charliem

I'm the OP and want to thank all of you who took time to reply to my post. Hope your travel year goes well.

Charlie

I'm the OP and want to thank all of you who took time to reply to my post. Hope your travel year goes well.

Charlie

We will be taking an Alaska B2B cruise (Celebrity) out of Vancouver in July. Will be flying into Seattle, spend the night, then take the am track train from Seattle to Vancouver for the start of the cruise. The train schedule does not work for us for our return from Vancouver to Seattle. What are our other options? Our Seattle hotel is near the Seattle airport. We will probably have at least 3 pieces of luggage to check plus 2 (total) carryon's.

Thanks

Charlie

We will be taking an Alaska B2B cruise out of Vancouver in July. Will be flying into Seattle, spend the night, then take the am track train from Seattle to Vancouver for the start of the cruise. The train schedule does not work for us for our return from Vancouver to Seattle. What are our other options? Our Seattle hotel is near the Seattle airport. We will probably have at least 3 pieces of luggage to check plus 2 (total) carryon's.

Thanks

Charlie

I'm the OP and wanted to apologize for the misspelled word in my subject line. Should be "room" instead of "roof".

We have booked a cruise on the Millennium later this year and would like to know the inside dimensions of the room safes on that ship. We don't want to get there and find our valuables won't fit.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Charlie

We will be taking a family cruise later this year which will depart from Vancouver and ends in Seward, AK. One of our party will not be able to board in Vancouver due to the logistics. We are seeking information about him boarding at our first stop, which will be Ketchikan, AK. It appears that the Jones Act makes it difficult for our party member to board other than in Vancouver. Is there a work around for this? It appears that there is a $562 fine for departing or boarding this cruise other than in Vancouver or Seward. Can our party member board in Ketchikan simply by paying the $562 fine? What are the particulars of accomplishing this boarding?

Thanks in advance for the advice.

Charlie

We LOVE Alaska cruises, but have done 6 already. Have not done the new England routes yet.

 

The dates we held so far are Oct 4 - 13, 2018-- wondering about this as it will be hit/miss for foliage and hurricanes can happen, making for rougher seas? This is on Royal's Anthem of the Seas 10 day RT out of New Jersey--ports are Boston, Bar Harbor, Portland, Halifax, St. John, back to New Jersey.

 

We could do NCL Dawn 7 day one way starting in Boston --with ports of Rockland, Halifax, Charlottetown, Gaspésie, La Baie over then night in Quebec.

 

Anyone done both Alaska and New England cruises and have any thoughts or advice?:confused:

 

Thought we would try something new, BUT still considering Sept 23-Sept 30, 2018 for Alaska too. (would be Holland's Noordam 7 day RT out of Vancouver)

 

Having a hard time deciding what to do.

 

thanks for any advice you guys can give!!! :)

We LOVE Alaska too!! Have been 8 times (cruises, RV trip,etc.) and was scheduled for this summer but had to cancel due to a health issue.

Last year we did the Celebrity 14 day round trip out of Cape Liberty with an overnight in Quebec. We thoroughly enjoyed the NE/Canada itinerary!! We went during the first part of October and the fall color along the St. Lawrence was breathtaking!! Loved all of our ports.

We enjoyed it so much that since we had to cancel our summer cruise, we are scheduled on the Anthem of the Seas this fall for the NE/Canada itinerary again.

It is a wonderful trip!

Thanks Radio......love your "LIVE" review. Adds to the excitement of our Athem cruise in the fall.

Only 320 points from Elie Plus so hate to change although we really like HAL. Stupid reason but maybe X knows what they were doing with this whole loyalty program. Actually a great idea although the logistics are simpler on a B2B than X one way and HAL another.

PoppyandNana,

We just returned Saturday night from a B2B on the Millennium - our third B2B Alaskan cruise on the Millennium (our 8th Alaskan trip overall). And we could have stayed longer. As you can tell, we LOVE Alaska! 😍😍 I highly recommend the B2B as a way to extend this amazing itinerary.

Linda

We will be doing our 3rd B2B in cabin 3112 (Millennium) in a few weeks in Alaska. The last one in 2013.....we love these cabins!!

Linda

We would like to thank all of you for your replies and recommendations. Lots of good information on this forum, as usual.

Hope your travels this year are great.

Charlie

I second the idea of using travel books to learn about all the sights and activities available at each port. Borrow books from your library, then buy the one that is most appealing and bring it with you (study on the plane). You'll find that there is more available than what the ship is offering, and most things are easy as DIY.

We did a Med cruise 4 yrs ago and probably maybe spent $200. We used public transportation and did everything DIY. Between the books and tripadvisor we were able to see and do what we wanted.

