bboop51

I have a question about specialty coffees on the Classic drink package. It says you can only have them at Al Baco. I know the last time we were on the Summit (2015) I was able to get a cappuccino brought to Blu (from Al Baco) with breakfast. Has anyone had any experience with this ?

It was a big disappointment for us to see the end of Bistro on five. It was our go- to place for day one lunch and a maybe a day or two other sea day lunches. Sushi is out for the hubster and I'm not looking to pad my bill. $7 was just right. I could see how the a-la-carte menu could really add up. It was nice space and we usually sat next to pleasant people for nice chat. I guess the sushi they served as a snack in the afternoon on the buffet is no longer. I enjoyed that.

I did not know I could do that... thanks for awesome suggestion ! I will do that (if I can figure out how to;p) This forum rocks. You guys were so helpful (not only to new cruiser but to old ones as well. :D

We are cruising on the Summit in September and dining in Blu (which we always do.) On past cruises I have always insisted my husband wear a suit on formal night or whatever they call it now. I wear a cocktail dress. He has put his foot down and said no more. He'll wear a pair of slacks and nice shirt but that's it.

Excellent ! Just what I wanted to hear. Thank you both very much. The card was great idea for me. I'm racking up the points left and right ;)

Does anyone know if you can you use the OBC that you received from your BOA Celebrity Visa Card to pay for your gratuities ?

Thank you :D

While not very good, I thought Celebrity's insurance does have cancellation for any reason, but you only get a credit for 75% on a future cruise.

 

For private insurance check out Insuremytrip.com. Any reason cancellation insurance usually needs to be purchased within 14 or so days from the initial deposit on the cruise.

Thank you ! From what I understand you have to cruise within a year. We generally take one vacation a year and next year we are hoping to go to the UK. So, I'd rather just pay the extra for the any reason cancellation. I have used insuremytrip before but was hoping for some personal experience.

I was hoping for similar info. But specifically anyone who has used "any reason to cancel" insurance. We are booked through Celebrity and they do not offer it.

Thank you, for all the time I have been here I missed the insurance board...ooops.:o

We booked our upcoming cruise through Celebrity. We usually book through a TA. We prefer "any reason to cancel" travel insurance over traditional insurance. It was no problem getting that with our TA, but Celebrity does not offer it. I thought since I had to pick for myself I'd ask for recommendations from you savvy travels. I love to especially hear from anyone that has actually used this type of insurance or know someone that has.

Thanks in advance :D for any info !

We book Aqua so we can eat in Blu. For us it would suffice. We love the food and the more personal attention. The exception would be if we had a group that wanted to eat in Qsine. We at there once and really liked it but it clearly (to us) was an experience to be shared by a larger group (it was just the two of us.)

We were on Summit for the Christmas cruise, and the experience has left us wondering if Celebrity has lost its way and badly needs management help.

 

Who is Celebrity's target market? I'd argue that they have no idea. The activities, entertainment, and even the service levels are all over the place. I used to be able to tell my friends that Celebrity provided a subdued experience. I'd always say, "think martinis as the ship sails away, and not drunks doing relay races in the pool", but after this cruise I can't say that.

 

I'm not stuck in the past - I know that things change and to succeed a company has to market itself to changing demographics. But I think Celebrity hasn't figured that out yet. In some ways it is clinging to the past (the string quartets), but in others it's clearly going after the under 30s (Demi Lovato and the silent discos) or the budget traveler (drinks included). The three don't necessarily meet - especially when you're paying beaucoup dollars for a vacation.

 

Anyone else see the same thing?

We have cruised on the Summit twice (and are booked for a third trip. All three trips included/will include "free drinks." I presume many (most) of our fellow passengers also had free booze. But we made sure to cruise when school was in session to avoid throngs of children running amuck throughout the ship. We have a good overall experience and expect the same on our next cruise. We also avoid judging folks on how they look. But everyone is entitled to their opinion.

We just booked yesterday and got the classic beverage package as our perk. I drink very little but use the package for the (very) occasion adult beverage and lots of bottled fizzy water and fancy coffee. Hubby likes the good stuff. Our Celebrity rep told me only one of has to upgrade and the cost for the week will be $83. We'll do that for the hubby, well worth it.

