drowelf

Please tell me how to enable that, as neither DWs or mine have on our last Celebrity cruise (Feb 23).

To all those hoping to use the App to Chat with your cabin mates, you need to be aware that there is a big difference between it and the messaging you are used to. There is no notification given when you receive a message on the app, no dings, no popups, nada! Only when you open the app and surface it can you see that someone has messaged you. This makes the feature pretty much useless as far as I'm concerned. All of us are used to getting immediate notifications when we get a text message on our phone. Not going to happen with the App.

As a recent retiree we are starting to travel more and looking into the annual polices for Medial and Evac, but I have researched this a lot and talked with Steve of the "The Insurance Store" and their are no polices offered that provide just Cancellation, Interruptions, lost luggage, etc. They all include Medical, Evac, Repatriations. I know some CC's offer that, but none of my do, so researching that angle too. So are you getting polices that cover the trip, but don't include the Medical?

Can't speak to most of those ports, but unless things have changed signficantly in 20 years since we were last at Kusadasi, then then docking may not be much to see. The dock then was a long narrow pier that stuck out into the harbor we just sailed up to it and stopped. Now when we left it was quite interesting as the ship backed straight out from the pier, never getting more that 10-15 feet away until the bow cleared the end by 50 feet or so. Then the ship did a 180 and just sailed away.

We got a duck in one of the lounges on the Caribbean Princess last August. We brought it home with us to live with our other stuffed/plastic critters. It had a tag that referenced a FB Group to report its finding. The DW is the FB person in our group so I left it to her to report.

I got the 17500 for $500 offer on my card. Made a partial payment to a March 2024 cruise and the points showed up within a couple of days. Woo Hoo!

Interesting that all this paperwork is required. Maybe a Post Covid thing. When we did this for my Father and Mother on Holland America I did not have to provide anything, other than the biodegradable container and the ashes. I have death certificates, for both, but I don't think I ever got any certificate of cremation, especially for my Mother, who passed away in the 90s.

So True! The entire cruising experience is subjective to an individuals expectations. From rooms, entertainment, itinerary and food all goes into the evaluation and decision as to where I'll spend my $$$. For years we stayed with a single line (Holland America), simply because all my expectations were met by that line. We did not feel the need to branch out pre-covid. Now post-covid we are testing the waters that other lines sail. This is mainly because HAL has disposed of their smallest ship (Prinsendam) and the other smaller ones are in the process of leaving the fleet too. We like the smaller ships as they can get into more ports that increases the attractiveness of the itineraries. We have 1 Princess and 1 Celebrity cruise since the restart, entertainment fell short of our expectations on Princess, mainly due to the small size of the theater and the need to get there 45-60 minutes prior to the show to get any seat. On our Celebrity our expectations were not met in two areas, food and itinerary. Now the itinerary is mostly my fault, as I did not do enough research on it. Oh well thats on me. The MDR Food selection and the cut-backs at the Cafe for dinner really did not meet our expectations. Rooms on both fully met our expectations, with excellent room stewards. We want things like Prime Rib, Beef Wellington, Lobster, Sea Bass and other better quality selections in the MDR. We are not prepared to eat in the specialty restaurants every night, as we already paid quite a bit PP/Day for room and board, as we book Balconies and above, as we like our comforts and the DW can't do insides. We realize the the Celebrity changes in food are new to 2023, so we do have a spring 2024 cruise booked on Celebrity. This cruise is 80% due to the itinerary, which I've researched much better this time. Our hope is that the pendulum will swing back a little more toward the middle regarding the food situation over the next year. Both our and several long time Celebrity Cruisers we met on the ship thought they scaled back the MDR and OVC food too much. Time will tell and we will continue to explore other lines and hopefully find another that has satisfied as much as HAL did for the first 20+ years of cruising. Note: We have not been back on HAL since the restart, but have heard from several cruising friends that things are not rosy there either. We will have to find the right itinerary in the next year or so and find out for ourselves.

I've often seen 1-2 hour of Wi-Fi specials offered by the lines on the day before disembarkation. Ask if something like that would be available. Otherwise you'll have to check in at the airport or as soon as you hit port that morning.

Same for me. I have a 32oz BubbaMug that I use at home. On cruises I take my 20oz Mug as I only tend to drink the tea in the morning and don't want to carry it around for the 2 hours it normally takes to empty the big one. Yep, thats our standard ploy in the buffer too. Get a drink of something (hot tea in the morning, cold tea for lunch) and us that to claim a table while we go off and get our food.

