PH2

Interesting. We've got 2 bookings and one (September 2023 Alaska) has our street address but no city/state, and the other (May 2024 Southampton) has Royal Caribbean's FL street address listed where our address should be and still no city/state.

The worst part about this is that instead of the people in charge handling it, they are forcing customers to be the enforcers, likely creating a hostile situation between cruisers (or, when nothing is done about it, essentially giving permission for bad behavior). We had a situation on a recent cruise where there was an ice sculpting going on, and several people stood in front of the sculpture, blocking the view of about a quarter of the deck trying to watch. I witnessed several people ask nicely for the people to crouch down, and one guy turned around and yelled NO right in this woman's face. Finally, after 3 announcements and sufficient embarrassment by calling out the last remaining standers, they finally got out of the way. Point is, cruise lines should be actively dealing with these kinds of situations and not encouraging a bunch of drunk strangers confronting each other as a way to resolve inconsiderate behavior of a few jerks.

We have an IV booked for next May on a short European cruise on Apex and we're going to try it, but from the comments, I'm not sure we're going to like it. But it's only 4 days and I didn't think The Retreat was worth another $2K+ for that short a trip.

This thread is helpful. We're doing a Celebrity Alaska cruise 2nd week of September and our Butchart Gardens tour was just canceled. It might be staffing, or maybe it's because it will be a September night? Sounds like we should just save our money and depending on weather when we arrive, just walk around town.

If Carnival employed fashion police on the Caribbean cruise we did last month, they would have had to double their staff to keep up. At the buffet, which is just off the main pool area, I saw more cheeks, side boob and hairy backs (sometimes all on the same person!) than I would typically see on a day at the beach. The neat trick of "covering up" with a spider web cover with holes that the Hulk could fit his fist through apparently kept the "fashion police" at bay on a technicality, I guess. It was disgusting. The MDR was better, but definitely saw tank tops, flip flops, etc., and don't recall anyone being asked to change. I'm expecting Celebrity to be a lot better (although it's a September Alaska cruise, so I doubt there will be that much skin showing anyway).

We did a Carnival cruise last month and they had 3 or 4 bingo sessions on a 6 night cruise. Not sure they cater to an older crowd.

I'm new to NCL as well and have a similar question about excursion availability. Now, we're not sailing until January 2024 but right now there are only 7 excursions listed. We sailed on Carnival in February and months earlier, there were dozens of excursions listed. We're sailing on Celebrity in September and same thing, we booked last September and there were a bunch of excursions available. Is this just an NCL thing? Will they have more excursions available closer to the sailing, or are there generally minimal offerings on NCL?

Lurker here, new to cruising and saw your comment here about customs so I'm curious about how this is supposed to work. We cruised from Miami on Carnival about a month ago. When we disembarked, it took longer than expected (we sat in a room for about 45 minutes until they cleared the ship to start the process) but there was no customs at all. Nothing. They scanned our cards on the way off the ship, then after we got through the building into the large holding area to get outside, they had two lines - one for US citizens and one for everyone else - and they did the facial recognition thing as we walked outside and that was it. I thought we were heading to customs, but that was it, so we just hired a van to get to the airport. I'm not even sure we saw more than a couple people during that entire process who didn't work for Carnival, much less an actual customs process. I take it that's not normal? We're cruising in September from Seattle on Celebrity and then NCL next January out of Miami again. I'm assuming that's just a lax Miami thing, so we should expect a more formal process in September?

I have two bookings and neither show an extra $50. However, last fall right after I had booked our first trip, I noticed that my OBC had doubled - it was supposed to be $600 but it showed up as $1200. Since I was new to Celebrity and it was shortly after booking, I thought maybe I had read the promo wrong and it was $600 for each passenger. A few days later, it reverted back to $600. I'm not sure what would have happened had I tried to spend the entire $1200. This may be a similar glitch.

Hyatt may still be a good value on a case-by-case basis (and as compared to some other brands for purposes of points redemptions), but they are undergoing a major reclassification of hotels that will result in higher point costs for over 200 hotels. There are a bunch of recent articles about it. Just an FYI.

I've gotten the best value transferring Chase Rewards for airfare. It just depends where you live (in terms of getting to hubs) as far as the best airlines to transfer to, but they have a ton of transfer partners. If you check award availability from hubs, you can find some good deals. But I've gone so far as to use Delta miles to get to a hub, then use transferred Chase Rewards points to get business class flights overseas. For instance, for flights to London, I booked the wife and I on United from Newark and got Polaris business class for 240K points and $640. The same tickets in cash for nonrefundable seats were $2750 per person (refundable were about $1000 more each). So we got $5500 flights for nearly $5000 value in points plus a bit of cash out of pocket. That's conservatively a solid 2 cents a point value.

Good to know! Amaretto is my favorite, although I can't say that out loud living in Kentucky...

If they start If they start serving horse, THEN I'm complaining!

Not sailing or flying on Friday but I live in Kentucky and yes it's going to be nasty on Friday. In fact, it's storming right now. I'd definitely try to get out tomorrow.

We did our first ever cruise 2 weeks ago on Carnival and the wife got both shigella and Covid. Not a fun experience for sure, but hopefully just unlucky and it's not going to deter us from future cruising (including a couple already booked on Celebrity).

We took advantage of that sale around Thanksgiving for our September Alaska cruise to book a few excursions and two specialty dining nights. Are those sales usually a once-a-year type of thing (and if so, if it usually around Thanksgiving), or do they do them periodically during the year?

Wife and I are huge fans of wrinkle releaser. Even if you need something in a relatively short period of time, spraying it and shaking it out for a little bit gets rid of everything except maybe the most stubborn of creases, and if you can get the next day's clothes sprayed and hanging for 12-24 hours, they look nearly perfect the next day.

I have a related question - is this something that the Future Cruise desk on a sailing can help with? If we already have a future cruise booked that we might want to upgrade, are they able to work upgrade deals while we're on an earlier sailing, or is it better to just call the Retreat number and deal with them by phone?

New to the board and generally to cruising. We just did our first cruise on Carnival last week (with the in-laws to the Caribbean) but the wife and I are doing an Alaska cruise in a Sky Suite on Solstice in September. Now that we're empty-nesters, I suspect we'll be cruising a lot more often, as we really enjoyed the cruise last week. Anyway, just came here to say that I've got a lot of learning to do before September. I knew Celebrity and being in the Retreat would be a gigantic step up from Carnival (although we highly enjoyed the Havana Cabana experience and the exclusive pool/bar area for sunbathing), but I guess I need to properly prepare for our Celebrity cruise. I'll be soaking all of the information up on this board. Cheers and smooth sailing!