Cheers

It does sound like the quality of services all depends on the rabbi that happens to be onboard. This matches our experience with the daytime enrichment lectures. We spoke with one of the presenters and he said that he was offered free cruises from Celebrity in exchange for presentations on the ship, so they would change week to week as different people took them up on this offer. Perhaps they have a similar program for religious leaders with the simple requirement that they conduct a service onboard. If this is the case then there would be zero way to predicate the quality of a service on any particular sailing.

Exactly... Celebrity counts on the Rabbi. Eventually we had a meeting with the Guest Relations Manager who could not have been more embarrassed for all our issues. I put that in the live and learn category, but stay home during the holidays now :rolleyes:.

Hello,

 

Question for Jewish travelers: how was your experience of celebrating Passover on the Summit? Celebrity's website includes the following in its Q&A section: "Jewish Services: A Jewish Rabbi or Cantor will conduct services during Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Hanukkah." I have heard, however, that the above does not necessarily apply to smaller ships.

 

Thank you!

We took our first cruise on Celebrity. I called Celebrity first (before booking) and was assured there would be a Rabbi on board who would conduct services. I was unaware of how notification was made and called the Concierge (we were in Concierge class.) He said he knew nothing about it. To make a long story short. By the time I found our ( the day of Rosh Hashanah ) it seems that the Rabbi on board decided she was only going to have a Havdalah service (the night before) and no other. That is not what I call "services." I was pretty upset. That was compounded with major problems with our cabin. But.. that said I saw a lovely photo on Facebook of a Rabbi classmate of mine, on a Celebrity cruise. He was performing a beautiful candle lighting service for the first night of Hanukkah for 200 cruisers.

Reading this with interest as I'm a vegetarian and my husband is a vegan.

I've found that even the best intentioned waiters and Maitre Ds have served me food that isn't by any stretch of the imagination vegetarian (for instance - bacon in a vegetable):(

 

I'm hoping this new Dine Aware program will educate the staff better.

I am also following this with interest. My brother and SIL are both Vegans. We are hoping to cruise with them next year (it will be their first cruise.) We like to cruise AQ and dine in Blu. I was hoping Blu could be a good fit. Or I was wondering if another cruise-line did a better job. BTW we hated NCL.

Side note to this general discussion: Staff lie. They repeatedly lied to me on the Millennium about the smell affecting our suite. The lies were worse than the smell. They really hire idiots, thinking that their passengers are not smart enough to understand what is really happening.

 

We finally got $800 OBC and a $1000 future cruise certificate. We resolved never to sail again on their M-class "rust buckets," but we have enjoyed ourselves once again on their S-class ships.

I can (almost) accept idiots.. I was manager for the government. But it was attitude that was almost bad as the smell. My husband tried to give me break and deal with the issue but he is way to polite (he is English.) Finally he warned them that he was siccing the dogs of war on them (me.) I had 51 weeks a year or so to deal with people's crap and b.s and I go on vacation to get away from it (and be treated nicely.) I have to say on the rest of my Celebrity vacations I have few complaint.

When we had our problem on the Eclipse we were in a RS and I have to say that the response from maintenance was not great. We and the other couple who had issues, who were in an RS on the other side of the ship, were on first name terms with the head of housekeeping as they kept sending cleaners rather than plumbers. All the officers knew about it. We went to the captains event in the shy lounge and they were all trying to not catch our eye. As we left, which was probably before the captain did his bit, the hotel director made the chief engineer discuss the issues with us and he promised it would be sorted in Lisbon when we were off ship.

 

What they did worked but by the time we reached Lisbon we only had to go to Southampton. You can imagine how we felt when we had the same smell on the Silhouette. It cleared quickly.

