4774Papa

12 hours ago, TMLAalum said:

We are so grateful to Cruise Critic's Roll Calls for so many friendships that wouldn't have occurred had social media been our only source of connection.

@realnice46

I know we have cruised together- most recently on the Eclipse around the Horn in 2019? Thanks to the roll call, we shared several adventures together on that cruise and the Silhouette in 2013? And I recall sending my undrunk bottles of wine back with you since we couldn't fly home with them!

 

Just earlier this week, we were contacted by a couple @Milhouse who'd shared private shore excursions with us way back on our 2nd Celebrity cruise in 2011. They've offered to give us a tour in Vancouver before we fly out after our upcoming Summit sailing.

 

Prior to our Alaska cruise in 2021, one of our British Isles 2016 roll call stalwarts @DrKoob gave us a tour of Seattle and we had a wonderful dinner together with him and his wife!

 

In 2013 we were skiing in Colorado and a couple from the Roll Call for that 2013 cruise invited us to their annual Souper Bowl gathering in Breckenridge. We arrived as strangers and were welcomed by their group of longtime friends.

 

In 2011, a roll call friend @quanmama from a future European cruise in 2012 invited my girlfriends and me to experience a genuine SF dim sum lunch. Thank goodness Rebecca is fluent in Chinese and handled the menu for us.

 

We've maintained friendships with Duncan and Elaine from the UK, whom we met thanks to the roll call and included us in the private tour of Ephesus they'd arranged on our 2012 cruise. Since then, we've met in Yorkshire England, had breakfast together in Sydney, and toured Coventry together on another trip to the UK.

 

We have a group of folks that we developed and maintained friendships with thanks to @4774Papa who organized a Murder Mystery at Sea on our 2017 Eclipse TA.

 

We are looking forward to our NE cruise where we will sail again with @Traveling Library!

 

Thanks Cruise Critic for Roll Calls!

 

We used CC to arrange tours, meet others and organize the Murder Mystery.  Since our last Galapagos Celebrity cruise in 2022 haven't cruises.  Instead, we are doing tours with Gate 1 Travel.   

We are looking at booking this cruise with Gate 1 for the lower Danube.  It looks great.  Any tips?  We have done Gate 1 before and their tours/cruises are great and the price is hard to beat.

On 6/23/2023 at 2:40 PM, trickylibrarian said:

Looking for thoughts from those who have done a river cruise here (Uniworld).

What is the main draw to this area?  Geography, history, wine?  Wondering if

cruising this river is on the top of anyone's list.  We have done the Danube, Rhine,

Moselle and Po all on Uniworld and love them all.  Thanks.

 

We did a great Douro river cruise about 5 years ago.   The Douro Valley is one of the most scenic in Europe.   Porto is amazing and we spent a couple of days there after the cruise.  Yes, you visit wineries and those were great, but we also had an excursion to Salamanca, Spain that was great.

4 minutes ago, pattycake08 said:

I typically cruise Royal, but was thinking of taking a Celebrity Cruise in 2024.  My friends that normally go on Celebrity do so because alcoholic drinks were included not because of a specific loyalty status. I noticed recently that drinks do not seem to be included anymore.  Anyone know when and why this happened?

I noticed that Celebrity pricing stopped the price bundling of cruise fare with the drinks package some months ago.   That was good news, since for me as a moderate drinker, I rarely drink more than I get from the free happy hour as elite.

We haven't encountered drunks passing out or crudely dressed hyper party types on any X cruises, but our last one was in 2021.

We lean more to Royal C., due to more favorable pricing.

NCL was our first cruise line and we haven't done them in four years, but still don't remember drunks passing out.  I have heard of that on the 3 day Bahamas cruise for NCL.

I think shorter cruises tend to draw more party drunks.

We like longer cruises that tend to draw more seniors.

Some Navy ships of other countries have diesel submarines that can switch to electric battery propulsion when they need to be silent.  However, there is a limit on how long they can do this.

20 hours ago, mcrcruiser said:

How do you rank Celebrity as your choice when searching for your next cruise?  If  Not Celebrity then what cruise line will you select ?

We have cruised with Celebrity, Royal Caribbean and NCL and prefer them in that order.

A few years ago Celebrity's pricing increased and we moved toward Royal.   Now, we cruise very little.

On 3/3/2023 at 4:29 PM, RichYak said:

It's hard to imagine $1100 worth of dissatisfaction within any cabin class on Celebrity. I could be wrong. I wouldn't ask for people's experiences though. The one's that ended up happy will say so and the ones that didn't will report that as well. I'm not sure how helpful that would be to you.

 

One other thing to consider is how sold is that sailing, particularly in the guarantee fare class you are looking at. You could be assigned a cabin and still switch to a different one within the same class if there's plenty of inventory and you're dissatisfied with what you got.