Is the $200 per person?

Thanks for taking time to reply.

Charlie

My wife and I are planning an Eastern Mediterranean cruise for 2016 and are putting together a budget for the trip. We will be stopping at Santorini Greece, Athens Greece, Istanbul Turkey, Kusadasi Turkey, Mykonos Greece and Naples Italy. We understand that excursions and tours cost will vary widely based on the services provided and our tastes but we need an idea of how much to budget per day per person. Since this will be our first European cruise we will be wanting to concentrate on seeing the more popular places rather than high priced specialty sites.

Any advice you can offer will be appreciated.

Charlie

We wanted to thank all of you who took time to reply and offer advice for our 2016 trip. We are using your suggestions to better narrow down exactly what would be best for our needs.

We hope all of you have a great travel year.

Charlie

Do you have specific questions?

Are you wondering about the 4 pre-cruise days? the hotel? activities?

or are you more concerned about the cruise and excursions?

 

In case you don't get more responses borrow some Med cruise books from your library .... Rick Steves ,Ann Vipond, National Geographic, Fodor. They will provide you with info about the ports, sights, activities, etc.

 

Also go to the Roll Calls for the this years sailing .... often times passengers will post a wrap up of their cruise at the end. And the MEMBER REVIEW section is another place to check for feedback.

mapleleaves,

We we were really hoping that someone who had taken the tour portion of this trip and could offer their opinion. We have been able to get some information via our travel agent about the actual tour package. The more we read and research the more we are leaning towards flying into Rome a few days early and do a DYI tour.

Thanks for the input.

Charlie

My wife and I are planning a European cruise for 2016 and need some input from more experienced cruisers on this forum. We have cruised a good bit but never outside of North America so anything European is foreign (pun intended) to us. We have been looking hard at the Celebrity 13 day Rome City Stay/Eastern Mediterranean offering. This is a cruise/tour package where we spend the first 4 days in Rome then the remaining days sailing to :

Messina (Sicily), Italy

Mykonos, Greece

Kusadasi (Ephesus), Turkey

Rhodes, Greece

Santorini, Greece

Athens (Piraeus), Greece

Naples, Italy

Rome (Civitavecchia), Italy

We have taken a cruise/tour before so we understand that while it may be more expensive and not the ideal method of vacationing we think it will probably meet our needs best for this trip rather than doing the tour portion on our own.

If anyone here has taken this cruise/tour or has any knowledge about it, we would greatly appreciate you offering any input you can.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Charlie

We will be stopping in Grand Cayman on our cruise next month and have a few questions about 7 mile beach. We have been to G.C. before and have been to 7 mile beach but it has been several years and would like to know:

Where is the best place to enter the beach? We will mostly be relaxing and people

watching.

Are there chairs and shady areas available? We don't mind renting chairs or beach

umbrellas, just want to be sure they are available.

We would appreciate any advice you can offer.

Charlie

We will be taking an RCCL cruise departing on 9/14 out of Galveston and I am looking for info about covered parking near the RCCL terminal. I had decided to use ParkNCruise but they are sold out. Can anyone recommend another covered facility that is within a couple of blocks of the RCCL terminal?

Thanks for your help.

Charlie

Yes the first sea day (all day sea day that is) was Monday and was the first formal night. The second formal night was Friday. We didn't do formal this time so I can't comment on anything related to it.

Thanks for this info. We too are not doing the formal nights for the first time ever......hope there are no regrets on my part. We are making reservations at specialty restaurants for these nights as we plan on smart casual dressing.

This will be our first time at St. Kitts.......we have stopped at San Juan and St. Maarten several other times. Can you make any recommendations for "not to miss" places or excursions on St. Kitts?

Thanks again,

Linda

Silhouette Eastern Caribbean 3/2 through 3/9

I don’t know the ‘traditional’ way of writing a review, so I will simply try to categorize the important stuff and keep the trivialities at a minimum.

Check In: Almost smooth! Almost. We checked in around 1:30 and had some weird issues with my partner’s seapass card. They could not get his photo and card to jive together. My process was seamless; his took a total of five attempts before getting it to work. The girl at check-in kept taking his photo and running his card without success. We eventually had to go see ‘someone special’ at the far end of the check in booths. This special person was finally able to make it happen on try #4. Kind of. Because when we went up to board, the card still would not read. So some more behind the screen magic happened and then this was attempt #5, without knowing if it was really resolved. But….finally onboard. (More on this later!)

First impressions: WOW. We supposedly had access to our Sky Suite (9376) but we wandered around a bit first. In a word, I would say ‘modern luxury’ really does describe the décor. Not overblown, but with so much understated beauty and proportion. There was no overabundance of fake wood (which we are used to seeing on Princess ships) and no bright neon. The public areas were well designed in every aspect. Loved the tree in the elevator atrium!

