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It was something like $150, and I gave an extra $10 tip (the maximum the Uber app allowed) for dealing with the complications at the Terminal. The cost was less with Uber than if the hotel booked it (IIRC about $200). It's been a hectic few days so I haven't had time to really write much, but I'll add some thoughts so far... I've had the Filet Mignon (twice from Blu and once from MDR) and Prime Rib (once from MDR and once from Blu). The servings from Blu were much better quality in all cases. The Filet from Blu was different each night - I liked the one with the reduction sauce better, but both were good. I've said this before, but I'm not a big fan of Filet Mignon in general, and never order it on land. The Prime Rib from MDR was tender, but there was basically no marbling... the one from Blu had nice marbling and was very tender - by far the best of all the beef I've had so far. Fish has generally been fine from either Blu or MDR, but certainly a bit better on average in Blu. If I were in MDR, I'd certainly pick Fish or Duck or Chicken before Steak. I personally do not like lobster, and have not liked it any of the times I tried it before... But the Blu oven-roasted Lobster was honestly very tasty, and the first time I've ever enjoyed it. I thought all the Lamb preparations in Blu were good. Duck was good in MDR and better in Blu. I didn't care for the Veal in Blu - and have personally found that it's very hit or miss on land as well (in my opinion). I didn't try it from MDR since I assume if I didn't care for it in Blu, I probably wouldn't like the MDR preparation either. I had breakfast in Blu a few times, the omelettes, juices, parfaits, etc were great. The breakfast I had on Jan 1 (New Years Day), honestly the Eggs Benedict was overcooked and just "Bad"... but I'll say in fairness, the crew was probably as sleep deprived that morning as I was, so I'll give them a pass on that. I don't normally eat Eggs Benedict anymore, and mostly just wanted it as a hangover cure before going back to bed. All-in-all we have been very happy with the menu from Blu, but both DW and I like to have variety. I've heard other people complain because they just want steak every night. Given the schedule of early morning events (eg: Glaciers in the Beagle Channel - 5:30AM, Cape Horn - 6:00AM, early morning excursions with meeting times at 7AM or 8AM) ... and the mix of New Years Eve staying up until 1AM... I'm unfortunately a bit exhausted right now. Of course that's nobody's "fault", but just the nature of the timing of when each of these things happened so close to eachother. Hopefully in another day I'll be fully recovered. As a result of this, though ... I haven't seen most of the evening shows I did see the Cellist (Andrei Cavassi) in his theater concert... IMHO this was the best performance I've ever seen on a cruise ship. Unfortunately for anyone on the next cruise, this was his last performance before he left the ship to work on making a music video. I'll upload a video of part of his performance on the Eclipse shortly. (With his permission). I saw the show Amade and Rock City, and enjoyed both of them. The singers and dancers are of course very talented... I've heard that the other performances that they put on were also excellent, and hopefully will get to see them on the second half of the B2B. The ship did run out of some provisions along the way. We ran out of mushrooms on Day 9 or so, and small bottles of Evian maybe one day later. There are still large bottles of Evian available at some of the bars. It looks like the small bottles of Pellegrino are also mostly gone but available at some bars. Large bottles of Aqua Panna and Pellegrino are available at Blu [but not Evian, even on day 1, strangely] The food in the Buffet varied a lot from meal to meal, day to day. For example, at lunch today, they had excellent freshly made on board Salmon Gravlax (a.k.a Lox or Smoked Salmon, depending on your background)... Honestly some of the best Lox I've ever had. For lunch time on January 1, they also had a lot of specialities out, though I didn't eat a meal ... but they did have a chocolate fountain where a staff member would dip freshly cut fruit or marshmellows for you... Was excellent. The chocolate fountain was out again for lunch today. At dinner today in the Ocean View, by comparison, the selections weren't nearly as impressive as they were at lunch on the same day. The internet service unfortunately leaves a bit to be desired... I have a background as a network engineer, and it appears to me that the issues are not so much caused by limitations of Starlink, but rather limitations of the ship's network. The wifi access points are placed very far apart from eachother in the hallways with the guest cabins, and the cabins themselves are essentially a Farraday Cage with metal walls and doors. Even having a room directly across from an access point, my wifi signal was weak, and I can't imagine it would work at all if you were 6 rooms down from mine. In addition, it appears that there was a lot of congestion in the 'core' network on the ship before reaching starlink (for any network nerds, you can run a 'mtr' from your laptop and see that the high latency and packet loss starts multiple hops before reaching the public internet, and if you ping the ship's public IP from a server on land, the latency/loss stays reasonable, indicating that this