cruisestitch

Not always in Europe….here’s a case where ship time and shore time didn’t match

The issue of port fees and whether or not they are refunded,, it’s much more complicated than it first appears. To start with, port fees are somewhat nationality dependent. That is to say that a port might charge US citizens a certain amount, but British citizens a different amount. So you and your neighbor might have paid different port fees to start with. Port fees go up and down. If at the moment you booked the port fee was, let’s say $10, and it goes up to $11, they don’t charge you extra. If it goes down to $9 dollars, they don’t give you the dollar back either. So let’s say that on some given itineraries, you paid $10 for each port for you were scheduled to visit. But suddenly one Port decides to increase their fee to $30. The cruise line doesn’t adjust what you pay. But if one of the $10 ports get cancelled you will get no refund because the aggregate fee went up. Because port fees go up and down, and vary by your nationality, someone else might have paid different fees initially and they might get a refund for a missed port while you don’t.

Good catch

That might have been a one-off on Royal but it is not the expectation on Celrbrity

You are not likely to find that on Celebrity

You can sign up online, or go to guest services on boarding day. In fact, even if you sign up online, you should still go to guest services to confirm that your name is on the list being given to the housekeeping department.

Sometimes the request for cold water works, sometimes it doesn’t. If you have something that absolutely must be washed in cold water, don’t bring it on the ship or don’t ask for laundry to wash it for you.

And there are elevators in the terminal. You won’t face in the stairs during the Embarkation process, on land or on the ship.

As evidenced by several recent threads, people often assume that what happens on Royal Caribbean also happens on Celebrity (or might in the future)

Cruisers who are used to traveling on Royal Caribbean often ask this question, because on that line you do need to pre-book reservations to see the shows

S class ships and E class ships are configured very differently. The sky lounge on the S class ships is open to all. It is a lovely forward facing venue. As to which side to book in order to have the best balcony, it depends somewhat on the itineraries. What itinerary are you looking at?

Celebrity does not require reservations for its shows

Yes On Board Credit can be used for gratuities.

You mean “balcony” isn’t a synonym for “window”😵‍💫😳🧐

Coordinate any changes with the Blu staff. They can give you advice as to what time might be available. Remember that you don’t have a table assigned to you in the main dining room and sometimes they are very crowded and they can’t send somebody into blue to take your place, so you need to be aware of when the main dining room might have a space to fit you in.

Pack a sweater. Why not? You’ll be unhappy if you didn’t and wish you had.

The dress code is the same everywhere. No shorts in the dining room, jeans are ok.

Also procedures change. What a passenger may have experienced on their last cruise, say in 2021 might be quite different in 2023. With specific regards to blue and the dining room menus. There are ships where blue and the main dining room share a kitchen or have adjacent kitchens. Then there are ships were blue and the main dining room are far apart from each other. There are various health laws which prohibit moving food between those kitchens. And you can imagine that if there is a waiter who worked on one of those ships and then moved to a different ship, they may say “no I can’t get you something from the main dining room”. But maybe on that ship they can. And finally, when the ships were sailing at 50% capacity, it was easier to accommodate different requests. Now that the ships are sailing nearly full, not so easy.

The OP said Constellatiin

Actually the sea pass card is not required at the assembly station as long as you have your “set sale” boarding pass so they can scan that barcode. On my last cruise I hadn’t even been to the state room yet to get my card but it was convenient to stop by the mustard station on the way there so that’s what I did and they just asked to see that boarding pass and all was well.

Even easier would be to just go to the assembly station and they will demonstrate how to put on a life jacket and what to do in case of an emergency. The staff can handle a person who has no phone and they are all set up to make the correct arrangements and get her signed off on the safety drill

Same itinerary? Same cost per day? If they are roughly equivalent I would say silhouette because of the forward facing sky lounge which you won’t find on Apex.

Some hand sanitizers do. He was oversimplifying. Look for ones that have benzalkomium chloride. Their labels usually say 99.99 % effective, not 99% effective, which alcohol-based sanitizers are. If you see alcohol as the only active ingredient, that’s not the stuff you want. here’s a good one to look for

I am on Ovation now. A Photographer was taking pictures of people standing in front of a large backdrop of the ship, in one of the lobbies on embarkation day (yesterday). So Royal has not eliminated photographers.

The app is frustrating and unreliable and not worth your time and energy to fight with.