FrankinPA

I'm currently booked in an aquaclass suite on reflection and plan on downgrading to save some money.

 

Looking at Sky Suite, or plain aquaclass room, instead of the new aq suite.

 

The sky suites aft are available, but they're all connecting. I typically avoid connecting rooms on ships, but I read somewhere that the design on celeb is different.

 

Anyone have experience in connecting sky suites...

 

or even aq class or concierge class connectors.

 

Should I worry, we want our privacy and don't want to hear neighbors or vice versa.

We were in Sky Suite 9376 on Reflection (pictures below). It is connecting only because there is a door out in the hallway that can be closed (has same type lock as your cabin) and that allows two adjacent rooms to leave their doors open and, thus, technically connected. There is no connecting door inside the suite and the only noise we heard was the flushing toilets. But those suckers are LOUD and you will hear them no matter where you are.

I think vickykay is referring to post #28.

Oh!! I took uktog's note to mean that he/she purchased the equivalent of 75% of the cost of the premium beverage package in OBC and then was consuming against that as a test to see if he really would have benefited by buying the package. Maybe I read too much into his note.

Maybe uktog can respond. I don't think he implied that he/she could buy OBC for 75% on the dollar.

Can you clarify buying OBC at a discount? never have heard of this. thanks.

Which posting number are you referring to? I cannot find a reference to that.

Hi Larry, now that is weird. When has there even be a Sr Officers

Party on sail day?

Hey Lois,

I think that is what Thom just posted so we will have to wait for him to give us the details. I would think that the officers would be a bit busy with other things as the ship leaves port. But what do I know???? :confused:

A clarification: no evening Elite Lounge the first [embarkation] night, and no evening Elite Lounge the day of the Senior Officers party [well I have had both the same day, but not on any recent cruise]. But I will quickly state that compared to what they had only a few years ago, I am very happy with the Elite offerings.

 

Thom

Great clarification. So you had a Senior Officers party on the embarkation day on one of your past cruises? That is weird.

Trying to figure out if we should get the beverage package as it's our first time as elite. We are on a transatlantic and will be at sea for 8 days total out of 14. I read they have espresso based drinks in the morning at the elite breakfast...are they the same as the cafe bacio? We love the coffee there...what other events will we be invited to as elite...Thanks for the help

Rita

Just depends on how much you want to drink. You will get espresso based drinks in the Elite breakfast which is open for several hours. It is the same quality as Cova Cafe but I have not been on an S class ship yet so cannot compare it to Cafe Bacio. I would think they are the same, however.

You will be invited to a 5-7pm cocktail party every evening, a Captain's cocktail party for all Select and Elite members one afternoon as well as at least one wine experience. So Elites have a lot of drinking opportunities that don't cost anything extra.

We plan on picking up two bottles of wine, but don't the CC and AQ's staterooms also get a bottle of sparkling wine in the stateroom?

 

Also, do we need to bring our own corkscrew? Can we bring some Tonic or Sprite for making wine spritzers?

I would recommend you bring your own good corkscrew. The ones in the rooms are the 10 for a $ kind which is a straight plastic handle and a screw vertical to it. In other words, you supply all the leverage. But don't put a corkscrew with a foil knife on it in your carry-on luggage. TSA takes them away (my experience). Not sure how you can hijack a plane with a 2.5 inch foil cutter but logic makes no difference to the TSA brainy folks.

Here is the wine list offered as part of the wine and dine Savor package. I pulled this down from the Celebrity website and it is the list we had on our recent cruise. http://media.celebritycruises.com/celebrity/content/celebrity/en_US/cel_pdf/Wine_Dine_Final.pdf

As you can see, many of the wines are not on Sloops wine list but we did have them on Millennium. Maybe the new list given to Sloop is not complete as there are other wines on board as part of packages.

The prices for the ones on the Sloop list are shown to the right.

Pinot Noir La Crema ($45)

Sauvignon Blanc, Brancott, Marlborough, New Zealand (not on list)

Riesling, J&H Selbach, Fish Label, Mosel, Germany ($27)

Pinot Grigio, San’t Helena, Fantinel, Fruili ($38)

Barbera D’Alba, Alfredo Prunotto, Piedmont (not on list)

Valpolicella Classico, Allegrini, Veneto ($33)

Bodegas Espana Autentica, Zeta, Priorat, Spain ($37)

Pinot Blanc, Erath, Willamette Valley, Oregon ($35)

Riesling, Selbach-Oster, Mosel, Germany ($47)

Albarino, Paco and Lola, Rias Baxias, Spain ($41)

