PH2

I really feel for those of you who are affected. We're new to cruising in general and have our first Celebrity cruise in 2 months (second cruise overall). Our third is with a different cruise line in January, so we're definitely testing out different lines to see what we like. As much as I prefer to be a loyal customer, stuff like this makes me wary of booking Celebrity in the future or committing to any one line, even if we think we've found a good match. This situation reminds me of an issue from way back in law school about changing what numeric scores constituted A's/B's'/C's, etc. The student body was generally supportive of the change, but the administration decided to apply it retroactively to the classes still in school. We argued that it was a betrayal of those currently in school who were working under the current grading rules that were in affect at the time we enrolled, and that they should apply to it incoming classes who would be on notice of the change before starting school. A number of us told the school point blank, if you apply this to us, you won't see a dime in donations in the future. They went ahead with it, we appealed it through the school administrative process, won, and... I haven't given a cent to my law school in 27 years. They may not be true to their word, but I am!

I have a related question. We're on a September cruise and got the Move Up email last week. We're already in a Sunset Sky Suite so I'm not really interested in moving up, but I am curious about how the bids work - is the minimum bid the same for every bidder, or is it based on your current cabin? For instance, would I be bidding the same minimum to maximum amount for, say, a Royal or Celebrity suite, as someone who has a Veranda, or do each of our bid amounts differ depending on which cabins we would be moving up from?

We are a week away from a driving trip from Kentucky through Toronto/Montreal/Quebec City and back (praying the smoke clears enough), but this trip to western Canada is definitely on the list as well.

If you go to Plan My Cruise, it's under the Gifts & Gear tab. I just started clicking tabs and scrolling down until I found it. Not exactly intuitive.

We will be going on our first Celebrity cruise in September and our only other cruise experience was on Carnival, earlier this year. From all of the "Walmart at Sea" comments I read going into it, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it was a big time party atmosphere (it wasn't spring break but we left on Super Bowl Sunday so that was part of it) and the crowds trended younger, but we stayed in the Havana Cabana section which had its own pool and bar area, so any pool overcrowding or rowdiness we were able to miss. I thought the food was good - better than I expected - and as someone above posted, the fast food (burgers, seafood station, pizza) was really good. We paid for the bonzai teppanyaki meal and it was worth it. Not much in the way of shows - we saw one the night before the cruise ended - but the comedians were decent and we enjoyed bingo a couple of times. I'm not sure what itinerary we'd do Carnival again, but it exceeded our expectations for newbies. I'll be curious to see how Celebrity stacks up.

I see on my upcoming cruise that right now the $60 bag is discounted to $49.

Can you not switch from one device to another? I just assumed that was allowed. I get it if you need your laptop and cell phone simultaneously, but doesn't one connection cover one person's devices, and you just switch back and forth?

Looks like excursion prices have gone up because I got better deals last fall than anything they are discounting now.

Agreed. I actually was interested in one of the previous ones where they highlighted some of the 2024 itineraries (Japan, especially, I remembered). With this one, I expected way more info about the ships after a short bit of Q&A with the guests, but 45 minutes later it was over and there was almost nothing about the ships.

Makes sense. Thanks!

Question - when do you actually schedule your class? I put one in my cart and got all the way to checkout, but there's nothing about days/times, etc. Do they contact you on the ship to schedule your time?

Yes, it was all ages. There's weren't a ton of teens or younger, of course (unless they were little kids with their parents), but it wasn't just old people. For about $45, you could win from about $100 to up to $1500 (or a free cruise under certain limited circumstances), so I'm guessing the potential windfall attracted the attention of just about anyone.

Oxymoron!

The allegation in the suit (who knows what the truth is) is that the wife was dissuaded from taking the body to PR due to the potential delays in performing an autopsy and having to pay the costs of transporting the body back to the US, so the better option was the ship morgue. And then they put him in a non-morgue cooler which caused decomposition because it wasn't cold enough. IF all of this is true, this should end up in a settlement. I'm surprised Celebrity let it get this far, but then again, we don't know the facts.

See my other posts, just above. No announcement, and now Skagway is back as Day 5 but we have a second Day 5 on our itinerary that says At Sea. My best guess is we are splitting Day 5 as half port call/half sailing and Skagway is being reduced down to a shorter stay. But nothing official from Celebrity at all, just changes me and others are seeing in the app or the website in our planner.

I now have TWO Day 5s on my itinerary (on the website) - one is Skagway and the other is At Sea. This would make sense if the stop is being cut short. According to an article I read about the issues with Ship Rock, cruise lines are splitting the port day with another cruise line instead of being in port for the entire day. Maybe that's what is happening here.

Haven't received any emails about an itinerary change or excursion cancellation, but a lot of us on Solstice sailings this summer/fall show "day at sea" on our app daily planner or website itinerary. It just changed within the past few days. Hopefully they are trying to figure something out before they send notice of any changes.

Solstice. And other Solstice sailings earlier in the year are showing the same, according to people in the Solstice roll call forum. Not sure how many Celebrity ships are doing Alaska this year.

Just posted about this in the other Skagway thread. It looks like Celebrity is pulling Skagway off itineraries, at least for now. We sale in September and our excursion hasn't been canceled yet, but it's now a sea day in the itinerary. Others with earlier Celebrity sailings are seeing the same thing. Bummed if this turns into a sea day only without another stop (Sitka?) or additional glacier viewing.

I saw an article about this messing with cruise itineraries this year and sure enough, it looks like we may lose Skagway on our September Celebrity cruise. Other earlier Celebrity itineraries appear to have dropped Skagway as well. I'm guessing Ship Rock is the issue and Celebrity doesn't want the liability of having passengers in the line of fire in a worst-case scenario.

This thread has me like... "Infinite Veranda is neither infinite nor a veranda. Discuss amongst yourselves."

Meant to post this here, not the other thread... As someone who works in an industry that deals with consumer complaints quite often, it can certainly help to make a call to a state regulatory agency or the BBB as a means of putting pressure on a company to relent. It may not work every time, but bad PR is a thing. If it's egregious enough (and I don't know that this one is), a call to the local news "On Your Side" reporter who regularly does features about helping people seemingly shafted by a business can also help move a solution along. It may be worth the company swallowing an incorrect fare to avoid a bad PR hit and to make the most of turning bad PR into an opportunity to turn it into good (or at least less bad) PR.

Ha, you're right! My bad. Thought I was responding to the other thread. And of course, it went to the top of the next page so I couldn't see the context of the other posts which might have alerted me earlier. Don't show my wife this post - she always tells me I don't multi-task very well...

Yes, that's exactly the same situation as someone being charged $3K more for a cruise than was agreed at the time of booking.

As someone who works in an industry that deals with consumer complaints quite often, it can certainly help to make a call to a state regulatory agency or the BBB as a means of putting pressure on a company to relent. It may not work every time, but bad PR is a thing. If it's egregious enough (and I don't know that this one is), a call to the local news "On Your Side" reporter who regularly does features about helping people seemingly shafted by a business can also help move a solution along. It may be worth the company swallowing an incorrect fare to avoid a bad PR hit and to make the most of turning bad PR into an opportunity to turn it into good (or at least less bad) PR.