Sky Suite 9376: This was our first time in a suite of any kind. Prior to now we have just done the usual balcony stateroom on Princess (and once on an unfortunate Celebrity Millennium cruise in 2003 that I won’t go into now. Suffice it to say that the Celebrity of 2014 is quite improved). Naturally we were blown away by all the space in this corner aft. The bathroom with a tub and shower (no clingy shower curtains this time) were a breath of fresh air. I loved the big porthole window on one side and did some reading while sitting inside it throughout the cruise. The balcony was a big hit. So huge and panoramic. We spent more time on this balcony than any other cruise we have taken. As for storage, we didn’t even use all that was available to us. I could not find a single thing to improve on this room. There were some rumors on Cruise Critic about soot on the balcony of these aft cabins. Yes, there was a miniscule amount on the way down to Puerto Rico, but it never collected on the loungers or table or even the deck; just a tiny little recessed area next to the glass. It is hardly worth mentioning and had no effect on our cruise. None. The room is quite a distance to the stairs and elevator, which was not an issue for us. We liked the privacy it afforded.

Service/staff: So, so different from what we experienced in 2003! FANTASTIC! Not one slip-up or negative; no not one. And so friendly! And funny! We both said to each other, “They must have a training class on sense of humor for every one they hire.” Everyone seemed to be having a great time on the ship and so happy to be doing their thing. Nicole was our room attendant, Singh was our butler. I can’t praise them enough. There are no words. They anticipated needs before we ourselves did. Clare at Guest Relations was quite funny. By this time, we realized that my partner’s card STILL did not work, so we went to her to get it sorted out. She produced a new card, we tested it out…and voila! On attempt #6 it did work! However…when he tried to use his card to get a beer, the beverage package verbiage was not on his new card…so we had to go back to Guest Relations again for a new one. This was attempt #7, and it did get resolved. Clare was so patient, apologetic and at the same time hilarious throughout this snafu.

Ports: Honestly, we did not book this cruise for the itinerary, but to try out an S Class ship in a sky suite. We had been to Puerto Rico and Saint Martin before, and loved these ports, but we had never been to Saint Kitts. We did not book excursions for Puerto Rico or Saint Martin; we just got off the ship and wandered around a bit in our favorite haunts. At Saint Kitts, we took the excursion to Brimstone Fort and to the Batik place. The fort was fascinating, and we took some beautiful photos there. Neither of us are into Batik, but we did walk around the botanical gardens that surround the place and got some great shots. There is a tree there that is over 400 years old! Probably in retrospect we should have done the zipline to avoid some of the cranky cruise passengers on the Brimstone Fort excursion. There was a big drama over someone sitting in a different seat on the van when we left the fort to go the Batik place. It was so ridiculous I won’t even bore you with the details, but we heard about the details for a good 45 minutes of the tour. We are not youngsters (both 57 years old) but some of our fellow passengers who are not much older seemed a lot less thrilled to be alive. I think the 400 year old tree we saw was a lot happier than this one woman who was so rattled about not getting her original seat on the van.

As I say, we did not choose this cruise for the ports, but for the ship.

Dining:

#A. Blu: I must say that I was extremely doubtful of all the great things I’d heard about Blu. I mean, how different could it be? But surprise! It was one of the high points of this cruise. We had wonderful waitstaff every time, but the standouts were Baron and Yasine. The maître de was Fernando. He could not have been more accommodating! I felt as if we were old friends within a few minutes. So…for the food here: What is there to say but that we were never disappointed in the slightest. My partner got the New York strip on two separate visits and pronounced it perfect. He is very particular when it comes to steak. We loved Blu so much we never even made it to the main dining room. Since we were in a suite we had the surcharge of $5 each time. SO worth it.

#B: Bistro on Five: This was quite a busy place. I had read on Cruise Critic that it seemed to be empty a lot, but not the case on our cruise…and as the trip went on, it became even more popular. Service was great once again, and the food was spectacular. We came here twice. I had the Buffalo crepe (spicy roasted chicken with blue cheese) and also the Mediterranean crepe (which I can’t remember the details about, but which was just as good). The desserts here are remarkable and different from what you get elsewhere on the ship. I would have loved to have tried breakfast here, but we didn’t get around to it.

#C. The Porch: Another place with a $5 surcharge. Worth it. I had the Reuben Panini and a Caesar salad. My partner had some kind of Tuscan/italiano Panini. A nice change from the buffet. The décor is fun too, and it’s nice to be more connected with the outside and the sound of the ocean.