Once we did a balcony cabin on an inexpensive cruise, we never went back to a ocean view window.

We used to pick our favorite balcony that was always a bit more than some of those "Partially obscured" balconies on the lower deck.

Then, one cruise, we picked a partially obscured balcony because we would be near friends and we didn't find it a problem.

Now, we always look for the guarantee.

Only, when we did Alaska with NCL (because they do Glacier Bay), we insisted on an aft balcony, which was fantastic.

3 hours ago, Bo1953 said:

Hello all, looking for input/recommendations and experiences for Asian sailings on X...

 

This would be for 2025, possibly shoulder (Dec/Jan/Feb months) is this correct???

 

While we really enjoy M Class, I think S Class would be the better option for ship size and activities???

 

TIA for your thoughts and suggestions... and,

 

bon voyage

Bo,

We did two cruises in 2015 in Asia and both were excellent.   

The first was from Singapore to Dubai, with four ports in India and one in Oman.  It was in the old class that preceded the M class, forgot the name.   We loved that ship, but it was decommissioned soon after our cruise.   The ports were great and we did five days in Singapore prior to the cruise as well as a two day tour of Malaysia.

The second was the one of the best cruises ever.  It was from Tokyo to Hong Kong and included four ports in the main islands of Japan, Shanghi, Taiwan, ending in Hong Kong.  Wonderful cruise.  Don't remember the name of the ship.

We book based on itinerary and price and don't really care about the ship.

I highly recommend any cruise that included Japan.  Also, we did several days pre-cruise in Japan prior to the cruise.  Do a three day Kyoto tour, don't miss it.

We used to cruise more on NCL until they price bundled the basic fare with drink packages, etc. that we don't want.   Wife and I may drink a couple of glasses of wine a day, or maybe not.

We rarely find NCL the best deal.

We compare NCL with Celebrity, Royal C. and Princess and Royal C. usually comes out the best.  

NCL and Royal C. both have great entertainment, but Celebrity's dining is the best.

Also, for ship design, we prefer Celebrity, then Royal and last NCL.   

Further, we like tranatlantic cruises and most of NCL's TA cruises are out of NYC, which eliminates them because of the cost for us to fly to NYC from JAX Florida.

4 minutes ago, EleventyBangBang said:

Yes, we just did this.  We had put down a $500 non-refundable deposit on a May sailing (just short of final payment date) and it was looking like I wouldn't be able to get the time off work.  So they let us move it to another ship/sailing later this year for $100 fee per person.  So the net result is that we now have a $300 deposit instead of a $500 deposit on that sailing.

 

This is not the same situation, but perhaps I could give it a shot. thanks

We are booked on a transatlantic cruise departing 22 April, which is 70 days from now.   Need to cancel due to health reasons, preexisting, so can't claim insurance.

I can still get a 50% refund up until 9 days from today.

Does Royal C. have any other options like transferring to a cruise in the future?

16 hours ago, tfred said:

prices are run by revenue management based on bookings placed and time to sail.  Why lower prices when you dont have to ?

Yes, supply and demand is huge for pricing, but when your initial prices (until less than 90 days before) don't attract customers, a cruise line will loose customers that book other cruise lines.   X should have been smarter and offered better prices early.   

When planning a TA cruise booking early is important, since I have to plan our European trip as well as our one-way flight back to the USA.   Booking those flights get very expensive when booked closer to the flight date.

We love transatlantics and compared X with Royal C. prior to booking for April 2023 from FTL to Rome.

Royal beat the heck out of X's price.

Now, less than three months from our cruise X has drastically slashed it TA prices.

Now they are a small bit lower than Royal, but we book early, like around a year ago.

Celebrity, how about offering better prices up front instead of the last minute.

My Son did a safari in Kruger a few years ago when he visited South Africa.    He did the safari in Kenya and Tanzania with me this August and said that our safari was by far the best when comparing the two.  We were able to see the great migration of thousands of wildebeests crossing the river, which is special.  Also, we saw so much that was amazing.

On 12/20/2022 at 12:17 AM, petuniaflower said:

Is there a particular area to get the cab or uber in the fastest amount of time from where we get out of the terminal?

Delta changed our flights so we don't arrive in Miami until a few minutes after Midnight.  We will need to go to a Marriott hotel near the Ft. Lauderdale Airport.

The website Rome to Rio provides several options

Taxi   US$75–95

I will check on enrolling in Uber or Lift.

We go on a TA cruise from Ft. Lauderdale in April and return by air to Miami a month later.  Our flight arrives late, about 9:30PM, so we will be looking for transport to our hotel in Ft. L to pick up our vehicle and spend the night before going home to Georgia.

