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We are on a cruise now, the second of back to backs. Approximately day 10 of a 12 day cruise, a banging noise started at night, and it was hard to sleep. I recorded it on my phone, and notified our butler, and the manager. They came with the maintenance manager and said they would caulk around the side window but we needed to be out of the room. We suggested they do it on the change day, because we had a full day excursion. They said they would. Today is the second day of the second cruise. The seas are calmer and we believe we are sailing slower, but I still heard the noise last night, albeit less frequently. So I asked the butler if the maintenance crew did anything. She said no. So we are in a suite, $$$, and we are loyal guests, and they just dismissed our legitimate problem. (After promising to do something, which may or may not have fixed the situation, but at least they would have tried.) What is the best way to handle this? We believe they should fix this or compensate us in some way. We would prefer the fix, but that may not be possible. Should we go back to the manager, who will be different since the other one went home? Or should we wait until we are home and contact Celebrity? I don’t want to spend too much time on my cruise dealing with this, but it’s disappointing how they are not dealing with the problem. Appreciate any advice. After 20+ cruises it’s the first time we’ve had a situation that wasn’t resolved. Thanks. Norma

Wow. So not impressed by customer service at Celebrity air. It was easy enough to book 10 months ago. Clearly they are trained to take reservations. And there was no huge discount like we had with other cruise lines…. We leave in 5 weeks. Two weeks ago we received a notice that there was a schedule change and that they would get to it ASAP. Nothing has happened and the schedule changes were major, (we have one leg out at 3 o’clock one day and the second leg is out at 9 PM the next day). So clearly we want that first flight to be corrected. Just move the first flight to the next day, the airline does it free of charge because the the major schedule change. ( I already confirmed with the airline even though the travel agency pretends there is a fee as they state in their email). Well it’s not so easy with this travel agency. I called today and basically talked to the three agents who have little ability to do anything. They told me they are not allowed to call the airline. Not only that, but they said could not even find the same flight the next day in the same class. I had to go on the airline website and bring up the information and tell them how many seats were still available. One agent wrote up a case and told me it would take 5 days to resolve. I am just glad I didn’t wait longer. I have no confidence that anybody would’ve done anything. I just hope they will get it right when they finally fix it. Its not possible to talk to anyone in schedule changes. It makes me wonder why anyone would use them a second time. We certainly won’t. I want to write Celebrity because they brag about the level of quality, but it doesn’t extend to their travel agent. Trying to find an email the CEO, when I called Celebrity they just put me on hold, and then told me there was no email…not for customer service or the CEO. any advice is appreciated…

Thanks so much for your replies. We have cruised Cunard several times and their dance floors are fantastic, but the selection of music has always been a bit stodgy. We just came back from Queen Elizabeth, and we are delighted to see that they are updating the music program to more modern music, although still playing ballroom tempos in the Queens room. Dancer Bob, you get a shout-out for the pix. Thank you.

That has happened to us on several cruise lines, running out of the popular wines…. (We typically don’t upgrade the package unless it’s included…) The sommelier always has offered us something better, so it’s never been an issue for us

Would love to hear others’ opinions. We have done lots of Celebrity Caribbean cruises, but we will be doing B2Bs out of Sydney this winter. In the Caribbean we have seen many folks dressed up more so, or less than us. We typically wear what I call classy casual, and for the galas DH wears a blazer and trousers, and I wear a cocktail dress or nice pant outfit. Not too dressy but nice. Not even sure how many cruisers will be Americans, so wondering if the crowd down under tends to dress up more or less or about the same. Appreciate thoughts… ?

Yes, except for the chiffon the laundry service has been great. Lovely getting back everything washed AND ironed. Many cruise lines only wash for the basic price.

Thanks for the tips. Shower didn’t do the trick. Helped for the wool tux jacket, but not the chiffon.