congestion is entirely on-ship. The captain today mentioned that the ship will go for dry dock in April 2025 for 3 weeks. He is only personally aware of and involved with the maintenance to the ship's propulsion, noting that the bearings need to be replaced in the Azipods... but that there will be approximately 2000 people working on the interior of the ship at that same time. We did the excursion "Destination Highlight: Peninsula Valdes Nature and Wildlife". We saw penguins and elephant seals. It was a great experience. We did the ship excursion hike "Small Group: Magallanes Forest Reserve Trekking" at Punta Arenas which was great (but somewhat strenuous if you are not in reasonably good shape ... but anyone who could wake a few miles and climb a few flights of stairs would probably find the trail reasonable). We did the ship excursion for Tierra Del Fuego National Park in Ushuaia. The nature was very pretty, but even with the 4 hour excursion it felt rushed. The 8 hour excursion to the park was sold out by the time I booked. There was no cell service there, so I'd be very cautious about using anything other than the Ship's excursion. We also did the ship excursion "Destination Highlight: Petrohue Rapids & Lake Todos Los Santos". While the waterfall itself is beautiful and I recommend visiting it, honestly, I'd say that anyone who is going to get a mobile esim for cellular data anyway (as I did) ... avoid the excursion and just use uber to get yourself to and from the park... or book a 3rd party small group excursion. There was decent enough cell phone coverage, and being in such a large group really took away from the experience... or book the longer 8 hour excursion rather than the 4 hour excursion, as it is less rushed and also includes some time in Puerto Veras (which looked like a beautiful city as we passed through) The glaciers in Beagle Channel were stunning (THANKS @mahdnc !!!) Celebrity certainly could have managed some things better: Our excursion in Ushuaia returned late and dropped us off next to the ship just before the official gangway up time.. along with multiple other busses from other excursions. The line was long and took about 40 minutes to get on board the ship while it was cold and windy... And the ship was only operating a single gangway. It seemed to me like it would have been fairly trivial for them to operate a second gangway (as they did in another port on the same cruise) to get people on board faster. Though honestly, this wasn't too big of a deal -- but I do think it's fair to note where they could improve. The ship's schedule (both printed and the app) NEVER noted times like the glaciers or cape horn. The cruise director on the night before the glaciers said after the show something to the effect of "We don't get to Ushuaia until 10AM so there's no reason for you to wake up early at all ... so make sure to enjoy the excellent entertainment we have going all the way until after midnight". If it wasn't for @mahdnc I wouldn't have known about the glaciers. I asked Guest Services what time we would pass the glaciers, and they said "I don't know, probably around 7AM". I said "I heard it might be really early, like 5AM. I don't mind waking up at 5 if there's a reason, but if I set my alarm for 7 and missed it, i'm not going to be happy, can you find out for sure?" She called the bridge and informed me that it would be around 5:30 AM. There were maybe 20 other passengers out on the deck to see it, and it is honestly a huge shame that people missed this. I complained to Milos about this, and it seemed that he understood that this was not right, and that evening the Captain announced Cape Horn's schedule in his briefing, and Milos started speaking from the Bridge over the ship's PA system at 6AM. It looked like probably 1000+ people were in public areas to see this, so clearly if there was an announcement, more people show up. At peak times, the bars get very overloaded. Eg on NYE, I waited over 20 minutes to place an order for a drink twice. Once at around 11:30PM, and again around 1AM. We were informed how the B2B will work at Buenos Aires. Basically they are breaking up all B2B passengers into groups with 15 minute time windows to show up at the Sky Lounge to get processed and re-checked in on turnover day. My time window is 8:00 - 8:15. We were given transit cards today (multiple days in advance) and allowed to come and go as we please after this process on turnover day as it was any other port day. We were told they need our passports for Falkland Islands, and offered to either keep holding it (they had it since Day 1), or to let us have it back if we needed to rent a car in Buenos Aires and then turn the passport back in later on. We were also informed that a percentage of passengers from certain countries will need to have an actual interview with immigration, which was apparently a surprise to those passengers. One of the passengers who was informed of this was from Moldova. USA passport has no issues though. They didn't say the list of countries that get the extra scrutiny. The staff actually acknowledged that they know things went poorly in Valparaiso [you can see other people complaining about it in other threads, if you want] and that they were taking measures to make sure lessons were learned for Buenos Aires... though they also acknowledged that Valparaiso will continue to be a challenging port in the future due to specific issues with that port.