#D. Oceanview Café (buffet): Best buffet setup by far on any cruise I have been on. We did not make it here a lot, as we wanted to try all our options…but it was so de-lish! My favorite thing here was a greek chicken salad to die for. I also did like the pizza, despite all the complaints I have read about. Perhaps Princess pizza is slightly better, due to their perfect crispy crust…but nevertheless, I thought it was quite tasty!

#E. I Forget What It’s Called But It’s The Burger Place: Much better burgers than Princess! We had them twice we liked them so much. Once again, great to have lunch on the little tables next to the ocean.

#F. Tuscan Grille And Murano: I am combining these together because my opinion of both is the same: Excellent in every aspect, and just as good as…but not better than Blu. I wanted to try them and was happy I did. Not disappointed in any way, but why pay more for something that I like just as much as Blu? Next Celebrity cruise I think we will just book Aqua Class and stick with Blu. Or we might eventually get to try out the Main Dining Room! If you book a cruise without access to Blu, then I would highly recommend either of these. If you’re able to eat in Blu, then I don’t see the point.

#G: Qsine: We had our free specialty night booked here. I was and am still fascinated by it, and will try it out again. It started out for us as great fun, but my partner accidentally ate some avocado that was in one of the dishes we chose, and he is deathly allergic. He became drastically ill within minutes and we had to cut our visit short. We will be back! We loved the lava crab and the disco shrimp, and the few other things we had before we made our exit. It is such a different concept, I think it is well worth the surcharge.

Entertainment: By far, this is the best cruise we have been on for entertainment. So much to do, and such high quality. All the onboard activities were wonderful, but the production shows….EXCELLENT EXELLENT EXCELLENT. As I have mentioned, we have been on many cruises, all but one on Princess, and enjoyed the majority of them, but this particular cast on Silhouette outshines them all. I majored in vocal performance and worked professionally in this field for several years, so I recognize great singers…and this ship has four spectacular ones! You will not be disappointed. Try to see at least one of the production shows if you can. My least favorite was the Cirque style show but that is just my personal thing. I don’t care for the genuine Cirque de Soleil shows, so it was hard to win me over on this one. I like the acrobatics; the gymnastics, the juggling. What I don’t care for is the nonsensical musical scores full of words that mean nothing. As I say, this is what the bona fide Cirque shows do, and Celebrity does it well…it is just not my cup of tea to hear gibberish sung. If you like Cirque stuff, you won’t be disappointed though.

SUMMARY: I suppose I could write more, but this covers all the main points that I’d be interested in if I was reading a review. We will definitely cruise with Celebrity again, and I can honestly say it was the best cruise experience ever. We will still go with Princess in the future, depending on itinerary…but yes, in a side by side comparison, Celebrity rules in our book.

Thanks for a wonderful review! I think the first sea day is a formal night - is that correct? Which day is the other formal night?

Thanks again!

Linda

Thanks for all the responses!

Linda

I called Captain's Club about this. The rep said that rules differ depending upon the type of promotion. She said that for the recent 123 promotion for OBC, you cannot withdraw money from the casino to use OBC, nor can you use your Seapass card to play. If you do either of these things, money will be charged to your account, but will not be deducted from OBC. As for OBC from the travel agent, if it was a gift, you can can use it in the casino. But if the agent gave you the money as part of a group promotion, then you cannot use it in the casino. Maybe someone will call another person at Celebrity and get a different answer. Who knows.

What will we be able to use the 123 promo OBC for? We are Select Dining so gratuities are pre-paid.

Thanks!

Linda

From someone who loves cabin 3112!! We were in this cabin last year on a b2b (Alaska) on the Millennium, have it booked again this August for another b2b and also have already booked for a 2014 Alaskan b2b cruise along with friends that will be in another one of these new cabins.

If you book one of these fabulous cabins, you will not be disappointed!!!

Linda

Linda, one reason I'm trying to get the Tracey Arm tour in on the northbound leg is so that I've got more time to fish DIPAC with Charlie on the southbound...surprise, surprise :) Barb & I are thrilled to be cruising Alaska with you and Charlie next year. Do you plan to go on the Tracy Arm Fjord tour this summer? If you don't, I'll let you know what I find out about reservations for the tour in 2014.

 

Finally, there's one other reason we aren't on the northbound leg with you. The ceo of Celebrity has banned us from being on more than one cruise with you & Charlie. Said something about having a issue with cleaning salmon in the staterooms. He didn't believe it when I objected, saying that all the salmon belonged to you & Charlie, and that I was just helping with the cleaning :)

Too funny!!

I may look into Tracy Arm for this summer......it is such a long excursion so not sure yet. I do plan to fish DIPAC this summer.......I fished there on the second leg last summer in pouring rain and still had a blast!!

Linda