PH2

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...

14 minutes ago, davekathy said:

Should we do what you suggest when Celebrity isn't enforcing their evening dress code in the MDR. 🙄

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.

19 hours ago, Dar & Bob said:

Just curious if your confirmation has your correct address on it.  I just looked at confirmations I have received and the strange thing is that they have our street address and United States but no city or state.  Very strange that they have promos that are not applicable to certain states.

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.

17 hours ago, Kudos2Fly said:

I think a lot of cruise lines are getting more strict with what people wear in the dinning room. I was on Carnival and we did lunch or breakfast in the main dining room and they turn a lady away that had a tank top on. I have worn hats into stores and a few times when we traveled out West I would walk in with one on into a restaurant but take it off when I got inside. 

 

 

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).

3 hours ago, phoenix_dream said:

Bingo generally appeals to an older crowd and Celebrity does not want to market to an older crowd.  Case closed. My opinion. 

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?

2 hours ago, Sailing12Away said:

 

Finally got off the ship and to the luggage area around 9am, so I wasn't worried as we were still on schedule for our short trip to the airport and our 11am flight. Going through the customs area took about 30-40 mins, with hoards of people cutting the line by either using the porters to carry their 2 bags or by sneaking in with the handicap folks going through on the side. 

 

The agent we saw didn't even ask us any questions until his neighbor did and it was almost as though he forgot he was supposed to confirm we had nothing to declare and weren't bringing in anything illegal. Guess we just look the part of a normal low risk traveler, or since they did facial recognition stuff maybe we flagged as pre-screened global entry folks. 

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.

13 minutes ago, cmaleblanc said:

Just off the Reflection, Amaretto is on the Primum list, it's probably one of my preferred drinks, and I did have the upgraded package. I also noticed that it's being pushed more. When I was on the Apex last year, I had to ask for Amaretto for my drinks. Now it's front and center on menus being offered as a dessert drink in many restaurants including the MDR.

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

If they start 

28 minutes ago, C-Dragons said:

Lobster again!  Really?

Hasn't this subject been eaten, I mean beaten, to death already? 😉

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.