Yes, I did have a 1:1 chat with him, which was interesting. He goes out of his way to make himself accessible by hanging out in the Sky Lounge almost constantly for anyone who wants to talk with him. Amazing amount of energy to do that all day. It's also interesting how he is such an entertainer on stage, but is much more quiet/nerdy on a 1:1 basis. I'd assume he has done a lot of practice to become such a great entertainer. I've personally taken a lot of Improv comedy classes to learn how to have a better stage presence even though my natural mode is a lot more quiet/nerdy.

I have heard this advice before, and believe it may make sense for other terminals, but I suspect this is valid for Valparaiso and other 'exotic' cruise embarkation locations. The reason why is because: 1) People who come earlier are much more likely to have done the early check-in (and therefore have a higher chance of being prepared for boarding at the terminal with their passport already scanned, already taken the medical questionnaire, bag tags attached etc .... Later in the day, the staff will be dealing with a higher % of people who need their hands held. There is very limited staff in a small location like this. 2) There is a concept in computer science referred to as "Head Of Line Blocking", which basically means that things can progress very quickly when most requests/users are easy to process, but if you have say 10 threads (staff processing customers), and 5 of them are dealing with people who need their hand held, the line will slow down even with plenty of 'easy' to process customers ... as time goes on, the likelihood of each thread (staff) being stuck with a difficult customer increases until eventually all 10 threads are stuck, and now the whole line stops moving, even if half the line has 'easy' passengers... 3) People are much more likely to try and do an 'excursion' before embarkation in a location like this ... go out and visit Santiago or Wine Country or a walking tour of Valparaiso or something like that ... and show up towards the end ... Probably almost nobody does this in Fort Lauderdale or Port Canaveral.

It's a fact that Valparaiso is a tiny cruise port compared to places like Miami, Seattle, Southampton, Civitavecchia, etc... The Celebrity Eclipse is *BY FAR* the largest ship to visit Valparaiso in 2023, and it only visited ONE TIME. On any given weekend, they might have a couple of visits from smaller cruise ships like Viking, and maybe at the most one cruise ship with 2000ish passengers. This particular route (Valparaiso to Buenos Aires or Buenos Aires to Valparaiso) is only done by Celebrity 2x total per year as part of repositioning. It's Absolutely a rare cruise, and it's amazing that some people can't appreciate that they are getting access to something that is so rare and that not everything will be as smooth as you expect in highly developed markets.

A few updates ... I've been eating dinner at Blu every night. I'm not really a big fan of Filet Mignon, nor do I eat Prime Rib too often... but I know these are frequently talked about on this forum, so I figured I'd give it a try. Appetizers: Blue Cheese Souffle (Blu menu) - Great Organic Roasted Red Beets (Blu menu) - tiny cubes of beets, mostly arugula ... I normally love this dish at restaurants on land, didn't care for Celebrity's presentation Caprese Salad (Blu menu) - good Tuna Tartare (Blu) - Okay, but I've had better on land Salmon Tartare (MDR) - Good Escargot (MDR) - Good Cucumber Gazpacho (Blu) - Excellent Kale crusted Mussels (Blu) - Good Crisp-Fried Mozzarella Sticks (MDR Lunch) - Okay Carrot Cumin Gazpacho (MDR) - I did not like this, DW did like it. Entres: Pan Seared Filet Mignon (Blu) - excellent (though I don't eat Filet often, so steak snobs may have a different opinion) Dijon Salmon (Blu) - excellent Aged Prime Rib of Beef (MDR) - okay Teriyaki Duck Breast (MDR Lunch) - excellent Ocean View Caffe: Salad good Indian good Protein choices good Drink service slow Overall about the same as every Celebrity cruise I remember being on in the last decade Deserts: Generally good in Blu (which afaik are the same as MDR) Cafe Al Baccio cakes were hit or miss Ocean View Cafe pastries/cakes hit or miss Christmas special mango cake and pistachio cake were very good Drinks: Cocktails/Martinis as good as ever on Celebrity Spa Cafe vegetable juices as good as ever on Celebrity Cutbacks on the wine menu was noticeable. In the past I had an Ice Wine as a desert wine by the glass under the premium beverage package which is no longer available The Taylor Tawny 10 year was acceptable but nothing amazing Rosa Regale, I didn't enjoy it, but DW did Coffee service at Cafe Al Bacio has had a line most of the time we used it, but we never waited more than 5 minutes or so. There was an officer helping out serving the cookies/pastries today to move the line faster since the staff was overworked. The coffee quality has been great, and DW has been having them make weird custom concoctions which they have been happy to oblige even with being busy. Entertainment: We missed the magic show 😕 hopefully it will be on the next cruise as well. The naturalist speaker Milos Radakovich is very entertaining. I read a lot, so honestly most of what he says is not new information for me personally, but he speaks in a very entertaining way, and I'm sure for people who don't read as much, he is very informative. I enjoyed hearing him speak even though I didn't personally learn much. We did watch "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" in the Celebrity Central room. Decent sound quality and projector (though a bit small). Seats are not super comfortable for a 2 hour long movie. The Staff: It's clear they are short staffed, overworked, and have had a lot of turnover. Everyone is of course trying to deliver a great experience, but I'm sure it's not easy on them. I've also seen customers acting rude more than once, and I always feel bad when I see this ... I wish customers treated the staff better.

