Donut23

3 minutes ago, 1Virgo said:

perfect.   Retreat has no charge for room service and they will set it up for you if asked

I know.  How perfect for lunch on the days Jim is away!

4 hours ago, Lastdance said:

I think your plan is excellent and a win/win for you and you DH.  We all have different situations that guide our choices.  There was someone on Cruise Critic where his wife stayed onboard and he took excursions and photos, so they both could enjoy their vacations.  Once your butler knows this, your service will be more tailored to your situation, so you can enjoy as much as possible!

I don’t have many cruises left.  In fact, I have many doctor’s appointments and at least one surgery before we go.  It’s nice to know I’ll have people around if I need them.  Royal and Celebrity make it easy for us.  We have rented scooters for years.  Heck, you can even rent a 24 hour oxygen concentrator.

I wish, however, they had more accessible cabins and aft-facing.  If I want to go on a certain cruise all I have to do is find an aft-facing balcony and Jim’s in.

1 hour ago, 1Virgo said:

Just curious as to what you are expecting.   .” I would have a butler to take care of me”.       The butler is not assigned  just for your cabin.    

obviously.

is bringing my lunch too much?

BUT …… if I have a problem, someone will be there to help.  Jim worries so much when he leaves me alone.  Now he can enjoy his shore excursion because I’ll have people around.

10 hours ago, arealcheapskate said:

Just to understand why prices might be so high, demand is off the charts.

 
For the June 6 sailing of Apex. 12 nights. No suites available except 1 aqua class sky suite. Everything else sold out. 

The rest of the ship has tons of availability. 

It’s supply and demand and you are absolutely right.  
 

example:  we are 501 days until the Eclipse departs.  There are only 4 accessible Sky Suites on the ship.  2 are already gone.

There is one Canada/New England sailing where all 4 are gone.

if you want a specific cabin (aft corner suite) you must book well ahead.

we were married onboard the Radiance of the Seas in Juneau.  We were on the phone immediately when cruise bookings were available.  We wanted a specific aft facing cabin.  As we were trying to book the cabin, it disappeared-deposited ahead of us.

This is why suites are expensive.

50 minutes ago, basenji56 said:

AQ is way overpriced for what you get.  Blu is fine.  But the Specialties are better.  Thermal spa is nice.  But weekly pass is not that much.  On the bidding process, I will pay $150-200 pp for Aqua.

A month ago we booked an accessible Sky Suite for an 11 night Canada/New England.  Yes.  It was expensive plus Travel Guard no fault insurance.  Honestly, I’m not sure how many cruises I have left 68 and poor health) so hubby said “let’s go big”.  (Aqua class is the highest we booked before).

Jim plans to take some of the long excursions that I cannot handle.  He was happy I would have a butler to take care of me.

Yes. Our situation is unique.  Yes, when booked we actually felt the price was appropriate for 11 nights in a big accessible suite.  Prices HAVE gone up since we booked.  (501 days now - can I start packing?)

2 hours ago, DaKahuna said:

 

Yes the porters still have blank tags they will apply to your luggage. 

 

Printing luggage tags from eDocuments is very simple.  

Just as I remember.  Thank you!

They still have luggage tags at the port.  Don’t they?

A crowd of friends will join us on the Eclipse in 2024.  Almost all are first time cruisers.  I knew every answer but have not cruised since the shutdown.  I want to make sure my answers are still correct.

11:20 pm Wednesday 

USA Today will announce shortly on their website ...

CDC HAS ANNOUNCED RETURN TO US CRUISING DATE

JULY. 2021

(hubby is in the news business.  His network is currently searching for a second.  They never publish stories without a second source.)

45 minutes ago, OnTheJourney said:

 

Summit is very nice. We liked the Infinity also, and several RCCL ships; but, I must say - we did one cruise with Viking and really enjoyed it. Somewhat different experience. Definitely not a "floating amusement park". Less than 1,000 passengers - no casinos, no kids under 18, no photographers bugging you to take your picture, no formal nights (YEA!), no inside staterooms, no art auctions, no charge for specialty restaurants, no charge for beer or wine with lunch or dinner. Eat anytime so no waiting in lines. Big difference in size. You refer to the "little" Summit - at 965' she's over 200' longer than the Viking Ocean ships. 

 

We will still sail with X and RCCL - enjoy both and very much like that we don't have to fly if going out of Bayonne or Baltimore (love the Inner Harbor), but I'm intrigued to try more with Viking - our first experience was great till it wasn't - being that we wound up being evacuated by helicopter during a general mayday. 😳 Terrible way to have to leave a ship if I must say so. 

don’t let Hubby hear no charge for beer.  He may have a new cruiseline if they have aft-facing cabins

1 hour ago, OnTheJourney said:

 

Fingers crossed for you. Same for me...hanging in there and hopeful for the May Bermuda cruise on the Summit that we booked back in December. 

