markeb

I think I would have simply looked at you and asked if you worked for the restaurant and when you said no thanked you for your interest. And ignored you completely.

Most of the car services now book through Uber and Lyft. They'll probably pull up with stickers for the company you booked through and an Uber and Lyft sticker.

Thanks again. We booked some places to stay as some are getting booked. Denali Bluffs Hotel--Not the cheapest, but looks very nice Hotel Edgewater in Seward--Likewise. Looks nice, good reviews, and the price was acceptable. Plus they run a shuttle to the train station and the cruise terminal Planning on the train from Anchorage to Seward. Just waiting until tomorrow to determine if my wife (retired military family member) gets the military discount or only me. Fly into Anchorage and spend the night. Drive back to Anchorage, spend the night, then take the train down to Seward. We'll figure out details for Denali and Seward later (but relatively soon). Two nights in Seward to do the domed train down (not available the day before). And the hotel says it has laundry! Back to research and questions. I suspect this would be a lot simpler if we were either a) only going to Denali and a land based trip, or b) only doing a cruise. And we've cruised out of Europe doing both without this kind of angst!

That makes perfectly good sense. And fortunately (no idea how easy or hard it really is) they now allow medical exceptions on the "everyone must have the same package" rule. It's actually a little bizarre they don't stock more ginger ale. It's kind of the go to for many of us for any motion issues. I've probably seen that, but it didn't really register. I also don't recall them selling ginger candies, which would seem a great idea and probably a money maker. When we've driven, which is rare, we have typically taken our two bottles of wine. Usually something in the middle range that I'm not worried about shocking too bad on the drive. That's never been to save money but to have something I know full well won't be on the ship. Have to remember the gift thing next cruise. If there's a whisky I'd drink available to gift...

It's seemed pretty heated here! I just don't follow a lot of other social media on cruising. If any. Let's me keep my losartan dose lower...

"Cookiegate" is an example of social media rage coupled with poor internal messaging of their strategy. Celebrity attempted to add a new offering for an additional fee. They even put it with the gelato, which is already an extra fee item. They clearly didn't communicate internally that they intended to make this an additional offering, and folks on Equinox (I believe it was Equinox; everything was on Equinox at the time) apparently moved the standard cookies out of the case to encourage sales of the new, "better" cookies. A logical move if you haven't been told why they're doing this. And the 'net, including Cruise Critic, blew up. And the rage reached critical mass before they could simply ensure all the previous cookies were still at Cafe al Bacio and that they didn't intend for the hot chocolate chip cookie to replace the free cookies. Maybe that was necessary to wake up some of the operational folks, but they were doing a lot of experimenting at the time, and this one might have worked if done better, and probably not in conjunction with everything else. But I will still argue that social media rage torpedoed the idea. I pay for gelato on occasion. I like it better than ice cream. I probably would have paid for an occasional hot chocolate chip cookie. Never got the chance.

Any specific recommendations for hotels? Looks like a lot of interesting places are booked for when we want to be there. Probably not surprising.

Have you done the math on that? Recently? The promotion may be over, but Celebrity had the premium beverage package on special for $69.99. Martinis at the martini bar are $17. Much of the (barely) drinkable wine is $17. Much of the beer is $11 or more. A latte is $5. Bottled water is $4. So are sodas. It doesn't take much effort to hit 69.99. Four martinis or martini priced drinks plus a latte should do it. Or three, a few bottles of water, and a latte. A little more effort to break even at $99. The cost of alcohol without a drink package is ludicrous. The cost of the package really isn't. (And no, I'm not adding the gratuity. It cancels out algebraically in the calculation.) I certainly don't advocate having 4-6 alcoholic beverages of any type every day, but people do it all the time on a cruise. And then presumably revert to baseline at home.

You'll need original identification, usually passport. Your boarding pass is available in the app and can be saved to your wallet. I print the luggage tags at home. I have clear tag holders that I bought years ago from Cruise Critic (does CC still have a store?). They also float down that great South American river (Amazon) and Celebrity and Royal Caribbean share the same size and format. Print, cut, stuff them in the holders, stuff the holders in a Ziplock, and put them on the bags at the hotel the night before the cruise. Just part of our ritual. I know the porters will fill them out, but if the tags are on the bags when I get there, it's less than 30 seconds, most of which is fishing for a tip... I do tend to save my edocs to my iPad. Ditto my travel insurance. That may just be me.

