rodndonna

Thanks. We called in to our airline agency to book and have our FCD applied. Was quite an effort for some reason, although I think it might be because the FCD is US$ and we are booking in CAN$ . I had not thought of that before, and possibly why I wasn't able to apply it on-line myself. More oddly, when the agent came back from having me on hold and talking to HAL, they applied it as CAD$200. So either we made and extra $50CAN (after exchange) or they just just lumped the USD$100 FCD and credit of US$50 into a simple CAD$200... bit of a mystery .🤔

I agree, but isn't that the case with all cruise based holidays? I wouldn't recommend generally recommend a cruise itinerary for anyone truly interested in seeing all what can be seen and experienced in any area of the world.

Since you played roulette I am not sure how that works (in terms of getting credit for your play). If you were credited for your play, try some of the "low hanging fruit" bookings, shorter Mexican and Caribbean in shorter term. If someone else posts they got freebies (people do on here), better chance you would have a discount on that cruise. Honestly though, it's a bit mysterious....

I think so. I think the discounting gets complicated when they combine promos and casino discounts ... in the end, with HAL it seems you just have to do regular mock bookings (including booking up and own in room categories) to get an idea what your options are. Thankfully we are retired so ample time to review everything regularly. We're also pretty borderline on HIA (at full price) but really like the convenience. Someday we will try a cruise without .. but not yet 🤔

Try a mock booking for your cruise through room selection up to payment. I don't know why, but or me I have to actually keep going through the booking to see any discounted rate that may be against the fare for a cruise. It doesn't say anything .. I just look at the price as I go through and notice the price change (dropped). When I have seen this on my last booking, it then showed a "Casino Discount" line in my pdf booking summary.

I was getting close to that point, but our last cruise has given me hope. After 2 cruises (Alaska and Norway) of insufferable hacking and nose blowing, we were preparing for the worst again on our recent cruise. Happy to report our 7 day cruise last week in the Caribbean was a breath of fresh air (pun intended- haha) with much reduced evident illness, even in a full theatre and music venues. They now had signs indicating "Cover your cough" which had been a big issue on our prior cruises (sad folks have to be reminded of this). Not sure if was the warmer climate or just a lucky cruise this time, but it felt pretty normal. Sadly at the FLL airport with 6 cruises disembarking that day, it was a different story, but at least our cruise felt pretty normal.

We have just returned from a cruise and purchased a $100 FCD which I can see in my account online. When I follow through a booking I and am able to select it and click the box for it ... but then nothing seems to change in my booking. When I continue to the credit card payment page, it is looking for the original deposit amount (i.e. is not reduced by the $100 FCD). Am I missing something? Would rather not use a PCC as I intend to transfer the booking to a TA afterwards.

Oddly the price for the cruise we are looking Dec 2023 did not change from the weekend pricing, and even better our casino discounted fare is now lower. We did just return from a HAL cruise but only played the Casino briefly but managed a small win which we withdrew, maybe they really want it back 😎

Yeah - I find that odd that they are only out of Vancouver, but it works for us as we are starting in Canada. The nice thing for me about the one way is the ability to extend the time in Hawaii a couple (or few days). Also have never been on a cruise with more than 3 sea days total and I have weak sea legs ...so the idea of making it across (or back) on a cruise is intimidating enough.

Yeah - I agree, if you don't have the luxury of time to add after you get there, not much point. We will likely end up on Celebrity, as it allows us to see more of the islands (overnights) and then a couple of extra nights in Honolulu would be ideal for us (with no kids in September) https://www.celebritycruises.com/itinerary-details/12-night-hawaii-from-vancouver-british-columbia?packageID=EG12H023&sDT=2024-09-21&cCD=CO Best of luck and have fun planning!

That could be a problem for you (with kids) - I don't see any on a quick search. They seem to be all when school is in on shoulder seasons , April, September and October. 😗 Edit: For a family on a budget - if you COULD take them out of school - hard to beat RCL in September 2024 https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruises?search=destination:HAWAI|startDate:2024-09-01~2024-09-30 Not suggesting you take them out of school of course... but am now thinking this is an option for us as it won't likely be overun with kids then. We would like to try RCL at some point, and without kids this might be a good way to do 😃

Have you thought about a one way rather than a circle trip to Hawaii? It is where I am leaning for late 2024 trip , but just starting research now. I like the idea of using a sea days to deal with time zone changes.