Be careful!

We we’re Loyal to Royal until we experienced our cute little Summit.  We are now dedicated cabin 9164 people - aft facing, handicapped.

If you see no need for floating Amusement Parks, the Summy will sweep you off your feet. 

Everyone is missing the point.

we must do everything and anything we can ..... right now!  
 

Secondly, you think things will go back to life before?  Remember all those people who fought wearing masks, etc?  They are the same who will refuse the vaccine.  Unsafe, DONT take vaccines, I’m from the planet Plucideruptus and we refuse all medical care.

They won’t get in line like my Mother put me in line for the polio vaccine.

Because of all the “Not Gonna’s”, we may never return to the way it was.

40 minutes ago, phbr said:

Our Reflection sailing on May 28th was cancelled by Celebrity around April 16th.

 

We immediately applied for the refund.

 

During a call about another matter with our TA yesterday, he advised that he has frequent dealings with Celebrity over the refund issue, and to quote him.'they are all over the place', its virtually impossible to get hold of anyone in the Finance department.

 

He has heard stories of refunds received with 45 days but it will be at least 90 days after cancellation before most people get the money back and then it could be in instalments.

 

I’m sorry you are having such a bad experience.  Someone else’s $$$ is nothing to play around with.

I only have our reservation and our friend’s to comment on.

Both got our $$$ back within days of each other (50 days after cancellation For us in 3 credits to our travel card).

Jim (hubby) would call late and rarely waited long and he never mentioned any problems.

i know they brought on staff to expedite all of this when it became obvious they were overwhelmed.  
 

i wonder if they put the Newbees on the phones before they were ready.

3 hours ago, zitsky said:

 

Eliminated all cases?  That sounds ominous.  How did they do it?  Of course if patients die that's one way.

They did what we didn’t do.

Extensive testing, Isolated the sick, traced people who had been exposed, face masks required, social distancing, quarantine.  They started when they had only a few cases.

They didn’t point fingers, they didn’t boast about not wearing face masks.  They put on their big boy and big girl Pants and did what was necessary no matter how challenging.

Your TA needs to checkout the news.  Canada has closed its ports to Cruise Ships through October.  But this was announced just a week ago.

My hubby works with international contacts daily.  What he has heard is many countries are concerned about allowing in a cruise ship full of Americans who flaunt their respect for new conditions into their ports.  Some cannot follow rules for POOL CHAIRS.  How will they follow the serious rules (face masks, 6’ apart and washing hands.)

I think Canada wants the cruise industry to “practice” the new rules on somebody else.

Sorry if I insulted someone.  🤨

On 4/17/2020 at 2:00 PM, edunava said:

Good afternoon from Barcelona.

 

First of all I apologize for my terrible English, I read and write here thanks to the invaluable help of my good friend the google translator.

 

We have been confined here for more than a month. My work is considered "essential", but my wife is a person at high risk for various pathologies and fortunately my company has taken this situation into account and I am working from home.

Every afternoon at 8 pm the whole city goes out to applaud the balconies of their houses in gratitude to the health personnel who are suffering a lot, the truth is that it is very exciting.

At the moment we continue with the state of maximum alert and confinement until April 26, thereafter the government will decide what to do. Probably from the 27th on, the "de-refinement" will begin in stages.

 

Dear friends of this place, take good care of yourselves.
A huge hug for all of you.

your English is Brilliant.

Well our Canada/New England cruise - changed to Nassau cruise is finally cancelled.  Best friend cruising in the Med at the same time got notice of his cancellation.

We were tempted to rebook an August 2021 Canada/New England and grab the 125% but ... (pls don’t get mad) we all agree it’s crazy to do a cruise until a vaccine it available.  (I have a compromised medical history X 4).

Also (and this reality hurts) this is a deathly environment for the cruise business.  I doubt everyone will make it without filing for bankruptcy.  If anything, cruising as we know it is gone.  It just cannot remain the same.

Cruise lines will jettison personnel and maybe even ships.  Policies on board will be different.  Lovely service we have been spoiled by will be different as crew has been reduced.

So give us our 100% back.  We will watch our autumn sailings and my handicapped cabin as prices plummet and hopefully all is good and we can cruise next fall.

Just too dangerous for me to step onboard until there is a vaccine available. 
 

Sigh.

During the last big recession  Disney required each cost center to reduce payroll by 40% with the promise to hire back when things improved.  Oops to the last part.

Anyway, their favorite policy is to  buyout the older, long term employees and replace with young pups out of college ... or the same people as contract labor.

their preference.  Who are we to disagree!

