JennAngel9

Hello All, we've booked a senses spa massage appointment (on the Wish, if it matters)-- and the spa appears to have a large dedicated indoor/outdoor relaxation area.  If you book a spa treatment, are you allowed/encouraged to hang out in the spa area before/after the treatment? If so, is there a time limit?

Thanks!

Just wanted to say good luck with your travels Ken! We also tested negative so we will see you onboard!  Like you, we wore masks in crowded planes (and airports) except when briefly eating or drinking and it looks like that did the trick. 🙂 

My children have been eating at fine dining restaurants (on land but also on Princess, Regent, and Celebrity) since they were a few years old.  They are much better behaved than many of the older passengers we encounter in specialty restaurants.  When they were younger than 5, they would occasionally get antsy and one of us would remove them from the restaurant to go for a walk or to bed early, but that has not happened since they were school aged.  FWIW, the discount cover charge for children has been in place for many years across most of the lines we sail on, including Princess and Celebrity.

If I could count all the annoying individuals I've witnessed in dining rooms, less than 1% of them would be children (and more than 90% of them would be large groups of drunk people).  I know that there are irresponsible parents and bratty children that give everyone a bad name...many cruisers come and remark how delightful and well behaved our kids are.  I also would be annoyed if loud and unruly children were seated near us (whether in specialty dining or the MDR), but I don't think you should assume that children aren't capable of behaving just as well as the median adult.

Good luck, Ken!  We will be joining you at the pier on Saturday, assuming we all test negative tomorrow AM (I'm a little nervous because we feel fine but there were a ton of people on our various flights who were extremely snotty, sneezing and coughing, etc.)-- FWIW, over the past 10 days we've flown LAX-CMH-MSP-KEF-BCN (the majority of them on DL), and none of our flights has experienced anything worse than a 30m delay.

Thank you, Lois!

Riffatsea and FlaMariner, would you be willing to share the names of the guides you did use or plan to use on Gibraltar? 

On 5/19/2022 at 7:37 AM, fiveparty said:

Geez, looks like my husband will need to do an antigen test to enter Spain (his last vaccine dose will be more than 270 days) PLUS, he (and the rest of us) will need to do another one before getting on the ship. 

 

Would you mind sharing where you found this information? I think all of us except my husband are within 180 days of our last dose, but I believe he's going to be longer....

For those of us who are way behind the ball in planning for our June arrivals in Barcelona, would someone mind sharing the link to the Spanish website that may or may not be updated with the latest information? I'd like to make myself a calendar reminder to check back 10 and 5 days before departure. 🙂

Thank you very much, Marazul and Cruiser Bruce!  I will reach out to both companies today and see what their availability is.

Hi All, 

Our ship arrives at Civitavecchia for disembarkation on a Saturday morning, and I was wondering if it would be possible to get picked up by van around 9AM, tour Rome for 4-6 hours (with luggage in the van), and then take the van to the airport for an evening flight within Europe.  Has anybody done this? Would we be able to put together a few major sites and lunch?  I would love any recommendations.  Thanks!

I'm sorry I'm just now seeing this.  I doubt it's helpful anymore, but we needed antigen tests. 

We are on the Celebrity Equinox and spend yesterday in port in Bonaire. 🙂

4 hours ago, Jim_Iain said:

 

 

Suggestion is call Celebrity and ask to be transferred to the Concierge for your ship.   My personal experience (even as a Zenith) when I send something to the concierge by e-mail it is rarely answered.

 

 

I am surprised to hear that Jim-- we've had pretty good experiences with the shoreside concierge- sometimes it can take 3-5 days to get a response, but we board Equinox tomorrow and our concierge has been extremely helpful.  I wonder if being in the CS/RS categories helps?

25 minutes ago, Bruin Steve said:

 

 

So, questions:

 

--Is that six month requirement really still a thing?

--How long is it taking nowadays to actually renew a passport?

--What is the best/fastest/easiest way to get it done?  (I remember the first time I ever gotten a passport--back in 1975--I went, in person, to the Federal Building in LA...another time, I remember doing it at a local post office...but every time I had done it in the past, it was either pre-internet, pre-pandemic or pre-something).

--Anything I should know or consider about the process as presently in effect?

 

Thanks... 

Six months is still arbitrarily enforced so far as I know.