This is assuming you have booked the FLEXIBLE fare option. - You just go in again, and click "change or cancel flights" -(not sure of exact wording) - it will give you options again, if there is a cheaper or better one, just select it and you will now have that fare. If you don't pick a new one, your original flight and fare remains.

EDIT: oops - my point below is the disadvantage of paying it off early, not ticketing early. 🙃 There is one potential disadvantage - if there is a price drop and you refare lower, it is not credited back to you but stated it is to be issued as a credit on your account (at least it was in my recent case). We refared for a drop of just over $300 that was to be credited, but was not. Not we are stuck with chasing FlightEase for that ... uugghh.

Thanks, We've got it now! 😃

Thanks - After looking and going through pretty much everything I could purchase, still no luck. I am thinking it may be a Canadian site thing. It is not unusual for things offered to US residents not be available to non-US residents. We should be able to purchase them on board though.

New to Celebrity - Where do you purchase "slot packages"? Have looked on-line under "Manage" you reservation and don't see it there. Is it something you purchase on board only?

I'd really like to try the 0% Gin. We are beer/wine drinkers with about the only mixed drink choice being Gin and Tonic (especially before dinner or in hot weather). I actually am content with just tonic water as a drink, but if I could get that 'gin' taste in there that would be nice. We are 'drinkers' in that we still drink, but appreciate non-alcoholic options to alternate or replace drinks when on holiday and drinking more (and our tolerance continues to erode with age .....)

Are they that bad? (I'm not picky). Our next cruise is with Celebrity, and I just read that they carry an assortment of the Fre non-alcohol wines (red, white, rose, bubbly). Will be giving them a try anyway - at least the Rose should be drinkable I would think.

The signature thing (for inventory control) being new, we were that not surprised it varied (and expect it may continue to do so). At the bars we could order 2 at once (they actually suggested we do that and prefer it) while at dining it was always both cards required. I assumed they modified the rule to 2 drinks per card at the bars to help reduce the effort required where they are dealing with so many orders. When dining, it is not really an issue so they maintain 1 drink per card rule. The 15 non-alcoholic and 15 alcoholic drinks per person was definitely a mistake or misunderstanding.

We were a bit surprised that there was no charge for extra appetizers in the Tamarind (I had thought is was new rule for all speciality dining). I asked if we could order 3 and the waitress said we could have as many appetizers as we wanted. 🙂

Just off the NS and had good bananas everyday. They were asking if you wanted bananas when ordering Oatmeal in the MDR, while on previous cruises it seemed to just be a default Oatmeal side, so maybe there is a banana supply shortage.

I think so (at least for AC -Air Canada). For our recent (really awful) flights we could go in to our booking on the AC site, review and select other options showing as no charge, but at the last stage of finalizing the change it would give us the "go back to your 3rd party booking" statement. We would then call Flightease, and after some time (about an hour) of being passed around, they finally said it's ticketed and we can't do anything (not sure why we were passed around for an hour for someone to decide that) so we gave up. We just got an email of a required change for our Flights by Celebrity Air in April, will be curious to see how it plays out. They are similar in stating they will rebook and let us know, but planning on being much more proactive and involved along the way ..so it doesn't cross that "this is what we gave you, and now it is too late to change it" boundary. For the foreseeable future while airlines are still reworking schedules in their post Covid comeback, we will be booking direct. Ironically though, our HAL flight ease issue was required for a HAL cruise departure time change.

We had a similar experience yesterday to fly back through Toronto (AC) yesterday. We knew there were 6 ships in and was hearing that could cause delays, so we walked off the ship with our bags, facial recognition, taxi, badadoom, badabing.. but then had we arrived too early and had wait to check in our bags until 3 hours before our flight. For delta (domestic) was 2 hours before flight to check in bags. There were no line ups or delays after our bags were checked, so was pretty impressed with the speed.

In our "limited" experience with HAL, I think it may also be itinerary and ship (size) dependent. We have just done our 4th HAL cruise - 3 on the larger Pinnacle ships - Alaska , Norway and the Caribbean and one on Eurodam (partial Panama/Caribbean) The partial Panama out of FLL (a drive-to embarkation port for many elderly passengers) on the Eurodam (smaller ship) was pretty darn old average age. I had heard about all the scooters to expect, and yet I was still amazed by the amount of them .. they were everywhere. We expected a repeat last week out of FLL on the NS (larger ship) for the same week (early December) but this time was a much younger average age and very few scooters. There were a small number of families and children but well behaved it seemed. Was a pleasant surprise to have a such a mix of passengers. We then expected the same