thon

The Roll Call for our upcoming 24 January Constellation cruise is up 3 pages now!! Things are definitely a lot slower than my previous cruises. There is a FB page for the cruise that has more people signed up, although the majority don’t post anything.

The one advantage to taking an earlier flight (going anywhere) is that typically those flights would be on time (excluding weather-related delays). Flights later in the day could be adversely affected by other delays (eg. mechanical) that get compounded throughout the day.

We are on an upcoming Constellation cruise and I understand that the beds in veranda cabins are queen size. We have only cruised in S class ships before. My wife believes that the S class veranda cabins we have been in before have king size beds but I seem to recall them being queens. Our latest ship was Equinox in Feb 2023. All of our cruises have been on ships before any were revolutionized. Anyone know what size the beds have been in these veranda cabins?

We always have Anytime Dining and try to book for 7 p.m. each night - do it online months in advance of the cruise. That gives us lots of time to make the 9 p.m. show. On our upcoming Connie cruise all could get most nights was 6:45 which is fine for us.

As for available boarding times I would think it would depend on the cruise. I am not one to get up at midnight to check into a cruise. My Feb cruise I think I got the 11:30 time slot and I checked in whenever it was that I got up. For my upcoming Constellation cruise in late Jan I have the 11-11:30 time slot and again I checked in when I woke up.

In our 4 recent flights to/from YYC via YYZ 2 of them were late - the flight to YYZ from Ottawa was about 15 minutes late due to the late arrival of the incoming aircraft. On our way home the flight from YYZ to Ottawa was almost 45 minutes late leaving as they were waiting for 90 passengers connecting from a late-arriving Winnipeg flight. The first delay was tolerable but the second one was a little annoying as we didn’t get to Ottawa until about 1:30 a.m. But overall, I’m pretty sure I now prefer Porter to AC.

I really wish that Porter had announced its Florida flights earlier as I have already booked AC for our YOW-TPA (via YUL) flights in late Jan. With their now direct, non-stop flights from Ottawa to Tampa we were hoping that AC made changes to our flights so we could then cancel with full refund and switch to Porter. But even if they did so now, not likely we’d switch as the one daily non-stop from Ottawa is sold out. Oh well. We recently flew to Calgary and back with Porter and we were really impressed with it, even though we had to fly via Toronto - but in Feb they are initiating direct flights to Calgary. If they stay the way they are now I think my favoured airline will be Porter and not AC.

We’ve stayed at the Rodeway close to airport on a couple of occasions and if needed to we would stay there for the day again.

On our very first or second Celebrity cruise there were 2 groups on board- one was very big (1000+ if I recall). They had seminars during the day and we very quickly learned to schedule our breakfast and lunch around their schedule. Other than that we didn’t notice anything different.

No need to wear either jacket or tie on Celebrity's “evening chic” nights. I just wear pants and a nice shirt and on all the cruises I’ve done in the Caribbean on Celebrity ships I’d say this is what the majority of men wear.

What port?

We are flying YOW-YYC in late Nov on Porter and are looking forward to it (even though we have to go via YYZ). When we booked our Jan cruise out of Tampa, Porter had not yet announced their new routes to various Florida destinations so we were stuck with booking AC Rouge (ugh!). However, I see online that there are very, very few seats booked on our flights so if AC cancels or amalgamates our flights I will cancel, get a refund and switch to Porter if there are still available seats. Would be considerably cheaper too.

We are cruising out of Tampa for the first time in January. Once I learned of previous problems regarding fog in this port, we decided to stay overnight and fly out the next day. No stress that way!

Does anyone know if any Tampa hotel has day rooms? When cruising out of Fort Lauderdale we often used one when we had a late flight home after returning from a cruise.

Jan 24-Feb 5. Celebrity Constellation - last port is Cozumel, leaving Feb 3 at 6 p.m.

Thanks for the heads up on fog. I just googled and found that there was a day in Jan/23 when cruise ships were kept out of the port for 9 hours because of fog. So there goes Plan B, C, and D!! We thought we had a pretty good deal on the cruise, but now if we have to make contingencies for fog, any savings may be moot. There are not a lot of options to fly from TPA to Canada.

We have never cruised out of Tampa before. Our Feb 5 Celebrity cruise is due to arrive at 7 a.m. We are hoping to take an 11:45 a.m. flight to Montreal. If we self dis-embark I am assuming that we’ll have more than enough time to catch our flight?

Of course you’re correct. And my flight out would be on Jan 23. Porter has those same flights on both days. But, when I put YOW-TPA into Porter’s search engine these flights don’t pop up which is odd as they are a good fit (if I want to go through YYZ!) so something else to keep in mind. I still have concerns flying during the winter with connections as if the first flight gets delayed or cancelled and the next flights that day are full, waiting until the next day may be problematic considering my cruise leaves the next day. And with the CDN exchange rate I really don’t want to go down earlier and have to book 2 nights in a Tampa hotel. We just booked the cruise on Friday so really just starting to look into travel arrangements. I much prefer FLL!

My cruise goes out of Tampa in January - never cruised out of there before. Porter now flies there but from Ottawa it is 3 flights (via Billy Bishop and Boston). Out of Montreal it is 2 flights (via YYZ). Not yet sure what we’ll do - being winter then I am worried about connecting flights. We had been planning on flying AC out of Montreal non-stop but the downside is that all they fly to Tampa is Rouge.

We are cruising out of Tampa in January and AC has nothing direct from YOW so we either go out of YYZ or YUL (much prefer YUL) and of course everything is Rouge. Guess we’ll have to bite the bullet! Only time we flew Rouge was shortly after they first started flying and we said “never again”!

Our upcoming Equinox cruise is scheduled to arrive in Bonaire at 10 a.m. which I think is a little unusual.

Yes. And both long sleeved and short sleeved shirts have sleeves. So not just long sleeved ones.😁

Where does it say “preferably long sleeve shirt”?

What is MPC?

This is not a perk!! This costs taxpayers nothing! It is a group insurance policy , the group being “federal retirees”. Totally paid for by the retirees themselves who opt in to the plan. There are no federal government funds involved and no involvement by any government department or agency. In order to qualify for this insurance you have to belong to the National Association of Federal Retirees. There are lots of group policies out there. The advantages of joining up with a group for insurance is that the premiums can be lower because of the number of people in the group.