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4774Papa

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  • Posts

    15,157
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About Me

  • Location
    Saint Simons Island, Georgia
  • Interests
    cycling, history (especially ancient), reading
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    Celebrity, NCL, Vantage, AMA
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    Med

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  1. We used CC to arrange tours, meet others and organize the Murder Mystery. Since our last Galapagos Celebrity cruise in 2022 haven't cruises. Instead, we are doing tours with Gate 1 Travel.
  2. We are looking at booking this cruise with Gate 1 for the lower Danube. It looks great. Any tips? We have done Gate 1 before and their tours/cruises are great and the price is hard to beat.
  3. We did a great Douro river cruise about 5 years ago. The Douro Valley is one of the most scenic in Europe. Porto is amazing and we spent a couple of days there after the cruise. Yes, you visit wineries and those were great, but we also had an excursion to Salamanca, Spain that was great.
  4. I noticed that Celebrity pricing stopped the price bundling of cruise fare with the drinks package some months ago. That was good news, since for me as a moderate drinker, I rarely drink more than I get from the free happy hour as elite.
  5. We haven't encountered drunks passing out or crudely dressed hyper party types on any X cruises, but our last one was in 2021. We lean more to Royal C., due to more favorable pricing. NCL was our first cruise line and we haven't done them in four years, but still don't remember drunks passing out. I have heard of that on the 3 day Bahamas cruise for NCL. I think shorter cruises tend to draw more party drunks. We like longer cruises that tend to draw more seniors.
  6. Some Navy ships of other countries have diesel submarines that can switch to electric battery propulsion when they need to be silent. However, there is a limit on how long they can do this.
  7. We have cruised with Celebrity, Royal Caribbean and NCL and prefer them in that order. A few years ago Celebrity's pricing increased and we moved toward Royal. Now, we cruise very little.
  8. Once we did a balcony cabin on an inexpensive cruise, we never went back to a ocean view window. We used to pick our favorite balcony that was always a bit more than some of those "Partially obscured" balconies on the lower deck. Then, one cruise, we picked a partially obscured balcony because we would be near friends and we didn't find it a problem. Now, we always look for the guarantee. Only, when we did Alaska with NCL (because they do Glacier Bay), we insisted on an aft balcony, which was fantastic.
  9. Bo, We did two cruises in 2015 in Asia and both were excellent. The first was from Singapore to Dubai, with four ports in India and one in Oman. It was in the old class that preceded the M class, forgot the name. We loved that ship, but it was decommissioned soon after our cruise. The ports were great and we did five days in Singapore prior to the cruise as well as a two day tour of Malaysia. The second was the one of the best cruises ever. It was from Tokyo to Hong Kong and included four ports in the main islands of Japan, Shanghi, Taiwan, ending in Hong Kong. Wonderful cruise. Don't remember the name of the ship. We book based on itinerary and price and don't really care about the ship. I highly recommend any cruise that included Japan. Also, we did several days pre-cruise in Japan prior to the cruise. Do a three day Kyoto tour, don't miss it.
  10. We used to cruise more on NCL until they price bundled the basic fare with drink packages, etc. that we don't want. Wife and I may drink a couple of glasses of wine a day, or maybe not. We rarely find NCL the best deal. We compare NCL with Celebrity, Royal C. and Princess and Royal C. usually comes out the best. NCL and Royal C. both have great entertainment, but Celebrity's dining is the best. Also, for ship design, we prefer Celebrity, then Royal and last NCL. Further, we like tranatlantic cruises and most of NCL's TA cruises are out of NYC, which eliminates them because of the cost for us to fly to NYC from JAX Florida.
  11. This is not the same situation, but perhaps I could give it a shot. thanks
  12. We are booked on a transatlantic cruise departing 22 April, which is 70 days from now. Need to cancel due to health reasons, preexisting, so can't claim insurance. I can still get a 50% refund up until 9 days from today. Does Royal C. have any other options like transferring to a cruise in the future?
  13. Yes, supply and demand is huge for pricing, but when your initial prices (until less than 90 days before) don't attract customers, a cruise line will loose customers that book other cruise lines. X should have been smarter and offered better prices early. When planning a TA cruise booking early is important, since I have to plan our European trip as well as our one-way flight back to the USA. Booking those flights get very expensive when booked closer to the flight date.
  14. We love transatlantics and compared X with Royal C. prior to booking for April 2023 from FTL to Rome. Royal beat the heck out of X's price. Now, less than three months from our cruise X has drastically slashed it TA prices. Now they are a small bit lower than Royal, but we book early, like around a year ago. Celebrity, how about offering better prices up front instead of the last minute.
  15. My Son did a safari in Kruger a few years ago when he visited South Africa. He did the safari in Kenya and Tanzania with me this August and said that our safari was by far the best when comparing the two. We were able to see the great migration of thousands of wildebeests crossing the river, which is special. Also, we saw so much that was amazing.
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