MamaFej

I'm confident that Retreat priority will serve you well. It occured to me after posting earlier that only having one spot for tenders may have been related to the cyclone that had devastated parts of the north island as well as Tonga and other islands in February. Perhaps BoI normally has more than one spot. Heck, even tiny, uninhabited Mystery Island had four spots. Of course, this is nothing more than speculation on my part. Enjoy your cruise!

I've never put anyone on an ignore list (though I've been tempted). I have, however, been very grateful not to see certain screen names on my cruise Roll Calls. Yes, I realize that I may be on some ignore lists, and some folks may be glad not to see me on theri Roll Calls. That's okay.

I'm sure that's part of it. It was a long itinerary, with many sea days, during the school year. That, I imagine, increases the percentage of higher-level CC members. Also, Bay of Islands had just a small dock. Only one tender was docking at a time, rather than two or three in differing stages of loading/unloading. This was on cruise 5 of a 5 cruise, 82 day trip. We were pretty chill, but I do have a bit of sympathy for those who weren't. However, I don't think they should have taken it out on crew who had no control over the situation.

It did, I'm sure. We were not in a suite, and were not in a hurry. I should have been more clear. I was referring to the priority tendering afforded to elgible level Captain's Club members. Tuscan was overflowing into the Ensemble Lounge with folks waiting. When many hundreds of people have priority, very few actually have priority. After our relaxing morning, we headed down to Tuscan, where priority tendering was just wrapping up. On our way to the tenders the CC host mentioned how angry some folks had been.

I refer to those as: algorithms be trippin' moments. We lucked into Aqua at less than Oceanview once that way. I'm guessing that one of the big TAs had just dumped a bunch of unsold Aquas, but it's nothing more than a guess.

At Bay of Islands, New Zealand in April, it took over 2.5 hours just to get the folks with tendering priority off the ship. Folks were not at all happy. We weren't in a hurry, so we went ashore later, even though we qualified. X probably could have gotten away with charging for the earliest tenders. Don't tell them I said that. For our next visit in October, we have booked a ship tour (unusual for us). I'm not sure that a tender port which can only handle one docked tender at a time is a great idea for a large ship. Again, they didn't ask me.

I'm not familiar with Mad Dog 20/20, but I made a mistake, anyway. I just saw Solstice, Hawaii, and September and got excited. I'm actually going to Hawaii in September to board the Solstice for a cruise to Sydney, not sailing to Hawaii.🤦🏽‍♀️

Oops Sorry about that. It only occured to me after the edit window closed.

I'm not sure that Celebrity thinks we are stupid, but I'm pretty sure they hope we are.

The loss of included (yummy delicious) Alfredo's (and more) really has Princess passengers up in arms. As with the recent changes on Celebrity, I'm seeing lots of comments about loss of trust, "bait and switch," and devaluing the product while charging more. I do not understand the business decision to tick off repeat customers, but clearly the C-Suite folks at both lines feel it is a superb idea. When news of the changes at Princess first came about, my first thought was: well, they saw what Celebrity has been doing, and getter away with, so they may as well follow suit. I appreciate this thread. I had only been looking at the chages at Princess in terms of Princess. The comparison to the beverage packages on X gives me another metric to consider. Thanks, @gardengalaz.

At this point, I'm hoping they won't start charging extra for using the tenders.

@padgman1 was expecting @Whinenowine on the Solstice, but is getting me instead. Kinda lile expecting Caymus, but getting Two Buck Chuck. 😜😜 😜😜

I'm hoping that the folks who are certain that Butlers are being dismissed will share their sources. I am not saying these folks are wrong, I'm merely saying that I find it extremely surprising. On my 5 2023 cruises and 3 2022 Celebrity cruises, several crew members had their contracts involuntarily extended due to difficulty getting enough staffing. From what we were told, there have been backlogs with getting work visas for new and even previous crew members. Crew have been overworked (even more than usual) due to short staffing. I wish I remembered all the names of the people who told us these things. I do recall a few, including a Blu host we'd sailed with on two other ships whose contract was extended twice, and who was hoping she'd be released in time for her wedding. I truly do not understand why Celebrity is getting rid of Butlers, instead of keeping them on the team, allowing for adjusting to a dynamic workload. Even if they aren't keeping them on the team, why not offer them the opportunity to work in places where there are staffing shortfalls? Then again, I don't understand some other things Celebrity does lately.

This made me smile. Thank you for that! My dear friend, who is also my TA, orders a Rob Roy "up" every night before dinner. He always shares his cherries with his lovely wife, also a dear friend.

That is correct. Perhaps we will run into eachother on the Trans-Pac. Enjoy!