Are you spending time pre-cruise in Singapore? Just go to any Hawker Market (take your own napkins...). $6-7 US for great food. It's own unique ambience. Singapore has so many different cuisines. Mostly Chinese, but a lot of Thai, Indonesian, Indian, and Peranakan, the traditional food of Singapore and a mismatch of several cultures and cuisines. And delicious. And I agree, I've not known Celebrity (or Royal before) to really do anything representative of where you're traveling. HAL used to have some dishes if I remember right. We did two British Island cruises on Royal. They have what looks like a British pub. I don't believe they even had a British beer. Maybe Guinness (which is NOT UK!).

I'd agree wholeheartedly with going straight from LGA to New Jersey. Too many logistics otherwise. I did a quick mock booking in the Secaucus area on Marriott, and none of their properties will allow that many people in a single room (at least online). You're almost certainly going to have to research a few places, probably suite type hotels (Residence Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, etc.) and call them directly to try to reserve two connecting rooms. Earlier is probably better. I know meadowlander said the Residence Inn had rooms for 6 and I believe them, but I'm not seeing anything on October 5 online. It may be a manager override thing...

Nah. Next cruise is May on Summit southbound Alaska. That's our last booked cruise at this point. Not because of any of this nonsense. We want to see inland parts of the world... (And who knows, we might book something onboard. Things change.)

No, they won't. And the $23/glass wine is in Australia with gratuities included, so $19/glass on a sailing in the rest of the world. Which the average customer will simply interpret as $2.40 extra from their premium package (or $4.00 apparently in Australia). Or $10.80 from their classic package. They're selling drink packages. The Premium Drink Package is currently on sale for 69.99/day plus gratuity (at least on some sailings). That's just over 4 $17 drinks per day. A pina colada during the day. A couple of bottles of water. Maybe a soda or a latte. A martini before dinner. Let's add that up real quick: Coke $4 Bottle water: $4 Sunset Pina Colada: $15 Martini at the Martini Bar: $17 Latte: $5 Glass of wine in package: $17 That's $62 (Before someone jumps in, the gratuity washes out mathematically here.). Have two martinis, 2-3 bottles of water, maybe one more Pina Colada and you're well over the 69.99. Two cokes, two bottles of water, two pina coladas, two martinis, a latte and a glass of wine and you're at $102, so you've paid for a full price package. Red Bull is $7 and San Pellegrino Naturali is $6, so those add up as well. And if you really want a better wine with dinner you get a 20% discount on a bottle of much better wine (which are largely priced much better than the cheap stuff). Of maybe you just enjoy the wine that is in the package. For package holders (which seemed to be the majority on my last two cruises) the absolute price is irrelevant. You've already paid for the first $17. That's a sunk cost whether you buy a glass of wine or not. It's not a $19 glass of wine, it's a $2 glass of wine (or $2.40 with gratuity). The price of the wine on land is irrelevant. It only matters whether it's in your package or you're paying extra. To the vast majority of cruisers not commenting on these threads. And looking at the various bars on the ship, there are a lot of people buying drinks other than wine. So they're happy their package is paying for what they drink. Which is a lot of rum and coke, Jack and coke, bourbon and coke, etc. And beer. I'm not going to argue whether they're premium wines. They're not. They're $2.40/glass wines.

Thanks. Back to searching the web. We were actually thinking 3 days at the park, not including travel. Then to Seward and off to Vancouver on the ship, plus or minus a stop in Anchorage. A lot to figure out!

And anyone who says something positive is a cheerleader.

Critic: 1 a: one who engages often professionally in the analysis, evaluation, or appreciation of works of art or artistic performances a literary critic a film critic a theater critic b: one who expresses a reasoned opinion on any matter especially involving a judgment of its value, truth, righteousness, beauty, or technique Critics of the new law say that it will not reduce crime. 2 : one given to harsh or captious judgment a fierce critic of immigration policies https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/critic Only one of the three definitions is limited to purely negative judgements. Critic always implied an analysts of plusses and minuses. Siskel and Ebert, Rolling Stone, art critics. And Cruise Critic, which historically had as many positive posts, reviews, questions and answers, etc., as negative posts.