Renacer Malbec ($68)

Chardonnay, Tenuta di Nozzole, Le Bruniche, Tuscany (not on list)

Chianti Classico, Tenuta Nozzole, Tuscany ($39)

Super Tuscan, Tenuta di Argeno, Prima Voce, Tuscany ($43)

Chateau Castera, Haut-Medoc, Bordeaux, France ($41)

Sancerre, Michel Redde, Les Tuilieres, Loire, France ($45)

Pouilly-Fumé, Michel Redde, La Moynerie, Loire, France ($41)

Chardonnay, Sequoia Grove, Carneros, California (not on list)

Cabernet Sauvignon, Benziger, Sonoma, California (not on list)

Christian Moueix, St. Emillion, Bordeaux, France (not on list)

Chardonnay, Freemark Abbey, Napa Valley, California ($44)

Merlot, St. Francis, Sonoma, California (not on list)

Pinot Noir, Byron, Santa Maria Valley, California ($47)

First of all, the price of wine is whatever the buyer is willing to pay. With the economy causing many people to dine at home versus restaurants, there is and has been a glut of wine on the market for the last 3-4 years. So wines by the larger producers are going at lower prices than they were a few years ago even though their transportation cost had gone up dramatically.

So if you don't buy the wine, it will go down in price.

For Celebrity, they are going to sell for it for whatever they can get. But there are some good deals if you want to also dine in the speciality restaurants. The Savory Package includes three bottles of wine and three dinner reservations for two people. The reservations would normally cost $240 (2 people x 3 dinners x $40). The total cost (including gratuities) of the Savory package is $279. So you have paid $39 for three bottles of wine from a list that is much better than the one the OP posted. And the wines are served in Riedel glasses - not the generic glasses in the MD. On our last three cruises, we had this package twice and it was a very good deal, if you are going to eat in the speciality dining room.

 

But now that you've brought up the Super Bowl, my view has softened a bit... to one of these :rolleyes:

 

Guessing the next day some of those folks were looking a little more like one of these... :mad::( (same face just going from red to blue... or green actually)

 

Cheers!

Hey Sloop, you should have seen them. (or maybe not:eek:) The next morning was disembarkation at Miami and most of these (young people especially) looked like a truck had hit them. I suppose they got their money's worth with the drink package. Unfortunately, the alcohol also brought out the worst in some people so ship security was more obviously present than they normally are.

Excellent analysis by Uktog. That is our view exactly. We would never drink enough to justify a premium package while being elite.

But some people do drink that much and they need to do this analysis for themselves. I remember someone posted on here a few months ago that they drink 16 beers a day plus many other cocktails and even some water with a few Red Bull's thrown in. We were on the Millennium on Super Bowl sunday and I am sure this person or many others just like him were on board.

Oh well! Need more Celebrity cruises I guess! I am not disappointed as I did not even know until I read that in this thread.

If you are in one of the suites, you may be extended elite benefits by the ship. Happened to us on only our second cruise. I think it might depend on how many other elites are on board but not sure about that.

 

Can someone tell me what the profit is on this package where the price per bottle is $ 35.98 ?

 

Is Celebrity aware of this ?

I buy wines all the time from distributors and the typical markup at retail is 40-45% depending on the vintage and availability/demand. Then Celebrity sells it in their restaurants and their prices are about twice retail, give or take a bit. So there is quite a bit of profit there. But not near as much profit as there is on distilled spirits. They would much rather sell you a cocktail.

My goodness, Sloop.

You did a ton of work. Thanks for the effort. I did notice one interesting thing on our recent Millennium cruises. We were in Select dining and had a Sommelier one night that was just convinced I needed to spent over $100 to get a good bottle of red. Everything I picked was just not appropriate in his opinion. Now I have been buying, selling and drinking fine wines for 40 years so this really got under my skin after a few minutes.

So I "fired" him and asked for the head Sommelier to come over for a discussion. When he arrived, he already knew about my concerns and he instantly recommended the Atalon Cab Sav from Napa 2004 vintage for $58. I agreed and it was wonderful. I see on your list that it is $84. That makes me wonder if the ships have a stash of such wines with a few years on them for public relations purposes. We also bought the same wine a few days later and our Sommelier at that table (not the one I had problems with) asked how we heard about the 2004 being available.

Am I safe is assuming that Jamie has arrived on MIL and is now Hotel Director?Be sailing her again on Feb.20th.

Yes you are. Andrew was on the Jan 28th sailing but then went on leave with Jamie replacing him. We really enjoyed Jamie on the Feb 2 and Feb 6th cruises. Very personable.

