beachluver9

I also forgot to mention that if you pre-purchased this ahead of time with X and you chose to make one of the smaller items, they would refund you the difference back to your credit card, so you would not lose the money. Pre-purchasing really gained us nothing...not $ savings since each piece is priced individually, no guaranteed reservation time, etc so not really worth paying in advance. If you pay when you have your appointment, you can leave a tip on your account. If you pre-pay online, your tip needed to be in cash. Our experience is not 14 months old and shortly after cruises were starting back post-pandemic. Things may be operated differently now.

We did the glass blowing in November, 2021 (multiple times). We wandered by the glass blowing area a couple of times in the afternoon on embarkation day in hopes that we would catch one of the demonstrators there. Shortly before sailaway we found one of the ladies there who helped us reserve our times. She said that most of the slots for day one were filled by people who were on a B2B, which was fine with us. We simply booked for the following morning. We were a group of three ladies and were able to book consecutive time slots with no problem. There were two ladies working the demo on our cruise and they were both very nice and great glass artists. They did not try to influence our decisions regarding which piece we chose and the colors were completely our choice. If I remember correctly, we were limited to two colors per piece. We all made the large vase and all chose different colors. They will give you as much or as little help that you desire. They all turned out beautifully! Both of my friends ended up making multiple items and giving them as Christmas gifts to family, appreciating the ability to customize the colors for each recipients decor. There were plenty of sign-up spots available all week long, but our ship was not at capacity so that might not be the case on your cruise. My friends would not have made multiple items if others could not get slots easily. Depending on the time of year and location that you are sailing, try to avoid times that are really hot. The evening appointments after 7pm were much cooler that the afternoons which were very hot (So Caribbean). If you will have extra time either before or after the cruise and you are sailing out of S Florida, the demo company (third party) is based in Ft Lauderdale. You can make the same exact items (plus many other choices) if you go to their studio there. If you make it there, you can arrange for them to pack/ship your piece once it is done cooling and it will be waiting for you when you get home. The cost is comparable. There will be several custom display items that the demonstrators have made in a display case near the elevator (really really beautiful) and several at the demo site. These are all for sale if you would like to purchase one. The prices were all quite reasonable. This is the sting ray that I purchased:

We have done the status match in the past with MSC and based on our Marriott status, qualified as "Black". We were very surprised that if you don't sail MSC again within 12 months that the status match is cancelled and not renewable (onetime match per person). Their program was not very robust the last time we sailed with them (2019), hopefully the benefits have improved since then! The chocolate ship was pretty cool (good grandkid gift), but the other benefits were pretty weak even for their highest tier.

ok, so I have to ask...what is a paris screwdriver?

We had made our final payment prior to the "final payment due date". Probably two or three weeks early. I needed to get the payment in on my new Delta Airline credit card to get my extra miles and free club access, lol.

I think it was October-ish of 2022. I kept the agent on the phone until I could confirm that everything was as she promised online. I couldn't believe it. She was my hero-of-the-month! The only thing that changed on my reservation was that my deposit was non-refundable, but in actuality it already was since I had made final payment. Celebrity direct agents won really big points for me with that one! I'm not sure that the TA's that I have used (or I should say quit using during the pandemic, lol) would have even tried!

We changed the reservation on our CS from refundable to non-refundable after having made final payment. We booked directly with X and a simple phone call to them saved us ~ $5k ! The CS category had been sold out for over 1 1/2 years, so currently availability was not a factor. The agent repriced us to the "current promotion" which was a % savings off full price. Since we had paid in full for the cruise (final payment date was still a couple of weeks away), we got a very nice credit to our credit card within a week! Never hurts to ask!

We are on Infinity at the end of the month. They have updated the app and now there is in fact the ugly fee for room service with the exception of the following: continental breakfast (all cabins are free) and suites still have free room service with the same special menu 24 hrs a day

This is the ugly fine print on ship sponsored excursions for our trip on the Infinity next month: In the unlikely event that your tour is significantly delayed, we'll make all the arrangements for you to return to the ship at the earliest opportunity with no expense to you. It sure doesn't sound like they are planning to hang around for late arrivals including those on ship sponsored excursions! This is the first cruise that has this included on the detail section of every excursion. If they remove the promise that the ship will wait for a sponsored excursion that is delayed, then they have also removed the reason many are willing to pay a premium for their excursions. Not good

You can easily upgrade your drink package once you board the ship. This can be done when you buy your first drink. You will pay the price difference between the two packages plus the corresponding gratuity. We've never had a problem making spa reservations once on the ship. We usually wait until we have the activity schedule for the week prior to booking. As is common with most cruise lines...some cruisers love the food, some abhor it. I suggest you try it before allowing anyone to sway your opinion. We have eaten better and we have certainly eaten worse. Depending on where you are sailing from and how long your cruise is, you may or may not need a covid test prior to boarding. Check the main X website for details.

