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sparkopotamus

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  • Posts

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About Me

  • Location
    Born-&-Raised Buckeye Girl now living in NEAL
  • Interests
    Fitness, gourmet dining, French Bulldogs, my husband, and libations!
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    WAS Celebrity--looking elsewhere.
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    Preferably a place <65F...not a fan of the heat!

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sparkopotamus's Achievements

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Cool Cruiser (2/15)

  1. Thanks! My husband and the couple traveling with us will have fun figuring it out. LOL For my part, Iโ€™m grateful they offer decent non-alcoholic options (beer, wine, and liquors). Cheers!! ๐Ÿฅƒ๐Ÿธ๐Ÿท๐Ÿฅ‚
  2. We are Elite Plus on Celebrity. Next year (May 2025) we booked the Xpedition because we didn't want to lose our deposit from the Celebrity cruise we cancelled for May 2024 and replaced with an Oceania Vista itinerary (it seems Celebrity hasn't dropped its standards for the Galapagos itineraries...at least not yet). We are looking forward to our first voyage on Oceania, and will give Viking Ocean a try as well in the near future.
  3. Hi, thanks for the tip--I saw the Preisman's website with all the menus, etc. VERY helpful! Referencing that page, there are two pages with selections such as Scotch & Whiskey, Cognac, and Louis XIII starting at $25 going all the way up to $360. Would anyone happen to know what the price cap is on any given libation is if one has the Prestige package? (Yes, my husband and I are Oceania newbies! Will be on the Vista 11-21 May. ๐Ÿ˜€)
  4. So if one upgrades to the Prestige Package, Embarkation Day counts as Day 1. Is this correct?
  5. Hi, Nancy, I just finished getting caught up on your blog. Thanks so much for taking your time to share photos with us! Seeing your photos makes we want to visit Iceland again sooner than later! โ˜บ๏ธ
  6. Elite +, moving to Viking. And after having taken two DIY land vacations (London with side trips and the Scottish Highlands (NC500)) we will split our travel between cruises and DIY land trips.
  7. We have a Suite NRD on X. We are changing it to a 3-day itinerary so just not to lose money and will do so before 4 Oct. At the same time we are booking on Viking Ocean. We are Elite +, which clearly means nothing to the new leadership. It has done the math and realized there are savings to be had with eliminating loyalists who get perks. No hard feelings, we are happy to spend our money elsewhere.
  8. Thanks for the tip! I can't wait to sail on Viking! Thank you for all your posts! ๐Ÿ˜ƒ
  9. It did for us as well. We initially tried HAL (2010) and cruised with them three more times after that. It wasn't bad but we felt like there might be another line we would like better. So we tried X. Yay! Until now... and honestly even since 2017 we've noticed little changes, minor and slight. But this new deluge of the line being changed to something more like Royal Caribbean is too much. We will most likely change to Viking Ocean, and then supplement that with French barge trips and land trips.
  10. With all decrements to service, perks, quality, etc., I'm reading about, I wonder if the new X leadership mentality has no issue with loyalists (we are Elite +) leaving. All those perks, e.g., a comp'd bag of laundry, 15% off a bottle of wine, discount on speciality dining, etc., add up. It would seem X continues to scrub its numbers, looking for ways to cut back. I suspect they would prefer a non-perk customer to one who has earned a few. Maybe I'm nuts but that's kind of what I see going on.
  11. We are doing the same. After this next one we are through with X. We made Elite Plus but with all the changes that they're making who's to say the Captain's Club (CC) perks won't deteriorate as well? And anyway, while nice they aren't compelling enough on their own to keep us on X. And if you think about it, X benefits from people with CC perks like free bags of laundry, discounts on bottles of wine and specialty dining, etc. from leaving the product.
  12. On Beyond we had a Sky Suite, and we booked it when they were offering $600 OBC (and as we all know, starting 4 October OBC for Retreat cabins as part of an incentive package will cease), so the $200 for the repositioning was added and now we have $800 total. I guess that means they can be stacked. Honestly if you call X and a rep tells you "no", I'd call back because it's not uncommon to receive two different answers to the same question.
  13. We were originally on the Beyond for May 2024. In late June this year we received an email from X that said they were shifting Beyond to the Caribbean, and we had 14 days to choose a new booking. They offered us $200 OBC, which was visible to the X agent when we called to rebook on Equinox.
  14. Iโ€™m sorry youโ€™re having to wade through the less-than-optimal X bureaucracy to get a refund on something that should have never been charged. Thank you for confirming what I feared was true. I will double down on my efforts to get this charge removed prior to our cruise.
  15. Thank you for taking time to do this review on CC and your blog. I look forward to following your journey. And I appreciate the details about the ship, too, as we are seriously considering transferring our cruise loyalty from Celebrity to Viking. Safe travels! ๐Ÿ™‚
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