Jump to content

judatt

Members
  • Posts

    967
  • Joined

About Me

  • Location
    On the Road Again....
  • Interests
    Travel, motorhoming, cruising
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    Royal Caribbean; Celebrity
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    Australia/New Zealand

Recent Profile Visitors

844 profile views

judatt's Achievements

Cool Cruiser

Cool Cruiser (2/15)

  1. Greetings everyone. We have a 14 night cruise in July. I noticed there are several lots within a couple of blocks of the port with monthly rates. Are these lots an alternative? I’d assume they are more expensive but any idea how much more expensive? Thanks for your help. Very informative. David
  2. Greetings everyone. I received a message from a travel agent about MSC offering a status match. You can use several different types of travel programs. We are diamond at Hilton (top level), Elite plus on Celebrity (next to top level) and Diamond plus (next to top level) on Royal Caribbean. Anyone know which one is best to use and what the corresponding level might be on MSC? Thanks. David
  3. We’re diamond plus on RCCL and elite plus on celebrity so we’ve been on a few cruises with each line. We’re the second level up on Carnival. Only cruised on them a few times with our kids and grandkids. My observations will mainly be comparing celebrity and royal with a few comments on carnival. biggest difference between celebrity and royal - add 20 years to avg age for celebrity and subtract 90% of the kids. Yes, there will be a few kids but not many. Carnival will have kids everywhere. now that we’re retired we often cruise in suites. Royal has coastal kitchen and celebrity has luminae. No comparison - luminae wins hands down. CK is good but it’s in the lounge. Luminae just has an upscale experience and the food is better. on celebrity and royal you will get one announcement per day, although on our recent royal cruise the cruise director got very long winded. I think he liked to hear himself talk. Don’t get me started on carnival with their 40-50 announcements per day. royal has larger ships with big promenades that are a lot of fun. Celebrity’s largest ship is about 3000 passengers. No promenades. entertainment on royal is more varied with ice shows, Aqua shows etc. however celebrity will typically have some kind of show every evening in the theatre. I missed that on our most recent royal cruise. finally, I’d say the food on all 3 lines in the mdr is pretty good. I give a slight nod to celebrity but carnival does a good job in the mdr. I found the last time on royal the food was Luke warm at best. I like it hot and Ive always been amazed how cruises ships could serve so many people hot food. We’ll, now they evidently can’t at least on royal. Pleasantly surprised that carnivals food was so good. just my opinions, fwiw.
  4. We were on Millie in 2008 to Alaska. Loved it. Also one other cruise on her. We’ve just booked the spice route cruise in Feb 2024 on Millie. Looking forward to a renewed pleasurable experience on Millie.
  5. We’ve sailed the Edge two times and the Equinox several times. I’d agree with others that the Equinox has actual balconies although on both our cruises on Edge we were in suites and had actual balconies. The retreat area on edge is very nice. Loved the pool deck. Can’t really comment on he infinite veranda on edge because we’ve not had one. you’ll love either ship!
  6. Greetings everyone. We are cruising out of San Pedro on Celebrity Solstice on Oct 8. We are doing b2b so will be parking 14 days. Anyone know how many ships in port that day ? Is there plenty of parking? I have considered staying at the doubletree and leaving our car there but then you have to get a shuttle to the port on Saturday morning and then also wait on a shuttle back to the hotel after the cruises. Rate at doubletree is about $800 for 2 nights including parking for length of cruise. I think parking at port is about $250 for 2 weeks. Anyone have any recommendations? Thanks. David
  7. Our next cruise is in concierge class and mainly for 2 reasons. First, we are 29 points away from elite plus. CC is 5 points a night so that’s 35 points and puts us over into elite plus. Probably more importantly, we like aft balconies and the only way to get one at the last minute was in CC. So we paid a couple of hundred more to get a cabin in our preferred location.
