p18750

We were on a Celebrity cruise in 2015 to Israel and they announced they would not be stopping at Haifa or Ashdod after we boarded the cruise. Several passengers left the ship after a couple of days, flew to Israel and rejoined the ship several days later. So it just depends on when they make the decision and whey they let you know. Celebrity has never been the best on keeping passengers informed, IMHO. 

As a big fan of the french onion soup on Celebrity I have to say the last cruise on Edge the french onion soup was very substandard. There was no cheese on top and no onions in the soup. I actually commented to the waiter that this was not french onion soup and well below the Celebrity standard. 

On 3/13/2023 at 2:14 PM, Jim_Iain said:

Really depends on the cruise. 

 

I'm on a B3B and the first cruise opened at 60 days prior to cruise the others still have not opened.

 

BTW - you don't need an invite to bid.  Just go to the link below and check.    Some TA like the Big Box store do not participate. 

https://www.celebritycruises.com/bid-on-cruise-room-upgrade

I think this is the key. Depending on who your travel agent is you may not be able to upgrade even within the 21 day window or you may be able to bid right after the final payment. 

Thank you for posting. For the MDR is the seating back to normal or are parties still seated by themselves. One of the things we liked about cruising was getting a large table and getting to meet a wide variety of people. On our last cruise with Celebrity they were seating everyone by themselves and larger tables were only for parties travelling together. . 

I would refer you to the "Recently Returned" for Flora. I am sure your question is answered there or someone could provide you with the information. The blog is at: Celebrity Flora Cruise Roll Calls - Cruise Critic Message Board Forums

On 7/20/2022 at 12:47 PM, mom says said:

If you can't tell before you leave the ship that it is going to be sunny and hot and take suitable personal mitigating measures, then you shouldn't take cruises with tender ports, or just stay on board. Wear a wide brimmed hat. Wear and carry sunscreen. Bring adequate water with you. Bring a personal fan. Heck, I even bring a parasol umbrella if I know I won't be risking poking someone's eye out. The cruise lines do the best they can under the circumstances  they are given, and situations like this are by no means unique to Celebrity.

Sorry (not sorry) OP, but given the current heat wave in Europe that has already killed hundreds of people, complaining about an hour standing, or a 20 minute wait without AC on the boat pales to utter insignificance.  This isn't just first world problems; more like a 1%er.

 

It seems some readers have misinterpreted my post. 

I have nothing against tender ports. As many have mentioned there are many wonderful ports that can only be experienced by tendering. The issue I have is with poorly done tendering. A tender plan with 20 minute wait times may entirely be suitable in October in Cannes but (in my opinion) is entirely inappropriate on an exceedingly hot day in July. By deploying just one more tender boat Celebrity could have drastically reduced the wait time and greatly decreased the stress on their passengers. 

And I am no stranger to heat, I have lived in southern Arizona for 40 years and am well versed in how to coexist with the heat. We live every summer with temperatures exceeding what Cannes and other European cities are experiencing. This does not mean I get in my car in the sun in July, roll the windows up and turn off the air conditioning. While that may work out well in January it is inappropriate (in my view) in July. 

And I do not dislike Celebrity, as you can see from my signature we have been cruising with Celebrity for over 20 years and there are many things they do very well, but in my opinion tendering is not one of them and I think people should be informed. I think Celebrity has a "one size fits all" strategy for tendering and they are unwilling or unable to alter that strategy based on conditions. 

On 7/20/2022 at 9:10 AM, Snit13 said:

Good Answer

Yes, rather than improving the tendering operations just blame it on the weather. If it had not been so hot the tendering would have been fine. 

Also, there have been no announcements about covid, no passengers wearing masks except some on tenders. 

We are currently on Edge and our waiter the first night told us the ship was less than half full. I can believe it since it feels the ship is deserted. There are no lines for anything, restaurants have maybe 50 people in them at 6 pm. Not complaining but I don't see how Celebrity is making any money on this cruise. 

The tendering was done by Celebrity, not the port. There are priority tendering for suite guests and Elite members but that is only for the early tender boats. Once those have been transported then everyone is transported on a first come first serve basis. At no time did I see the tender boats were full even for the priority tendering in the morning. 

I am not saying Celebrity should not visit tendering ports but as long as they do such a poor job we will avoid them. Certainly, with the hot weather it would seem they could have done tendering every 5 minutes rather than every 20 minutes. They also could have run the air conditioning on the tender boats to make it more comfortable as they did in Portofino. I do not know why they are not doing that but my guess is it would require 4 tender boats rather than the two they are running with the associated cost and manpower. 

