mahdnc

It's a one ship day at the port for Tampa Bay.

The new promotion is actually worse for solos, triples and in the very rare instance--quints.

Here is the new sales variant that appeared today on Celebrity's website:

Our domestic flight out of TPA is right now scheduled for 11:43 am. We have not decided whether we will do self walk off or not. I forgot to mention that there will be a big (American) football game being played in Tampa (vs LA Rams!) on the day we disembark. I am thinking that it will not affect things.

No. Our last scheduled port before Tampa is Nassau.

HI, sasset. I think we are on the same cruise. If you do self-walk off (which is critical to the plan), you should be able to make that 10 am flight although there is not a large allowance for things to go wrong. I know it's just one data point at a completely different port, but we got off Solstice in Sydney (self walk off) and got to SYD via taxi by 7:37 am (7-8 miles away from the cruise port). The self walk off line can be long (a lot of people looking to get off early for various reasons), so you will want to get to the assembly point earlier than what is stated on the disembarkation newsletter. My understanding is that the Tampa cruise terminal does not use Global Entry which isn't that big of a deal if you are among the first to get off via self-walk off. Daylight savings time ends on that Sunday we pull into Tampa, so we will have an extra hour of sleep before we get thrown off the ship. It doesn't help with the disembarkation schedule, but at least you will be well rested. Hopefully you do not incur any unfavorable changes in departure time with your flight which is something else to watch out for. I think it is worth the risk as long as long as you can adjust if things go wrong and you need to catch a later flight. David

It can vary. If you look at the first advertisement in Post #2, you had to book between May 12-18 (the ad was emailed right around May 12) and it was good for sailings between Sep 4 - Dec 28. So that is 4-7 months in advance of the sailing. The second advertisement in Post #2 was received via email on Dec 4 for a Dec 23 sailing--so 19 days in advance. These are all pre-pandemic examples.

Thanks for your review. I look forward to seeing the photos--cloudy or not. I would be interested in reading about details of your shore excursions.

That is definitely good news for you. I hope you come back a very happy camper. We will get our first cruise "fix" since the pandemic in October. (89 days from now). Cannot wait, either!

Thank you for your well written summary of your experience. And thank you for doing the right thing and self reporting when your husband came down with symptoms.

Love the self explanatory photo!

Yes they do have them. Sometimes they are for a wide variety of sailings (first screenshot below) and sometimes they are very sailing specific (last two screenshots). Also the non-sale prices will change (up or down)--so sometimes you will find a favorable price change when there is no sale going on. My advice is to check your cruise planner on a regular basis.

You make a very good point. I presumed that they would be similar, but not identical. I did notice that Celebrity runs the excursion (CH73) in reverse: bus ride first and then the train ride is second compared to our excursion (KQ07--description in screenshot below).

Normally when the airline changes your schedule drastically enough (I think 9 hours certainly qualifies), you should qualify for re-accommodation (to a schedule that works for the customer) or a refund (without fees). Does one lose all that when they book their flights thru Celebrity? For our upcoming Oct TA cruise, we booked our flights thru Celebrity for the very first time. So far we have not had any issues at all, but stories like this really have me rethinking this. Welcome to Cruise Critic, @Kat915, and I am sorry that this had to be your first post. I sincerely hope things get resolved to your satisfaction. Please be sure to let us know how it all turns out. Our fingers are crossed for you.

I received mine at 3:32 pm CDT

Here are my notes from taking the Trans-Alpine Railway excursion when we sailed on Solstice to New Zealand in late Dec - early Jan: 7:30 am We arrived at the Celebrity Theater as instructed on our ticket. 7:45 am We line up to board the first tender. 8:20 am We board our motorcoach. There are 28 passengers on our bus and a total of 3 buses. The bus ride is nicely narrated by the driver. 9:05 am We have a scheduled restroom stop It is very brief. 10:00 am The bus arrives at the location in Christchurch to board our train. The train is empty and appears to be dedicated for the cruise ship. It only has around 4 passenger cars with an observation car. There are 84 passengers that board. The train ride is headphone narrated and is very comfortable. 11:00 am A nice box lunch is served on the train You can buy additional snacks or meals. The train climbs the mountains through 12+ tunnels along a beautiful river. The river is a pretty silty turquoise color which indicates that it is being fed from a glacier. 12:30 pm We arrive at our destination, Arthur's Pass. Under gorgeous sunny skies, we get off the train and board the same 3 buses from earlier in the day. We make 3 quick stops for photos of the mountain scenery. The view on the bus ride down the mountains is as spectacular as it was from the train on the way up. 2:20 pm. Two buses arrive at a sheep farm where free water, coffee, and tea are served along with snacks. There is a demonstration of the dogs herding the sheep followed by a sheep shearing demonstration. 3:30 pm. We get back on the bus for the 2 hour bus ride back to the tender dock. I am currently on the bus.

No wonder you were working so hard to Elite+

I remember it being published around mid-October because there is Halloween information in it.

Last year, Celebrity actually published a brochure which had the holiday decorating schedule for each ship: link Note that not all ships were sailing then (Solstice, Eclipse). The brochure has more holiday information in it that you may find of interest.

I am sorry to hear that you have Covid and it must be so disappointing to cancel your cruise vacation. It is good to know that you had a great customer service experience. Get well.

It depends on what you like. During our last cruise in 2019, we did the train excursion and very much liked it

Basically Book Later allows you to delay your decision for up to 90 days. If you don't make a decision, it expires and your deposit is returned. When you do book, you then make a decision on whether the booking has refundable or non-refundable deposit. Here is a link to to the form itself with screenshots of it pasted below:

We have booked the family cabins at least 15 times. As many have mentioned, they are not eligible for the one category Captains Club upgrade. During the late 90's we did get CC upgrades into the larger family cabins but they were outside cabins (Century class) and were designated as Cat 3 cabins. The upgrade was worth about $200 pp for 1st/2nd.

We are flying to Rome in October. It is my wife's dream for our bags to be lost so she has an excuse to buy a new wardrobe in Rome in which case I will need the Euro to go down more....

There is a world wide chip shortage going on right now.