Interestingly the Coffee, Classic Soda and Zero-Proof packages do not show up online in the Cruise Personalizer for my journey on the Enchanted Princess starting on the 23rd. Only the Plus and Premier Drink packages, plus the water and 6 pack of canned soda are available.

We have a sliding scale based on how long they have to handle our bags. At embarkation it will generally be $5 or $10 for 4 bags, depending on how long we have them attending us. A few times its been zero as they got the bags and whipped them onto the big cages and were gone before I could even pull any money out. Another time in Amsterdam I tipped the 2 porters that helped us $20. These were young folks doing the porting work that day. We had both a girl and guy, who did this work in the mornings before university classes each day. So I doubt they got paid a whole lot. I found this out, as we chatted in line trying to get the luggage inside. It was a mad house that day in Amsterdam with 2 HAL and at least 1 princess ship in port for embarkation. For disembarkation, I'll go with the $5 a bag, as they tend to end up spending 20-30 minutes dealing with us, as we go through customs/immigration, unless we are using ships transfer in which case we will tip less. Its all a matter of the service we get that controls the amount.

Just off the Infinity (1/28 Sailing) for 14 days and none of those showed up on the MDR menu any of the nights. For the last Chic night the meat dish was lamb chops along with the lobster.

For some bizarre reason native Hawaiians just love SPAM. Its even on the menu at McDs and other FF resturants.

We will set a bag or other item we are carrying around with us on the table to mark it as taken while we go get some food. Snagging a drink first and putting that on the table works for us too. As for the food situation, we just got off a 14 day Infinity cruise (1/28 - 2/11). Food was definitely of a lower quality. The MDR Menu for 14 days never had Prime Rib, Filet, Beef Wellington or Sea Bass. There was Lamb a few times, lots of Tilapia and Chicken and maybe Turkey once. Dinner in the Oceanview was reduced to a cook to order stir fry station, salad bar and maybe 3-4 hot entrees and 2 hot vegetables dishes. Plus of course the standard fruit, cheese, cold cuts, bread and deserts. I'd say that they only used 1/3 of the available serving space at dinner. We did not starve, but it was not really up to the quality or variety that I expect from a cruise line. Can't comment on the server issues, as we had an outbreak of Noro among the crew about half way into the voyage, so staffing got really tight at times. In the OVC I would often see 3 servers having to cover 5 stations at a time. You know its short staffed when you see the management types behind the line serving out food.

Besides the new room service charge, what nickel and dime fees are there?

We don't think so, especially when we have already paid for 3 meals a day. There are some very good restaurants in our area that the DW and I can eat at them for around $100.

First we don't do many 7 day cruises, 90% of ours are 10 days or more. But for us its totally variable, based on the following factors, in priority order. What is being served in the MDR that night Sea Day vs Port Day On Port Days, how we feel once we get back on the ship. Sometimes we are just not up for getting cleaned up and dressed. We just want some quick food and onto the evening activities.

and potentially increase the time required for the meal to be served due to staff shortages.

Prime Rib, Lamb Chops, etc. never disappeared from the menu on the app for our upcoming cruise *(28th) on the Infinity. No Beef Wellington, but the menu only goes out to Day 7. Day 8 and beyond show the MDR as closed.

Take a look at Saga Tours, we used them for several tours when we did a circumnavigation of Iceland in 2018. Private is the way to go, as it will be cheaper than the ship tours, but be aware that everything is very expensive in Iceland. When we went out to the geysers, our lunch of chicken fingers and fries was about $25 and that was for one order that we shared.

I'm hoping that happens for our cruise in 11 days! Not going to be shocked if does not happen, but am bracing for what we are going to find on the Infinity.

and that was when?

We too are on the Infinity in less that two weeks. Once we experience what is actually going on in the OVC and MDR, we will be sure to let the appropriate folks at Celebrity know our thoughts. My DW already has a hard enough time in both the MDR and the buffet dealing with the over abundant use of bell peppers in a variety of dishes. We often don't really want to spend 2+ hours in the MDR for dinner. Some nights we are just not up to getting cleaned up and dressed, especially after a long port day. On the app, it still shows Prime Rib for the embarkation night dinner. We will have to see if that sticks.

Charging 22.78 (18.99 + 20%) for a 3 or 4 oz additional lobster tail is ridiculous. I can get them at my local food store for about 6 bucks. I can get a 1 lb or so lobster at my local seafood restaurant for between $30-35 and that includes sides! Also never understood the rationale behind listing something as $xx.xx + 20%. Why not just list the price so that folks don't have to do the math, or get surprised when they actually see the bill.