Sea Hag

Wow! I'm so sorry you had to go through all of this. Is your aunt okay?

I like the new ships just fine, and, in fact, our favorite cabin is only on the new ships. But we chose the Diamond for a cruise this November. We've done the Mexican Riviera many times, and the last few we didn't even get off the ship. I've always wanted to do a Sea of Cortez sailing, and the 7 day on the Diamond fit the bill for that. There are some advantages to the older, smaller ships. The main one of those for me is the full wrap-around Promenade deck. I love walking laps on that. The best walking option on the new ships is the track up top. Not a bad option, but it is completely exposed to whatever weather is happening.

All of ours have automatically added themselves, but the timing for that seemed to vary.

Inflatable wedge pillows would be a lot easier to bring, and those work very well.

We probably should give Celebrity another try too. We only sailed with them once, and while it wasn't a disaster, we were completely underwhelmed. The cabin was nice, but the food was disappointing. The best thing I had all week was braised shortribs, and the waiter tried earnestly to talk me out of it. 😂

I would probably book L249 over L229. My only reason for saying that is that we were under a pool once and there was some noise in the wee hours when they were cleaning and running the pump. L249 is just under a changing room, so I don't see how that could be noisy in the middle of the night. We're going to be on the Diamond for the first time in November this year, and the lack of the IC is a bit disappointing. I've looked at deck plans, and I don't see anything similar.

We encountered a big con with the Boticelli on the Ruby this spring. There's not enough waiting area outside the restaurant to accommodate all the people who show up at once at 5:00. It was an absolute zoo. The line snaked back and forth in the small lobby area. There was a line wrangler guy who herded everybody into line. After the first night, we had an assigned table, but that didn't help. We still had to line up like the rest of the herd. If it hadn't been such a great table and wait staff, we would have bailed and taken our chances getting reservations at one of the others. If you like to eat later, you might be okay there, but definitely not if you prefer early.

Thanks! I'm a happy camper. 😃

I think I shot myself in the foot (again). With the stock price so low, I thought this would be a good time to buy the 100 shares and get the onboard credit. So, I bought the shares. But now looking at the rules in the annual report, I see that casino (don't care) and gratuities (do care!) are excluded. I should have read that more carefully before moving ahead. Really, the only reason I was interested in this was as payment toward gratuities. We don't buy the upgraded pricing, since we don't drink alcohol and don't care about photos. Is it really true that you can't use the obc towards grats?

I went ahead and plugged in what the form wanted, so my access is also back to normal. I did this since I had second thoughts that it's really not uncommon to force an account update. People have changes to location and/or phone number and don't remember to update everything.

That's my thinking as well. I'll try again tomorrow and see what I get. Bringing up the app works fine.

Throughout the years, we've only met one couple who tried to act like big shots and make us feel inferior. It didn't work. Everybody else has been great. You won't find a more friendly bunch of people anywhere.