AE_Collector

The "Champagne Water Fall" stuff? :)

Terry

I can only compare the OBC's with Princess and Celebrity. Princess is way better than Celebrity. You can combine perks/OBC with Princess but have to just pick just the one that works best for you on Celebrity.

And Celebrity has watered down the Future Cruise Benefit if you aren't booking your next cruise while on board (if you just do the $100 deposit on board) and they just made it much more difficult to move up loyalty levels as well. To top it off they made this change while we were at sea on one of their cruises, without any warning at all so when we got off the ship we were not nearly as close to Elite as we thought we would be when we got onto the ship! So much for our experiment over at Celebrity, we are back to Princess....

The topic about the New Captains Club changes over in the Celebrity area is over 70 pages long already!!

Terry

Okay, thanks. I might make an enquiry with the Captains Circle. They usually seem pretty accommodating and all they can so is no. It is going to be a toss up whether we make Elite because of 15 cruises or 150 days otherwise. We will be at 14 cruises and 140 days father the three B2B's in April.

Thanks,

Terry

Okay, thanks for the new info. I had never heard of anything past elite and 15 cruises.

For a moment I thought I was confused about the one combined cruise where it was available as two individual cruises and the discussion about singles in a room getting double credits since they paid double or close to it.

So Astro Flyer, are you saying that you had similar combined trips that they were willing to show as two separate trips for purposes of adding up your total points? We have 3 B2B's booked from Tahiti to Vancouver and if I could get the two different combined cruises that we have done credited as two cruises, we would become Elite for the last leg of this trip which would be Great!

Terry

Sorry but you have all lost me in this topic! I am usually right up on all of the perks available. We made platinum and are wow four cruises from Elite. We always each have several FUture Cruise Deposits to use in case of multiple B2B cruises. We are shareholders in order to get that extra credit...

But what are you all talking about here with after 20, 30 cruises etc? Is this is also a Captains Circle thing above the 15 cruises to be Elite? Is it the same figure for number of cruises completed that determines this?

Someone mentioned talking to Princess about additional credits when booking a combined B2B. We have done that twice now where there was a combined cruise offered that was made up of two shorter cruises. Not regular B2B cruises but where Princess marketed it as a combined cruise for a slightly better total price. This way we only got one credit instead of two though.

We did a 7 day Alaska north bound and a 7 day Alaska south bound as a combined 14 day cruise this past June for a better price than booking the two trips individually. We were credited for one cruise only where as 6 of the 10 in our party (all booked as a 14 day cruise) received two credits for the cruise. The 6 who got two credits happened to be changing levels after the first segment so I figured that on board the ship they can't bother trying to sort out those that actually booked B2B from those on a single longer trip technically. The 6 who went up a level after the first segment got the new Coloured cards and those that became Platinum got free Internet on part two of the trip. I booked the whole thing for everyone and thought that it figures that I am one of the few who didn't get two credits! Should I have enquirer about this with Princess? I figured if I brought it up the six would be more likely to lose their extra point!

Terry

That was going to be my point as well. Be sure tat you were logged in. Sometimes it makes no difference at all to the price and other times the difference can be substantial.

Terry

I agree, both earned it both should get it. :rolleyes:

Look at it this way. There are two of each item in the setup, so that is one for each of you.

 

(Yes, it is the same quanitity if a non-elite and an elite are in the same cabin, but that just means a bonus for them.)

Sounds like a Mini Bar Half Full / Half Empty disagreement!

Seriously, there are lots of inequities in this perk as we have done 17 and 19 day cruises with Princess as compared to the 4 and 5 day cruises that get the same benefit. But....probably not a life changing thing in the big picture. They probably could make it one per 7 days or portion of 7 days.

Terry

One per cabin although you'll get one setup per segment even if booked as a single longer cruise. We have b2b four day cruises so will get beer & soda on the 1st one & 2 coffee cards on the 2nd cruise.

I know about the coffee cards but are you saying you can trade off the free mini bar setup for two coffee cards with the Elite Benefit?

Terry

If all else fails GottaLuvCruising, have someone else here who is booked at $149 do the "Share the Savings" with you.

Terry

Vancouver return via Hawaii Islands would be a big hit with one of the newer ships.

This would cover BC and Alberta,Washington State passengers. Not too long and not too short.All these areas don't have long flights so that would be cheaper.Certain folks working in the oil Industry in Alberta would love the break.:)

We are about to do Tahiti to Honolulu and then on to Vancouver. With the cost of flights to Tahiti, I can never figure why they don't do some occasional trips to South Pacific that start and end in Hawaii as it is so much less expensive to fly in and out of there from North America.

And occasional cruises that spend multiple nights in many ports would save more fuel as well as provide cheap accommodations in many of these expensive ports to stay in hotels. Not every cruise but just fit in an occasional cruise in the rotation that takes twice as long to do the circuit. Maybe port fees are more expensive than fuel.

Terry

Nine days out from a 4 day on Ruby and I see more than 150 balcony cabins available. Is this unusual?

How does one get an idea of how full a ship is before the cruise? I would have thought they kept tat very quiet to avoid people waiting until last minute for the deals.

Terry

A trip to the brig might have been a good outcome as well as being a safe place to hold them. However, we have all probably seen parents that would then read the riot act to the ships personnel and threaten to sue haven't we! (Just a general comment from the ships point of view, not directed at the OP specifically)

While searching for the way to unsubscibe from here I happened upon the rules which state that it is NOT allowed to discuss removed posts in a topic so I predict some more removed posts coming soon!