For the past several years we have tried to avoid Celebrity cruises that have tendering stops. The reason dates back to an Australia cruise several years ago on Celebrity. I do not remember the tendering port but it was in Western Australia and the temperature was very warm, over 100 degrees F. Just as several groups of tours were returning Celebrity decided they needed to move the ship and stop tendering for approximately an hour. So over a hundred passengers stood in the heat with no shade, no water and no place to sit down. Since many Celebrity passengers tend to be older this should have been a concern for the captain and hotel manager on the ship. To their credit the people in the town were holding a craft fair nearby and when they saw the line of elderly  people standing in the heat they brought over their own chairs, cool drinks from their own coolers and shade awnings from their booths all while the Celebrity tender personnel looked on and did nothing.

With this experience in our mind we were concerned when Celebrity cancelled our Adriatic cruise and we were shifted to the Edge with two tendering ports. The first port was Portofino where the tendering went wonderful and I thought Celebrity had actually improved. The tendering at Portofino used air conditioned tender boats that ran every five minutes. So today we get to Cannes and have to tender again. According to the ship the temperature is 97 degrees with 63% humidity. The tender boats sit at the dock with no air conditioning, no air flow and bake for 20 minutes before they return to the ship. It appears the passengers on this cruise are younger than the typical Celebrity cruise but even so it could not have been comfortable. So it appears Celebrity still has little or no concern about the comfort of their passengers and we will continue to avoid cruises on Celebrity with tender ports.

We are on Edge currently and while we booked the traditional dining at 6 pm when we boarded the ship they had changed us to Select Dining. When we called they said they were no longer doing traditional dining. We asked our waiter about it today and he said due to Covid they were no longer doing traditional dining since they could not seat different parties at the same table so it made more sense to eliminate traditional dining. He said he believes when cruise occupancy increases and covid declines they will resume offering traditional dining. 

6 minutes ago, p18750 said:

Well rho naut means the number of infections you can expect from a single person in a population where no one has previously been infected or vaccinated. While it is a good measure of the difference in variants to spread it is of little value today when large numbers have either had Covid or been vaccinated or both. 

For example the mumps has a p0 of 10 and measles 16 and while at one time there were massive outbreaks of measles and mumps that rarely if ever occurs today because nearly everyone has had the MMR vaccine. 

8 hours ago, canderson said:

That's what the hieroglyphics mean, yes.  It spreads much more readily.

Well rho naut means the number of infections you can expect from a single person in a population where no one has previously been infected or vaccinated. While it is a good measure of the difference in variants to spread it is of little value today when large numbers have either had Covid or been vaccinated or both. 

I think an earlier post mentioned Celebrity is a business so they will perform non-government mandated testing which they feel will maximize their revenue. Some people will be hesitant to cruise without testing because they believe it will increase their chances of contracting Covid and either being sick or quarantined. Others will not cruise for fear they will have a positive test right before their cruise and won't be allowed to board. So their vacation will be ruined. 

Most of the cruisers I have spoken to are in the second group but that is a relatively small sampling of cruisers. What can be easily seen is that ships departing from European ports have a lot of vacant cabins. Our cruise in July from Rome has over half of the cabins vacant and this, I assume, does not include any reserved for quarantine. Once X believes more cabins will be filled by removing non-government mandated testing I am sure they will do so. 

2 hours ago, JerseyGem said:

Thanks for all the excellent advice.  We'll check out the blogs and website links.  I think we've narrowed it down to the Xpedition with Celebrity's  10 day package, probably the Southern Loop.  We're still debating which month because we read so many different opinions, and the prices are so varied throughout the year.  We had settled on August 2023, only to discover that it was outside of X's package!  Back to the drawing board.  

 

Thanks again, Lynn

you should consider not only the season but the current outlook in the Pacific Ocean since whether it is an El Nino or La Nina year will determine how much rain the islands get Sometimes  small amounts of rain will cause large number of the animals to die off making it a less desirable visit. 

If you want information on the Galapagos with Celebrity Xpedition there is a long running blog called "Anyone Recently Back". The blog has been going on for at least 10 years and has an answer for just about question you could think of and if not you can quickly get an answer from people who have taken the cruise, sometimes multple times. It is generally the first entry on Celebrity Xpedition Roll calls. When we went (twice) we got excellent advice on everything from what to pack to the differences between the itineraries and seasons. 

