mauimary

We stayed at this same Marriott when we were here last time. We schlepped our bags in the reverse from the ship up to the Marriott!! Very nice to have the M Club for breakfast and a light dinner. Very nice lounge. It will be fun to follow along with you as we are doing a B2B2B Oct-Nov this year. We are cruising down from Honolulu and doing a similar flight to you on Hawaiian Air on our return to the west coast. Have a wonderful trip Mary.

Have a wonderful time. I imagine since it’s spring break time there are many families. The pool 🏊‍♀️ could get quite loud. . I just looked at our Caribbean cruise April of 2025 and realized we are cruising over Easter! What were we thinking!! Excited to see all your tropical 🌴 photos coming up.

I can only imagine how tired the two of you are and just want to arrive in FL and head to bed! If there is anything we definitely understand well it’s all about airplane doors! The door that fell off the Alaska flight happened here in Portland. When we flew to FL for our cruise all the aircraft of that model were taken out of service and our flight was canceled with two days notice! That left many of us scrambling to get FL. I hope you get there tonight so you get a day to rest.

Fun to log on to CC while sitting here on a rainy day in NW USA drinking my coffee and see that you are traveling again. Warm Caribbean weather after all that snow will be a great welcome I’m sure and give you renewed energy to tackle a home remodel. Have a wonderful time. Thank you for sharing with all of us.

I believe it was $25. We went to guest relations and they removed it. Another reason to check your account every day. Much easier to get it removed on the ship.

That’s great that you use it. We are usually in SV verandas ourselves. Just saying for the Edge class that does not have that many standard balconies it can work. We made it work because we didn’t have any choice. Definitely have to have the right mindset and understand it is not a traditional balcony. During the day we were out and about and didn’t spend much time in our stateroom. We like to read so we would find a quiet place somewhere else.

We got charged a corkage fee and we did not even bring wine into the dining room! Obviously someone else’s charge so the real party may not even have been charged!!!

We did a transatlantic April of 2023 in an IV on the Beyond. Actually it worked out well. We liked it far better than we ever thought it would. Like others have said it makes the room bigger and gives extra seating. Our weather was pretty decent and during the day we were not in our room very much. If the weather is lousy you probably would not be on a veranda either. You can always step outside up on 14 or even on deck 5 outside of Eden.

We saw several tuxes on our Beyond Cruise in Feb. There were also many people who dressed up with many guys wearing suit jackets. Woman wore fancy dresses too. They called it “dress your best”. For some obviously that was better than others! Those that wore the clothes they wore into port were in the minority.

I would have been very disappointed too. A similar thing happened a few years back to me and we had to cancel a week before we left when I ended up in surgery and we had to cancel our Greek Cruise! At least we had insurance. Sounds like it worked out for the FB group.

There is one similar to this one. Sounds like the same sort of deal. We do private excursions a lot but this one makes us nervous. Someone on our roll call has listed it and they are looking for 38. Would love to hear how it all worked out.

I would love to hear from anyone that has done this tour through the third party that is advertised in Airlie Beach. How was your timing getting off of the tenders? How was it getting back especially if the tenders do not bring you to a dock in Airlie beach and have to get south of town.

We just listened to the Cruise Directors talk on the Celebrity Beyond. She answered all kinds of questions on what goes on behind the scenes. She talked about this and Cruise staff that miss the ship are in a huge amt of trouble and essentially loose their jobs.

Did this happen on a Celebrity Ship. Have never heard of this being allowed or done before.

Wow thise are quite the stories. The only time we were late was a Celebrity Excursion in Costa Rica. As soon as our bus and two others drove up the gangway went up. Ours was due to crazy heavy traffic.

We have used Rome in Limo many times. Fabulous company to work with. They have a stellar reputation to uphold and that means getting you back to the ship in plenty of time. We have now done 4 trips down the Amalfi Coast alone. We never worry when we are with them. We have always been back at least an hour ahead of time. They are in constant contact with the other vehicles regarding traffic. On several occasions the Celebrity buses were a ways behind them. We have never heard of anyone left behind. When you see the Analfi Coast you will be so glad you are not on one of those buses! If you go down to the Port Boards/Europe/Italy there is a whole thread on Rome In Limo alone. They are enormously popular. Write to them and they are very good at answering questions promptly.

Yarramar thanks for the info. Oh My! This is good to know. I looked the brochure up. We’re not familiar with either musician.

I know this cruise is short and it looks like many are doing this as part of the chain of cruises before the New Zealand one. Just because it is four days does this mean that it is a party cruise. We would never do a four day cruise out of Florida. So that brings me to the question about a cruise between the Australian one and New Zealand one become a four day party cruise. We have never done one this short.

When we were on the Beyond in Feb we found that people arrived really early for the shows. The stage shows with the Beyond singers and dancers were very popular and they were packed early. Some were quite full 30 min early. We always tried to arrive at least 30 min early to get our desired seats. Folks that came in 5-10 min early were really searching for a seat.

We did enjoy our private small group tour. We also stopped at Featherdale Wild Life Park. We are in the same stateroom but do have to switch before the New Zealand segment. We do not mind as it is pretty easy to do.

We just did the golf cart a few weeks ago. That was a fun DIY excursion. It does have to be arranged ahead of time.

We find just getting down to a lower deck and sit somewhere in the middle of the ship makes a big difference. We have twice been in a high veranda stateroom on the aft and we definitely have to get out of the room and hunker down on a lower deck during the day.

We are on these same segments as you are only we are starting with the one before this beg on Oct 3 in Honolulu. We too have already spent extra time in Sydney pre pandemic and have been on excursions to both the Blue Mountains, Hunter Valley, have also been to Manly and attended a musical at the Opera House. We are doing the short Tasmania Cruise in lieu of getting a hotel room for 4 nights in Sydney. We did not want to have to pack up all our things and lug them off the ship and back on again and unpack once again so for us it’s more of a convenience factor. Mary

We have booked a B2B for July of next year on the Apex. Since we booked this last Nov while cruising we were fortunate to be able to get a Sunset veranda for both of them. Plan to be up on top a good share of the time and also just enjoy that aft view. We are very much forward to this cruise.

I’ll second that it is a long walk to the sunset verandas. We just had one a few weeks ago on a B2B. Our veranda was right next door to one of the sky suites. For the price our veranda was almost the same size and when we took a glance into the stateroom next door when it was being cleaned it was not all that different from ours for the price. Well maybe slightly bigger! But it did cost them a lot more. Yes they got to use the retreat deck which was no doubt really nice when we couldn’t even find a lounger in the shade. We are very happy with the SV’s.