sanger727

The retreat on Celebrity is the suite area. You can't purchase access for the day. 

22 hours ago, Anyislandwilldo said:

Do you remember how much these boats costs?  TIA

 

No, it was several years ago. But it was much less than the cruise line version. 

Here is a recent tripadvisor post about this service

Boat transfer from old port to Oía ? - Santorini Forum - Tripadvisor

14 hours ago, zitsky said:

 

Lots of sensitive people here who can’t read that it was my husband who wanted to cancel, not me.

 

no, we read that. You are 

1. Traveling to an area of the world that most people will never visit 

2. Complaining about traveling in a celebrity suite which most people can’t afford

3. Comparing a celebrity boarding experience to viking

4. giving your husband the ability to decide that waiting a couple hours to board outweighs taking a fantastic trip in a suite

if my husband wanted to boycott over this, I’d invite him to stay home and not ruin my trip

When you get onboard they will usually have a port day special with a sampler of treatments. Like a short massage and facial. I would recommend looking for something like that.

aside from that, I would recommend a pedicure. With massages and facials; some people love them and hate them. Massage styles and masseuses vary so much by personal preference.  I personally love massages but when you try a new therapist it’s 50/50 on whether they are any good. I’ve never heard of someone disliking a pedicure. 

4 hours ago, mom says said:

If long lines at embarkation are a reason why you would cancel an entire cruise, have you considered arriving at the port terminal later in the day, after the initial scrum?

really. I can’t imagine cancelling a cruise over this. First world problems.

1 minute ago, Joanne G. said:

My former company’s health plan offered up to $200 per year reimbursement for such services as exercise classes, gym memberships, weight loss or smoking cessation programs - and massages.   I scratched my head at massages being one of their “healthy living” benefits, but they offered it and people used the benefit.  This was a regional southern WI/northern IL health insurance company.  

Nice. We have a healthy lifestyles plan that gives you reimbursement money. But it doesn't cover gym memberships, massages, or any of the things you listed. Just doctor's visits and prescriptions. 

12 minutes ago, Charles4515 said:

I will always try to book direct but I am not bull headed about it. Sorry 😀 Sometimes it does make sense to do a ship arranged excursion or even something like Viator. A small local operator might not be able to have a booking engine or take credit cards. Usually those request cash but some do use the middleman only. 

Agreed. We have found that some local operators, especially ones that that have contracts with the cruise line, won't sell tours direct. We booked an ATV ride in St Martin one year. There is only one ATV provider in the area, and they only book via third parties. We booked through viator and was extremely happy with the product. We actually started with the cruise line's tour, but at the first stop a new guide picked us up with a handful of other people and we had a much longer small group tour. It was roughly the same price as the cruise line's tour, but we were so happy to be on it. The number of people on the cruise line's tour was so large, they had to stop constantly for inexperienced riders to catch up. 

It is typically 90 minutes - 2 hours ahead of time. My personal risk tolerance would be to be there 3 hours ahead in case your planned transportation gets delayed. 

I'd like to know what health insurance reimburses massages! I can't even use FSA money for massages. 

1 hour ago, Mum2Mercury said:

Random thoughts, which contradict some of the above:  

- I've price-checked with travel agents, but I've never found lower prices. 

I think this really is cruise line dependent. I know a TA that can always get me lower prices than listed on Celebrity; but they can't beat direct with NCl or Carnival. 

On 12/17/2023 at 4:36 AM, CDNPolar said:

I understand and appreciate your situation and your desire for retribution, but next time, please, just walk away and protect yourself.  

 

 

In my area we have had a rash of lethal road rage incidents. Ohio recently changed most of the gun laws so that almost anyone can carry a gun without a permit and it can be carried in a car accessible to the driver. I walk away as much as possible from a situation where someone is antagonizing because you just never know if the person is unbalanced enough to become violent with very little provocation. It's not worth "being right" or standing up to someone. 

I appreciate your desire to stick to your workout routine. I work out daily at home and intend to work out daily on a cruise, but it never quite happens. 

On shore excursion days it ends up not being practical to workout around the port times. I have trouble sticking to my normal meal/snack routines and end up eating a weird times. There tend to be activities in the afternoon/evening hours that I like to do.

I would just encourage you to be flexible about your workouts dropping a bit on the cruise. If you are very fit, you will see literally no difference in your fitness level when you return home if you miss most of your workouts for a week. I can't help you feeling like a "fatty" in your head; but the reality is it doesn't matter. Any significant weight gain you see will be water weight and come off when you get back into your routine. 

5 hours ago, livingonthebeach said:

It is customary in the U.S. to give tips directly to the people that service you.  It is not customary in the U.S. to give tips to a multi-billion foreign corporation for them to distribute as they see fit. Whether the corporation uses it to supplement a shortfall in crew pay or gives it to their CEO as a Christmas bonus, is none of my concern. My concern is getting my tip money directly to those who offered me good service and are deserving of it. 

 

It's customary to give tips to people who serve you directly. And it's also customary for them to tip out people who serve you indirectly. The fact that you don't see that doesn't mean it didn't happen. 

3 minutes ago, Hlitner said:

For the folks we met, it was less about the cost than the fun, life style, and adventure.  I got the impression that none of them were dealing with severe money issues.  Keep in mind that with one exception (a lady we met on our EJ1 cruise) these folks generally spent more than half the year living on land (in various parts of the world).  The exception was a widow we met on the EJ1 who owned one of the "Condos" on The World cruise ship.  When we asked her why she was on the EJ1 (instead of just cruising year round on The World) she explained that The World can sometimes get a little boring :).  Given the cost of The World and her attitude, we gathered that this lady had no money problems and could afford just about any life style.