It does not appear this is new since is was last updated in 2020. It seems common sense that Celebrity would be able to remove you if you violate the law or Celebrity policies or procedures. Doesn't seem like a big deal to me. 

Just now, p18750 said:

It is difficult to know but since different cruise lines have different requirement it would appear there is no Spanish or Italian requirement. For example until a few weeks ago the requirement for Oceania was 72 hours before embarkation while Celebrity was one day. Celebrity then changed from one day to the current 2 days. I believe there is now no requirement for Viking cruises departing Spain and Italy to have a test at all. So my assumption is the cruise lines are deciding on their own what their procedure is. My guess is that if they determine testing is reducing the number of people willing to cruise they will removed the requirement. 

I would also say that if a country had a requirement, they would publicize it through their national health department as Greece and Canada have done. I can find no such verbiage on the Italian or Spanish sites. 

5 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

So any idea how one finds out if an EU member country has decided to “ignore” paragraph 7.4, in essence leaving it up to a particular cruise line to make the decision to require/not required a pre-cruise C19 test?

 

For example, we’re flying to Barcelona on July 1 to subsequently board the Princess Regal once we arrive. Barcelona has no requirement  for a C19 test to land in their country if you are fully vaccinated. However, Princess states on their website you have to test within 3 days of embarkation. Is there a way to tell if that’s a Spain requirement or just the EU requirement Princess is adhering to?

It is difficult to know but since different cruise lines have different requirement it would appear there is no Spanish or Italian requirement. For example until a few weeks ago the requirement for Oceania was 72 hours before embarkation while Celebrity was one day. Celebrity then changed from one day to the current 2 days. I believe there is now no requirement for Viking cruises departing Spain and Italy to have a test at all. So my assumption is the cruise lines are deciding on their own what their procedure is. My guess is that if they determine testing is reducing the number of people willing to cruise they will removed the requirement. 

3 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

So the EU pre-cruise testing requirements listed at paragraph 7.4 in the EU Health Gateways Operational Guidelines are just a suggestion? Would these be considered similar to CDC guidelines, but applicable to all EU countries?

 

 

7.4. Testing of passengers on the day of embarkation

All passengers (except children under the age of 12 years) should hold proof of a negative:

 NAAT performed within 72 hours before embarkation, OR
 RADT performed within 48 hours before embarkation

 

https://www.healthygateways.eu/Portals/0/plcdocs/EUHG_Operational_guidelines_CoV_June2022.pdf?ver=2022-06-10-140149-413#page26

Yes, the EU can issue advisories but it up to each country in the EU to decide the actual requirements for their countries. 

1 hour ago, terrydtx said:

The first early season Europe cruises in April did testing because Spain required cruise ships that disembarked or stopped in any Spanish ports had to test passengers before they boarded the ship. There was a time that Italy had a similar requirement, this may have changed since then. This was reported in several Live from Threads on the early Silhouette cruises from the UK and TA.

That is true but I do not believe either Italy or Spain requires testing prior to embarking or disembarking. I believe Greece still has some requirements, but they are thought to be removed soon. I believe the Celebrity testing requirements for Spain and Italy are voluntary and can be removed by Celebrity.  

5 hours ago, terrydtx said:

Now Viking did state they will continue to have pre board testing in countries that require them for embarkation ports and/or cruise stopping ports. I think Italy and Spain still have this requirement.

Why do you think this? I could not find anything on the Italian NHS site or the Spanish Ministry of Health site indicating a pre-boarding test was required My understanding was the testing was purely voluntary for European countries. 

Now that Viking has eliminated the pre-cruise Covid testing (except where required) I think other cruise lines will follow. I don't see how they cannot. 

12 minutes ago, Arizona Wildcat said:

I think you will find that passenger loads have increased significantly in the last 45 days.  Friends recently sailed on Apex with about 2500.  A thread on Summit suggested 1700.  Accounting for quarantine cabins held back and CWC last minute cancellations that looks pretty full to me.  Especially  with the continuing issue of getting crew visas.

I think it is hit or miss. Some cruises seem relatively full and others are half empty. I am not sure of the reason but I would guess Celebrity can see the correlation. For example my cruise on Edge next month is less than half full if you can believe the available cabins displayed on the Celebrity site. If the ships fill back up again there will be no reason for Celebrity to drop the testing requirement. If not, then there will be a major business reason to drop it.