jwilcox

An additional question - I understand that to upgrade from the Premium drinks package to the Ultimate you simply pay the difference in the daily rate. But I've read a suggestion that if you ask for a spirit from the Ultimate list there is only a "slight upcharge" that reflects their difference between the a Premium level spirit and the desired Ultimate level spirit. Does anyone have any experience with this? If this is not clear I'll make up an easy example (not using real prices). If a scotch listed on the premium list costs $10 and a scotch listed on the Ultimate list costs $12, are you charged just the $2 difference? Or, since you've ordered something not included in your package do you pay the full $12?

Do you any of you who have been doing this for a while know if Azamara ever offers their "Experience Packages" at a discounted price, perhaps as as an incentive for more people to sign up for them?

I am not a "wine snob". In fact, I specialize in finding and enjoying good, cheap wines. On our two Azamara trips the wines available on the Ultimate package were either not really available, or would retail here in California for under $10. There are good wines still available at that price, but sadly not the ones in the Ultimate package we had access to for our two trips. Calling the wines they offered "ultimate" in any way is a joke. I should add that the same thing happened with some alcohol choices too. One reason we got the package was to have access to good Cognac and scotch. The best of what they had listed on the package list on the table where we signed up were also not really available. I understand things change and sourcing wines all over the world is difficult, but how hard would it be to put out a list that reflects what they actually have available, especially at the sign-up table.

We have our second Azamara cruise coming up in a couple weeks or so. I thought that for the last one we received "documents" (can't remember what exactly, and maybe i'm not remembering this correctly) a few weeks before we sailed. Now we leave in two weeks and i haven't received a single communication from Azamara about our upcoming trip. Should I be expecting to get some communication from them at this point? The online system is showing everything is OK with the reservation including all the options we selected. But it seems odd that we would show up at check-in with nothing other than the confirmation we got way back when we booked over a year ago,

Exactly what I said a few posts above yours. Still hoping someone can tell me how to do this.

Thank you. This took care of that problem Now if I can only figure out how to pay.

I seem to have an additional problem. When I first looked at excursions under the Manage My Reservation link I saw the full list of all available excursions. We we certain we wanted to take one of them, but wanted to think about others. So I signed us up for the one we wanted and hit STORE. We have finally decided on another we want to take but now when I go to Excursions it only shows the one we have already signed up for. I can't figure how to add another excursion to the first one we signed up for. Has anyone successfully done this?

When I first logon I get three choices - Make a Payment, Manage My Reservation, and the option for having a problem. If I click on either of the first two (Make a Payment or Manage My Rservation) it takes me to a summary screen that shows all the details about my reservatoin including the excursions I've signed up for, the Special Request we've made, and the extras we wanted. At the bottom is an option (the only option) that says "STORE". There is no CONTINUE option, although I seem to remember one back when I was entering my excusion choices. If I click on STORE all it does it give me a popup that says my reservationed has been stored. I have to click OK to make that popup disappear and then I am back at the summary screen with the option to STORE.

I am an IT professional. So I feel comfotable saying that the design of their new website is AWFUL. There are so many things wrong with it and so many terrible design features it is incomprehensible how they could have paid someone to design this for them. It looks like it was done completely without any user testing, or without any user experience people having input on it. Having said that (hoping someone at Azamara reads this thread) I did get the notice. Fortunately I had already stumbled on the "Store" option which is not self evident. That was after having selected shore excurions more than once only to have them not show up next time - because I hadn't found the "Store" function. However I still cannot figure out how to pay for what I have signed up for. The announcement says to "Navigate to the payment screen". But I can't figure out how to do that. If anyone out there has figured out how to get to the payment screen I'd appreciate your letting me know how to do that.

We are staying at a hotel nnear San Marco after we disembark our Azamara cruise. I understand that we will arrive at Porto Maritima, but is not clear to me even after reading several posts how we should proceed from there. I think we could take a water taxi but that would cost something like 100 Euros. Can we take a vaporetto? If so, where would be the nearest vaporetto stop on a line that goes to San Marco, or San Zaccaria, and could we walk to it with luggage?

Thanks. That was what I thought but it is good to have someone confirm it. Now if someone can give me the specifics of the local tansport needed to get to our hotel. We ae 75 and healthy enough to walk a few miles, but not while schlepping our luggage. So the easiest way possible is what we would be looking for if anyone out there can help.

