AstoriaPreppy

I can attest to this... last year I received *two* casino comp cruises out of LA on Celebrity The first one was offered when we sailed NJ-Iceland in 2022. Coming back to our cabin one afternoon, we found a letter saying we both had a casino comp for later 2022/early 2023. The letter specifically noted this was a book on board only offer. We both assumed it was a mistake, as we are very (very) low-level gamblers, but the future cruise desk confirmed the offer and we jumped at the option. Coming back from that cruise in January, we received an immediate bounce-back offer for ANOTHER cruise in the next few weeks. I ended up jumping on this offer again, as they offered me an aqua class cabin that I took as a solo cruiser (working remotely from the ship that week). The staff was very confused that I was back only two weeks later, and many remembered me by name. TBH, we also received casino comps on Carnival in 2022 which we certainly weren't qualified for (~$100 loss over the course of a 7 day cruise). As best as I can tell, this was a combination of unfilled capacity along with an algorithm trying to identify potentially new high-rollers/high-spend gamblers to receive more comps in the future.

I'm not going to speculate publicly on what this similar-name relatives did, but it's clearly bad enough to be a major red flag for the US government (not Carnival). Carnival didn't target your husband, the Department of Homeland Security did when it got the passenger manifest, your husband's name popped up, was immediately flagged, and then flagged again because of an incorrect DOB. You might as well have entered his name as "Jerry Nothingsuspicioustoseehere" on the manifest. It behoves you to make sure this doesn't happen again, not a cruise line or airline. If the government flagged your husband once, there's a good chance it could happen again on another line/flight. You're very bent out of shape over shared bus fare (on a bus that everyone else in your party used to board the cruise). If I knew I shared the same name with someone on a federal watch list, $280 in bus fare would be the furthest thing from my mind... I would be tripping over myself to make sure getting flagged by the feds didn't happen the next time I wanted to take a vacation! TBH, in the time you've spent griping on this forum, you could have instead applied for a redress number for your husband. It's likely that this might happen again on another line or flight in the future, it's completely free, and will guarantee your DOB mistakes or paperwork snafus won't ruin any vacations in the future. https://www.dhs.gov/dhs-trip

A few notes for non-New Yorkers: 1) It's illegal for a yellow cab to not use the meter. The only flat fare route in the city is JFK to Manhattan (not vice-versa). 2) It's also not legal for a yellow cab to turn down a ride if they're accepting fares. That is, the cab driver can't turn you down because they don't like the destination. Legally they have to take you, and use the meter. More details on cabs in NY here: https://www.nyc.gov/site/tlc/passengers/taxi-fare.page

There is 100% an easy solution to make sure this never happens again: get a redress number from the US Government. From what I've read, it sounds like your son and/or nephew may have 1) both the same name as your husband, and 2) some past legal issues that would get them flagged by Homeland Security or the TSA while traveling. Redress numbers exist for people in these situations: you apply, then DHS does a background check and verification to make sure person X is not person Y (who is getting flagged). They then issue person X a number to use when flying/sailing in the future to make sure they're not mistakenly flagged as person Y. In this case, you could have just given Carnival that number when checking your husband in, and all of this would have been averted.

When Oasis-class was developed, they were way too large for typical cruise ports... ie, Ocho Rios. Not in a beam/draft/length size way, but in a getting people on/off efficiently way. That's why ports like Falmouth were developed. Royal could build a massive facility to their specs, and move a lot of the typical stuff that happens when re-boarding a ship (queues, x-ray, security, etc) off the ship and onto the landside space. It's become common practice now, but when those ships were launched at the end of the 00's, it was revolutionary.

Hmmmm... maybe that's the case for us as well? I don't remember seeing details about a coach before, but it's absolutely in there now. Here's the description: --- Overview Berlin is about a 2.5- 3 hour train ride. Throughout the journey, your escort will provide you with water and light snacks, Berlin city maps, and an "emergency kit" with essential phone numbers to prepare you for your exploration activities in Berlin. Your escort will also inform you of your departure time and location in Berlin. After a day of exploring on your own, you'll take the train back to your ship. The coach will transport you from the arrival/departure train station to the city center. Highlights Explore Berlin at your own pace. Discover your own Berlin—see the Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, or browse the city’s unique boutiques and shops. Sit back and enjoy scenic views of the northern German countryside on a relaxing train ride. Important details and advisements During the transfer to/from Berlin guests will be escorted and assisted by an English-speaking host. Guests may be required to pay between 50 cents and 1 Euro to use the public toilets. Guests must be at least 18 years old to consume alcohol. Alcohol may be served, please drink responsibly. Please note that shops are normally closed on Sundays in Germany and only souvenir shops will be open. The train ride between Warnemunde and Berlin is approximately 2.5- 3 hours each way, subject to daily train traffic conditions.

