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markeb

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Everything posted by markeb

  1. That's bizarre. It's not what it says for the Retreat Lounge on Summit (or Equinox). Can't remember what other ships still have Michael's to look. I don't know that anything in the description is current!
  2. The flyer actually says "re-price" even though it answers a bullet of adjustment... Re-price at prevailing rates? I can see those posts already: They'll re-price my cruise at cruise only without those things I don't want to pay for. It'll only cost me $1000 a person more than my current booking. Different going forward on new bookings, obviously.
  3. That would be the business explanation, if the math works. The person cruising once per year is paying full fare, including the AI for the Retreat. In the age of internet marketing and niche marketing, the question is how much does it cost to recruit that once a year cruiser versus provide a free benefit to the repeat cruiser. And since status is for life, you're providing the same benefit to someone who now only cruises once a year, same as your new cruiser. Most folks with that status on CC still cruise a lot, obviously. As you say, softening demand would change the calculus. Glad I can analyze as an outsider, not have my job on the line doing it for them...
  4. I guess a signature could theoretically cut down on freebies that are being recorded as lost and wastage today. Sounds like they put an accountant in as the F&B manager... I'd probably just scratch through it and hand it back. Kind of like most of your point of sale terminals that will accept anything as a signature. Seems pretty silly.
  5. As a fellow Lifetime Titanium with Marriott (one of the rarest loyalty statuses out there, as you know!), I agree. I don't begrudge Zenith members here, but I'm a bit surprised. Someone at Celebrity did an analysis that keeping Zenith's cruising was a net positive on Customer Lifetime Value. Marriott doesn't "owe" me anything for all the money I spent with them. United doesn't "owe" me anything for all the miles I flew. The programs are designed to encourage "presently profitable" (I'm going to steal that...) customers (a good reason that airline and hotel programs are annual and lifetime status is a very high hurdle) to continue spending. I'm actually more interested that Celebrity felt they needed to do this. Jason Liberty keeps saying that demand has been increasing for RCG as prices have increased. That's in their public filings, so there has to be a basis in fact. That would suggest there's no financial reason to make this change. I don't know how many Zenith members there are. I know I've watched United Global Services members turn right through the cabin door to economy, and I did the same many times while I had 1K status. I guess their concern is that the highest tiered members of their retention program would rather cruise someone else than "fly coach with perks". Or pay the flat rate pricing. And frankly the "always included" concept was the direct opposite of the "nickel and diming" everyone complains about. And competitive (before some of the recent price increases) with luxury lines for the Retreat. Glad for the Zeniths. It's a great thing for them. Scratching my head on why it makes business sense if the ships are full. They're not doing this because it's "the right thing to do"...
  6. It's not just the immediate port activities either. BMW and Mercedes, at a minimum, have vehicle processing facilities associated with the port. Military Sealift Command has a major vehicle processing center for overseas shipments of personal vehicles. Those are just a couple of quick examples. It's going to be messy, as you say.
  7. The Baltimore Sun is reporting there was a pilot onboard. There are unconfirmed reports that the ship lost power; no one's going to confirm that until there's a full investigation. I'm not that familiar with the Port of Baltimore, but from the reports I've seen, cruise ships are a blip on the radar. Shipping traffic into an out of the port is suspended. No one is saying for how long. That's container ships, roll on/roll off car shipments, etc. Whoever's in the port may be stuck there, and it could be awhile before anyone else gets in. Praying for the victims and their families.
  8. It's Newark. They posted a couple of weeks ago about going from EWR to Broadway to catch a play. Do you have to take the train to the Uber pickup point? EWR isn't my airport...