Thanks for the advice! I’ve seen the Fjords in Alaska before, and remember the drill or being forced to wake up super early or miss the cool sights, but didn’t know when to expect those events on this cruise.

Flight: My trip started off in Florida, along with my DW. I flew on AA from MIA-SCL. Unfortunately all business class seats on this route were sold out months in advance. I tried using an American Airlines System-Wide-Upgrade certificate (Based on my frequent flyer status), but as the flight was sold out consistently and nobody missed their flight, I had to fly in my Main Cabin Extra seat as purchased. I hate redeye flights, and I rarely fly in economy on long haul flights. This wasn't a fun flight, but thanks to a sleeping pill, I got 4 hours of sleep (better than zero!). If I had a do-over, I would have flown MIA-EZE (Buenos Aires) and taken a short flight EZE-SCL, since there was tons of business class availability to EZE. Santiago: We arrived at the Hyatt Centric Santiago took the day easy in Santiago, recovering from the long flight. We walked around up to the entrance to the park to see San Cristobal Hill, but decided not to actually go up and instead to go back to the hotel and take a nap as we were both exhausted. After the nap, we ate at the french restaurant at the Hyatt Centric. Absolutely fantastic, and highly recommended to anyone who loves french food. Yes, I know, Kinda weird to eat french food in Chile, but it was amazing. Santiago Day 2 - we planned to go back to actually enter the park by San Cristobal Hill ... unfortunately, there was a wildfire, and we were unable to enter the park. Instead we spent a few hours just enjoying the view at the Sky Costanera, the observation deck at the tallest building in South America. beautiful view. We had a few cocktails at the bar there, and enjoyed it as well. I had to take a few business calls (I'm never really on vacation), and ultimately that was my day. We had some Ceviche for dinner, which my wife enjoyed (I'm personally not a huge fan of Ceviche). Boarding the Celebrity Eclipse - Day 1: I had read in advance that the Valparaiso "Cruise terminal" was very complicated. Lots of negative reviews on Google Maps and tripadvisor... This is an industrial port which mostly serves cargo/container ships, with very few cruise ships (and the Eclipse is by far the largest ship which will visit in all of 2023... and it only visits one time in the whole year). I took notes from the comments/reviews and planned my day around what I learned. I scheduled an Uber XL in advance. I scheduled it for a 10AM pickup (expecting to arrive at 12 Noon), with the destination set to "Valparaiso Terminal de Pasajeros" (in Spanish). If you pick "Valparaiso Cruise Terminal", it will point to the actual terminal building, but unfortunately the roads are not mapped, and it will therefore direct you to the closest road which is on the opposite side of a major train station... Since I picked "Valparaiso Terminal de Pasajeros" in Spanish, it actually directed my driver to the *actual* entrance to the port area. The driver showed up 30 minutes early at 9:30, we got moving at 9:40 and as there was no traffic, we made it to the waterfront area very early by 11:20. The driver got a bit lost (The signs are very confusing, even for locals!), so we didn't actually make it to the cruise terminal until 11:40 - with the help of me pointing out on the map how to actually enter the port. Once at the terminal, a contractor who worked with Celebrity very kindly pointed out that the bag check was next to the terminal building and not inside - we walked over there and saw a long line of people who did not print their bag tags dealing with chaos ... I printed my bag tags in advance and had them all properly attached to my bags, so we walked around the long line, handed the bags over to someone with a Celebrity nametag, and were on our way back into the terminal in under 5 minutes. Inside the terminal, we joined a long line marked "Check-in". After about 5 minutes waiting on the line and it barely moving, an employee walked up to us (at the back of the line) and asked if we already had an Express Pass from checking in online. We did. He scanned it and his iPad told him that we already fully checked in, entering our passport info and taking the health questionnaire properly... He informed us that almost a very small % of the passengers actually does the online check-in properly, and that there was no reason for us to wait on the Check-In line. He pointed us how to walk around the line and immediately get on the bus and head towards the ship. Within 5 minutes we were on the bus and moving. There is a 15 minute long ride through the port (which I found fun ... getting to see lots of industrial equipment moving around tons of cargo... maybe I'm weird). Then at the ship, a very short line to get on board. Once on board, there is a long line to check in our passports (since it is a one-way cruise to Argentina). The staff inform us that only one member of our group needs to stay with passports, and the rest can enjoy the ship. I send my wife off to the room so she can drop off bags and relax a bit while I deal with the line. After a few minutes, some staff member announces that we need to have the Visa form with the QR code given to us by the Chilean immigration when we entered the country. I already have mine properly folded in next to the identification page of each passport, so no worries ... but I hear what seems like the entire rest of the line say things like "I threw mine away, I didn't know I needed it" or "I have it crumpled up somewhere at the bottom of my backpack" or "My family member who left has it, and I have no way of contacting them"... So, there's a long line of people in front of me who are ill prepared, but once I get up to the staff, it's about 30 seconds to hand over my documents and get a receipt... I'm not sure what happened to the people who threw their Visas away. The line was about 45 minutes, and By 12:40 I'm at the room. By 1:30 I've had a few Evian to quench my dehydration, and DW and I watch the workings of the port ... again, we are nerds, and find this fascinating for about 20 minutes. At 2:00 we make it back to the room, our bags have been delivered. We start unpacking (we used compression cubes for the first time on this trip to make our packing more organized, and it worked fantastic! I highly recommend it!) By 3:30 I am completely unpacked and my DW is mostly unpacked. I head down to the Martini bar to have a cocktail, and then back to the room to get a bathing suit and use the sauna for a bit. At this point, I look out at the line to board the ship and it is massive. Gangway is supposed to be up at 4:30. I talk to the first set of other passengers in the elevator back to my room... People are complaining "I'll never ride celebrity again! I can't believe how disorganized Celebrity is!" I respond "The port is very confusing, it's an issue for any cruise ship that comes here." They respond with more complaints ... I'm not really interested in losing my positive vibe, so I continue on to the room and then the sauna. I spend 45 minutes in the Sauna... and now I'm writing this post! Dinner at Blu was great. We had a mix of orders from the Blu and MDR menus, and enjoyed everything. The captain announced that the waves will be "mild" tonight and will be "rough" tomorrow. Compared to what I remember from my most recent Alaska cruise, it's already more wild tonight than what we had in Alaska ... will be very interesting to see the Drake Passage in a couple of weeks! For anyone who's read this far and is planning on doing this cruise (Valparaiso to Buenos Aires) or Valparaiso to Los Angeles in the future... If you plan things in advance, there's no reason for it to be stressful ... but if you don't ... well, it will be what it will be. I'll post comments as I go if people are interested to read along.

