Luvcrusn

shhh....

You will not pay gratuity on drinks unless you go over your drinks package price and then you will pay the difference plus the gratuity on the difference. X now charges the gratuity for specialty dining at the time you purchase the package, so no additional gratuity is charges there. If you purchase the dining on board (we usually purchase pre-cruise) I'd imagine that the gratuity price would also be included in the purchase price.

We were long checked in before winning our MoveUp. Our MoveUp didn't occur until 2 days before sailing. Good luck!

X's version of "Where's Waldo?"

Maybe Dave got all the missing PUPs from the folks who have been posting that all of Captains Club points are mysteriously missing?

Yep, DH is wondering who David is lol!

We all make the life choices that suit us. Thank you for your service and enjoy your travels wherever and however you move forward. Travel safely and have a wonderful adventure.

On each of our many cruises on X even years before Covid reared its ugly head we remember staff members stationed outside of the theater, MDR and OVC with hand sanitizer as passengers entered those venues. Noticeably they were not there on Equinox this past December with the exception of occasionally outside of the OVC.

The phone option sometimes decides not to work.

I sent an email to LLP after our most recent Equinox cruise expressing our disappointments in the food and the cutbacks.

As you can see from my profile I'm not a first time poster. DH and I have sailed on X a lot for many years. I have sometimes been called a X cheerleader and always see the glass as half full. We sailed on Equinox in December 2021 and again in December 2022. The ship was slightly over 1/2 capacity on both cruises. So I'll be comparing apples to apples so to speak. We thoroughly enjoyed our December 2021 cruise. The service was what we have been accustomed to over the years. The OVC was what we have come to expect. In December of 2022 (before the January 1 extra charges and menu deletions) it was a very different experience. The service in the MDR was exceedingly slow. We were in select dining at a table for 2. The time between courses some evenings stretched to 40 minutes. The wine service was very slow since the sommelier was spread too thin. The breakfast service in the MDR was at a snails pace. One morning it took 45 minutes from ordering our eggs until they arrived. The eggs benedict that was ordered came cold and the English muffin it was served on was microwaved so long that we couldn't cut it with a knife! The folks at the next table had the same issue. This happened at least four times during the cruise. The choices for lunch in the OVC were cut back drastically. There were less options for salad, no stir fry options, no grilled steaks and the carving stations offered cheaper proteins. Many areas of the OVC were dedicated to displays of things like uncooked boxes of pasta, cracker boxes etc. instead of food options that had been there before. The afternoon tea that previously had been put out in the OVC at about 4 PM with scones, tea sandwiches etc. were never offered during the 10 days. We looked as well as asked. My favorite drink indulgence that I've enjoyed for years on board X ships, a Frozen Toasted Almond, got me blank stares when I ordered it at various venues throughout the ship in 2022. I've never encountered that on any X ship including the Equinox the year before. I had to tell many different bar and bar servers how to make it and most couldn't get it right. The choices for dinner in the OVC were minimal and most of the stations were closed down. Murano was wonderful and we dined there 5 different nights. Our room steward was awesomely wonderful. He magically appeared and cleaned our room as soon as we left it. We used the Go Green for the first time and honestly noticed no difference. Our room was turned down at night as usual and we always had fresh towels. DH had to use a scooter due to a back issue and the crew could not have been more helpful and considerate. We also had requested curb to stateroom wheelchair assistance with embarkation and the reverse with disembarkation and they were awesome. Yes we will sail X again, but we miss the good old days. We have loved our vacations on board X ships, and realize what has happened in the world over the past 3 years. We are fortunate to have our health, each other and be able to enjoy vacations. It was obvious on this past sailing that a lot of the crew (bar servers and bartenders as well as dining wait staff) were new and in training and we also see the cutbacks. Hopefully as people return to cruising and the cruise lines re-monetize themselves things will turn around. If not we will be looking at other options for our vacation dollars.

? Prior to getting food? And if I do this, who's to keep the clean table reserved while I get my food?

Definitely it is not "beneath me" to remove plates of previous diners, however, I don't have sanitizer to clean the table, a towel to wipe the table or 2 extra hands to hold my plate of food while I do so. I also don't want to handle another passenger's dirty plates and cutlery and then eat without cleaning my hands, and then my food would be cold and or removed while I was doing it.

this

Yes. I told them I wanted to upgrade WIFI and use my Captains Club discount. They figured the total on the discounted pre-cruise price.

Depending on what info you are looking for it's often easiest to just go to cruisedeckplans.com public site and enter the ship. Lots of great info there as well as the ability to drag one deck onto another to see what's above/below.

I never can use them, they are too weak for my mop. I'd spend my whole cruise drying my hair lol. Also I don't like having to constantly keep the switch depressed to get airflow...but that's another and entirely different thread.

I did it yesterday.

If you do it beforehand you can stack the pre-cruise discount with the Captains Club percentage off.

There were none last time I sailed Eclipse. We always bring a multiport USB hub because even if there are USB ports available on the ship we're sailing there are never enough to charge 2 phones, 2 tablets, 2 kindles, smart watches etc. We also bring a European adapter and plug the USB hub into the European outlet and free up the limited US outlets for important stuff like hairdryers and hair curling/straightening devices.😜

Call Captains Club 800-760-0654. I just did it yesterday and upgraded our WIFI. You have to ask to have your discount applied. I also had to ask that my OBC be used for payment. Easy, peasy.

Our last cruise was on Equinox in late December of 2022. It was the first X cruise where we gave negative feedback in our post cruise survey about the food, and this was before the inception of the extra charge for a second serving of lobster or the room service $9.95+gratuity. The offerings in the OVC were noticeably cut back and many sections were closed. The carving stations at lunch offered cheaper proteins. The grilled steaks were absent. The afternoon tea (scones, tea sandwiches etc.) was never put out even though we looked for it and asked. The evening offerings for dinner were not nearly what has been offered in the past and much of the buffet area was closed and empty. We were disappointed. The ship on this sailing was only a bit more than 1/2 full and the service was excellent in almost all areas, however it was very noticeable that staff weren't being deployed to urge guests to use hand sanitizer when entering the dining rooms, specialty restaurants or theater like in pre-covid days.

However if one sails without the other their level would reflect only their own Captains Club total.

Don't bother deciding. We chose our March 2024 Silhouette cruise because we wanted to go to St. Vincent and not Dominica. We don't like Dominica. It was devasted by a hurricane several years ago and hasn't recovered. There is nothing in the town. We tried to spend money there feeling sorry for the people and trying to stimulate the economy but it was very hard to do. We just got a notification from Celebrity about an itinerary change and St. Vincent was being replaced with...you guessed it...Roseau, Dominica. The itinerary on the X website still shows St. Vincent. We will stay onboard the day the ship visits Roseau, Dominica.

You would think that...at least we did. Ever since PUPs started back in 2020 DH has gotten his PUP emails to the address that he uses to sign into his X account. They have always gone to that email he uses for logging in. This last one was sent to an email address that's totally different and to our knowledge has never been used for anything relating to X. They must have just done something to their system (IT strikes again). I just yesterday upgraded my WIFI and got the verifying email confirming the order. We do this every cruise. I didn't upgrade DH's again, what we always do. But he also got a confirming email. That's never happened before. Puzzling, but in the end it really doesn't matter. It just makes you say, "hmmmm."