lisa6191

On 2/8/2024 at 8:38 AM, jhenry1 said:

We are using Caleb Knight Here is his contact calebknight17@yahoo.com

Tell him Kandy gave you his info

He has been very responsive 

Recommended by The Hilton Barbados Resort

We are using him for transport from Airport to hotel, from hotel to ship, and from ship back to airport with a short tour of the island. Very reasonable 

@jhenry1 Were you satisfied with Caleb? What did you do for your tour on the last day? We are thinking about hiring him to do the same thing for us. It’s a transatlantic cruise so we only need him from ship to airport. Thanks!

12 hours ago, stan01 said:

 

On the AA and BA websites.  Not ticketed yet, but was able to select seats.

 

 

I just checked, and while I am still unable to access the seat selection/change buttons on the AA site, the seats I selected in FlightEase are showing up correctly as my seats. So I am all good. 😊 

24 minutes ago, PRMinx said:

We reserved our flights with FlightEase for our upcoming Mediterranean cruise. The cost savings for business class were huge compared to booking directly with AA. We reserved in July, just paid the final payment. No change in price. 
 

I have (what I hope) is a minor issue in the way they presented our names to the airline. In my AA app it appears as: Firstnamemiddlename Last Name Ms and Firstnamemiddlename Last Name Mr. The names are correct, but I don’t know why they jumbled them together this way and I hope it doesn’t cause an issue for us. Everything appeared correct on the FlightEase site….

I don’t think that’s a Flight ease thing, I think that’s an airline thing. My direct booked tickets look like that too.

7 minutes ago, stan01 said:

 

I am able to view and change seats on the AA and BA flights I booked this weekend.

 

You must call for hotels, there may be multiple choices.  

On the AA website? Did you pay for your tickets already? Or can you only view and change on Flight ease?

24 minutes ago, Vineyard View said:

When we booked flights on British Air in BC, we had to pay extra (I don’t remember how much but it was acceptable) to choose seats ahead of time. Does AA give you that option? 

We were able to request seats in Flight ease, so for now I will leave it at that. As we get closer I will worry about it, we still have 8 months.

Different question, where on the website do you find hotel arrangements? I only see flights in pre and post cruise travel. Or do I have to call for that?

3 hours ago, stan01 said:

One other important point.  If using Flight Ease to book a flight yourself with extra pre- or post-cruise hotel nights it is necessary to call Seabourn and make sure they know to add in those extra nights in the hotel program.  In fact, I'd recommend calling Seabourn (or travel agent) no matter what after self-booking flights in Flight Ease.  There seems to be some manual things they still need to do and their IT systems are not 100% connected.  At least that's been our experience in general with Seabourn is to always call and confirm everything done on the website.  Also ask for a new booking confirmation that shows the added arrangements, that doesn't seem to be emailed out automatically.

That’s probably a good idea, I will call tomorrow. When I went on American’s website to try to select seats, it just said have your travel agent purchase these tickets and wouldn’t let me do anything to the reservation. I guess because we haven’t actually paid yet? I’ll try to sort it out tomorrow.

We are on this same cruise and just booked our air via Flight Ease last week. We had multiple choices of flights and could select any date we wanted to arrive and depart. We were able to book a nonstop in both directions and are landing in Barcelona 2 days early, all at a price that was less than booking direct. I was also worried about the flight price increase notice, so I am glad to hear that doesn’t usually happen.

One question though, if Seabourn provides transportation and hotel accommodations if you book with Flight ease, how does that work if you arrive 2 days early?

Sorry, November 9, wouldn’t let me edit. And I see you ended in Miami, and I know the Miami weather was unseasonably cold and rainy this year, so ending in Barbados will almost certainly make it warmer. 

@doglover214 so how was the weather on your cruise? Did you pack well or was there anything you needed/didn’t need? We are taking the November 7 cruise out of Barcelona this year so I would think the weather would be similar (although we end in Barbados, where did you end?). 

Any updated info on weather from this past November crossing from Barcelona appreciated!

Oh, gotcha, I misunderstood. We embark in Barcelona so no need to go to London first (and either way no need to fly business class from London to barcelona lol). Thanks!
 

So even though the U.K. price is better for our cruise, we will lose the $1000 air credit that we currently have. So it’s only about a $400 difference and it isn’t worth it to us to have a nonrefundable deposit. Good info though and in the future I will always check with them first!

On 12/7/2023 at 9:27 AM, Sunprince said:

I also booked this cruise. Since Mr L took the last penthouse (we are waitlisted), I had to settle for a V3 (only 2 left).  Also got the business class air…for a few pounds more you would be crazy to have not taken it.  I suspect we are all using the same agency as the advisor told me they had made a lot of bookings since yesterday.

 

And to answer my own question from an earlier post - YES, this pricing is available to non-UK residents. You just need to realize the difference in the deposit T&C’s between North America and UK.  
 

A big THANKS to the OP for alerting me to this special pricing! 

@Sunprince I was able to get a quote, but the agent is saying that he cannot do anything with the airfare for anyone outside the U.K.  Are you saying you were able to get the business class air included from Canada?

18 hours ago, Katsings01 said:

If you do the Retreat on a 14 day basis, I assume you can aggregate the $700 coupons for a spa service (for example $350 on one service and $350 on another)? Also do they provide the $50 coupons in advance or daily (i.e., do you need to collect the last day and use it that day to get full benefit)? Lastly, what are the Retreat hours -- are they same port or at sea (looking at the value proposition when only 2 of 14 are sea days). Thanks in advance. 

