PH2

Nevermind... moved to another thread.

I literally received a Move Up email moments ago and was coming here looking for the answer to a question of my own. Here's what my email says: We're excited to let you know that you may be eligible for a stateroom upgrade on your upcoming Celebrity Apex cruise. When you book one of our extraordinary suites, you get access to The Retreat®, which has a private restaurant, an exclusive lounge that rivals any high-end resort, personalized butler service, a dedicated concierge, and much more

No need to self-shame, lol, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a change to how things worked in September for our upcoming cruise. My laptop is mostly for work - which I try to minimize as much as possible on vacation - so I don't switch back and forth as often as you probably do. In fact, I wish it was harder to switch, then I might not check in with work as much!

I just got the email for our 4-day cruise in May on Apex. I had already purchased premium WiFi for both of us at $16/day per person. This is $35 a day per person. No thanks. As an aside, why do so many people buy the 2 device WiFi? I've been on a couple of cruises (including Celebrity) where it's no big deal to switch devices (for me, phone to laptop and back) - that's part of the 1 device access, it's just one device at a time. This didn't change, did it?

The likely reason the credit card thing is only US is because (up until now, fortunately), we don't have caps on credit card exchange fees. So, banks and travel brands are ultra-aggressive on jointly making money from rewards programs. The majority of airline profits are driven by their loyalty programs - partnering with banks and selling rewards for offer through credit card programs. It's much like how, for years, retailers like Circuit City, CompUSA, Best Buy, etc., all made their profit from the sale of service contracts (extended warranties). When the economy dropped a bit and those sales largely went away, so did CC and CUSA. BBY is moving into areas like healthcare to find new profit areas because they've squeezed as much as they can out of their warranty programs. Anyway, compared to many other travel-related credit cards, what I've seen of cruise line credit cards is totally underwhelming. Just no compelling reason to get one unless, I guess, you are a cruise lifer dedicated to one brand. Otherwise, there's way more value in Chase or AmEx points for travel-related expenses.

Looks like an announcement of Fall/Winter 25/26 itineraries, but not Europe Summer 2026 yet. https://www.ncl.com/newsroom/norwegian-cruise-line-reveals-new-fall-and-winter-202526-sailings

Agreed. Since last year's announcement was on Wednesday, December 7th, I was planning to check today.

Oh wow, wasn't expecting it that soon. Thanks!

I know each cruise line has their own schedule for when they release new seasonal itineraries. For instance, Celebrity just released Europe 2025 itineraries, and I know I've seen Norwegian Europe 2025 itineraries for months. Based on history, does anyone know when Norwegian typically releases a new season? I'm specifically looking for Europe 2026 because our younger daughter will be graduating from college and we are thinking about a Mediterranean cruise to celebrate, and I think Norwegian is probably the best fit for her and us. I've seen Europe 2025 itineraries for quite some time on Norwegian's site so I'm guessing maybe late spring? What's typical?

Gotta hand it to the marketing coordination here. Release the new Europe itineraries during the inflated Black Friday sale AND have people pay extra for refundable deposits in case they want to gamble that prices will inevitably come back down.

I can sign in just fine, but when I try to access certain areas of my recent reservation, I keep getting a "Reservation number is locked. Try again later." error message. This is after clicking "Manage Reservation" and then trying to click anything else. After that, I can't even click "Manage reservation" without getting the error.

I have been tracking prices and booked as soon as I saw the $50 pre-Black Friday bonus. Good thing I did because price is now about $150 more for the same cabin on a 4 day sailing. I didn't get the absolute lowest price, but I got a decent price and the Black Friday deal is definitely worse across the board, from what I can see. I assume these sales are meant more for a general audience looking for "deals" than CC members who meticulously track prices on a weekly basis.

This would seem to make sense only for the internet upgrade if you aren't doing AI but planned on purchasing the Premium WiFi. That's $26/day per person as it is. So if you find another $6/day of value out of the rest, it might be worth it.

Definitely following this thread. We booked flights during the summer for May 18-28, 2024 to and from Heathrow and have already booked 4 nights in London. We were either going to travel to Paris and spend 4 nights in Paris and then return for our flight home or take the Celebrity Apex 4-night cruise to Amsterdam and Bruges, and we chose the latter. So now I need to figure out transportation for 2 to/from Southampton. We don't leave until the day following our cruise, so if we have a full day for sightseeing tours on the way back from Southampton, can someone suggest the best options? Also, is there any car/bus service and tour company that is considered the best?

Well the email says to add the promo code "at checkout" and I know I take things literally most of the time, but that would seem to suggest to pretty much anyone that it gets added at the end of the booking, not beginning. But I found it. The fare was the exact same with or without the coupon, just $25 for each passenger was subtracted from the fare with the coupon. I'll take what I can get before fares go any higher.

