Benthayer Gonbak

I haven’t found many places that have it as they are still in short supply. My drug coverage has already stated that just having a mild case of COVID isn’t enough to qualify for the drug! I’m an excellent candidate, but I doubt I can get it for a first aid kit. I can’t imagine the ship carrying those either. I had wondered if they were still using rememdir.

The old RCCL accounting system is s antiquated that I’d worry about the safety of the online payment!

Since a most flights to the US leave early morning or very late evening in order to be during working hours at your arriving port many cruises have an overnight at the disembarkation port. So, it isn’t unusual, but they still need to know. We have that scenario in CapeTown Africa, at least one overnight in port.

That’s what we’ve always done. I’ve even written captains Club, it was understood too!

Even domestically you need at least 2 hours before your flight. Most airports are short handed so lines are longer too. That means you need to be there no later than 9:50. Plus a 2.5 hour drive? What time do you expect the port authorities start working so embarkation can start?

Deck 4 is mostly OV as the center is the medical center and guest relations. I know there are at least 2 interior which are disabled though.

Is it possible the difference is the country? Barbados in January required a nasopharyngeal swab which are done by medical personnel. That’s what we got in Venice, but not by design. In Rome they were doing the return to US with the regular swabs.

That would make all the drive through test in the US invalid too!

In control of everything but poor wifi!

I never remember a sales pitch, maybe because we were in steerage? I did get asked to come back when I saw them again!

i know we had 1 item pressing with Discover, I don’t recall whether it started earlier than that. I don’t know if they are combinable either!

I’ll be checking out the wing chairs in the Atlas bar then, during the day! The living room is often noisy from small groups chatting, bridge games, etc. Not ideal for reading! for what it is worth, I’m hoping they rearranged the furniture so everyone can get down near the dance floor. My last cruise with the living room nearly empty I had difficulty even after moving some furniture so that I could avoid the step down.

Those were there when the Den appeared. That area also had future cruises and shore excursions using the space which often made it difficult to get to the books.

There used to be a community puzzle in the corner of Mosaic cafe.

I suspect the problem may have been there was not bar area to meet up before going into the restaurants nearby. If that’s true, then I would expect that it’s hours would be similar to those in the main dining room, which would the defeat the attraction of having another bar in many ways.

Although the library had begun to be used for more meetings it was otherwise a nice quiet place to sit and read. There are at least 5 bars without the library being converted although the one in the Caberet is normally only open for shows.

I’ve been waitlist for an accessible cabin since I was forced to change years when Azamara announce our Western Africa cruise was cancelled. Today I was told, nearly a year later, that the cabin was now available. I have no idea if someone cancelled or someone was given an upgrade. My guess is the length of time was probably a cancellation as it’s really tough to get upgrades of accessible cabins. There have been some interesting quirks in the remodeled accessible rooms, some have been fixed, others are more difficult. I didn’t see the problem with the bathroom mirror being too low for a companion or anyone who could stand but it appears to have been fixed. One of the ones I ran into was that the plugs by the beans thus near the large mirror were 220 and there was nowhere to plug the 110 hairdryer. The solution should be that a mirror has been added back to the desk. The fix for that 60 day cruise was a small standing mirror for the desk. They did not have any working voltage converters and we didn’t bring one because all but one of our pluggable devices are dual voltage. As I recall there wasn’t an extension cord that was long enough either. Please note too, that you lose some storage in the bathrooms too. The hanging rods heights can be annoying at times too! On the plus side the shower is pretty large!

we find we are rarely on the balcony. However, we did spend some time on it through the Suez Canal. With the new intensive ports there’s even less time to be out on it!

Refurbish window is way too late to be evaluating design!

I would have to agree that group was superb! As was the escort to Machu Picchu. Thanks for pointing out at least those involved in land tours with transfers are quite good. I remember the bus from the airport but not the logistics of how we got on the bus. To me that means it was quite efficient!

okay. I was told that those wearing celebrity badges in the terminals and at the airports were contractors, several times. The attitude you got matches what I’d experienced with those at an airport.

The US Embassies are capable of quickly replacing lost or stolen passports. It’s more difficult when you don’t have any ids as can happen with a fire, that’s why a copy in the cloud etc is valuable. As for the ground crew in the terminals, they seem to be contractors and more than useless. I had an asthma attack in Vancouver, while they kept insisting I wait, in smoke, outside for a bus! When I couldn’t breathe much more I was told that I was making a scene. I’ve not used cruise transfers since then, but then again I’ve only been on Celebrity once since then. Celebrity was losing a lot of their quality around that time. I have one cruise that has a unique itinerary, next year, to try again. I, fortunately, won’t need much of their ground help. from what you are describing, I need to set my expectations lower yet. That is truly a sad turn of events. I’m looking forward to seeing the changes that are being promised that give us back cruises without drink packages.

That requirement being lifted is for 90 days, as I read. I’m still curious what the question about 10-14 days affects.

what a nightmare. I can’t even imagine how I’d react although I’d probably start with the embassy! I’ve even worried about a May cruise, next year, being too close to the next cruise and not being negative when I need to enter Portugal.

From all the reports from the Caribbean it would appear that part of clearing a vessel can now include the number of COVID cases. Since it’s not uncommon for ships to be cleared by the ship having your passport, nearly everywhere else, I would expect that the cruise line has very little say in what is required of them. Certainly, if the requests were out of the norm a cruise line could refuse to enter their jurisdiction thus effectively skipping a port but for the EU that could be more than a simple skipping of one port! Hopefully, Ex-air will fill in the details about where they were in the cruise etc.