Your experience was definitely different from all 5 of our boardings. The staff were plentiful, delightfully friendly, and efficient, but not once were we told about the requirement to stay aboard. We were absolutely not alone in trying to disembark, and it seemed that the onboard security staff were a bit tired of having to tell people they couldn't leave. I'm very happy that your experience was different, and I think it would be wise if they went back to doing things that way. It defintely seems like a better way of doing things than having only one, fairly small sign. As we've disembarked after dropping bags multiple times on multiple continents in the past, it hadn't occured to me it would be an issue. In the future, I'll look into it before boarding. Thanks for sharing your experience.

Definitely! On our first turn-around day, we walked to the Opera House and bought tickets for a tour on another day. We also bought tickets to see the outdoor opera for a later date. It was remarkable! We were sitting in Sydney Harbour, watching an opera, with the Sydney Opera House in the background. We even watched the Eclipse sail away for the three day cruise between our Fiji, Tonga, New Caledonia cruise and our Trans-Pac to Hawaii. We will be doing the reverse Trans-Pac to get back for land time, then the circumnav. Fun stuff.

The turnaround letter, of course, does not come until well after you've boarded the first cruise. We now understand why the hotel offered to hold our bags when we checked out. I wish they had explained at the time. We live. We learn. We try to help others to learn. Folks on the later cruise Roll Calls, as well as on our upcoming October circumnavigation cruise have appreciated the heads up. Sone folks opted to reboard right after zeroing out. We chose to spend time in the delightfully walkable Rocks area and saw more of the gorgeous Royal Botanic Gardens each day. Our last walking day in Sydney was over a month and a half later than the first, and it was so lovely to see how the plants had changed with the season.

We did, indeed. It was beautiful. And, @Jim_Iain, if you decide to do this, you and Iain might consider volunteering to fly in separate planes. They needed one couple to split up, no one wanted to do it, but PapaFej and I agreed to. That led to both of us getting to sit up fron (as it looks like David did). We were able to take pictures of each other, and get quite a bit more window real estate. However, I'm confident that everyone else had great views, too. @mahdnc, if I'm cleared by my doctors to dive in time, I will. If not, I'm sure I'll enjoy the snorkeling.

Back soon... Singapore is acutally our last port. We were supposed to arrive 24 hours earlier. We will probably cancel that cruise in favor of more land time in India and in Singapore for the following cruise. We were doing 5 consecutive cruises, the second and third of which were Singapore to Mumbai, then Mumbai to Singapore, with plans to do different things on the second visit to each port on the reverse trip. Celebrity wins: they will get to sell our cabin at a much higher price than we were paying. We (sort of) win, too, as we will be breaking up the long stretch of cruises with some interesting inland time, then fly to Singapore to join the next cruise. I think. 🤷🏼‍♀️

You didn't ask me, but we did two sets of B2Bs in Sydney earlier this year. You can go back to the ship, if you'd like. However, once you are onboard in Sydney, you're onboard until the next port. We were not told this ahead of time, and there was only one small sign indicating this, that we did not see until cruise 3 of the total 5 we did. In other ports, we have boarded early, dropped off carryons, then gone to explore. We were so disappointed when we tried to disembark, and were not allowed to. If we weren't going to have more time in Sydney later, we would have been even more chagrinned. So, be sure to get some time in Sydney before, between, and/or after your cruises. Also, another thing you didn't ask me about, yet here I am: I have a recommendation for Airlie Beach. We did a flightsseing tour over the Great Barrier Reef/ Whitsunday Islands. It was the top highlight of an 83 day trip with many highlights. Our next trip there, we will snorkel and/or SCUBA dive, but the view from the air was absolutley the right choice for us for our first visit.

They claimed it was due to "port congestion" as if they hadn't booked the berth years in advance. And the letter said nothing about reducing port taxes due to the decreased time in port.

Admittedly without evidence, I am guessing that the "research" was done according to the same standards as that which led the powers that be to decide that passengers want vape aerosols in the casino (and adjacent corridor) and that replacing an overnight port call in Singapore with a Sea Day would "enhance" our cruise experience.

I do not pretend to speak for wineoclock. I have read many concerns about the lack of windows in Blu on E class. I would not be surprised if that is part of their calculus.

I'm intrigued by the idea of the MSC Yacht Club, especially with the loyatly status match. I have not yet found an itinerary and timing that has led me to pull that trigger. We've discovered in the last couple of years that we really like small ship cruising. We are okay with quieter nights and fewer activities. I totally respect that others are not. We love smaller ports, getting farther up rivers and into the interesting parts of cities, many more overnights, and other aspects. I suppose we are pretty darn lucky to even be able to consider such things.