ECCruise

You most likely will be fine. Would advise getting everyone involved before you embark re: the OBC to verify it is there. Once you are onboard it will become a nightmare if it doesn't show.

But as far as booking direct, I shudder to think how much more we would have spent had we not booked every one of our 50+ cruises with a TA. My guess would be somewhere between $15k and $20k, enough for a bunch of new cruises.

Just received a booklet from Celebrity in the mail explaining our status and the new tiers. Too bad they did not send this out sooner it would have helped everyone understand.

I am sure it has gone out to everyone. It tells you exactly what you can expect.

Maybe we will get it in the mail since we haven't received the email notification.

Which is, unfortunately, typical X/RCCL technology. Yesterday we both got a survey from Royal asking for our opinion on our "recent cruise"-- that we took in April of 2008!

Typical of too many concerns so focused on the bottom line that they lose all focus. They are saving a few dollars on quality IT/web development, but how many times that are they losing in excursion sales/specialty restaurant sales/beverage package sales. I would hazard the loss to win ratio is probably in the 1000 to 1 ratio. And the worst part is, they don't have any real way of gauging the loss.

We also have 10 cruises with NCL who give you just about nothing for that, a repeaters party is about all you get, but if the itinerary and price is right we would still book with them.

If you have 10 cruises on NCL, you might want to check your Latitudes account. You should be Platinum, which means:

Free laundry

Free dinner for 2 in a specialty restaurant (2 dinners if you and your cabin mate are both platinum) with a bottle of wine at each dinner

Sparkling wine in the stateroom

Behind the scenes tour (which on Dawn last month was the best we'd ever seen--better than what Princess charges $150 pp for)

Chocolate covered strawberries

We are Elite+ on X and Platinum on NCL and both of the programs are pretty darn good, but I don't feel that these are a "gift" from the cruise lines. They were earned by putting lots of money in their pockets. It is a win-win for both the company and us, which is the way American business used to be structured.

Hi Fellow Cruisers.

 

Have sailed on the Norwegian Jade recently in the Eastern Med and loved it a lot. Just wondering about jumping ship to the Celebrity Silhouette for our next Med Cruise in 2015. Not so sure about Celebrity although their ships look great. Is there much difference between these cruise lines??????

 

Cheers and Thanks. Bob.:):):)

We find the 2 lines are fairly different, although obviously there are similarities. We've done 20 cruises on Celebrity and 10 on NCL over the last 10 years or so, so we have seen changes in both. Our take:

Food: Overall, Celebrity wins hands down, especially if you are only considering the main dining room(s). More specialty restaurant choices on NCL and those are more reasonably priced. Contrary to what has been posted here, Celebrity does NOT only have set dining...Select Dining (when you want) has been around for years, or you can do traditional with 2 distinct dining times.

Ships: The Solstice class ships are stunning but don't really see a huge advantage over NCL here. The M class ships on Celebrity are getting a little long of tooth, even with "Solstistation" but still have lots of cool features.

Service: Yes, the service is generally friendlier on NCL, but we've found that once you get to know one of the service team on Celebrity, whether housekeeping or dining, and they see you don't need over-the-top attention, they loosen up. It is all in the training.

Itineraries: A toss-up. Neither shine in our opinion (Princess and HAL both are better here).

Can't imagine being uncomfortable on either line, frankly.

Is there a way to check that all cruises and points have been added to your account? Over the years we believe quite a few are missing. Started cruising with Celebrity in 1990 1 to 2 cruises every year. My points don't seem to add up and we never really bothered to look into it after we reached top tier Elite.

Yes, look on the "Sailing History" in the Captain's Club area on the website.

150+ nights on Celebrity and I think we have seen towel animals 2 nights.

On lines that do them on a regular basis, we tell the steward the first night that they appear that they no longer need to do them for our cabin. I guess if you've never seen them before, they are cute but after you've seen them once it, for us, is same old, same old. But the biggest factor is if it takes 5 minutes to do one elaborate creation and the steward has 20 cabins, that is 100 minutes, or 1 hour 40 minutes that could be spent in their crew quarters. For people who work 80+ hours a week, 7 days for 6+ months, that little extra added time could, at the least, be refreshing.

We've owned RCL and CCL for years and have reaped several thousand of OBCs as stockholders. Have a couple NCL cruises booked so looked into a quick purchase of NCLH stock.

Not.

Fundamentals are less than stellar, starting with an enormous debt load that is scheduled to increase with new inventory. Very few "buy" recommendations and lots of less than glowing analyst's reports. We would be the last ones to take analysts' advice too seriously, but this one we will mark a big "wait and see," especially with a measly $100 OBC across the board that has no combinability.

Difficult if not impossible task. We've done this at least a half dozen times, but never left less than 9 or 10 hours.

First, it depends on where the ship docks. If you are in one of the outlying berths (where we always seem to be) it will take a minimum on 30-40 minutes to walk to the station. Otherwise, you will have to take the shuttle and then walk to the station (that walk alone is 10 minutes). Then hope to time a train departure right (otherwise wait 15-20 minutes). The trip to Termini for us usually takes 50 minutes or more, so leave an hour there. You are at a minimum of 1.5 hours already, double that for return (living totally on the edge) and you will have 2 hours, at best in the Termini station area.

5 hours? Wouldn't think of it.

Try Dollar Tree. I swear I saw something very similar to what you described for sale there.