Celebrity Solstice - Pacific Coast Itinerary in Jeopardy

[slidergirl]

I was just about to pull the trigger on the Solstice cruise.  Losing Monterey isn't a big deal to me - I was going to stay onboard, anyway.  BUT, the overnight in San Francisco was the big thing for me.  I've done an overnight before in my favorite city on a cruise and this was the thing that drew me to this one.  

Has anyone received a notice about a change to the Solstice itinerary?

 

as for Monterey, bravo!  I'd rather not have a few thousand people have to get tendered into town for a few hours, either.  

[Jim_Iain]

10 hours ago, phoenix_dream said:

I'm not sure I agree. Monterey is one of the most desirable ports on that route. To have that permanently deleted would be a huge loss. Maybe as a Californian it doesn't matter to you as much as you can easily drive there.  I can tell you to me it matters a lot. Santa Barbara is very nice as is Catalina Island but Monterey and their fabulous aquarium tops them all.  I'm not saying it would necessarily make me never book a coastal again but it might be the tipping point depending what the alternative ports were.  We already don't have a lot of ports on our March sailing and if they just added another sea day I will be one very unhappy camper.

 

I guess it is a balance between  potential for irreparable damage the fragile ecosystem as opposed to tourism.    I know it is a treasure in our back yard and disappointed that you may not be able to visit it.  

 

Monterey is an easy 2 hour drive from San Francisco so is not necessarily a blowout.  Many Points like  Le Havre to Paris,  London from Southampton etc are also distant ports.   With an overnight in San Francisco could be a fun overnight trip.

 

 

[Jim_Iain]

5 hours ago, Fly and Sail said:

California strikes again. 👻

Ok....  we also hug trees

 

[Jim_Iain]

On 2/7/2023 at 5:18 PM, cruisingator2 said:

Agree. We’re doing a PCC on the Solstice in the spring. Seven nights with an overnight in San Fran, Santa Barbara, San Diego and Ensenada. There is a way around if changes need to be made. 

 

You were luck they cancelled Santa Barbara and Monterey last year and we got Catalina Island.   Regardless we had a ball.     Crazy as it sounds I had never been to Catalina. 

 

Life's a journey and I'm only along for the ride.

[phoenix_dream]

14 hours ago, Jim_Iain said:

 

I guess it is a balance between  potential for irreparable damage the fragile ecosystem as opposed to tourism.    I know it is a treasure in our back yard and disappointed that you may not be able to visit it.  

 

Monterey is an easy 2 hour drive from San Francisco so is not necessarily a blowout.  Many Points like  Le Havre to Paris,  London from Southampton etc are also distant ports.   With an overnight in San Francisco could be a fun overnight trip.

 

 

But I guess I wonder if the ecosystem is really the reason.  As you know the ship tenders quite a ways out and do the small tender boats really damage the ecosystem? Maybe they do. If so I get it. But I also think too many of these ports are submitting to the "not in my backyard" selfish restrictions.  At the same time, the cruise industry 's continuously building mega ships I think is ruining the ports for everyone.  

[davekathy]

We've done the RT Pacific Coastal cruises from Seattle and Vancouver with Celebrity and RC. Monterey and overnight San Francisco were always on the itinerary. We've got an 8 night Pacific Coastal cruise RT from LA (San Pedro) on 8 October on the Eclipse we booked while on the Summit last September. No Monterey (bummer) and no overnight in SF.  We liked the overnight in SF as on the first day we would go over to Sausalito. Still a nice itinerary. 

.  

[mcrcruiser]

Add a day or two  for over night SF & one day   in Oregon  could be a solution 

[soniam]

I feel bad for anyone's itinerary that gets changed after they have paid in full. It's really a bummer. However, I have visited Monterrey. It's a beautiful, unique, and fragile place. I love cruising, but it's very damaging to the waters off the ports. If you have seen pictures of Venice's bay and canals during covid, you will see what I mean. Venice's other boats don't help, of course. I think Monterrey and the area is best visited by land. I love Venice, but I refuse to do a cruise that actually leaves out of there because of that. Not that you can do that anymore anyway. At some point, we have to protect what we have if we can. I must confess though, I really prefer sea days. Ports are fine, but a cruise with just sea days would be perfectly OK with me. Good luck to everyone. I hope your situations work out.