Too bad that the content of posts didn't count for anything before being removed just because someone pushed the flag button.

Goodbye everyone,

Terry

Some one must have flagged it.:D

I can't recall who but someone accused me of trashing everyone's thoughts that didn't align with my own even though I had only made one single post to this topic that now has over 1300 seperate posts!

That is one way to further sway things their way, get the posts of others removed if that is what happened. Unbelievable. Enough of this....

Terry

WOW...the long post that I very carefully put together last night giving my opinion on this entire mess after reading the complete topic start to finish....is GONE! I think it was post #1282.

My one single post to this topic where I didn't post my opinion over and over and over again but summed it all up into one (I thought) well written post. Four seperate members here made comments immediately after such as "Bravo" & "Well thought out and balanced post". Those posts are gone now as well except for one very small piece of evidence, a quote from Orator at the top of post #1283. I don't know what could have possibly happened to them all but there is a 14 hour lack of activity in this very active topic now.

Terry

Orators Quote:

Originally Posted by Orator

BRAVO! Excellent post.

Gee, we got off of the Connie on December 9 and would like to talk to someone from the Captains Club about how they handled the change over t othe new CC program. Missed him by that much!

I did hear soeone on board mention something about Head office having a group of people on the next (Dec 9) cruise.

Terry

Proofreading at Celebrity is not one of their stronger points.

Not to mention web page design and lets not forget about redesigning and implementing changes to Captains Circle programs either....

I think, if I made the rules, one of the things I would have done was make a penalty free time for those beyond the final payment to cancel.

But even something that drastic wouldn't be neccesary. They could have had a 70 day conversion period (final payment time frame) where they just gave everyone the best reward from either program. That way they wouldn't lose any paid customers, everyone got what they thought they would get when they paid for the cruise and a few (those in suites) got even more.

I was on the Constellation B2B and had one cruise awarded the old way and one cruise the new way. Not a big deal, I am just not as far along at making it to Elite for laundry and Internet as I thought I would be when I paid for or even when I got on the Constellation. We were trying to improve our odds of chosing Celebrity over Princess by making it to Elite to even things up a little.

As someone else mentioned, it is hard to try Celebrity over Princess as Princess has considerably better loyalty perks (IMHO) starting after just 5 sailings. We had several little glitches on this last Celebity trip where as our previous trip on Princess was flawless so I suspect our next will be with Princess again.

Terry

Just off the Constellation and thaay had this new Pizza. They were cutting each into 5 pieces a couple of inches wide. They are making them right there so when they get a lineup and there are only a couple in the ovens, all stops while he makes up some more. One Pepperoni came out of the oven and the guy at the front of the line took the whole thing so wait some more! Oh well, nowhere to go anyway! I enjoyed it but agree, Princess has the best Pizza i have had a sea but that is only comparing Celebrity & Princess.

Terry

We got back a week ago from the very popular Constellation Nov 12 - Dec 09 B2B Istanbul to Rome and Rome to Fort Lauderdale TA. There were about 450 B2B passengers on the cruise.

We received two credits (12 days) which converted to 60 points for the first part of the B2B. Ironically the conversion happened Nov 23 and we got the points a day BEFORE the first cruise completed in Rome Nov 24.

My best guess was that we would receive 3 credits (15 days & Concierge)that would convert to 90 points for the second cruise as it started at least a day before the new program did. The new program supposedly started AFTER Monday Nov 25 but I think that was poor wording for what should have been "Starting November 25".

In any event, we were on the cruise November 24, definitely before the new program began. It took quite a few days for anything to show up on-line but when it did of course we were awarded under the new system. They have messed that up becasue we have only received 45 points for the 15 days even though we were Concierge which should have been 75 points which is still less than the 90 points I expected to receive.

It is obvious that it will now take substantially longer to get to the relatively mediocre rewards for Elite Status unless we are regularly in a suite which we like most others aren't. For us a Balcony has always been the "top tier" on a cruise but it isn't anymore, balcony's are just average these days.

I thought that Celebrity may have had an overlap period during the conversion where they just gave you which ever formula worked to your advantage but they didn't. I can even see the arguement for cruises booked and paid in full being done to the passengers advantage becasue if they automatically handled them the old way, suite passengers would complain.

I really thought that our second cruise would have been done on the old system since it began before the new program did. I will have to call them though becasue we have received zero additional credit for upgrading to Concierge on the second part of the trip and the extra credit for Concierge was definitely a factor in us doing that upgrade along with being able to snag an Aft Cabin.

Terry

Thanks for stressing this, Darcie. It only takes a few minutes of your time to get an Attention to Detail card from Guest Relations, fill it out, and submit it. I pick up a handful at the beginning of the cruise.

Now I am disappointed! Just back from b2b 27 day cruise on celebrity and didnt use the "Attention To Deail" cards left in the room one day on each portion of the cruise. We cruise on Princess a lot more than Celebrity and they have individual employee recognition cards available which we make a point of using. The wording on Celebrity's "Attention to Detail" cards implies that they are to bring up any problems that they would like to fix BEFORE the cruise ends and we certainly had no such problems.

Now I am thinking that I didnt think the "Atttention to Detail"cards through enough and we should have used them for praise. We have gotten so that we almost always give just a little extra in an envelope to the two room stewards and the two waiters. Their service is almost always over the top.