Don’t forget Hong Kong and Shanghai have been closed since February.  Tokyo just closed so everything, ships too will be closed.

i for one am happy the parks and cruises are only 9% of the company.

BUT hubby is a 41 year veteran and we would love to see a buyout.

3 hours ago, cheeseclan said:

We are on the Reflection in an AQ cabin in January.  This is our first cruise on Celebrity as well.  Hoping that there are no issues with lines at dinner in Blu.  We booked this cabin for that benefit and the spa.

We have been loyal Princess cruisers but they started doing things like this so now we are branching out.  Sucks to have this happen so keeping fingers crossed.

 

 

How exciting!  A new cruise line.  The nice thing is you have selected a GREAT collection of ships.

Our Bermuda cruise was the first Celebrity Cruise for my Jim.  He loved it (I knew he would) .... booked our Canada/New England on the same ship - same cabin.

Just wanted to say ... Welcome to the Celebrity family!  🤗

3 hours ago, terrydtx said:

I agree, if you are in a AQ cabin you are paying a lot more for the Prviledge and experience of eating in Blu. It cheapens the experience if non AQ passengers have access. The OP is asking if a friend (not a solo) in a non AQ cabin can join him for dinner in Blu, that would result in at least 2 non AQ passengers in Blu since he already said neither he nor his friend is a solo. 

 

I am leaving HAL because they have a private dinning room called Club Orange which originally was going to be free to all top tier suits passengers. Then they opened it up to anyone willing to pay an extra $25 to $50 pp per day to eat in Club Blu and other CO benefits.. Suite passengers on HAL no longer have the Pinnacle Grill for exclusive breakfast as that has been substituted with Club Orange for breakfast and dinner. BTW on non Pinnacle class HAL ships the CO dinning area is a roped off section of the first floor MDR, hardly an intimate private experience.

 

We have booked the Infinity for 2021 because unlike HAL  X has real benefits for higher level cabin classes.

How did our friend in the inside cabin, who got approval to be there, cheapen the Blu experience for everyone else?  How could you tell he wasn’t traveling in an AC cabin?

Lou is the human version of a bear hug and the last thing he would want to do would be to upset fellow diners.
 

Yes, we needed a 4 top instead of a 2 top but every time we tried Blu is was nearly empty.

2 hours ago, terrydtx said:

Easy fix here make the menus in both Blu and Luminae identical then there would be no reason for Suite passengers to visit Blu. Or offer the Blu menu in Luminae plus a couple of special choices to keep Luminae special. If I was in that line with fellow AQ passengers waiting for a table, I would very vocally express my displeasure to the Blu Manager with Suite people being seated in a already crowded dinning room. 

I know on the Summit the galley for the MDR mingles with the Blu galley.

Its very easy to request something from the other dining room.  I did it both ways which made things easy because we loved, liked allot, enjoyed tremendously our wait staff in the MDR but there were a few things from Blu we didn’t want to miss.

47 minutes ago, hcat said:

As  I recall, yours was a fact specific situation where Celebrity was the cause of a mismatch in cabins and made fair amends.

 

OP was asking a gen question about the " standard"  rule.  Too many exceptions will lead to even more overload, which has contributed to us taking a break from AQ class and BLU for awhile.

 

 X should stick to the published guidelines!

Blu was dead on our trip to Bermuda.  Our first evening there (day 3) there were 3 large tables of guests and it was as quiet as a tomb.

Indeed, Celebrity had a great deal to apologize for but what could it hurt to checkin at the desk at Blu and just ...... ask?

I was simply suggesting.  If they continue to be as slow as they were on our cruise, they may be motivated to say ...... SURE!

We had our best friend travel with us on the Summit to Bermuda.

About 10 weeks out Celebrity decided to give our handicap accessible cabin to someone else.  (We had booked months prior and completed Celebrity’s paperwork for the cabin along with a letter from my physician).

They gave us a regular Aqua Class cabin - no way could I deal with a traditional bathroom and no room for my scooter.

Anyway, we worked it out but our friend was now in an inside cabin by himself.  Customer service contacted Blu on the Summit and they allowed our friend to dine with us in Blu.

It can be done.

1 hour ago, grandelli502 said:

We are sailing on our first cruise with our kids, we have booked this type of room for my husband and our 3 kiddos. Do you think there is enough room for all of us? 

We were in the aft facing Aqua Class Handicapped Accessible Cabin on Deck 9.

They replaced the single sofabed with a single sofa (no bed).

9164 is now a double cabin only with lots of room for my wheelchair and scooter.

We were also on the Summit in September with our friend.  The 3 of us were at a 4 top and I was so interested in our conversations I rarely noticed the people next to us except for one couple.  They never spoke to even each other.  Perhaps they were having too much fun listening to us.

With the 3 of us were constantly gabbing, you could never get a word in anyway.