Heading on a Celebrity cruise this summer, stopping in Warnemunde for the day. We’ve booked Celebrity’s Berlin on your own by train excursion, with pickup in Warnemunde on the chartered excursion train. One question: I’ve seen *multiple* reviews, comments, complaints and gripes across multiple lines, mentioning the drop off and pick up stations in Berlin being different for this excursion. However, none of these comments mention which station the train stops at on arrival and where it leaves on departure. Most of the times it’s an exasperated passenger saying “no one told us” or “we were so confused and had to take a taxi,” etc. Does anyone know specifics? It would certainly help us plot out our day in Berlin knowing what station we’ll start the day at and what station we’ll conclude.

Had the employee in question ever stopped to chat with passengers, I would have asked her 😉

We experienced this on the Gem in the Adriatic in August. Multiple nights the main theater was dark, or showed a five year old movie as the evening entertainment... meanwhile Emma was slogging though another round of Deal or No Deal in the atrium. TBH, we wondered if cruise directors have a revenue goal to hit now, so she moved the programing to the atrium to try and sell more cards? While we overall had a great trip, I will say that we found Emma to be one of the weakest cruise directors on 30+ sailings we've taken; completely disengaged from the passengers outside of her public address announcements and intros at shows. I've never seen officers sprint out of an elite guest reception faster than that sailing. It was like the 100 m at the Olympics.

If the ship arrives at 8 am, you should have no issue getting to Kyoto by 10:30... the trip to Kyoto from Osakako station takes around an hour, with two transfers. Even if you're slightly delayed arriving or disembarking, there's a lot of buffer time.

One note on tours. In early May, you'll probably have daylight until around 10 pm, which gives you a lot of opportunity to see a lot, even with a 2 pm arrival. Also, if you're a seafood fan I'd recommend the Arctic Char, which is sort an Icelandic cross between salmon and trout.

Ships dock in Reykjavik (no tenders), and you can come/go as you please. Re: tours, you have plenty of options. As mentioned below, the "Golden Circle" is the standard tour out of Reykjavik: Gulfoss, Geysir and Thingvellir, where the North American and European plates meet. Very manageable in a day. Re: a food tour... Iceland is an amazing country, but isn't really known for their food. It's expensive, limited, and largely underwhelming (despite what YT creators trolling for likes say). There's a reason Icelanders eat the most candy/chocolate/licorice per capita of any nation in the world. Current volcanic activity in Iceland is near Grindavik and the Blue Lagoon, not anywhere near the Golden Circle area.

Ravenna at least has some spectacular things to see... some of the best preserved byzantine mosaics in the world. Rijeka, not so much. We ended up getting diverted to Rijeka after all Venice stops were canceled by the line on our Gem cruise last year, and TBH it is absolutely a "stay on the ship" sort of port. Croatia is amazing (Split, Dubrovnik, etc) but Rijeka is just a dud.

We're going to be on the Silhouette this summer... could you expand on the areas that need attention?

Just off the Meraviglia a few days ago: 1) We found the YC dining room to be fantastic... never crowded, great service, and elevated food. The one specialty dining we thought was well worth visiting was Hola Tacos, where you can order a-la-carte, or all you can eat for $18. Butchers Cut was good, but we had particularly poor chaotic/poor service. Kaito Sushi was very good for cruise ship sushi, and Ocean Cay was excellent, but especially on a 7 day cruise I don't know it would be worth eating outside of the YC, especially at dinner. Maybe a lunch or two? 2) We didn't try streaming anything other than music on this trip, but found the internet generally stable otherwise. FaceTime calls were fine, but absolutely compressed and not high-res like a home wifi or 5G network. I will say that trying to receive/send photos in messages on an iPhone was laborious, and would take several tries to get working. 3) You definitely do not want to be in a cabana outside of the YC area on Ocean Cay... you'll loose easy access to the Ocean House restaurant, butlers with towels, waters, drinks, snacks, etc. We're big cabana people on private islands, having done them on Half Moon Cay, Princess Cays, Labadee, etc. We didn't find it necessary to do a cabana on Ocean Cay. The private beach has tons of umbrellas, padded loungers, etc, and if you need a break/extra shade you can just hop up to the lounge space outside of the Ocean House. There's the added benefit of having a shuttle drive you directly from the ship to the YC space, instead of waiting in the crowd or walking to your own cabana. 4) Gelato is an extra charge from the Jean Philipe shop in the galleria/promenade. There is soft serve on the main pool deck, but we avoided going out there as much as possible. That said, butlers will often do an ice cream/gelato service on the YC pool deck in the early afternoon on warm days. Ultimately, it comes down to how you want to spend your vacation. We spent most of our time eating at the YC buffet for breakfast and lunch, and then lounging on the sofas on the YC pool deck for hours reading. We'd head out for activities or lunch sometimes during the day, but ended up spending much more time in the YC than we expected, especially because the rest of the Meraviglia was so chaotic... we only made it to the real buffet for about 20 seconds one afternoon, and then late at night if we just wanted a slice of pizza.