 

Hank

No, I don't think these people are doing it to save money. It's just a question of whether it's affordable at all.  I can see doing a condo in "the world" (not that we could afford the fees). I personally can't imagine not having a home of some sort. 

We have put a lot of effort and money into making our home our "happy place". Someone who would travel year round would be a completely different mindset and once i personally can't relate to. I enjoy traveling but nothing is good as coming home at the end. 

I've booked through Viator, but I avoid them when I can. I agree that booking directly with a tour operator gets you the best price and best tour. However, some tour operators don't book directly and I've had some decent tours through Viator. I try to avoid cruise line excursions unless the travel time is significant. 

This seems a little extreme to me. I guess if you went on a world cruise you could stay for awhile. If you are just piecing together B2Bs for months at a time, I think that would get a little boring with repeated menus, repeated shows, constantly having to add bookings to maintain that lifestyle. I personally like having a home base and can't imagine a traveling lifestyle competing cost wise. Our base expenses  for 2 are roughly $3,000-$4,000 a month.   A $500 pp cruise a week works out to $6,000 a month; not including internet or drinks.  Maybe if you are in a Retirment community it would be most beneficial cost wise 

4 minutes ago, asctony said:

Why is this based on ships rather than being an X line policy applicable to all ships.? 

There is usually a celebrity policy. And then some ships where the staff don't follow the policy to make their customers happy (and probably to get bigger tips). 

4 hours ago, Bree Payne said:

I need help - we have never done a Europe/Greece cruise and I need to know what is the best excursions to do in each port...

• Kusadasi (Ephesus), Turkey
• Mykonos
• Santorini
• Piraeus (Athens)
• Katakolon (Olympia)
• Messina, Sicily
• Naples (Amalfi/Pompeii)

I want to sight see as much as possible in each port. Thank you in advance! 

We took almost the same itinerary on Celebrity. In Ephesus and Athens we took cruise line tours of the ruins. Mykonos we just explored on foot, it's a very cute town. Santorini, when you get off the ship there are a ton of little boat companies that sell the same transportation. They take you by boat to the old dock, and then by bus to Oia. There are then buses available to take you back to Fira every 30 minutes or so. In Siciliy we went to Mt Etna. I'm not sure if you can still go there now or not. 

There's really "best" excursion; everyone has different interests. 

You can easily book everything yourself. That being said, I think that you can get a much better deal on river cruises via a TA than you can get booking direct. Alot of the mainstream ocean cruises are the same, although you may get bonus OBC or a gift from a TA. We used Avalon for a river cruise and saved thousands by using a TA. Now, the TA ended up being incompetent and a huge headache. But I would shop around for a different TA before booking direct. 

Also, I did get travel insurance once through a TA package. It was cancel for any reason at a great price. We ended up using it for a travel disruption and had no complaints about the insurance. 

27 minutes ago, Itchy&Scratchy said:

some tiny boat captain in a more or less impoverished Caribbean nation who ferries people to an island or a sandbar for $50 can hardly guarantee that.

 

Small boat Captains working independently don't usually make that claim. I've only seen it on big third party bookers like viator. We are fine doing independent excursions but do consider how far we are going from the port.

We did a private tour in Hilo to the Volcano National Park. While we were in the park there was an earthquake and a small eruption. We left the park immediately but our tour guide wanted to make the other stops listed on the tour. We asked about if anything could go wrong to get us back to the ship and he mentioned that there is one road that connected where we were to the ship so if it was damaged in an earthquake it would be difficult to get back. We all voted to head straight back to the ship. There ended up being several more earthquakes and a Tsunami warning. We still made it back before the ship's tour. 

Is there any chance you booked under one of the BOGO sales where they mark up passenger 1 to mark passenger 2 down to 50%? Maybe everyone was supposed to get the 79% back but the 90% and 34% made up the "on paper" fare difference.

59 minutes ago, livingonthebeach said:

 

How on God's Green Earth would they know which employee (if any) was responsible for a passenger removing the auto grats? 

They know which staff serve which guest. No, unless you complain about a specific staff member, they don't know which staff member triggered you to take off tips. But generally speaking, if you take off the wait staff tips, its reasonable to assume you were unhappy with your wait staff team. If you take off the room stewards tips, its reasonable to assume you were unhappy with your room steward team. 

5 minutes ago, not-enough-cruising said:

As the percentage of cruisers removing the auto gratuity grows, the employer has to see it for what it is- a message from the clientele. 

Maybe that is your perspective. auto gratuities aren't going away. The cruise line is using them to pay their employees so won't give that up. It's more effective for them to punish the employees whose customers remove gratuities to get them to encourage people to leave them on.

Yes, technically cruise lines are committed to make up the minimum contract pay. I used to waitress and the restaurant had guarantee us minimum wage and make up the difference if we didn't make that in tips. Do you really think they kept servers on that they had to pay? 

2 minutes ago, glentally said:

Your math and comparison is fuzzy and murky.  Let me help you.  So it's like you got $30 from the 

person in Cabin 3003 and your money from the tip pool is now $0.50 less than if the $30 was given to everyone!

You seriously believe that the employer doesn't hold it against the employee that their customers removed the tips? We live in different worlds. 

You can add this coverage prior to final payment with cancel for any reason included. So, yes, you can essentially add it at this point and cancel. It would probably have been significantly better if you hadn't declared this issue on the internet. Typically insurance won't cover any claim that you knew you had to make before you purchased the insurance.