What is the best solution for transport?  We don't use Uber.  What would be the typical cost?

22 hours ago, LGW59 said:

which has more affordable rates.  Definitely agree Celebrity rates are high.  I am taking a Med cruise on Oceania in May (other than Rome & Venice/Trieste) they go to ports that Celebrity does not or perhaps cannot.  Either way, the cost difference was substantial for the same class of suite and on a brand new ship.  Even when adding in for Retreat prepaid tips. wifi, prem bev package (we do not drink alcohol) the $$ difference is still several thousand dollars.  A win-win to us as we go to ports we know we will love in Greece & Croatia and save some of that retirement $$.  I have to say though that I LOVE Celebrity and was just on the Edge TA and everything about the cruise was A+++, truly the food, suites, service, entertainment, gorgeous ship, love the layout design etc.  But for our hard earned dollars if we can get a similiar product on Oceania and save $$ = more vacations.  We shall see.

Yes, a few years ago X went to mandatory inclusion of drinks packages which mushroomed their prices.  Later, they did allow bookings without the drinks packages, etc., still, their prices either way have remained non competitive.

Interesting that Oceana being cheaper than X.    Royal is still the best deal.   Also, we once did an occasional cruise on NCL, but they still have the price bundling that makes them not as desirable.

We only drink 2-3 alcoholic drinks a day and that is covered by being Diamond.  I am always amazed when people tell me they drink 10-12 alcoholic drinks a day.  Fine, but not for us.

If you do go to Portugal, don't miss visiting Porto and spend some days in the Douro River Valley.   Take the train up to Regua or take a cruise up the river.

While in Porto, I strongly recommend a wonderful B&B, it is the InPatio Guesthouse.  It only has five rooms, so book early.  It is the best ever and centrally located.

On 11/30/2022 at 6:10 PM, slanik said:

We have several Celebrity cruises booked out to spring of 2024.  Every time I see a sale, I check the current prices for my current bookings.  They are always more expensive now.  Sometimes they are almost twice as much now.  When I look beyond spring of 2024, I see lots of cruises very high priced.  Has inflation got to the cruise industry too?  Will I still be able to afford Celebrity in the future?  I hope so.  Anyone else notice this?

We have pretty much switched to Royal C., which has more affordable rates.

1 hour ago, Mapleleafforever said:

The majority of cruisers aren't too health conscious, a quick glance proves it. Besides, there's always Metformin and Insulin right? 😉

I have two friends that drank about 6 or 8 diet cokes a day and both had acid reflux.

Just now, Ashland said:

No covid test required any longer.

We have a Royal C. transatlantic on Odyssey of the Seas in April 2023 and a COVID test was required.  Has Royal changed the policy or is that just for shorter cruises?

44 minutes ago, cyntil8ing said:

 

Good for you! I miss traveling with my folks. They're both gone now, but we did a handful of cruises together. We had the opposite issue -- they owned a beach house and wanted us to come there. I didn't see it as a vacation because I still had to meal plan, grocery shop, make sure the laundry got done and the dishes were washed (even if I didn't have to do everything myself, I was still "responsible"). It took me years to convince them to cruise, but then they saw the value in it. They even cruised without us a few times.

Interesting, I love travel and have rarely taken a trip that was to stay in one place and chill.

Another thing, grandchildren are 8 and 14 and they love the beach.  Yes, they would like cruising, but there is the hassle of driving to a port (some distance away) getting COVID tests for everyone, etc.

3 hours ago, cyntil8ing said:

You didn't mention the kids ages, but cruising with two littles isn't that bad, depending on the cabin of course. Here are two examples from our cruises, first a balcony with a pullman and the sofa as a bed, second an inside with two pullmans. Neither were awful, but the kids were small. They're teens now, so we get two cabins.

 

 

 

But honestly, comparing the cost of renting a house to a cruise is simply unfair. The house doesn't come with all your meals, all your entertainment, staff to cook and clean for you, entertainers to well, entertain you, kids clubs to keep the kids busy so the adults can relax, etc. 

 

Not to get all sexist, but I find it's mostly men who make this cost comparison, discounting that renting a house means all the housework continues; it just takes place elsewhere. 

Good point,

I am the one that pays for all our vacations (wife and self) and aware that cruising includes much more than just lodging.  Of course, if you take excursions/tours, then more $$$ can add up.

My Son and his wife are still working, of course, they are in their 40s.   We are in our 70s and live on an island in South Georgia near the beach.   We almost never go to the beach unless we have visitors.

Going to a beach house and splitting the cost sees a little like a waste to me, but for a family vacation with  kids, I understand it is a way to relax.   Heck, we relax all the times since we are retired, so when we travel, we want to do more than lay on the beach and read.

Still, if he wants to do the beach  house, we will go and enjoy the family company.