Same. After using the app to check in for our Meraviglia cruise earlier this month, my account has been locked out from the app, website, etc. The only way I was able to access anything for the cruise or use the app was by using my booking number (not my username/password). There's no way I can check my voyager's club points earned for the trip, etc. From what I've gathered, MSC's IT backend is notoriously poor, and there's not really a good way to resolve the issue. I've heard that calling MSC directly can help resolve, but I haven't tried that yet.

This provides great context! The space is still configured with dining tables and seating but they're completely unused. Only the chairs and cocktail tables surrounding the stage are used for seating. At the two shows we went to, there were maybe 50-60 people max in each audience. The lounge is only used for the shows, which only happen at night and only with the blinds drawn. It's inaccessible during the daytime, which makes me wonder what you'd do if your muster station was there? Currently, the two shows on the Meraviglia seem to be produced in-house by MSC under the "Carousel Productions at Sea" banner. "House of Houdini" is the more avant-garde, Cirque-style show, while "Rock Circus" is a bit more direct, but still features cirque style performances. From what we could tell, the performers in the Carousel lounge shows perform exclusively in those productions, and never appear in any other entertainment offerings onboard. The singers and dancers were notably better than the performers in the Broadway Theater shows, which I guess justifies the fee. The space, technologically and design-wise is amazing... tracks in the ceiling for performers on wires, rotating lighting rigs, elevators up and down for the performers to enter in, LEDs, fog, snow machines, turntables etc. It's a shame they aren't really using it much now, other than the two nightly performances.

@PistolPete13 We were also on this journey, and echo many of your thoughts as first time MSC cruisers. Based on talking to people on other lines, we booked the Yacht Club to give us a bit of a buffer from some of the issues. The weather theme for the trip seemed to be wind, constant and strong. It's not normally like that out of NY, having done the sailings out many times. Oddly, we didn't seem to get much of the up/down rolling, hitting waves motion, but more of a pitch/yaw sort of shimmy that seemed nearly constant some days. We're not normally remotely seasick, but one of the days I had to bust out the emergency Bonine with our location high and forward in YC. The Meraviglia didn't seem to handle the winds well... I'm still shocked we were able to dock in Ocean Cay. We found the ship itself very impressive, but there were some quirks. Our inside YC stateroom was completely lacking in storage, other than two closets. If not for our packing cubes, I'm not sure where we would have kept 11 days of underwear/socks, much less shorts, pants, shirts, etc. We also found it odd that there was no nightclub/disco on a European ship, only to discover that the aft Horizon pool doubles as a nightclub, even in cold weather. We also noticed some major maintenance issues with the LED screens on the ships, including panel failures and glitching that was especially noticeable in the theater. We found the Carousel Lounge to be... oddly underused? It's a massive space, with huge windows, a giant bar setup, and views off the stern... that is only open in the evening for two paid shows with all the windows covered? Overall though, the ship seemed well maintained and staffed... including an inordinate number of activities staffers who seemed to be a constant presence, and were constantly hosting trivia, dance parties, karaoke, etc. We thoroughly enjoyed the YC, and found the rest of the ship to be chaotic, but at the most random times and places. We've been on 20+ cruises, and never experienced *anything* like what we saw on the Meraviglia. TBH, we've sort of chalked this up to the passenger mix and some cultural differences. We were present for the screaming fights at the $10 knockoff sale, and also heard reports of the fruit hoarding and mussel-fist fight in the buffet. The theater seemed to be a hotbed of bad behavior. Lots of coming in 10 minutes before the end of the show, shoving over everyone in a row to get to two open seats, then deciding you hated the show and leaving after 5 minutes sort of stuff. Overall though, we enjoyed ourselves, and will be back to MSC in the future. The YC was a welcome respite from the rest of the ship, but we enjoyed having the chance to get out and socialize whenever we wanted... we met lots of fantastic people, and it's been years since we had such a good people-watching cruise. We were also surprised by the "there is no flavor" comments we've seen on CC, as we found the food in/out of the YC to be consistently well-prepared. The specialty dining we went to was across the board better than NCL, especially Hola Tacos which we wish we'd visited earlier on in the trip (to make some repeat stops), and the Carousel lounge shows are actual do-not-miss entertainment. We also didn't seem to have any of the issues with bar service I've seen reported, although we were never able to get into the Edge cocktail bar as it was constantly mobbed (especially with half of the Champagne bar having been converted to casino space. We'll absolutely be back to MSC in the future!