  9. What ship what venue? It's showing $17 on Summit in the MDR.
  10. Best live moment ever. 2016. Nats Park. Incident into Rosie live. If you know, you know…
  11. Again, what was the last generation who didn't believe the next generation's music was awful?
  12. That may be the greatest oversimplification of musical tastes of the two generations I'm counting on funding my social security I've ever seen! Yes. EDM at the club. Yes, with a big but, to hip hop and rap. Those are two very broad genres that encompass an awful lot of music. Most of it's not my style either, but some of it's pretty good. And a lot of Millennial and Gen Z music is new country, which has become almost the descendant of southern rock. Apple has a pretty good playlist for Gen Z, as do a number of other sources. It's all over the place. Everything from late 90s TLC to Cee Lo Green to Kelly Clarkson to Carrie Underwood to... You can't lump Millennials and Gen Z into Hip Hop and EDM. If you do you're just as bad as our parents when they couldn't accept the Beatles, the Eagles, Springsteen, Billy Joel, Quiet Riot, etc. I've seen teenagers at Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen concerts, not always with their parents, and my wife and I have been to Paramore and loved them. We were at a Patti Smith concert last fall and the age certainly tended to my late Boomer/early X generation, but there were plenty of people a generation younger than me there. Insert Dr. Rick gif here...
  13. As in most restaurants, you’ll get much better wine by the bottle than by the glass. The package pays off if you’re mostly happy with the by the glass offerings, have a beer or cocktail or two, and throw in some bottled water. Then you get the discount on a good bottle or two. And don’t pay too much attention to the pennies!
  14. With the premium package you get a 20% discount on the bottle price. You’ll still pay a 20% gratuity but on the discounted price. Easy math is $100 bottle @ 20% discount is $80 plus $18 gratuity is $98. With gratuity you pay $2 less than the posted price, but $22 less than the bottle would cost without the package discount. ($100 + 20 = $120)
  15. Hasn't that always been true? I've never seen Luminae open for lunch on a port day (other than embarkation day).
  16. I guess it's too simple to just point out that RCG has invested heavily in Florida with cruise terminals in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Port Canaveral, and Tampa. Every cruise that leaves one of those locations increases the return on those investments. And those cruises are mostly leaving full. Including plenty of cruisers willing to fly from the West Coast. Seattle and especially Vancouver give them advantages that wouldn't exist in Southern California. They can reach Alaska easily from either location, and Vancouver as a non-US location allows them to do one way cruises to Alaska or Hawaii. Europe and even Australia have become big "other markets" for RCG. If the OP has an actual business case for San Diego I'd love to hear it. Although having multiple user names on the same platform usually gets one banished. I'd have to look at the user agreement on CC...
  17. Well that greatly simplifies the definition of modern popular music! Keep having fun out here! 😁
  18. Agree. Although I'm stuck with Disney+ since they're now the "other than UK" distributor of Doctor Who. How does a ...
  19. We'd have to sit down over a beverage and update my baseline on Baroque versus Classical. Not sure I'd know the difference. Would be a fun exercise. Nirvana for their impact on popular music. Green Day for still being around and still making great music. Foo Fighters doesn't count. Taylor or Adele would depend on the day of the week and the mood I'm in. Are we talking Red and earlier or 1989 and later? Taylor's early stuff is more storyteller, like a lot of Adele, but her voice is better now. Adele is just Adele... Les Miserables. Of course!
  20. I wonder if that would crash their servers like she crashed Ticketmaster...
  21. I'm almost exactly a decade behind you. I can handle all of that, maybe even a little bit of ABBA, in moderation. The overproduced music of the late 80s pretty much led directly to grunge and the rock of the 90s. So we can skip most of the late 80s. We're a quarter of the way into the 21st Century. It's OK to play something more recent. I was truly amazed in November that the house band on Equinox knew at least two Foo Fighters songs! Mind you, they were both off The Colour and the Shape which was released in 1997, 27 years ago. And I think they'd been specifically told not to do anything harder, which is kind of difficult with the Foos. Equinox put on what ended up being a "tribute" to Queen one night in the Grand Foyer which was maybe the worst butchering of Freddy Mercury I've ever seen or heard. Be careful what you ask for! And for the record, my favorite album of all time is Born to Run and it will be 49 years old in August. Not hearing that on a cruise either...
  22. Back to the Future is one of the Kennedy Center shows we're looking at. People seem to like it, but I haven't seen it. If you haven't seen Hamilton, though...
  23. Because they can make more money sailing from Florida? Just like California? 😃
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