markeb

Boarding times don't apply to the Retreat. Unless something's radically different in Sydney, you can show up pretty much as soon as the previous guests clear, and they'll board you as soon as the ship is cleared for boarding, in most places that's been around 11:00, so you're good to show up at 10:30.

So you've just perfectly summed up the marketing quandary (almost failure) of Luminae on the E Class. The E Class was for all intents and purposes built around the Retreat. Luminae was designed to be the dining for the Retreat. There really is no true alternative. Their whole approach, market segmentation, targeting, etc., is for a Retreat guest who absolutely wants the menu offered in Luminae. There's no reason to have access to the MDR menu because that's not the guest their targeting. But the menu is somewhat adventuresome, and it's every night. Arguably there are plenty of choices for the guests they're targeting. But the actual guest isn't the guest on the storyboard. I'm not either, but I do like the Luminae menu. I can get steak, for instance, anywhere, and usually better. But sometimes you just want something to eat that's a little nice but not trying too hard. They didn't build that into the Luminae experience.

That I don't know. We've always been there 11:30-12:00.

Hours may vary by ship, but generally 11:30-1:30. Yes. The menu is available in the app. It'll be under "main dining" for most ships, and under "suites" for the Edge class ships I've looked at. If your sailing is well in the future, look at the current sailing of your ship.

That's actually delicious. I've ordered it. Hence my question. Luminae tries to be an upscale adventurous menu. The sauce on the lobster sounds interesting to me; I'd much rather have the choron sauce that butter, although I don't get excited about lobster in general. Much of what they serve in Luminae is French inspired and that means sauces. And I find the variety exciting. It's fine that you don't. It's a challenge with the entire Luminae concept. Upscale dining for their upscale Retreat experience, but sometimes you just want something simple prepared and served well. That's something they don't do as well.

Can you elaborate on that? Your tastes are your tastes, but what specifically did you not enjoy in Luminae and what specifically in the MDR was tastier?

I'd argue Luminae lunch on embarkation day is one of the best perks of the Retreat! Sit down lunch with table service. No wrestling in the OVC...

The only thing you gain checking prices after final payment is frustration. Just don’t do it.

I have vivid memory of random, useless knowledge. I think it was 2019 and I believe you were trying to do dinner and a show while in NYC. That was a restaurant I threw out because they’re spectacular and have open seating in their lounge. After that the random useless knowledge fails!

Those are all Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) nations and you're on a closed loop cruise. I'd normally tell you to go to travel.state.gov and look up the requirements, but Antigua and St. Kitts would just confuse you (and me). The information from the State Department is for air travel and private sea travel, with caveats for cruises. Antigua and St. Kitts WOULD require six months if you weren't arriving by cruise ship. But you can cruise to them with a birth certificate and a valid state or federal ID. For Antigua, you need 6 months on your passport to get a visa, but a US citizen arriving and departing the same day on a cruise ship doesn't require a visa and they go silent at that point on passports. Didn't look at St. Kitts. There's no time issue for Barbados, St. Marten, or St. Lucia even if arriving by air. Not an immigration lawyer and haven't done this myself. There are people (including on this thread) who have. Look at the US state department sites for the countries your visiting and the sites for the countries themselves. There's usually a separate, and frequently unobvious, section for arriving by cruise ship. I'm pretty sure you're fine. If you're really concerned and have a certified copy of her birth certificate, take it as well. Belts and suspenders kind of thing.

They sail in 11 days...

What are your ports of call? Do any of them require 6 months? That’s really the only question. You can reenter the US (essentially) on the day your passport expires as a US citizen. There are a handful of port stops that will require a 6 month expiration. Most of them will also require a passport so the birth certificate and ID won’t work. Edited: Celebrity and their lawyers like to imply “must” when the actual guidance is “recommended “.

They should be in the app by venue. The drinks tab is just the packages. But when I just looked at Infinity in particular there were a lot of items that weren't populating, especially for the dining rooms. That's where the much of the wine should be. Summit is fine so I don't know what's going on. What are you looking for? Wine would normally be listed with the dining room menus, for instance, as well as Cellar Masters and the Rendezvous Lounge among others. Beer can be all over the place and harder to track down, but there's a decent sample under the Constellation Lounge. If you're looking for cocktails, the only ones in the app are specialty drinks. A well drink (gin & tonic with house gin, margarita with house tequila, etc.) will be whatever the upper limit is of the classic package. Most call drinks (Hendricks and tonic) will be somewhere between $12 and $17 (upper limit of premium package). And most of their specialty drinks look to be $15-$17. The martini bar is pretty much universally $17, although I'm sure there's something over the limit if I look hard enough. If you're not seeing things on your sailing, go to the current sailing or try a different ship. The wines won't be exact anyway even for your ship. But it'll give you ballpark sample.

Yes. John Bull is listed on www.rolex.com as an authorized dealer.

😁 I don't know about Celebrity. We used to cruise over spring break when DW taught and the whole East Coast took the week before Easter as Spring Break. There were always services of some sort, but I have no idea who performed them. We should have gone, but we didn't, and usually the Spring Break cruises ended before Easter.

That looks fun, but not exactly an ecumenical Easter service...

