NutsAboutGolf

Was on the Beyond in May, nearly full. I parrot what @hcat says about Blu not being crowded if you go early and the pool being jam-packed. With shows, one of the best "tricks" I learned is to sit in the back which allows you to leave for any reason

You don't have to be "old" to get an AARP membership, just at least 18. Here's a list from AARP of what comes up when you type "cruise"

Do not interact with anyone who approaches you, often they will have their fist out for a fist pump and say "respect", do NOT fist pump them and instead, just say "no thank you" If one is physically able to hike, Dunn's River Falls is a very unique experience

X has the best marketing tool of all cruise lines, Capt Kate. She is the most well-known active ship captain out there and is even "cool" with the kids as she puts out very interesting social media reels/videos often sharing content about the ship she's on. I'd argue she's in the top three of the most well-known ship captains of all time. I've seen a TV commercial where it shows her face for a few seconds, but she's very sharp and quick-witted. Her social media content thrives not because she's posting selfies, but rather because she provides great content. Celebrity needs to get her under a marketing contract and have her become more prominent in their marketing

@oatbagg1, once you receive the location information from AT&T, please post it here. If a mistake was made, we'll all be respectful, if it's confirmed by AT&T it is Miami, we need to know

Or...Indulge in the Celebrity Treatment* *Results not typical

"Thank you for saving me money, I was totally going to book your more expensive sister brand Silversea, but now I won't because it won't come close to Celebrity"

As I'm sure you know, the idea of GE is you pay a premium for a dedicated line/lane which is usually faster. GE pushes the "enrollment on arrival" which covers renewals, however, most airports have different operating hours at different terminals, and if your flight is delayed you're SOL if you land after operating hours An article just came out today, cliff notes, use enrollment on arrival if possible, they claim to be opening "tons" more appts in most locations yet San Diego and the Bay area will remain challenging and they open up appts on the first Monday of the month at 9am (no timezone given) https://thepointsguy.com/news/global-entry-wait-times-update/

Which ship?

They've pretty much leapfrogged GE in favor of facial recognition

It's not a bad idea to turn off Wi-Fi Assist to reduce data usage, however, on the iPhone, WiFi Assist does NOT work while in airplane mode. IDK about androids but the feature may be called something different

What did they say and did they share the exact location? If you don't know the location, I would suggest you call them again and ask. There was a time when I was on hold for over two hours with Celebrity, just put your phone on speaker and do what you'd normally do

We were just off her on Monday, 4 nighter to Nassau and Bimini, we were on the 3rd deck. Great cruise, only two issues were the slow-to-drain shower/sink, and the safe wouldn't lock as the display asked for an "e-code". I reported both issues, the safe FOUR times and neither were fixed despite telling us the safe issue was fixed multiple times. We figured nothing would be addressed about the slow drainage and while the non-locking safe wasn't that big of a deal, we were surprised there wasn't much communication about it. The odds are too long that they "fixed" the safe four times and only when we happen to use it, press any button and it flashes "e-code"

Just adding a datapoint, we just got off the Summit this past Monday, Ms Nuts is Elite, I'm Elite+, they did take and take our SeaPasses when getting our free gelato

Rather than a simplistic "whatever", why not expand on why they are still performing cutbacks which surely would not be a good business strategy?

If it's a banned item with a plug, there's a 99% chance it'll get confiscated if you try to carry it on

X doesn't care about backlash, they had no problem with cutbacks until "cookiegate". They bought back some but not all of their cutbacks. We can't deny X has somewhat been "royalized". There is no longer an X CEO at the moment, the CEO title was stripped once LLP left, as Laura is only the President of X. The parent company RCG is run by a former CFO who says during earning calls they're surprised by how they can increase pricing and there isn't a decrease in bookings. Royal Caribbean cruise line had a poll asking if would you pay for pizza. Two very bold statements. This is why it wouldn't surprise me if they mirrored MSC for only NEW cruisers, existing CC members are grandfathered

Corporate ignored my question of WHY it was throttled down. Seemingly, people just assume X can't reach sustained speeds above 5mpbs for some reason. Once Starlink went live on X, many ships were sailing full or very close to full and we have to remember the ship itself plus its crew also use the wifi. Many were getting 10x the speeds when it first deployed. As I stated before, we were on the Carnival Celebration in December 2022 which was their biggest ship at the time with about 2500 more total people than the X beyond and was hitting 40-60mbps

I said "probably inevitable" so was speculating; I believe it will eventually mirror MSCs loyalty program, don't cruise for a 2 or 3 years, lose status. Right now the casino status resets annually although the status has been extended due to COVID

It's probably inevitable that CC will eventually expire if requirements aren't met for NEW cruisers. Yet those who already have status will be grandfathered

I'm just pointing out that when starlink first deployed on X, people's SUBSTAINED speeds were well above 5mbps. When I was on the Carnival Celebration, I often hit 60mbps, always above 40mbps. IDK why people assume X's version of Starlink cannot reach sustained speeds beyond 5mbps. An one on one video call take a lot less bandwidth than an MS Teams call when you can have 100 participating, someone sharing their screen, multiple people talking and multiple people typing in the chat. MS Teams says 4mbps is required and I can usually connect but there are all sorts of issues with using it

We just got off the Summit two days ago, the buffet grill was indeed open for lunch and dinner but I have no idea if this is fleetwide

It goes both ways, technically, X is "UP TO" 5mbps...