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The_Big_M

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  1. Not defending the situation, or Celebrity's handling of the process. However, the reason given still is possible and potentially plausible. It doesn't have to be that it was a Penthouse Guarantee, but they may have sold any intermediate grades between Celebrity and a Penthouse as well, as a guarantee. e.g. a Royal Suite guarantee. In this case, they still couldn't assign that passenger booking to your Celebrity suite, so the only 'spare' one may be the Penthouse. It may even be that there had been an additional Royal suite when booked, but it became unserviceable for whatever reason. That would also do away with the speculation about them being a VIP - anyone could have booked that.
  2. Their bidding is to maximise revenue. They seem to place minimum bids based on similar amounts to the cost of the cabin. This is likely as they are sailing full on most sailings so there aren't a lot of empty cabins to fill in any case, and so the few if any available can be sold to those who have had a change of circumstances .e.g had a subsequent bonus, or extra cash now available for upgrade, or just the psychological separation between the upfront cost and the upsell (e.g. it's only x more, disregarding costs alread paid) or just availability when they booked i.e. they want that cabin type but it wasn't available when booked.
  3. Yeah, that was a weird one since the way the question was asked (that you can get your loyalty benefit level in one program when you sail on another) is already the case! But the answer seemed to hedge around just having a single program instead - but agree with you, that would be a bad thing since it would complicate benefits between ships i.e. you're xxx level but on Celebrity these are your benefits, and on RCL you have these benefits, plus mean an overall degradation of earning, since progression could potentially be much faster now - so to compensate they would have to slow down progression.
  4. For me, one of the big turn-offs was the answer about adding 2 types of wine to the premium package, and they're looking at adding some upsells - but she made out it was all such a big deal. One of the biggest disappointments of my last celebrity cruises was the food and drink offering - and then I sailed on Virgin Voyages and it was a breath of fresh air... yet not so different to other mainstream cruises with a wider beverage offering. The last Celebrity cruises only had 1 cider (and it even ran out for a short while), and that's all. Plus anything modern, or exotic just isn't carried. Whereas others have a much wider range of drinks, including juices and cocktails. Yet here at Celebrity, adding a couple of additions to the small wine list is a massive deal. (When they often run out of stock as well!) They really have a lot to do to live up to the premium label they now claim - and used to hold.
  5. Agree with your experiences. Evidently what Celebrity has offered is additional choices, rather than being integrated into the regular menus. This is supported by it being a separate section in the buffet, rather than having good choices integrated throughout. I have only seen the additions in the buffet as recent sailings have been dining in Luminae and Blu. So it's good to see an addition in main dining, although as you say they don't change the menu, unlike the regular menu. Blu doesn't have special options, but fortunately its regular menu has more options by default that are vegan, vegetarian, or pescetarian. Unfortunately, Celebrity really misses a trick in Luminae and hasn't made any changes there, which means it is the least appealing of those available. There's only one vegetarian (not vegan) dish a day, not always very good, and they don't customise, and even getting alternative menus from other restaurants is in practice problematic.
  6. It's a bit like the vaping trial in the casino, and removing butlers with no notice, despite paying for them (as well as many other things). Celebrity reserve the right to make any negative changes to your cruise, and are not concerned with how you feel about that.
  7. I'm sure they'll have an announcement, and update their web site when the butlers are back, the same as when they were removed. Rather than just bringing them back quietly and... surprise. So as there hasn't been an announcement/update yet, I'd say not yet.
  8. If VV disputed it, they had to have given evidence of the charge to do so. Ask your bank for the evidence they gave, and then you'll know.
  9. I figure they'll either come up with a new one - or if they haven't, they'll extend the current. They won't just let it end with nothing to replace. But equally it's not their permanent go-forward, so will only be extended if they haven't sorted out the new one.
  10. Simply put, as another poster said, if they considered themselves successful, they would have stuck with their original plans and stayed for 24/25. Cutting and running only 9 months out, with all those cancellations to process, all for the sake of avoiding a single relocation cruise (that they'll be doing in another direction anyway) tells you it's purely a commercial decision. Which is not what they're saying. The fact they are happy to make such drastic changes so often - and without supporting travel compensation - means I consider them very risky, especially to make long distance, far off travel plans. Which is not what they want, but the message they are sending.
  11. For the one I sailed a week ago, was completely full, and sold out a few weeks before sailing. That said, mine was out of Sydney, which is the main hub for cruising, so those cruises were more popular. VV based most cruises out of Vic (and got government incentives to support that), but the trade-off was lower demand there.
  12. If you want to advocate against people cruising to NZ, you're probably on the wrong forum. In any case, the OP has said they want to visit by cruise, so I'm trying to answer for their scenario. Feel free to offer a constructive suggestion of your own, instead of just arguing without helping the OP. And incidentally, I have heard many enjoy visiting the ports of Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland, amongst others - including others in this thread. So not sure who you're hanging out with, but it's a poor claim to suggest cruising to NZ is not a good experience.
  13. You say you would spend all day in a car looking at the same scenery... you'd spend multiple days on a ship looking at the same scenery before getting to the next major stop for Australia. A week on a ship, you've been to all the major cities in NZ, typically with 5 or even 6 stops. A week on a ship and you've only hit about 3 major cities in Australia, with fewer stops. Hence, as said, why there are fewer multi-stop AU cruises, and all these AU/NZ cruises, including the ones in this thread have more stops in NZ than AU.
  14. While NZ is well suited to cruises, having interesting places at sea ports, close to each other, Australia is less so with larger spreads between major ports, which is why the cruises don't visit many Aust ports so much, and are longer if they do. In that light, and considering attractions at that time of year, I have an alternative suggestion. One of the highlights at that time of year in Sydney is New years fireworks so if the timing suits, you might consider visiting Sydney just before New years eve, and being here for the fireworks. There is then a Princess cruise on Jan 3 which covers I'd suggest the main destination ports in NZ. Although it is a round trip so you have extra sea days, Australia is best suited to land trips, so I'd look at flying on to a preferred place to visit after the cruise returns to Sydney e.g. Melbourne, Ayers Rock, Cairns or wherever, and getting an open jaw for the international flights and returning from there instead of Sydney. Just a suggestion but that's probably what I'd be looking at in this scenario.
  15. You'd presumably already have your ETA for NZ, since the cruise is visiting there already, That said, you'd need to inform the cruise ASAP - before departure - that you were delayed, and then get agreement with them for the alternative plan. If you didn't they may upgrade/assign someone else to your cabin as a no show. Given a verifiable situation (i.e. the cancelled flight) and advance notice, and that the alternative NZ port allows immigration processing (which is likely but depends on the port), then I expect the cruise would allow it and hold your cabin. If you didn't do that though and just showed up in NZ without agreement I expect not. You'd also obviously lose 3 nights cruise at a minimum, which is a substantial hit.
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