It’s all done on your account, which is settled up at the end. So you can use the spa as you wish and then at the end you will have $700 credited against whatever you spent there. 
 

I believe the hours are the same every day, 9-6.

The BLT chop chop salad and club sandwich are delicious, the berry basil drink (forget what it’s called exactly) is delicious, the brownie sundae is delicious, the atmosphere is lovely with a really nice hot tub and attentive staff, and the loungers are super comfortable (and you can be in the sun or the shade as you desire). We were on a warm weather cruise and I did not find it hot or stuffy. I do not care one bit about the champagne or wine. So as always, depends on the person and what they are looking for.

And for the person that asked, yes you get $50/day spa credit, so $700 for 14 days.

On our last cruise, it seemed like there were certain cabanas that were reserved for the same people each time we went up there. So if you reserve it for the whole time, I bet you can choose one on the first day and that will be yours for the duration (I don't know that for sure though). Honestly though we went three times and had three different cabanas and liked all of them, so I wouldn't stress too much about it.

Mine is also showing as unavailable. I’m hoping my TA will be able to check on Monday.

Some of my evening photos.

4 hours ago, Mauzac said:

I'm afraid we had an awful experience with leaving something on the ship.  It was something to do with health, that actually cost ££££, along with my husband's meds.  It had a name and address prominent on the outside of the bag, and was accidentally left in the bedside table.

 

Within 15 minutes of disembarking and realising our error, we were already on the coach going to a SB arranged hotel to wait for our flight.

As soon as we reached the hotel, (maybe 20 minute journey) we had the ground staff there contact the ship and we were told they had it safe and to go back to the ship and collect it.  Such relief!

 

We caught a taxi straight back and asked the driver to wait.  We waited and waited for someone to see us and we eventually had to let the taxi go.  After some time, an officer we didn't recognise came out and told us it had been put to 'garbage'.   Despite being told it had been found, and was there for us to collect, and catching a taxi back to the ship, it was thrown away.

 

We then had to get another taxi and head back to the hotel and we were very disappointed at how it was handled.  

I’m so sorry to hear that. That’s really awful. It’s strange how Seabourn has such wonderful service for some things and such awful service for others.

On 10/27/2023 at 12:15 PM, CruiseCruiseCruise13 said:

Does anyone have a recommendation for a day time Ephesus tour? Seabourn offer a few at varying prices, but we’re stuck on which one to go for.

Definitely do a private tour rather than a ship tour, they are much less expensive and you get your own guide (and can skip the obligatory rug factory tour/sales push if you want). We used Curio Travel and were very happy with them. We did Ephesus, the Terrace Houses (must see) and Artemis temple (can miss, nothing there really) for $150 total for two of us. I think that price was good for up to 4 people which is a steal, but even for two people it was a great price. The guide also offered us various options for visits to a rug factory, leather factory, or ceramics factory, with and without lunch, all of which would have been included in the $150, but we were not interested in any of them. Bonus, our guide took some great pictures of us at Ephesus and knew the best vantage points for various photos.

Also, if the free night excursion is offered, it is a must do. Probably the best thing we did on our whole cruise.

Thanks all. The mirror is $17 on Amazon so obviously I don’t need to pay 150 euros to get that back. And I didn’t realize I can get a new card with the same number, so thanks for that! I will call Seabourn tomorrow and see if they can destroy that card, and if so I will just get a new one.

Obviously I can do that, but I would prefer not to for a variety of reasons. It has not been used so I have no reason to believe it’s compromised. I may not have a choice though, because I am certainly not paying 150 euros to ship it.

Has anyone here had a lost item found and returned to them? I left a credit card and a travel makeup mirror on board Encore a couple weeks ago. I filled out all the forms and had pretty much given up hope, but then today I got an email that they found both items. I was so happy until I went to the site to request that the items be shipped back to me. They want 150 euros as a shipping fee! For a credit card and a small mirror! I’m going to call on Monday, but has anyone had any experience with this? It seems outrageous to me and I have no idea how they arrived at that number. I don’t care about the mirror but I really want the credit card back if possible.

2 minutes ago, sfvoyage said:

Two big bottles can easily fit on each of the 2 wall-mounted shelves in the shower, with room to spare for my own small bottle of face wash, at least on the Odyssey.

Hmmm, maybe we just have too much of our own stuff. I only use my own cleansers and hair products and have 4 or 5 small travel bottles, and hubby has shaving stuff. We couldn’t fit the big bottles, so our suite attendant brought us the small ones with no problem. 

15 minutes ago, Covepointcruiser said:

Also prefer the large bottles.   The study cited is from 2011 and was about hand soap in public rest rooms in elementary schools.

Seriously, how did you guys fit the large bottles in the shower? There’s just those two flimsy and small shelves. Or do you put them on the floor? I am in favor of the large refillable bottle concept, but I wish they would put them on the wall of the shower. A large refillable bottle on the counter does me no good.

On Encore last week our room attendant got us the small tube of shampoo when we asked. We had no issue with using the large pump bottle, but there was no room for it in the shower. 

Also, make sure you have the app on any devices that you want to use with wifi on your cruise. You can’t connect to the Wi-Fi without it, so you can’t download the app while you’re on the ship.