[terrydtx]

22 minutes ago, soniam said:

I feel bad for anyone's itinerary that gets changed after they have paid in full. It's really a bummer. However, I have visited Monterrey. It's a beautiful, unique, and fragile place. I love cruising, but it's very damaging to the waters off the ports. If you have seen pictures of Venice's bay and canals during covid, you will see what I mean. Venice's other boats don't help, of course. I think Monterrey and the area is best visited by land. I love Venice, but I refuse to do a cruise that actually leaves out of there because of that. Not that you can do that anymore anyway. At some point, we have to protect what we have if we can. I must confess though, I really prefer sea days. Ports are fine, but a cruise with just sea days would be perfectly OK with me. Good luck to everyone. I hope your situations work out.

We were in Venice last August for a cruise on HAL that departed from Trieste. Compared to Pre Covid, Venice was so much nicer, the canals were clearer, cleaner and didn't have the old stench of sewage from having the lagoon and grand canal churned up by the mega ships.

[curmudgeon98]

Well, that's a bit annoying, but not surprising.  To some degree, I think the cruise industry brought this on by bringing ever larger ships in to port there (like Solstice).  If they had stuck with smaller Seabourn/Oceania size ships it might not have come to a head.  Personally, I think the "ecosystem damage" was more talking point than reality, but that area is already overrun by hordes of tourists most summer weekends (and some other times, like the recent Crosby Pro-Am) so it's not surprising that residents are less than enthusiastic about cruise ships.

 

Santa Cruz has a small boat harbor in addition the a wharf, either of which could probably handle tendering operations, but I suspect the swells out where a cruise ship would be anchored might make tendering too often problematic.  A similar situation applies to most of the other small harbors along the coast.   

[terrydtx]

We are booked on the HAL Koningsdam Coastal California cruise RT from San Diego in November with a stop in Monterrey. We had planned on a private winery tour in Monterrey. I guess that stop is going away, but I would be happy with an overnight in SF so we could do a day trip to Napa.

[maggie.1008]

Our final payment on Oceania is today for our May Coastal Cruise and they have not changed our itinerary.

We are still tendering in Monterey but leaving one hour early. 

We will see if Oceania let`s us know any different.

[sunviking90]

4 hours ago, soniam said:

I feel bad for anyone's itinerary that gets changed after they have paid in full. It's really a bummer. However, I have visited Monterrey. It's a beautiful, unique, and fragile place. I love cruising, but it's very damaging to the waters off the ports. If you have seen pictures of Venice's bay and canals during covid, you will see what I mean. Venice's other boats don't help, of course. I think Monterrey and the area is best visited by land. I love Venice, but I refuse to do a cruise that actually leaves out of there because of that. Not that you can do that anymore anyway. At some point, we have to protect what we have if we can. I must confess though, I really prefer sea days. Ports are fine, but a cruise with just sea days would be perfectly OK with me. Good luck to everyone. I hope your situations work out.

Very well put. As the ships have gotten bigger, and there are so many more of them we will probably see more places decide they don’t want them. We don’t necessarily have a “right” to visit all these places by cruise ship just because we want to. I am one who also prefers sea days. We have taken many pacific coast repositioning cruises and as much as we have enjoyed our visits to the ports, we have also often done the shorter ones with All sea days or only one stop and find it much more relaxing. 

[Fietsen1]

As an aside, does anyone know about low long the tender is from the ship to the actual port in Monterey?

[davekathy]

18 minutes ago, Fietsen1 said:

As an aside, does anyone know about low long the tender is from the ship to the actual port in Monterey?

15 to 20 minutes to fishermen's wharf. 

[LarryHD2]

On 2/8/2023 at 11:47 AM, kguerriero said:

Not to poke the hornets nest but also wondering if this is yet another cost cut. Slower ships use less fuel.

Whale strikes are a real issue, and it's not just cruise ships but also all other ships.  Whale-ship collisions are currently a leading cause of death for large whales, and scientists estimate that over 80 blue, humpback, and fin whales are killed by vessel collisions on the West Coast of the United States each year.  There are efforts to try and mitigate this and keep marine traffic informed - https://boi.ucsb.edu/active_projects/whale-strikes

[Jim_Iain]

8 hours ago, curmudgeon98 said:

Well, that's a bit annoying, but not surprising.  To some degree, I think the cruise industry brought this on by bringing ever larger ships in to port there (like Solstice).  If they had stuck with smaller Seabourn/Oceania size ships it might not have come to a head.  Personally, I think the "ecosystem damage" was more talking point than reality, but that area is already overrun by hordes of tourists most summer weekends (and some other times, like the recent Crosby Pro-Am) so it's not surprising that residents are less than enthusiastic about cruise ships.