Where is the information on the wine and dine? We are going to be on a seven night cruise.

Thank you so much.

Here is the link. http://www.celebritycruises.com/aboutceleb/pressDetails.do?pagename=press_room_details&event_date=2011-07-06&event_type=press_release&sequence_code=A

Look at the fourth paragraph down.

That wine & dine package you purchased is fabulous:D. Where do we go to sign up for that one ?

 

Thanks in advance for your help:)

We had to do it on the ship. As soon as you board, there will be tables set up and manned to sell the various beverage packages. Just tell the wine seller that you want to buy the wine and dine package. They then took us to the SS United States and we booked our five dinners. They charged our on board account on the first night we dined there for the amount of the package.

This was described in the July Celebrity monthly newsletter.

On our recent 15 day cruise, we purchased the five bottle wine and dine package. The total cost of $399 included five dinners for the two of us in the SS United States and the wine. We were able to choose from a list of very nice wines - some costing more that $70 a bottle. Since the five dinners for two would have been $400 anyway, the wine was free. How can you beat free?

They also have a three bottle wine and dine package. Not sure what it costs.

Wow thanks:D Look at those balcony's on the Celebrity Suites:):)

There were some great shots of the new CS verandas in Dan's talk on Friday. You can see his presentation on the Celebrity facebook page. Very nice addition to that suite.

Hi everyone - I see that most replies to this thread have come from people who have cruised in the Caribbean/North America. I'm still hoping that someone has had some experience with packages offered by MSC/Europe. Any takers?

Thanks ;)

Hi, welcome to cruise critic. Each cruise line has its own section on this site. You are on the Celebrity Cruises section now.

It would be better for you to ask on their discussion page. It is here

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=80

I suspect that they have changed the process. I just returned from a cruise on Friday and Celebrity did not provide a paper statement. Everything was updated and available via the account section on the TV. I missed the list of drinks that I received with my package, but I did not want to go to the Desk to ask for a copy.

They may have just missed you. On Nov 11th, we received a hard copy printout in our room for everything thru noon that day. This was on a 15 night cruise so it was several pages. We did have some additional charges that last night and I confirmed those were correct on our TV system just prior to disembarking.

Hi everyone. I've been reading through page after page of posts on these boards. Thanks for all the helpful info. One quick question... I'm cruising for the first time ever in about 24 days (yeah, I've got a countdown on my phone). I've pretty much decided on getting the classic beverage package. My question is: If I purchase the package while on the ship, does the last "day" on the ship count as a day that I must pay for the package? My ship gets back to FLL at 7am. Surely they wouldn't count that as a day and charge for the beverage package, right?

Hi Scott, welcome to Cruise Critic. You have jumped into a pool of people who love to cruise and we all have some facts and a lot of opinions. As I understand it, a cruise is listed by how many nights it is and that determines how many equivalent days you pay for the drinks package. On a typical 7 night cruise, you will be gone parts of eight days but will pay for 7. For example, if you board on a Saturday at noon and arrive back on Saturday at 7am, that is 7 nights but you have parts of two Saturdays.

If my understanding is wrong, just wait a few minutes and others will correct me. Enjoy your first cruise.

Hey, thanks, FranklinPA. That's fascinating. I love to hear about engineering marvels such as that. Does that apply to the shower water as well?

Yes it does. But the water is soft so expect to have to rinse a lot to get the soap off. The water quality was one of several pleasant surprises we had on this past cruise. I would never buy Evian as long as I had access to the ship's water.

We will be on the Infinity in May and the Summit in September. They are both being "solticized." Does that mean that the Infinity will no longer have the SS United States restaurant? Will either of them have Murano. We were on the Equinox last March and Murano was fantastic.

 

Also, could someone please tell me, what is the Molecular bar and which ships is it on? I think I have missed something.

 

Thank you so much.

 

GiGiAnn

The SS United States will remain on Infinity. They are adding Blu, Qsine, Bistro on 5, Cellar Masters and re-doing the bars. No Murano as far as I know.

I was dreading going through all 14 pages of posts to find out the cost, so was really glad that I went backwards and found it on page 12. DH will absolutely love this - he drinks sparkling water at dinner, plenty of drinks, and this way we won't have to bring a case of wine with us from NY to Alaska. I guess choosing Celebrity over Princess (his choice) is looking even better.

Celebrity limits the amount of wine you can bring on board at 2 bottles per cabin. So don't bother bringing a case anyway unless you plan to drink 10 bottles before you board the ship.