  8. Interesting. I recently posted on the HAL board that we are long time celebrity cruisers looking for info on HAL. Received many great responses and trust you will as well. Celebrity does have theme nights although can’t say specifically about white nights. Several options for lunch upon boarding although we usually just go to the Buffett and get a table by the window with a view. Doesn’t really pertain to your question but my most memorable embarkation lunch was on our first cruise where we took our kids and grandkids with us. We boarded and we’re sitting around a large table (10 of us) eating lunch and I looked over at my wife with a tear in my eye and said this is the best $15,000 we have ever spent. Great cruise - and we’ve done it a few times since. enjoy celebrity - we hope to enjoy HaL someday soon.
  9. A few months ago we did 2 cruises on 2 different ships. First one we were in a RS. Next one we were in a CS. In my opinion, totally different experiences. RS has a Whirlpool on deck, the bedroom is a little bigger, the bathroom is a good bit bigger and the living room is slightly larger. In the RS everything is included. We don’t drink much alcohol so can’t comment much about what’s available there but everything is included. If you want to go to a specialty restaurant it’s included and the concierge will make your reservation and escort you to the venue and you get a great table. In the CS they’ll make the reservation but you have to pay the fee and they don’t escort you so you don’t necessarily get a great table. In the RS all the staff knew you and greeted you. In the CS just another couple of folks. Yes, he RS is more but it’s a great experience.
  10. Thanks to everyone for some excellent responses. I probably should have said we’ve done some longer cruises - 35 nights in Europe which was actually a b2b2b and we’ve done almost 40 nights which was USA to Australia and then around New Zealand. We enjoyed both of those very much. we agree with several of you that cruising to Alaska in October probably wouldn’t be a good way to find out anything about HAL so we’re not going to. We do plan to do a HAL cruise soon though - maybe this winter to a tropical place. thanks again to everyone for some great input. David
  11. Greetings everyone. We have been on several cruises on Celebrity (20+) and almost as many on Royal Caribbean. Several on Carnival (with kids and grandkids). One each in NCL and Princess but never on HAL and honestly don’t know why. HAL has some longer itineraries that look very interesting to us but before we sign up for a 30+ night cruise we thought we’d try a shorter one to see how we like it. We’re thinking of the Eurodam to Alaska Oct 1. I realize this is the HAL board so we expect most if not all replies to be positive and frankly I’ve heard nothing but good things about HAL. only negative I’ve heard is that it tends to be an older crowd but hey - that’s us - we are 69 and 70. For those of you who have sailed Celebrity or RCCL as well as HAL I’d be interested in any comparisons you might have. thanks for any and all input you might give us.
  12. We received an email from the shoreside concierge yesterday for our Oct 15 Solstice cruise in a royal suite. One thing we asked for was a small real refrigerator for my wife’s injectable medication. We’ve had both types - the kind that is just basically a chest and the kind that actually cools. We need the refrigerant in there 😎. last January we did a 12 night in a royal suite and a 11 night in a concierge suite. Don’t think it was my imagination but the service and experience in the RS was a notch or two above the CS. Just a different level of everything. May have just been our staff and they were on 2 different ships.
  13. We did 2 cruises out of port Everglades in January. One was 12 days and one 11 days. We drove to the port and parked at port Everglades. We considered parkngo but decided to park in a covered building and near the ship. Yes, it was $15 a day but off site parking wasn’t cheap and all of it left your car sitting in the sun and subject to hail, etc on our first cruise, the slip we were in was changed to a distant part of the port. I dropped our bags and my wife and I went to park in the garage. There was a shuttle waiting and I was back to the terminal in 5 minutes. After the cruise we rode the same shuttle to the garage - no lines and we were there in just a couple of minutes. on the second cruise our slip was right across from the garage. Easy walk. After the cruise we walked with our bags to the garage and we’re there in a couple of minutes.
  14. Thanks for your input. I went back to the app and it still showed the apex data. I played around and got to the page of the app where it showed the ships supported by the app. I clicked on Solstice and it gave me the next several cruises. I clicked on our Oct 15 cruise and it switched to that cruise On the app. looks like we are good to go.
  15. We’ll try not to do too much damage. We’re in a Solstice RS on 10/15 sailing 😎
×
×
  • Create New...