tacrum43

I've enjoyed many a glass of wine when dining in the specialty restaurants without any upcharge. If I wanted something special, since last year you only pay the difference + 18% which usually amounts to under $4. It's not worth the upgrade to DH and I.

Interesting. Is this change applicable only in the specialty restaurants or any bar/restaurant? In the past, one of the main benefits of upgrading to the premium package was that you only had to pay the small differences vs paying full freight for anything above the limit for the classic package.

I use Firefox on my Mac laptop. It hangs up sometimes when loading things (especially shore excursion booking), but still is usable.

It is good for me to have at least one West Coast option with Princess. But it is bad for me since there are no alternate options with competitive pricing. However, a little birdie (my TA) told me it is likely that Celebrity will be basing a ship in San Diego/San Francisco in a year or two. I hope that is true.

That would be great to have Celebrity sail on the West Coast (other than Seattle/Vancouver). I've seen a Celebrity Cruises booth at a street fair and the Taste of SF event here in the Bay Area the past two years, so clearly they feel they have a customer base here.

Meanwhile, it's nice Princess at least makes an effort at providing SF (and LA) sailings, even if it's on older ships. Good to have options.

When we started cruising, one of the things on our list to try was the Sanctuary.

We picked a day when we were in Ensenada (been there, done that, don't get off the ship). Paid for a 1/2 day in advance. When the day came, it was COLD. The attendants gave us 2 blankets each and we had on sweats and jackets and it was still cold.

The afternoon tea that they brought was a disappointment.

 

Maybe not a good place to try it out, maybe we would have liked it if it was warm...but we haven't felt the urge to try it again.

Sorry - I know this is an old thread, but can you still book a day or 1/2 day in advance? Or do you have to line up the day in the early am and hope for the best? We will be on a Hawaii cruise next year (15 days), and while having a dedicated lounger is nice, the $30/day price ( = $450) seems excessive for a cushioned lounge chair, no matter how serene.

It is open seating only based on our experience a couple weeks ago on the Regal. We arrived within 5 minutes of "doors open" for five nights (the other two nights we went to the SRs), and we had three different tables and waiters. The hostess seemed to make sure that we did NOT have the same table or waiter every night even though she could have easily given us the same table/waiter (wide open selection when we arrived). Not necessarily a bad thing since by moving us around we did get a window table 2 or 3 nights.

 

I do not think assigned tables or standard dinner times would work well in the very small CC dining section.

OK, thanks for the information!

Ted, that would defeat the purpose of Club Class dinning! Anytime, no waiting! :)

Well, we just enjoy sharing a table with tablemates that we get to know over the course of the cruise, and have made some good friends that way. Also enjoy having the same waiters over the course of the cruise.

We will have to decide if the slightly better service and few extra menu items are worth using an anytime type dining service. Personally, I'm leaning towards no. But I know many people prefer it that way.

Just got off the Grand yesterday, occupying a full suite. Breakfast is in the Crown Grill now, no longer in Sabatini's. On the last day (yesterday), breakfast was not served in the Crown Grill, but full suite passengers could eat breakfast in the Club Class section of the DaVinci dining room (actually they could eat there any day, not just the last day). I believe the breakfast menu for Club Class is the same as breakfast in the rest of DaVinci for all other passengers, although we always ate in the Crown Grill for breakfast so I can't testify to days other than yesterday. There might have been a "special" offering on other days, like at lunch or dinner with one special addition to the normal dining room menu.

Thanks for the information. I just booked a Hawaii cruise for next year from SF (will be nice not to have to fly before/after a cruise for once!) and booked a window suite, which the website comes with full suite perks. Do you know with the Club class menus look like? Are they just the same with a few extra steak or lobster tail options here and there, or more than that? Is the service noticeably better? Finally, can you go an assigned table or is this only for anytime dining (within the Club class).

Thanks!

For the Club class dining at dinner, it is only opening seating, or can you get an assigned table as well with the standard dinner times?