I'm really confused about where exactly I will "hit the ground" when disembarking at (what Azamara says is) Fusina. We added a few extra days at the end. How to do we get to our hotel which is very close to St, Mark's?

FWIW the Matanzas Creek Merlot was one of the few wines from the list that they actually had. On the other hand the Oregon Pinot Noir was gone and they offered an Italian Pinot that I think cost about $10/bottle, and was pretty awful. I talked with the sommelier. Told him I understood the supply chain issues and that my problem was with their having a sheet showing wines on the ultimate drinks package on a table where they were advertising the package while knowing that many of the wines on that list were not really available. He told me the list came from the corporate office and they couldn't update it even though they know it's out of date. On the plus side they were also out of Couvoisier VSOP cognac but substituted Remy Martin VSOP. So that was a good swap.

Just got off the Quest a week ago. My suggestion would be not to bother having someone send you a copy of the wines available on the Ultimate package. As soon as we boarded and sat down on the rear deck for a champagne toast we discovered that the one listed on the Ultimate package list had been substituted with another. Portends of the future! The next four times we ordered a wine off the list we received a substitute, or at least an offer of a substitute.

Quite frustrated at the moment. I tried to book an experience package over the phone using OBC and they told me I could not do that in advance but I would be able to use OBC to buy the package once on board. They convinced me to pay for it with credit card and then ask Guest Relations to use the obc once i was on board and refund what i paid to my cc. So I boarded a couple hours ago and was told I could NOT use obc for experience packages. Hmmm. Then I thought maybe everything would work out as long as they used Azamara obc first and refunded the obc from my travel agent. They told me the travel agent obc is not refundable. So now I'm left with lots of obc that I expected to use for the experience package. I'm also left having paid for something with cc after being told it would be refunded once on board only to have ship staff refuse to do that. This can't be something decided by individual ships. How can I find what official policy is on use of obc?

Thanks. I had a bright idea and started to book a shore excursion. When I went to pay it showed OBC. Do you know if that would be the total of the two, or just Azamara's OBC?

I know I've seen lots of posts about OBC, but I can't find exactly what I'm looking for. My TA provided some OBC for my cruise and I am supposed to get some from Azamara. Where do I go in my account to see what the two amounts are, and make sure they are recorded properly?

Our upcoming trip will be our first on Azamara. So I am as far from an expert as possible. However I tried to book one of these packages using OBC and they (Azamara phone rep) told I could not do that prior to boarding and I would have to do it on board.

We're planning on being super careful, but Covid has a way of hitting even people who are taking precautions. So Im curious if anyone here knows whether the ship medical staff provide treatment, or just isolate the passenger and wait for them to get over it. Also wondering about the availability of Paxlovid. Does anyone know if ships carry a supply of it to administer if someone tests positive?

I've found information about flying and boarding my cruise (in Southampton), but I can't find any information about disembarking at stops along the way (France, Spain and Portugal). Are there any restrictions of passengers disembarking to take shore excursions in those counttries? Or, where can I find that information?

Even if it is only a mild impact on you it could be much worse for others. For our part we are equally worried about getting it, and about unknowingly passing it on to others who might end up with a bad case.

The version of Covid going around now is highly contageous. I was looking forward as much as anyone to not having to test before boarding and not needing masks. But right now ships full of unmasked people are just a super-spreader event waiting to happen. If it were my call I'd resume testing before boarding to at least try to keep infected people from coming on board and starting an epidemic. Sure people could catch it on day trips, but unless it happened really early in the cruise hopefully that would not spread as fast as something that started spreading on embarcation day. Any way this kind of post has us thinking once again about what kind of precautions to take.

We also hope to avoid crowds as much as possible. Eating in our room or at a table for two should help, and that's why I'm disappointed to hear there's no outdoor seating for dinner, We've got some small group excursions planned and are worried about the close quarters on a van or mini-bus. But we're taking a whole bunch of N95s and plan to mask up when near others. I'm hoping others will do the same but, sadly, a lot of people seem to have given up masking.

You'd think that with Covid raging again they would want people eating outdoors as much as possible

I can find likely temps in our ports of call for our cruise departing from Southampton and ending in Lisbon. But, we are spending two nights at sea in the Atlantic going from Southampton to Bordeaux (Aug 30 and Sep1). Trying to figure our how warm to pack. Anyone gone that route have an idea what the temps are likely to be like then. I realize we can be inside for that part of the cruise, but still interested.