Nevermind, I accidentally found it. It's on the page where you choose the number of passengers. Counter-intuitive, but whatever.

Yes, you do. But here's the question - where do you add the promo code? I'm doing a mock booking and I cannot find any place to add the promo code to the booking.

Right, but we don't drink coffee and have no problem filling tumblers with ice and water at the buffet. I appreciate bottled water, but it isn't necessary. On Celebrity in Retreat we were served Evian at every meal but I could have easily done without and just had regular ice water. So, I don't put much value in those benefits of the package, which is why I'm hedging on whether it's worth $1400 for mainly WiFi, gratuities and a couple of drinks.

Thanks everyone for their comments. We have plenty of time to decide but for now, I think I'm going to hold off. We have only been on 2 other cruises, drastically different. First was a Caribbean cruise on Carnival. Everything was a la carte, so we brought tumblers to fill with water every day, didn't drink pop except maybe once or twice, I think? Had a couple of mixed drinks each on a 6 night cruise - $12 each as I recall. We don't drink coffee just tea, and tea was available in the buffet every morning so we made sure to have our fill when we could. We survived just fine. Second cruise (just about a month ago) was an Alaska cruise on Celebrity in Retreat. Unlimited everything. We definitely took advantage of that by drinking more and having tea and Cokes whenever we wanted, mainly because we could and we paid for it, so why not get our money's worth? So, I think we're flexible enough to be happy either way. Wildcard here might be that it's a 12 night cruise and possibly worth getting the package because there's more downtime with sea days and more opportunities to drink and enjoy some of the extras. We specifically booked this cruise to test out how much we might like a longer cruise compared to the standard 6/7 day cruises. Both of those cruises were tons of fun but went so fast. By the time we were ready to relax a bit after 3 port days, it was over. Anyway, good to think it all through...

New to Princess - we just booked a January 2025 12-night cruise - and I'm trying to understand the value of the plus package. Plus was about $720 a person more than cruise only for our booking. I decided against it for the time being as I gather more info about the value. We booked a balcony, so gratuities (at least at today's price) would be $32 for 12 nights ($384). WiFi for two 1-device packages is $30 (so $360 for the cruise). I'm assuming 1 device each means we can use it on multiple devices, just 1 device at a time? So for the most important stuff (for us), that's $744. That leaves just under $700 for drinks and the other stuff (won't use the fitness class, don't drink juice, I already eat too many desserts on cruises, we decide on extra food purchases as we go - not sure we'd use the casual dining meals, don't need room service). I don't assign much value to that stuff since we don't need it. For easy math, I'll say that stuff is worth $100 just as a buffer for the almost certain price increases on WiFi and gratuities between now and then. So that leaves $600 for drinks, about $50 a day or about three $15 drinks a day. So for this to make sense for us, we'd need to have at least 4-5 drinks between us a day. Does that sound about right? Am I missing anything (other than, I'm sure, not caring as much about drinking as many other people)?

We sailed on Solstice in a SS 3 weeks ago and received an emails asking for preferences. We got what we asked for which was type of drink and extra hangers.

Having Miami as the only other port we've ever cruised out of, Seattle was a piece of cake. Only 2 ships versus 7, and the embarkation was so easy. We got slightly delayed because they were removing some COVID people from the previous sailing last, but it went fast. Also, they handed out these cards with group numbers and we noticed they really weren't checking so a couple we met on the ride over came with us when our group number was called and they got on about 10 groups ahead. As far as upselling, there were 2 stations set up outside the buffet entrance on either side of the ship across from the elevators manned with 2-3 people actively trying to sell specialty restaurant reservations. That's about the only "in your face" upselling we saw.

There were 4 when we did it 2 weeks ago because I think we answered Yes Yes No No.

We did our first Celebrity cruise on Solstice last week to Alaska. We were in a Sky Suite and had a fabulous time. That said, looking at the prices for a SS 12 months out will price us out of the Retreat for the foreseeable future. We will definitely not hesitate to cruise on Celebrity again, but it will only be where it makes financial sense. Since we're new to cruising, what makes the most sense is to book future cruises by itinerary and price on various lines and decide which lines we like the most for the price and narrow it down from there. We are considering a Princess cruise next (probably not until early 2025 though).

Same for us on the Solstice. Also had the same experience that our Retreat Host left 2 bottles of water (sometimes 2 bottles both morning and night) and chocolates on the pillow every night. Sounds like our Retreat Host wasn't as proactive but he did a fine job with the room, and brought us 2 blankets when requested (we cruised Alaska and used them on the balcony). We purchased 1 day of laundry service which was brought back the following day and not shrunk. But all we gave them were jeans, underwear and socks. Amazingly, I still fit into the jeans on day 8.