The weird thing is that when I log in using my booking number, it only shows excursions… nothing else for the trip. And notably, at least one of the ports has all the excursions listed, but an error code pops up each time you attempt to book any of them, saying there’s no availability. Just to make sure, I did a password reset, and it still doesn’t work on the website or app. Same “wrong country” error code. But I am able to log into the app using my booking number. This happens across platforms (desktop, iPad, iPhone) and browsers (safari, chrome).

I have been getting the same message for weeks, and there doesn’t seem to be any resolution. The MSC website is spectacularly awful. We’re sailing on the Meraviglia on Monday. Had zero issues with the MSC website until I tried to do check in using my phone, which has somehow paralyzed my account at msccruisesusa … but I was still emailed my check-in docs? The whole thing makes no sense. TBH, each time I see some Zenith-plus cruiser who only stays in suites on Celebrity complaining about abysmal X’s website is, I just laugh knowing how uniformed they actually are…

One of the things we *don't* enjoy on Celebrity sailings is that they don't add local food/beverage options on the ship when sailing in a region. Compare this to Princess/HAL, where they make a point to bring local beers/MDR food when sailing the world. Japan especially is VERY accessible without a tour guide from most of the ports via public transportation. For example, in Osaka it's a 5 minute walk to the elevated subway, and you can just head out from there. Immigration when returning to Japan after Busan was... a mess to be honest, excruciatingly slow. I think part of this may have been that Typhoon Hagibis was heading towards Tokyo/Yokohama, and the line gave passengers the option of departing early in Aomori (instead of staying onboard to our final overnight and cruise end in Yokohama). Mass transit is very easy and reliable to use in Japan. Yokohama to Tokyo is $3 or $4, and takes about a half hour. That said, I'd highly recommend staying in Tokyo, as it's one of the world's great cities. I could not disagree more with this. Almost every single port we visited in October 2019 on the Millennium was walkable to mass transit and tourist sites. This was very much unlike a cruise in Europe where you're in a major industrial port requiring a shuttle just to get out of the port. Is Celebrity using Osanbashi now? We'd hoped they would on our sailing, but we were at the temp terminal on the other side of the bridge, on what we derisively called "parking island." It actually made us glad we didn't stay in Yokohama, as the port was completely inaccessible by foot/mass transit from the city... only shuttles/taxis.

As far as I know, the only common cruise ports/lines where beverage packages are not immediately available for use after boarding are Carnival departures from Manhattan, and all sailings from Galveston, TX. Our NCL sailings from NY and Royal/Celebrity sailings from NJ always have the full beverage package usable immediately on boarding. The Texas departures are particularly weird, as they have to use state-approved liquor bottles with Texas ABC stickers on them and a very very limited menu of specific mixed drinks, beers and wines. As soon as the ship reaches international waters, they lock the Texas liquor bottles in a special cabinet behind each bar, and then the pull out the full spread of alcohol for the rest of the cruise.

I can't say enough good things about the Revolutionizing the Millennium and Summit received. They didn't just replace wall coverings and carpeting in the staterooms, they gutted them down to the wall studs and completely rebuilt them. They are fantastic. In addition, many other places on the ship received full renovations: the buffet (while not fully serving islands like the new ship) was overhauled, the MDR space was refitted to look much more modern, the Rendezvous lounge is bright and a revelation compared to the dark former space, etc. Contrast this with the Constellation's sister ship Infinity (which we sailed earlier this year). The staterooms were in disrepair, seating, fittings and carpeting worn, and lots and lots of lighting that just didn't work throughout the ship. You'll find a lot of people on CC who will tell you how great the Connie and Infinity are, but I can only guess there's a level of nostalgia shaping those perspectives. Objectively, the Infinity was not up to current Celebrity standards. We would happily sail on the Summit/Millennium again... and have regularly recommended that people avoid the Infinity if they're expecting a well-maintained ship.

The one thing I've always found confounding about Royal Caribbean is how bad the pizza onboard is. Princess, MSC and even Carnival blows Sorento's out of the water. I'm not sure if it's a proofing issue or a recipe issue, but the dough on Royal ships always seems so... industrial/food service in both taste and texture.

Some fascinating Great review, but this is literally the first time I've ever heard someone say a Celebrity mast grill burger is better than Guy's burgers on Carnival! That's the hottest of hot takes!