 

We still totally enjoyed our cruise but the RS was for my 60th birthday and it did slightly spoil things.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

On our very first cruise, Celebrity - Infinity to Alaska we had a serious smell issue in our cabin. It was making us sick. Maintenance first tried to fix it and then refused to acknowledge it (rudely.) I also had another more personal issue story for another day.) I was FURIOUS. I wound up in the office of the head of customer relations, who moved us to another cabin and comped us for for a dinner and drinks. He could not have been more apologetic and I could not have more delighted. Much to my surprise on the night before we were to arrive back in port, we were presented with two certificates for $500 each to cruise again. It was totally unexpected but so appreciated. I was not sure if were going to ever cruise again. But of course this gave us the incentive to try again and now were are cruisers for life (and lovers of Celebrity of course.) Earlier this year because of circumstance we tried NCL and said never again. Back to Celebrity for us.

We booked a Celebrity suite on the Summit for an Aug 2017 sailing back in June. We got the suite for about $6,000 with the 4 perks included. I am one of those who book early then constantly check the rates to see if it goes down.

 

Last week I checked and the price for our room jumped to over $8,100. I thought this was very strange to jump this much.

 

Today I checked again and Celebrity is running a Promotion..."Get 2nd person for half off". This brings down the $8,100 to the same price I paid of ~$6,000. How can they get away with increasing the price and 1 week later discounting it back to the original price and calling it a promotion? My guess is Celebrity will raise the price back to $8,100 after the promo for a week then drop it back down close to the $6,000 original price.

I'm glad someone else noticed this. I've been checking prices for the AQ on the Summit for Sept 17 and a good idea what the prices were. When I go the email about the buy one get the second cabin half price with $25 down, I figured it was time to book. I checked the website but the prices did not lineup, so we called. We got the same price. We told them straight out it was a bait and switch. I got another call, told them the same thing and a survey where I told them the same thing (less politely. ) I wish we did not love Celebrity so much.

We are thinking about booking the Summit again, for next year. It will big a big disappointment if the Bistro on Five become Sushi on Five. Even at $10 it it's a great lunch spot. It was $7 the last time we sailed. We got sushi as a snack in the late afternoon on the buffet.

We have gone Concierge once and AQ twice. We LOVE Blu ! It enhances our trip quite a bit. I would not pass on that opportunity unless I had friends I was traveling with that were not going AQ.

The 300MB will be plenty. You can go to the settings on your phone & check your usage but that will include everything.

The 300 MG was something like $59. We used their computers and it was pretty quick. We both used it to check our email and Facebook messages everyday except for the day we were in port in Florida and still had almost 100 mg left when were done.

I had family that just sailed NCL and they were charged state tax for drinks on their drink packages while in port in FL.

Yes we are just on NCL. We had the beverage package and still were charged tax for every drink ordered while in port in NY and Florida.

I highly recommend the Dawn. We have sailed on her three times. Yes it is a little older but in very good condition. It doesn't have all the "bells and whistles" of the big ship, but it also doesn't have the crowds of people either.

 

I love New Orleans as a port city. If you can swing it, try going a couple of days early. There is so much good food and entertainment.

 

I get my hackles up any time I see the words "nickel and diming." I have only sailed on RCCl besides NCL Let me compare:

 

NCL charges for pictures. So does everyone else.

NCL expects you to pay gratuities. So does everyone else

NCL charges for alcohol and soft drinks. So does everyone else.

Specialty restaurants are extra just like everyone else

NCL charges for ice cream sundaes, sodas and milkshakes. So does RCCL.

 

The point is you have options. You don't have to spend a penny over your fare plus gratuities. So how is that nickel or diming?

We were just on the Breakaway and we did feel nickeled and dimed (compared to Celebrity, the only ship we've sailed before.)

We had the UBP. It does not include water or premium coffee. Celebrity's includes all of the premium non-alcoholic beverages- premium bottled water, vitamin waters, red bull, soda, and premium coffee. I am a very light (alcohol) drinker and for someone like me that means a lot. NCL charged to tour the ship. That kind of made me chuckle. I understand there are premium restaurants but on the BA they have up-charges for certain items, in the free restaurants. I think the "free" restaurants should be free. I also think the entertainment should be free, but some of it on the BA was not. I did not find this the case on Celebrity. It's just my opinion.

It's probably worth you reading the rest of the thread.

LOL.. I always think it :rolleyes: and rarely does anyone say it. Bully for you :p . That said, it's nice that someone took the time to answer at all :).