Having sailed on both lines a few times, I personally choose Celebrity over Princess whenever possible. Princess is okay overall in my experience and their itineraries are good, but I find the service, food, condition of ship, drink package (often included in fare), decor, and activities (such as lectures by naturalists) and production shows are superior on Celebrity. Often price is about the same too, sometimes less, and Celebrity ships tend to be a bit smaller and feel less crowded to me. Celebrity also offers a full hot breakfast room service to all cabin categories and their standard balconies have a couch (even if small). To get a couch on Princess, you have to book a mini-suite. Princess does have the ultimate balcony dinner and the chef's table (if you can get it), which are both great. Just my $0.02.

The stress will be worth it. Congratulations. Enjoy the Best perks, the extra suite perks, and the cabin. Do not forget to check if a better location becomes available once you are assigned a location.

Yep - they assigned an S2 immediately - there were about 5 available still. I switched to preferred side of ship (port side will be towards the shore for most of this particular cruise)

Booking a guarantee you must be prepared to accept the worst suite on the ship. Both times we've done suite guarantee on M-Class we've gotten cabin 9121. Handicapped accessible and located below the ping pong table. No bathtub.

 

It's not terrible though - the ping pong table is actually over the balcony and this suite is very conveniently located for access to the pool deck, buffet, and elevators. We'd take the risk of getting 'stuck' in this cabin again, though I'd prefer the prettier bathroom in a non-accessible room.

Right, you have to be ready to accept the "worst" room. Still can't be that bad though, right? It's a suite.

Actually, I wouldn't have personally minded the accessible room, as I'm 6'5" and I find on most ships the bath/shower combos are lacking in height. But I could see how most people would like the standard bathroom set up better.

I would check daily, on my upcoming cruise it would appear and disappear almost daily. When we pulled the trigger it was 4200 for a Suite GTY and something like 4900 for a S2, a few days later a GTY was 100 more than the S1 which is all that was available, made no sense to me.

The suite guarantee did come back, went away again, came back, went away again and then came back again. It was a more stressful process than I'd like for a vacation, but mission accomplished. And it really is a good deal with all the perks. :cool:

Thanks for everybody's input - sounds like it's a landslide for the Sky Suite. Ironically, now that it's morning here and I could call to have it changed, the suite guarantee appears to have been pulled. So now it is about $2000 extra for S2 category which to me is too much. Oh well - I will watch it and if the guarantee comes back then switch at that point. :p

Just wanted to get a sense for what others would do in this situation. We are traveling on Celebrity Millennium on Apr 8. We paid to upgrade to Family Verandah (nice corner room on deck 9). The suite guarantees for this sailing (which I assumes means 99% chance this will be a Sky Suite) are now actually $100 less than what we paid including the prior upgrade. It would come with all four perks, versus just two we have now.

I like the rear ship location, huge balcony and larger room with divider that the FV room offers. Always wanted to try one of these too.

On the other hand, Luminae would be fun to try too, the four perks are quite nice, and the priority boarding and butler service are also strong arguments.

Yes the cruise terminal is on the Kowloon side, on the site of the old Kai Tak airport. Kong Kong has a wonderful transport system and it should not be any problem to get there if you are staying on Hong Kong Island. Easiest route I would imagine would be by taxi via cross-harbour tunnel. Perhaps you could ask your hotel to advise you of approx. taxi fare and allow appropriate time.

Taking the MTR would probably be too inconvenient as the terminal does not have a nearby MTR station and no doubt you would not want to heave luggage around.

Great, thank you for the info

Hi Capt. Ron

We did this cruise last November. Our hotel was also in Kowloon pre-cruise and our taxi took approx. 20 minutes to get from the hotel to the terminal which is in a fairly isolated area. At some stage there will be infrastructure built which will make it much easier for cruise passengers to get around (really needed is a ferry stop/MTR station), but we were aware of the situation. We arrived at 11.30am on the Sunday and by 12 midday we were on the ship, having passed through security and check-in without delay. We do not have status with Celebrity but were really pleased with the ease of embarkation procedures. We believe also that our online check-in some weeks before leaving home speeded things up. There were many people there also who help "channel" passengers through as quickly as possible.

We thought that Monday would be a fairly free day before we sailed away from Hong Kong but we were told to be back on the ship for Customs and Immigration inspection of passports etc. in the Cosmos Lounge on Deck 11 between 3pm and 7pm. Muster drill was in the theatre at 7.30pm which didn't last too long. Then it was up to the pool deck to watch our sail away from the spectacular Victoria Harbour.

