Diamond/Elite on RCCL/Celebrity - considering Azamara - what do I need to know?

[*twinkle*]

Considering Azamara for a South Africa cruise in January.  I realise they are no longer part of the RCCL/Celebrity gang.  What do I need to know?  Not sure if I can even transfer my status now - has that ship sailed? 😁

 

Also, would you book direct or with a TA?  I'm hoping for some good OBC etc.

 

Any hints/tips gratefully received.

[Dr H]

Sadly, since the divorce your RC status is now gone with Azamara. You gave up a free bag of laundry every week of cruising, along with a significant percentage off the cost of their slow internet. You abandoned one or two cocktail parties. You lost about 10-20% discount on spa treatments. You lost a low percentage off the price of a future cruise booked on board. My guestimate, you lost between $50-75. worth of on board credits. Actually, the loyalty program is nice, BUT the overall level of everything on Azamara, service, food, alcohol is so excellent that loss of status doesn't mean very much in the end. As for bookings, you probably know that currently Azamara is extremely difficult to work with because of IT problems. On board service has not been affected, but reservations/stuff than needs to be done on the ground is not what it should be. Normally we book through our Big Box Store travel agent, it can still be done, but it's tough. However, most recently I've booked on line on the Azamara web site, no issues at all. You have several weeks to contact the travel agent of your choice, and switch over to whoever you choose. MAKING a reservation is easy. Followup can be a bit problematic, but hardly impossible. At the moment, cruises are offering a $300 OBC, the "free nights" or $$$ off for the next person is really smoke and mirrors. My bottom line, we've been sailing with Azamara since 2010, and have been on several Celebrity cruises since then. We have NO plans on abandoning Azamara anytime soon. Their current problems will be worked out, eventually. The quality of their product does not have to change. Read the fine print at the bottom of their web site, and have a wonderful time.

[lisiamc]

As @Dr H says, you haven’t lost very much by not being able to use your reciprocal status. in your shoes, I’d book through a travel agent, preferably one that has experience with Azamara. The new IT system is slowly getting the kinks taken out of it, but it’s still very useful to have access to an agent’s expertise.

[ebtrip]

I booked through my online TA on a March sailing.  Fortunately, I sailed on Azamara in 2008, so since I am Elite Plus on Celebrity, my status was carried over to Azamara. Not too sure what perks Azamara gives Discover Plus, but can’t wait to board the Journey.  

[ECCruise]

2 hours ago, Dr H said:

 You gave up a free bag of laundry every week of cruising, along with a significant percentage off the cost of their slow internet. 

Just a heads up.  Not sure if you've sailed since the upgrade to StarLink, but the internet is anything but slow now.  We were able to stream (with no buffering or jitter to speak of) virtually every day of our 40 days on Quest in April/May.

[read2learn]

I am Elite with Celebrity. My first sailing with Azamara waas in June '22 and I had Discoverer status. When this reservation was made it showed as Discoverer also. Now it has been changed to Adventurer with a new number. i thought my sailing with Azamara was recent enough to retain my Discoverer status. Does anyone know the cutoff date? I have submitted an email to Azamara help but no reply as yet.    Thanks!

[Riocca]

9 minutes ago, read2learn said:

I am Elite with Celebrity. My first sailing with Azamara waas in June '22 and I had Discoverer status. When this reservation was made it showed as Discoverer also. Now it has been changed to Adventurer with a new number. i thought my sailing with Azamara was recent enough to retain my Discoverer status. Does anyone know the cutoff date? I have submitted an email to Azamara help but no reply as yet.    Thanks!

Cut off date was 1st February 2023, so you should be retaining your Discover status, best thing is to submit the online form that’s on the account website quoting your original loyalty number.

[Dr H]

EEC, I was not aware of the internet upgrade. Thank you, it is something we use.

[excitedofharpenden]

2 hours ago, ECCruise said:

Just a heads up.  Not sure if you've sailed since the upgrade to StarLink, but the internet is anything but slow now.  We were able to stream (with no buffering or jitter to speak of) virtually every day of our 40 days on Quest in April/May.

I was on Quest last month and the wifi was awful. Not sure if they had particular issues on the Greek Intensive we were on. I read so much positivity about Starlink so was very hopeful, but was really disappointed at the number of times it dropped out and we had no internet. 

 

I'd agree with others though. The reciprocal perks if you do get them aren't worth getting too excited about. The onboard experience for me is the biggest perk. 

 

Phil 

[ECCruise]

3 minutes ago, excitedofharpenden said:

I was on Quest last month and the wifi was awful. Not sure if they had particular issues on the Greek Intensive we were on. I read so much positivity about Starlink so was very hopeful, but was really disappointed at the number of times it dropped out and we had no internet. 

 

I'd agree with others though. The reciprocal perks if you do get them aren't worth getting too excited about. The onboard experience for me is the biggest perk. 

 

Phil 

What Ryszard told us is that when the Starlink is not at optimum, then the system automatically switches back to the original (and deathly slow) provider.  I believe that is also the provider that the crew uses if you hear them complaining about the speed, as we have.

 

But ours was fine 90+% of the time from Tokyo to Pireaus in Asia, Middle East and Europe.  When it was obvious that we were on the old provider, we didn't attempt anything bandwith intensive until it switched back (although we never went much above 3MPS, nothing like 1 or 2 of the other ships and mind boggling speed).

[Scots Caz]

I wonder if there are plans on Quest to fix this. Was looking at the transatlantic in November but need connectivity. Was on Onward transatlantic in February and it was great - I could get my bits of work done...may need to reconsider Quest and look at the Onward transatlantic instead. 