 

Santa Cruz has a small boat harbor in addition the a wharf, either of which could probably handle tendering operations, but I suspect the swells out where a cruise ship would be anchored might make tendering too often problematic.  A similar situation applies to most of the other small harbors along the coast.   

 

I guess anything is possible but having lived of 5th Ave a couple blocks from The Crows Nest in my hippie days, I really can't envision dumping 2,000 passengers in such a quiet harbor neighborhood which is 2 plus miles to Downtown or the Boardwalk.   Just my opinion, knowing the culture of Santa Cruz it would be frowned upon. 

 

[Jim_Iain]

duplicate post

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Jim_Iain

[Rtowncruiser]

11 hours ago, phoenix_dream said:

  At the same time, the cruise industry 's continuously building mega ships I think is ruining the ports for everyone.  

I agree with this. I avoid the Megaships. I prefer the Millenium Class ships but am sailing on the Solstice since it's the only Celebrity ship on the West Coast. I can't imagine the logistics of moving 5k people with tenders. And trying to go back on the ship all at once. Monterey is a small city and if you have visited the Aquarium and shops, there's not much locally without and excursion. Last time we visited Carmel by the Sea where we were married. (1974!)

[Buckeye94]

On 2/7/2023 at 6:51 PM, Jim_Iain said:

 

Monterrey sits within the Monterrey Bay National Marine Sanctuary -  One of our nation's most spectacular marine protected areas.  

 

I do not think that dropping Monterey from the Pacific Coastal will have any impact on Solstice cruises on the California Coast.     As a matter of tact at the end of Covid we did a back to back and both Monterrey and Santa Barabara were pulled an we had a fantastic cruise with port of Ensenada, Catalina Island and an overnight in San Francisco. 

 

 

Same. Pacific Coastal in 2019. Monterrey was cancelled due to swells, so we sailed into San Francisco early and got an overnight there! It was pure bliss. 

[phoenix_dream]

On 2/9/2023 at 6:46 PM, LarryHD2 said:

Whale strikes are a real issue, and it's not just cruise ships but also all other ships.  Whale-ship collisions are currently a leading cause of death for large whales, and scientists estimate that over 80 blue, humpback, and fin whales are killed by vessel collisions on the West Coast of the United States each year.  There are efforts to try and mitigate this and keep marine traffic informed - https://boi.ucsb.edu/active_projects/whale-strikes

I'm all for saving the whales. I just wonder how dangerous cruise ships are. Given their size, are whales (very intelligent creatures) really not aware of passing cruise ships?  I can see faster, smaller ships hitting them. I wasn't able to open the link on my phone. Maybe it addresses this.

[Ex-Airbalancer]

On 2/9/2023 at 8:53 PM, Jim_Iain said:

 

I guess anything is possible but having lived of 5th Ave a couple blocks from The Crows Nest in my hippie days, I really can't envision dumping 2,000 passengers in such a quiet harbor neighborhood which is 2 plus miles to Downtown or the Boardwalk.   Just my opinion, knowing the culture of Santa Cruz it would be frowned upon. 

 

Any different than dropping 2,000 passengers in Qaqortoq ? 

[Pear33]

was wondering if anyone has heard if this has affected the Solstice itinerary April 22 and April 29th, 

It still shows but i have just noticed the excursions are no longer shown on the cruise planner.  

[BlerkOne]

On 2/11/2023 at 8:34 AM, phoenix_dream said:

I'm all for saving the whales. I just wonder how dangerous cruise ships are. Given their size, are whales (very intelligent creatures) really not aware of passing cruise ships?  I can see faster, smaller ships hitting them. I wasn't able to open the link on my phone. Maybe it addresses this.

Google whales impaled by ships...

[sunviking90]

2 hours ago, BlerkOne said:

Google whales impaled by ships...

Yes, sadly it happened right here in Vancouver some years ago. It was a cruise ship.