We had cabin 1138 in Alaska last summer.The view was great as long as you were looking straight out. If you looked down at all, pretty much all you could just see is the sunset bar. The back staircase to the sunset bar/oceanview cafe was the best part. It was very easy to run down to grab a quick snack and a drink. Keep in mind though that the back stairs are closed.when it is rainy-ish. Also, the treads on the stairs are narrower than normal stairs so those with big feet take note that you will be side-stepping up/down!

We were on Millenium in June. Our experience was the same as the other posters. Texting was fine, no photos.

We took land cruise 7-B in June starting in Fairbanks and heading south (Tours ending in A go north and B tours head south). We chose to go south for two reasons: 1) many posts recommended to do the land tour first because it can be more tiring than the cruising portion. We found this to be accurate as we were exhausted at the end of each land tour day, but the upside is that we slept very well at night! 2) return flights at the end of our cruise tour had much better options/times in Vancouver vs returning from Fairbanks. We thoroughly enjoyed our cruise tour and would do a cruise tour again instead of a diy without hesitation. We didn't have to drag our bags each night as they were delivered directly to our hotel rooms, and our guide was extremely helpful while we were trying to plan our free time. No fumbling with maps (cell service is sketchy at best in many areas so you need to bring paper maps because you can't count on a gps to work in many areas). We appreciated the amount of free time included in the schedule so that we could pick and choose what we wanted to do and where. There were a wide range of options available and prices were comparable to booking direct (although expensive). A few couples booked independent excursions during the free time in the schedule, but we selected from the optional excursion choices. We stayed at Pikes Lodge in Fairbanks with the cruise tour and chose to arrive a day early so we were well rested when the trip began. Pike's has a free shuttle to the downtown area that runs on demand (but not late at night) and taxi service is readily available. The only hotel that we stayed at that either didn't have a shuttle to town or wasn't within walking distance was in Denali. The area with all of the tacky shops and the monstrous Princess Lodge had zero appeal to us. From the Denali lodge, you could walk across the main road to a local restaurant if you wanted to save some $. Because food at the lodge was expensive (no doubt about that!), our guide also arranged for us to have a one hour stop at a huge grocery store (comparable to super Wal-Mart) for incidentals and food items since she knew that the options there might not appeal to everyone. From what I understand, not all guides made this stop for their travelers, but we easily could have used the Pike's shuttle to do a grocery run before hand also. Several couples bought sandwich items, fruit, drinks (including alcohol) etc for the land tour portion. For my husband and I it worked out well, however some people thought the grocery stop was tacky and the food options not acceptable.

We sailed on the Edge way back in January, 2019. We had no interactions with entertainers in any venues on the ship, including in Eden. Our only complaint about the ship was lack of seating in the bar/entertainment areas. The older ships have a number of different lounges with varying menus, atmosphere, and entertainment. Edge had only a couple of larger lounges that filled extremely quickly (no seats left by 4pm) and did not have the intimate setting of some of the smaller lounges. Because we like to cruise with friends and we meet for cocktails before dinner each night and would actually like to sit down(!), this was a big problem for us.

We have cruised from København twice, both times we stayed at the Marriott. The Hop-On Hop-Off bus stops directly in front of the hotel and you can buy your tickets from the concierge in the lobby. There is a more-expensive option that also includes the canal tour. If you book a room on the club-level, the included concierge lounge offers a nice breakfast buffet and heavy hors d'oeuvres /cocktails in the late afternoon/early evening. Soft drinks, juice, and coffee are available all day. Granted, the hotel lacks character and feels like it could be anywhere in the world, sometimes familiar is nice. Especially if you only have a day or two. The concierge is very helpful as well.

Seat assignments have to be done by Flights By Celebrity (FBC) prior to ticketing. FBC can either assign seats at the time you make your reservation or you can call them and they will do it while you are on the phone. The big aggravation for me is that even though you make final payment for the cruise/air, FBC does not ticket your flights automatically when you have paid in full. For a cruise that we took in November they didn't ticket (pay) for our flights until 5 days prior to the first flight so we couldn't even order our meals until the last minute. Before you are ticketed it is easier for the carrier to move seats around for families, air marshalls, etc. Keep in mind that even though flights are ticketed and seats assigned, the carrier might switch your seats up until the time that you board. This is especially true for European carriers which aren't keen on seat assignments in the first place. We had Air France flights booked to KBH three years ago and our seat assignments were dropped/changed multiple times in the last two months. It became part of my daily routine to check my phone app a few times a day to adjust our assignments asap after they have been randomly changed.