Hope some of this helps. It was our experience of course and we did have more time than you to see the sights of Hong Kong.

Best Wishes

Temani

So the cruise terminal is on the Kowloon side? Would it be difficult to get there if you are staying on Hong Kong island?

This has already been discussed in several other threads:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2254941

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2250655

boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2257650

I mean, good for Kate - but sheesh, how much do we need to talk about this?

We were on the Equinox in Sept. In Spain and ate in Luminae most nights and had a nice cava and Chandon to start most nights without a charge.I love Domains Carneros but was not available on our cruise! Our sommelier after a few nights and some extra tips loved pairing wines after we would decide our meals.Victor from Portugal was a joy to see every night always smiling and bringing us great wine ! We miss all the great staff on Celebrity that we met!:D

You know, I may be mistaken. I thought I had read Domaine Carneros was on the premium list. Maybe it is Chandon (also California, but made by same people who bring you Moet-Chandon and Dom Perignon). Both are good. :o

There's a good one for about $22 but I don't remember the name. On premium, you only pay the difference.

Perrier-Jouet - is a wonderful champagne (I prefer it to Veuve Clicquot personally). $22 per glass seems a bit much to me though - I got a whole bottle for $40 recently at a local grocery store.

The Domaine Carneros sparking wine is free with the premium package. It's also delicious, and regularly scores 90+ points in reviews. It is California grown and so not champagne technically, but is owned by Taittinger (French champagne house) and the Los Carneros AVA where it is grown produces some really great grapes. This is what I'm planning to mostly drink for my cruises. :)

I won't comment on Chardonnays - buttery/oakey is not my thing. I'll take a nice, crisp sauvignon blanc please.

I voted "I don't care" because this is not going to make or break my vacation, but I think I might actually prefer it to traditional formal night because I vacation to relax. I get dressed up every day for work.

Here is the new Tuscan Grill menu from the first post drydock cruise on the Infinity:

 

 

Thank you for posting!

I think it looks good overall. However, I do find it annoying to see upcharge items at an already supposedly premium restaurant... how many times do I have to pay money before they give me the good stuff? :rolleyes:

AA makes it very difficult.

 

For the great majority of transcontinental (coast to coast) flights, even passengers flying on paid first class tickets don't get lounge access. The exceptions to this rule are passengers flying in first class on three routes, and three only, those being SFO-JFK, LAX-JFK, or LAX-MIA.

Business class on these still gets you access to the regular Admirals clubs. First class on the two class aircraft from MIA-LAX also gets Admirals club access. First on the three class aircraft transcons gets you access to the Flagship lounges (where they exist: JFK and LAX, not SFO) and to the "Premium Lounge" One World lounge in MIA.

FYI: There is pretty good availability right now to Europe in summer 2016 on American Airlines. Taxes and fees are higher than United since almost all flights route through LHR, but they aren't too bad if you don't book the the trans-Atlantic flight on British Airways.

That doesn't help if you only have United miles. But this is why I try to collect both and stay flexible.

I ate in a sushi place once. That is enough, I really don't get it why people would pay good money for raw fish.

Maybe you went to the wrong one place... or maybe you just don't like sushi. But many people do. To each his own.

I see people excited about the cheese on cruises a lot. I know Celebrity charges extra for room service gourmet cheese plate. I don't really understand what people are so excited about - is it the quantity of free cheese available? Personally, I can drive down to my local supermarket and easily buy cheese to serve on a plate at home (and I do - my favorite currently is triple cream brie served on sourdough with pepper jelly). I get more excited by the hot dishes which would be a lot more work to fix myself at home.

I am trying to understand the different categories and codes.

I have a guarantee Veranda. ( Yes I realize I can't choose)

 

I'm curious about their coding

.

For instance, below is 2B with 2 different descriptions.

Why are both 1 and 2 both veranda rooms?

Deluxe Ocean View Strm Veranda

Deluxe Ocean View Access Strm

I've never had a problem understanding other cruise line web sites, but I'm not 'getting' this info.

 

Thank you

It appears they are distinguishing between standard and accessible (handicapped) rooms in the same category.

It was fun to see the Infinity in SF. I will be meeting up with her in Buenos Aires in January. :)