Just stating upfront that all of those are above my current "comfort zone"! I don't see myself booking any of those fares... The Regent I believe is "all in". There are no real add ons. Drinks, gratuities, etc. are as I understand it included in the base price. I don't know about the Silversea pricing, but I think it's the same. Regent includes excursions, which isn't a big deal to me and may be a negative depending on the port. Same "I don't know" disclaimer on Silversea. The Celebrity won't include gratuities in their current pricing, so you actually need to add $23/person/day to the celebrity pricing. That's still less than the other two, but let's be fair here. If you're going to that price point, Regent definitely is worth consideration. The "intangibles" from Celebrity as a larger ship with more options are going to be a plus for some and a minus for others. From a business marketing and strategy perspective, they've all "lost" if people are comparing prices. Their value proposition is the intangibles, IMHO...

Hey Lois! If this is your first time in a suite, a lot of the negatives here won't apply. You're not going to see a decline in something you never had before. I don't know how things work in Bayonne. You should see a different boarding experience. Unfortunately, it may not be obvious. At Port Everglades, there's a totally separate entrance for the Retreat on the far left. You just skip the line and are pretty much whisked in and onto cruise mode. Hopefully someone can give you some info on Bayonne, but that's a major change from 2016. We love Luminae. It's a very different experience from any MDR we've been in (Full Disclosure: We've only cruised Aqua and Suite/Luminae on Celebrity). The menu can be adventurous. I'd argue not adventurous enough. Others want less adventure. But it's a very nice menu. We don't eat much beef in general, and a lot of the complaints have been on beef dishes. Don't know where you fall on that. Fish will likely be overcooked, but that's a clientele thing (I love raw to lightly seared tuna, and minimally cooked seafood in general). I find the notorious "decline" to be beef, and we just don't eat that much beef. If you do, you may notice it. If not, you may not. Wine is hit or miss. As always, much better by the bottle than by the glass. Depends on your preference. By the glass has not been great on our last couple of cruises. I remember a few years ago discussing Le Bernardin as an option for you while you were in New York. Don't know if you went. Don't expect that. But odds are you'll be fine. Enjoy your cruise!

So piracy made perfectly good sense for them. They were after money. From all appearances, the Haitian "opposition, crooks, whatever" are actually looking to replace the Haitian government. Attacking Labadee would be a distraction from that goal. And likely to provoke regional and international intervention where right now that's unlikely. Without US hostages in Haiti, how long do you think it would take to create the political will in the US to intervene in Haiti? Attacking a US corporate leased space with US citizen tourists would change that calculus. Remember US med students in Grenada? If their goals change to purely money, that changes the calculus. Again, the right answer for RCG is probably to get out of there for now.

No. But you act like it's a video game. If I were RCG, I'd get the h... out of there at this point for general purposes. I can think of a lot of ways to take out a ship in Labadee. I just don't see a reason to do it. Especially if your aim is to replace the Haitian government. Anything you do that detracts from that aim is a waste of energy and money. And the Haitian government is in Port-au-Prince. Hours away on bad roads.

While I recognize a tendency to sarcasm and sometimes extreme sarcastic positions (takes one to know one), you're also a notorious over planner and over analyzer. You wouldn't have picked a TA without more research than the average bear. Give them a chance. And no, it shouldn't be that simple. That's how you do silly things. The TA SHOULD protect you from yourself!

I assume you're a former Marine assault planner? I mean, you've done air assaults into contested terrain, obviously? And amphibious landings onto a beach? Were you planning on flying the assault craft in via a Cessna? What about fuel once you commit? Ammo? Medical support? Or are you just planning on being Napoleon during the Russian campaign and eat your horses? It's not a simple approach or a simple assault. You could probably land a handful of people via commercial helos, but you'd have a heck of a time reenforcing them. They could probably access some Vietnam era UH-1's for enough money; probably not UH-60's. The commercial Bells are all over the world, but they have limited lift and range. Do they actually have pilots? And aviation fuel? The approach from the sea is probably more doable, but again you need some logistics to make it work and sustain an assault. And for what purpose? What's your goal in taking Labadee? Honestly, I think it makes perfectly good sense for RCG to just stop the visits, but this amateur hour assault planning is getting really old. Never did it, but I know people who did this for a living. With the US fleet backing them. They still wouldn't be anywhere near this flippant about that assault. There are things a well financed insurgency could do if there was a strategic result. See what Ukraine has done to the Russian fleet. No evidence this group has either the tools or the strategic interest to attack cruise ships in Labadee. Even a terror attack has a strategic goal. What would be their purpose? Call in the US Navy and USMC on their positions? Not a brilliant strategy.

Have you talked to them since doing your own pricing? As stated above, things may have changed in those two months. They may be able to do what you're seeing. But it wouldn't surprise me for them to have had a better group rate than the rack rates you can see on Celebrity. But if you can now see a rate that's much better that includes everything you want, AND gets you the experience you want, the first step would be to ask the TA to look at the change. But I'd also listen to them if they break any of the "not obvious" parts down to be sure you understand the entire change. But before trying to change TA's on an answer you got two months ago (if I'm reading your post correctly), make sure your current TA's information hasn't changed as well. We had a saying when I was in uniform that the truth has a date-time-group...

Just for clarification, it’s one 750 ml bottle. Not liters or magnums. Max of 2 per cabin. The policy doesn’t specify an ABV. Port, Madeira, or sherry “should” be fine, but I probably wouldn’t bring my 30 year old vintage port, just in case. Ice wine, late harvest wines, Sauternes, etc. would be well under any ABV considerations, which theoretically don’t exist. But the limit is by bottle, so 2-375 ml Sauternes or ice wines are your two bottles even though it’s half your allowed volume.

Yes. You can purchase and get the discount before boarding. It’s generally best to go by before their first demo to actually schedule your time.