[ECCruise]

40 minutes ago, Scots Caz said:

I wonder if there are plans on Quest to fix this. Was looking at the transatlantic in November but need connectivity. Was on Onward transatlantic in February and it was great - I could get my bits of work done...may need to reconsider Quest and look at the Onward transatlantic instead. 

I can only relate the experience we had.  As @excitedofharpenden said, perhaps it was location dependent.

We were in the East China and South China Seas, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden (!), the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and it was 90+% fine. 

[wjfan417]

I was on the same cruise as Phil and agree that the wi-fi was terrible. It was a Greece Intensive from Athens to Venice.

 

Diana

[fruitmachine]

3 hours ago, Scots Caz said:

I wonder if there are plans on Quest to fix this. Was looking at the transatlantic in November but need connectivity. Was on Onward transatlantic in February and it was great - I could get my bits of work done...may need to reconsider Quest and look at the Onward transatlantic instead. 

Journey was similarly very slow in April.  But it was definitely running on Starlink, as a speedtest.net showed them as the provider.

[aliaschief]

We were on Journey for a month in June. They have Star Link working onboard. Wi Fi was adequate but in discussion with HD and Captain they stated Onward has newer technology installed and running and there WiFi is faster. I have to agree,  as last March in Caribbean we were able to watch Prime. Net Flick and You Tube Streams on Onward. 

Could stream at times  on Journey but not as reliable as Onward.

Location still plays into quality of service.

Progress and technology are improving the on-board Wi Fi experience. It can only get better.

[fruitmachine]

6 hours ago, aliaschief said:

Wi Fi was adequate but in discussion with HD and Captain they stated Onward has newer technology installed and running and there WiFi is faster.

Although Onward may have newer technology, I have my doubts that the age of the onboard WiFi has anything to do with the speed problems experienced.  Compared to the speeds we and others were achieving, standard wireless technology has been orders of magnitudes faster since before the ship was built.

[Grandma Cruising]

15 hours ago, read2learn said:

I am Elite with Celebrity. My first sailing with Azamara waas in June '22 and I had Discoverer status. When this reservation was made it showed as Discoverer also. Now it has been changed to Adventurer with a new number. i thought my sailing with Azamara was recent enough to retain my Discoverer status. Does anyone know the cutoff date? I have submitted an email to Azamara help but no reply as yet.    Thanks!

Your status will have stayed in place, it’s a website issue. My husbands account is wrong too, he’s down as being Preview with no points, whilst I’m Discoverer! When I rang Azamara to book some excursions I discussed this with the Azamara Agent and we discovered that his email address had got changed during the IT handover. The agent referred the issue to their IT department for me.

[Bobal]

14 hours ago, ECCruise said:

I can only relate the experience we had.  As @excitedofharpenden said, perhaps it was location dependent.

We were in the East China and South China Seas, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden (!), the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and it was 90+% fine. 

We were on Onward in the Caribbean earlier this year and WiFi was the best we'd had on any ship on any cruiseline we've sailed with. We're Discoverer plus and agree that, apart from a pretty good discount on WiFi, the benefits didn't count for much to us.

Edited August 6, 2023 by Bobal

[hamrag]

19 hours ago, *twinkle* said:

Considering Azamara for a South Africa cruise in January.  I realise they are no longer part of the RCCL/Celebrity gang.  What do I need to know?....

 

That their cruise experience is better than X or RC, no bells or whistles which works for the general Az gang. Despite being better, they are not as premium as they believe themselves to be. The MDR is generally fine, occasionally very good, but we mix it on alternative nights in the specialty restaurants which we much prefer.

 

There is a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong thread specifically about their disastrous new website, which I have actively avoided for the last couple of months, and many continually complain across various threads about their poor pre-cruise experience. We sailed in May, and the onboard experience was similar to our first two sailings....for us at least, the pre-cruise issues that many report in no way impacts the cruise itself and we're booked on a November Transatlantic Lisbon to Barbados..

[excitedofharpenden]

27 minutes ago, hamrag said:

 

That their cruise experience is better than X or RC, no bells or whistles which works for the general Az gang. Despite being better, they are not as premium as they believe themselves to be. The MDR is generally fine, occasionally very good, but we mix it on alternative nights in the specialty restaurants which we much prefer.

 

There is a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong thread specifically about their disastrous new website, which I have actively avoided for the last couple of months, and many continually complain across various threads about their poor pre-cruise experience. We sailed in May, and the onboard experience was similar to our first two sailings....for us at least, the pre-cruise issues that many report in no way impacts the cruise itself and we're booked on a November Transatlantic Lisbon to Barbados..

I'd agree with everything you say. 

 

Phil 

[aliaschief]

7 hours ago, fruitmachine said:

Although Onward may have newer technology, I have my doubts that the age of the onboard WiFi has anything to do with the speed problems experienced.  Compared to the speeds we and others were achieving, standard wireless technology has been orders of magnitudes faster since before the ship was built.

But the Captain said!😁 All I can say the difference between WiFi on Onward compared to Journey was significantly better on Onward.

[excitedofharpenden]

17 hours ago, fruitmachine said:

Journey was similarly very slow in April.  But it was definitely running on Starlink, as a speedtest.net showed them as the provider.

Yes, my speedtest showed Starlink too when I did it. 

 

Phil 

[BrendaJ]

We just disembarked from the Pursuit this morning.  The onboard wifi was terrible for nearly our entire cruise.   We were in Norway and I assume our location was an issue.   On the Onward in January, the wifi was great.

 

For Norway, I think your best bet is to get a European e-sim.   We ended up using ours all the time since the onboard wifi on the Pursuit was pretty much non-existent.