Los_Pepes

21 hours ago, ECCruise said:

We had exactly this situation in Lisbon and although we weren't actually disembarking early (only taking our luggage to an apartment in Alfama) they required us to notify Guest Services of our intentions, and even after doing that stopped us at the gangway with our luggage and had to get notification from GS before they would let us go.

 

Let Azamara know in advance and while you are on the ship.

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?

On 5/8/2023 at 8:02 PM, Takapuna Grammer Girl said:

Thank you for your advice. We were thinking of sending an email to the  Guest Services Manager  and, depending on his answer or lack of it, sending one to the CEO. In the latter, it might be a good time to bring up the possibility of disputing the charge with our credit card.

It really is sad to have to fight for something as simple as a refund due to a customer, especially when the vendor agrees with the refund. I just don’t get it.

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. 

11 minutes ago, Grandma Cruising said:

Firstly does the $1200 OBC include some refundable OBC from your travel agent. If so that won’t show up until you board. Secondly, presumably you have some paper/digital evidence that you have $1200 OBC, such an invoice from Azamara/your travel agent. Make sure you take that evidence with you.

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!

1 minute ago, Shmoo here said:

Typically, yes.  But you have to ask the first TA to release the reservation.  Sometimes that comes with a cost.

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

23 hours ago, JLS07 said:

I have written and rewritten this post several times.  I know this is likely going to upset some people, and I am sorry for that.

 

Just for some perspective, I am mid to late 40’s, been sailing Celebrity for 12ish years, have a 16- and 10-year-old that have been on every cruise they could have gone on (10 or so for my daughter and 8 for my son).  I have only ever sailed Celebrity (other than one Carnival to Havana).

 

As the title says, I think Celebrity is at a crossroads for which direction they should go.  We have always loved the elegance and higher class on Celebrity, but the last two cruises (both Apex and post covid) have seen a significant decrease across the board.

 

To me, celebrity is currently trying too hard to fit into too many categories, be it the older crowd that doesn’t want kids around (you should see the nasty comments on our spring break cruise’s Facebook page), the family crowd, or the party crowd (never seen as many drunks on all my celebrity trips combined as I have the last two).

 

We have simply encountered a quality of people that we had never seen before on celebrity.  We encountered:  Multiple people passed out on St. Patrick’s Day by the pool (yes passed out - we were watching them start taking shots at breakfast), Eating as much fried this or that as physically possible all while barely able to stand, people who absolutely reeked of cigarettes everywhere, nasty rude people who snapped back at anyone around them (one lady snapped at me when I offer her a seat on a particularly rough sea day).

 

We have two more cruises already booked and paid for over the summer.  I will use those as one more chance to determine if Celebrity is still what we want to continue travel on.  

 

If you have considered moving from Celebrity due to the drop in quality, which lines did you consider as a replacement?

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. 

5 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

 

That does not bode well.  Hopefully, it It staff will get it fine tuned and improving the speeds by the time we sail next month. 

 

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. 

6 hours ago, DaKahuna said:

 

Did it show that you were using StarLink?  I believe I heard Millie had been upgraded to StarLink already. 

 

For what it's worth, I was able to make voice calls with basic WiFi on Reflection in December 2021 while the ship was inport in Fort Lauderdale.  

6 hours ago, DaKahuna said:

 

Did it show that you were using StarLink?  I believe I heard Millie had been upgraded to StarLink already. 

 

For what it's worth, I was able to make voice calls with basic WiFi on Reflection in December 2021 while the ship was inport in Fort Lauderdale.  

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. 

47 minutes ago, hubofhockey said:

It's not breakeven point, but closer.  4.5% is $256, but AMEX still give you 1% or $57, so about $100 less than AMEX.    Also, I got $475 back in refundable OBC from my AMEX consortium agency.  Sometimes AMEX works well.  Sometimes it doesn't.  

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 

On 2/23/2023 at 11:54 PM, hubofhockey said:

The cruise I used it on was $5700 for a 10-day cruise, so the Platinum card use 300 on 5700 made a lot of sense.  I have the Costco Cit Visa.  It just made no sense here.

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. 

2 hours ago, AussieBoyTX said:

This sounds like something you could strategize with a TA. My understanding is that your wife can only get a referral for you if you're in a separate cabin. You'd certainly be eligible for the new cruiser discount regardless.

 

Your discount for this cruise and all future cruises will be based on the number of sailings for each of you separately and you'll see this itemized on your invoice.

 

Where are you sailing? We always like to hear about that!

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. 🙂 

56 minutes ago, the penguins said:

possibly but possibly not.

I in response to my emails to the Chief Exec I have responses from a named person, all headed " Celebrity Cruises, Executive Office" with a direct phone number to that office. The number is 316 554 5608. I have also said had several phone calls from the same person. The general email for that office is: executiveoffice@celebrity.com.

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". 

On 1/22/2023 at 1:22 AM, mnocket said:

I'm willing to bet the people who call you on the phone are far removed from the Executive Offices.  They are probably the equivalent of call center employees albeit more professional and polite.  Their job is to make customers feel better.  When X decided to make these changes I'm sure they expected a flood of communications from disgruntled customers and staffed up a "response staff" to deal with it.  The only upside besides making people feel "heard" is that they probably keep tally of the complaints and produce reports that go to management.  Much like when you contact your congressperson about a particular piece of legislation.  Your specific conversation is never relayed to the congressperson, but he/she is given a periodic tally of how many constituents contacted the office on a particular piece of legislation and how many were for or against it.

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. 

20 hours ago, TrueCruiseaholic said:

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. 

17 minutes ago, C4HCG said:

Unless those cruisers look elsewhere and find a similar situation, the grass isn’t always greener. I would imagine all lines are facing these challenges, and land based vacations. We just looked to book London in Easter, a regular treat for us. Not a chance at those prices and that’s tough for us as London is our third favourite city.

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! 

21 minutes ago, BazingAu said:

I work at a large corporate travel company (billions in sales). Took on a ton of debt during the pandemic, and did not nickel and dime our customers after people/companies started returning to travel. Our executives and management all took pay cuts! We are a customer-first company and the approach that RCL takes versus those of the company I work for - it’s very evident that philosophy and corporate culture is completely different.

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.

12 minutes ago, NMTraveller said:

Well if you look at a good year, say from 2016 to 2017 you will note that X paid down about 2 billion in debt.  If they put new ship builds on hold and bring their business back to 2016 profitability, they can pay their debt down to pre-covid levels in 5 years.  I do think that the new ship builds have been cutting into profitability.

 

Issuing junk bonds is more common than most would think.  Southwest Airlines issued junk bonds at a high interest rate to expand their business and routes.  I profited nicely from both their stock price rise and junk bonds paying a heft interest rate.

 

Now nickel and diming customers, ticking them off, and degrading the experience is not a good business model.

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.