It is very annoying to get a passport at the Federal Building in LA these days, theoretically possible, but you need to show you have travel booked within a week.

We applied for a passport for our kid in person at the USPS in Malibu back in September (I see you are in Calabasas) with paying extra for overnight shipping each way, extra for the expedited process, etc. and they told us it could be 10-12 weeks, but we got it back in about 5-6.  I would check the website and leave that standard amount of time they advise-- but driving into the passport office in person slightly expedites the process, I believe. 

I will have a better answer for you when we board later this week, but when we last sailed, I believe that the cover for non-suite guests in Luminae was about the same as (maybe slightly less than) the other specialty restaurant cover charges. 

In our experience, calling to book a new cruise is a much shorter wait than calling to modify an existing cruise.  Recently I called to upgrade a room, but selected the wrong option (for book a new cruise)-- got someone almost immediately but then when I explained what I wanted to do I was transferred to a different line where I held for 30m.

Hi Everyone,

I am thinking of booking a last minute(ish) cruise for next month, but my cabinmate would be traveling from overseas and I'm a little worried that they might not make it with all the uncertainty in international travel these days.  Does anyone know what happens if my cabinmate cancels under cruise with confidence but I want to go anyway?  Do I get charged a single supplement at the dock? 😮 

5 minutes ago, Happy Cruiser 6143 said:

You get mailers from Celebrity?  How did you achieve that awesome feat?  I get tons of e-mail from other cruise lines.  Zip, nada, zero from Celebrity.

I get maybe 2-3 emails a day from Celebrity and happy to trade places with you if I can figure out how!

1 minute ago, abbydancer said:

We were able to bring friends in when we wanted, but I suspect flexibility on time would help.  We eat late and by the time we get there the restaurant is about half empty by 8:15.  I hope this helps.

 

 

Thank you!  This gives me some comfort (we've actually asked the shoreside concierge specifically to ensure we can bring guests on Thanksgiving dinner and embarkation night, but a few additional days might be nice).

Perhaps we'll just try to keep the whole extended family on California time. 🙂

Hi Abby-- thank you for bringing us along with you on your trip.  🙂

We are traveling on the Equinox next month and only 2 of 6 in our group are traveling in a suite.  Is it difficult to get guests into Luminae for dinner? (We're aware of the per person upcharge and don't mnid paying it.)  I've heard that Luminae is generally full because even though the ship is at lower capacity they are filling the suites. 

Thank you, everyone, for the updates on shoreside concierge.  We are in a Royal Suite and want to make sure we can dine with our family members who are not traveling in suites for Thanksgiving.  My preference is to pay for their upcharge into Luminae if possible, but honestly, I just want to ensure we can eat together.  Other than that, I don't anticipate too much heavy lifting so I guess we can wait until a few weeks out. 🙂

I haven't been able to sail with Celebrity since 2019, but the last time I sailed, there was a Shoreside Concierge available to assist with reservations for dining, shore excursions, miscellaneous immigration issues (less helpful on that last issue, but the service was excellent as they tried to get me in touch with the right people at X).  Is this feature still available? We're two months out from our next cruise and I haven't heard anything yet.

I'm curious about this also.  We are still showing that we will make port in Grand Cayman on our November cruise on the way to the ABC islands.

On 8/8/2021 at 1:01 PM, mashisback said:

This might get on to a completely different subject but...

 

How easy is it to find other trusted tour operators in different ports? Is their a general website for this maybe with reviews etc? 

 

I have 3 ports that nothing on celebrity has took my fancy, mainly because we have a 9 year old and would prefer to find some things more geared towards him than the usual maturer audience celebrity mainly caters for. 

We have used a combination of Viator, TripAdvisor, and Ports of Call here on Cruise Critic-- If you are going to a common port, there are usually a lot of cruisers in the ports of call threads recommending certain operators, and that's always my first choice because when traveling by ship and taking independent excursions, it's important to find an operator who always gets you back to the dock on time. 🙂

For less common cruise ports, we often end up looking at tripadvisor or viator, and we also make sure to return to the ship earlier if it's somewhere we wouldn't want to miss the boat!

56 minutes ago, mashisback said:

I guess the right thing for me to do is delay booking until I know it looks like I am much closer to the 220 limit

 

 

One other option is to try to find a tour operator you can book with directly, explain your situation, and see if they will take you whether you are 219, 221, or 235.