The posting from the Ascent yesterday (in this thread) includes multiple wines available in the Retreat Lounge for an upcharge. In fact the menu prices are the amount of the upgrade. Are you seeing something different? The most talked about favorite, Decoy Cabernet, is back on the premium list. No one has posted that I’ve seen on other ships, but presumably this will be adopted across the fleet.

One of the great things about Cruise Critic is consensus... 😁 If we go to Denali, any recommendations on where to stay? We'd probably do one overnight in Anchorage on arrival, and then drive? train? to Denali. Obviously you have more options with a car. We're somewhat open ended on time before the cruise. I'm well aware we'd see a fraction of the park regardless of how long we're there. Is there a general time recommendation we should consider? There's a lot of travel involved regardless. We'd plan to get to Seward the day before the cruise so that would bring the same choices into play. It sounds like the train from Anchorage to Seward is pretty enjoyable. Thanks! We'll look at those as options.

That's an interesting question. We all assume that, but what if it's not the case? What if they (corporate they, not just Celebrity) are able to reset while they can charge whatever they want? I really have no idea. I've not seen a clear strategy from Celebrity (or really RCG) to suggest that's what they're doing. But right now the default strategy is do whatever we can to raise revenue, and I doubt that's unique to Celebrity. And BTW, for the OPs question (these threads all become one continuous thread at some point), we thoroughly enjoyed our most recent Celebrity cruise in November (which I'm sure I'll be reminded was before the most recent round of changes...). We went in expecting it to be a bit different than our last cruise but also expecting to enjoy it. Both were true.

Wouldn't any CEO feel the same way? Like it or not, if they can do that, they need to ride it. At some point they may have to balance current gains against long term viability but they have a ton of debt and I'm assuming a bunch of shareholders that would like to see a return on their equity. None of us like it as consumers, but cruising is a luxury, not a need. Luxury goods are the classic example of inelastic demand; demand increases when price increases. And that's apparently across RCG so even though most of us wouldn't consider RCG a "luxury", other than maybe Silversea, apparently at least for now the market does and is behaving that way. And a lot of the food, beverage, and service changes don't appear to be impacting that bottom line. It has to be a strange place to be corporately...

We are booked on Celebrity Summit southbound from Seward on May 31st to Vancouver. We're late in planning, probably because there's a part of you that doesn't really believe you're going to take the cruise, but we are! Our plan had always been to fly in, probably to Anchorage, and spend a few days in Denali before heading to Seward for the cruise. Looking at some threads in this forum, I see there are issues with the road into Denali, so I'd really love input on whether that's still the best option or where else should we look? Both my wife and I have separately been to Alaska. She did a roundtrip HAL cruise years ago from Seattle and I spent about a week in and around Anchorage at Elmendorf years ago. So we've seen what, less than 1% of Alaska? Looking for suggestions all around. Go to Denali? Go somewhere else? Where to stay? Rent a car or take one of the trains? Getting from Denali (or elsewhere?) to Seward? We're still somewhat open on how long we'll be in Alaska pre-cruise. We do plan on spending at least a couple of days post cruise in Vancouver, and it looks like Air Canada has a direct flight to Dulles! But the Alaska piece is pretty unclear and in its infancy. We're both 61, reasonably active, but we both have some health issues, so a long backcountry hike isn't a consideration... Help!

Or tomorrow’s. One ship sailing today had no wine when I looked They implemented this late last night or today with no time for IT to update the app.

They're in the app for the Ascent. Easy enough to check (yes, for the most part it appears they did). Ascent sailed today so that looks like the first menus to update.

Get a new phone... Seriously. An iPhone 6 running iOS 12 is missing three full generations of security updates. I'm hoping you don't have your bank or credit card app on it! Look for a used unlocked phone. You can get refurbished iPhone 12's direct from Apple, and there are other resellers out there. But you can't update the phone to a version of iOS that will let you run the app.

Just pulled up Ascent in the app. Today is Day 1 of their new sailing, and a quick look shows the $19 wines (that I recognized and found) are now $17 (again). Including the infamous Decoy. Looked at Equinox and it still shows the $19 pricing but they're also mid-cruise. They "might" have reverted the pricing there as well, but I'm assuming they'll roll them back on Thursday on the next sailing. Of course, you can win all the battles and still not "win" if you don't have a unified, coherent strategy (talking Celebrity and RCG, not CC!).