Absolutely you should complain about it, and it'd be good if you got at least a token amount of compensation... All of the cruise lines (including Celebrity) react to complaints. If you don't complain, they don't know it needs to be addressed. If there's some compensation, even a token amount, that means it's more likely for them to actually look at the issue.

I’ve noticed this before and agree it’s less than ideal… but compared to the Edge class having the gym above the Thermal Suite, it’s not nearly as big of a mistake. it’s really quite amazing sitting in the sauna, zoning out in a mindset of peaceful trance … and then someone drops (what sounds like) a 100lb dumbbell directly over you.

What’s your review half way through the cruise? Other than the supply chain issues, all is good?

That’s unfortunate. I suspected it might happen on this cruise as well as the following one (which I will be on), since it’s a one-off route for repositioning, none of the ports are going to be great spots for getting provisions. The next one (which I will be on) I suppose is probably going to experience this even worse since most ports are tender and extremely remote and likely cannot resupply at all.

I absolutely would not book Aqua if Blu was not included. It is in fact the primary reason for booking AQ for me.

I agree completely. I haven't cruised in anything below Aqua in many years, but the last cruise I had on Celebrity ... the other people at the MDR really had absolutely nothing in common with me, and the conversation was really boring. I found myself dreading having to go back to that table every day. In Blu or Luminae, sometimes conversations happened with the adjacent tables, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I liked the people, sometimes I didn't. Overall, I think the way Blu does things is the happy medium, and I'm happy that the Edge class ships have essentially made that the default for all 4 MDR venues as well.

If it doesn't appear in the app / website, you need to call. If you have any sort of status that you can match to Celebrity, do that first, and mention your level (Classic, Select, Elite, Elite Plus) to the people on the phone in case there are any discounts which apply. On Celebrity, the upgrade package is called Premium. Unfortunately for you, there was just a deep discount sale for Black Friday/Cyber Monday which was something like 50% on most cruises for the upgrade to Premium... but it's now expired.

Is there really anything stopping you from reserving it at the paid rate for the one night and then canceling that reservation and instead taking it with the unlimited package?