high pressure sales pitch.

So I thought I would just do it by chat. However, for the past 3 days, every time I have connected to someone by chat and told them I want to cancel a booking, I get the exact same message - our system is down so you'll need to call. THREE DAYS.

Has anyone else tried using the chat feature during the past 3 days and been helped? Or are they just lying to me to force a call? If it's the latter, I wish they would just be honest about it instead of telling me the system is down. If the system really is down, 3 days seems excessive and Princess needs to fire its IT director.

This has left a pretty sour taste in my mouth about Princess. Not exactly a great first impression...

Dont get so revved up.

I'm still trying to understand the algorithm for the Move Up bids where they offered me, as a minimum bid amount, a price that would basically equal (or possibly exceed, on any given day's pricing fluctuations) the price of the suite if I just booked it outright and received the full allotment of benefits from booking versus Move Up. It's a headscratcher to me, for sure.

16 hours ago, RTShaker said:

 

 

 

All I heard in the webinar was blah, blah, blah, blah, carefully culled question, generic non specific answer, blah, blah, blah. Rinse and repeat.

I'm still chuckling at the last question - forget the answer. I mean, no disrespect to anyone who sends in questions (and in particular, this question), but who really takes the time to send in such a clear softball question as "What's the one thing that puts Celebrity above other cruise lines" (it was something like that)? I don't understand the point of a question like that, other than perhaps it was requested by the company from some super-elites so they could claim it was a question from a member and they obliged.

What response to a question like that could possibly provide anyone with any kind of meaningful or useful feedback?

Thanks. And yeah, the pricing may be slightly different, taxes, etc. But I have to think - absent a huge price spike - the NR cost would still be a savings.

I am tempted to try it, looking at a summer 2025 sailing right now...