Los_Pepes

Perfect. Thanks!

Thanks for the replies!

We are scheduled to be on a cruise that pulls into Lisbon on the second to last day, overnights in Lisbon and then disembarks. We are considering taking a very early flight (6:30 am) and I was wondering if anyone knew if we could exit the ship whenever we like since it had already been there for 24 hours. Any insights?

My advice would be to start aggressively trolling their social media posts. Be persistent and comment on every one of their posts. Something to the effect of "You have time to post advertisements on FB but no time to call me back after X days?" I have used this tactic previously on other companies (Comcast for example) and it is no surprise that someone gets back to you very quickly. You become the loudest voice and they will want to placate and silence you. I don't do it often but it sure does work.

Thank you for the information. However I was really looking to find out whether or not the excursions I booked will be billed onboard or prior to sailing on my credit card on file. Apologies if I wasn't clear.

This may have been answered elsewhere but I don't have time to read through dozens of posts. We have a cruise in July and have a $1200 OBC. The OBC is not showing up on our reservation yet we wanted to book excursions. Is payment for excursions settled onboard or will they charge my credit card since I have $0 OBC showing. Thanks!

Thank you. I figured it wouldn't be a clean process.

Without going into detail as to why I am asking this, but is it possible to transfer a booking made through one travel agent to another? Deposit has been paid and final payment is 8 months out. Thanks

I took my teen kids on a Celebrity cruise a few weeks ago. While the employees were awesome and the food good, the experience left all of us turned off. We will never do a large ship mass market cruise ever again for the exact reasons you state and more.

I did it multiple times throughout the week with about the same results. The last two days it shot up to 100MBS but only a few apps worked and for some reason it was still painfully slow.

I was on the Millennium this week and I tested the speed of my internet on the basic package. It was .21 MPS! You can barely do anything and it was frustrating. It was part of an AI package but if it wasnt, I would have asked for a refund.

The key to my equation is the 9% back on every cruise from my TA. Along with my 4.5% from Chase I got back $1,229 on my $9100 cruise

With the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which gives you essentially 4.5% back on all travel purchases, your $5700 cruise is right at the break even point with the Amex $300 credit. My upcoming Azamara cruise was $9100 and I got back $410. We also use a non-Amex agency which gives us 1/2 of their commission as a reduced fare or OBC.

We are thinking about a Svalbard cruise in 2024. It would be the most expensive cruise we ever paid for so we are going to shop it hard!

My wife has sailed Ponant and I have not. We have our eye on a cruise and I am curious how we can leverage either a referral or past cruiser discount. Can she refer me as her husband and traveling companion? Can she use her past cruiser discount for both of us in the same cabin? Any and all advice is welcome how to get the largest discount in this situation. Thanks!

Quick note to those use use the Rakuten portal. They have a 4% cashback/4X Amex points deal right now for Celebrity. I just booked $1050 of excursions on my upcoming cruise and got 40,300 points for doing so. 35,000 from the American Express Spend $1000 get 35,000 points offer, 4,250 Amex points from Rakuten and 1,050 points from regular spend. 40,300 points softens the blow of seeing Tilapia on the MDR menu. 🙂

I appreciate that you believe you are speaking to the actual office of an executive. After I spoke the "executive office" I received a service survey asking how the service I received on my call and listed the name and title of the person I spoke to. Her title was "Pre Cruise Corporate Guest Relations Team" That is not a title you posses when working in the C-Suite. You also don't have automated customer service emails sent out for calls into the C-Suite. My close relative was the president of a Fortune 30 company. Dozens of times per day people would call the switchboard looking to be connected to his office. The switchboard would route the call 2,000 miles away to a CS center's escalation desk and it would be answered "Mr. Los_Pepes" office".

You are exactly correct. No one is talking to a member of executive staff. You are speaking to the escalation desk in the call center. It is common practice across all consume facing businesses.

In my experience, albeit limited, I have learned that the buffet is the single largest source of waste on a cruise ship. We all know that X is trying to cut costs and scaling back the buffet seems like a no brainer when it comes to cost cutting.

I am by no means an X expert so I need to know, has Tilapia always been a signature dish? It is a cheap farm-raised fish that my cat would probably walk away from.

Sycamore Partners paid cash for Azamara. I sailed with them this past summer and apart from the atrocious wine, It appeared to be decent value. Sailing with them again in July in Greece for $2000pp in a balcony cabin with $1200 OBC and bev package. Rates on the sailing are still really good if anyone wants to join us!

Executive pay cuts only get you so far since the majority of executive pay is tied to stock performance. RCL is paying roughly $1.75b in debt service and if the entire executive staff had zero pay, it would represent a rounding error in their interest payments.

Excellent points. One thing to consider is that they are paying a much higher interest rate with lower passenger loads. Until occupancy gets to Pre-Covid levels and they restructure to an overall lower interest rate, they will struggle to pay down $2b per year. Until then the only other recourse is reduction in services.