So we embarked in Ft Lauderdale on Aug 9. They cancelled the Bermuda port, just saying it was untenable. Three days later they said there were several Covid cases on board and everyone had to mask up. They also closed the laundries, and gave us a discount to use their laundry service. So we aren’t happy to wear masks to dance, but we deal with it and don’t dance so much, which disappoints me a lot. But the big problem for me was the laundry. It’s bad enough I have to send clothes out or hand wash the ones I don’t want them to ruin, but here’s what really ticked me off. We pack for gala and smart attire, so that means a few of my outfits have some chiffon, which gets folds from packing. Typically I would just take them into the launderette and steam the folds right out…easy peasy… But… I can’t do that so I sent one out and it came back with the same fold wrinkles. I showed it to our Butler who took it and got it done correctly. I then sent out item number two, a simple chiffon skirt which also came back not steamed. The butler says, no problem, I will take it back and tell the manager. Well, there is a problem, because she then came back and told me “they cannot do this”. And they won’t charge you. Duh? That it? What kind of laundry can’t steam a clothing item? My next step is to talk to the concierge. Now I have 2 outfits I can’t wear because they have arbitrary decision making due to Covid. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. I feel like I’m whining, but Cunard has to consider how they react to Covid at this point in time. They could even ration out launderette time so all of us who packed fewer clothes could wash them ourselves. Frustrating….anyway, thanks for reading. I’m wondering if there’s a better way to complain or if no one listens.

Just like everything else with Cunard, they move pretty darn slowly. This morning we got an email telling us they are taking off the Bermuda stop. That’s after everybody on the ship already had to do the Bermuda travel authorization form, and pay for it. And pay for the excursions. Yes, they will reimburse us, it says via our onboard account so I guess that means OBC. We cruised five times during Covid, and we understand that itinerary changes happen, but this is ridiculously late based on the lame reasoning they gave. Most of the times when they changed the itinerary it was because the ship had too many Covid cases, or the island had too many cases. Neither of those exist. My guess is they didn’t want to have to do all the testing for the people who’ve been on board prior to today’s departure. People getting on today will have a negative Covid result that’s within the number of days that Bermuda requires. This could’ve been decided at least a week out. I think Cunard needs to get a move on it and start being a little bit proactive. There’s been no change in the situation that I can tell. Anyway, we get to go to the Azores now, which is another place we haven’t been so I won’t complain too much. I just don’t understand why Cunard is still the slowest of all cruise lines to “get a move on it”. Thanks for listening to my mini-whine. 😉

We have used Cunard Air three times. We’ve traveled in business class and their prices knocked my socks off. They were so good. We have not been able to match it when traveling with Celebrity Air, for example. Also having traveling with Vikings river air, you don’t get your final flights until about 30 days out… They will give you flights, but they will continue to change them if they can’t keep the prices low enough for their budget. And Cunard we flew twice with United, once with Lufthansa. All three times we were able to select our seats by going to the Airlines website and just adding them to our reservation.

The last time we flew into Heathrow for a Cunard cruise, the lines were not much better. I’d say they were about 2 1/2 hours long. And that was in 2018 before Covid and all the problems that there are currently with respect to hiring people and keeping positions filled right now.

We’ve not yet cruised on Costa, but we’ve heard that their ships have a nice dance floors and good old fashioned couple dancing music. Is that still true or is it only on some of the ships? Appreciate any information on which ships still have great dance floors and music, (something other than a discotheque…) thanks in advance.

Oh wow. Thanks for catching. I’m getting old and clearly not reading everything as well as I should. . Yes we are B2Bing. Now I need to revisit my emails and make sure I have it correct. DH would kill me if we showed up without the correct docs…or I might commit HariKari if I couldn’t board after all the packing.😬

I seem to remember Queen Mary having a luggage scale, but maybe I’m confusing myself here. Since we’re going to be flying on a European airline when we get off in Barcelona, I want to make sure the suitcases are within the right weight range. And I hate to carry one of those little Luggage scales with me if I don’t have to. Does Queen Elizabeth have a luggage scale somewhere? Thanks.

In response to the requests, I received the email on July 21. Here’s the excerpt. “we’re letting you know that we’ve updated our pre-sailing testing requirements. These will apply to your voyage, Q226A, departing on 08/22/2022.For your embarkation port, all guests aged five years and over must still take a Covid‑19 antigen test and receive a negative result within two days of departure. You will no longer need to provide a test certificate, however, you will be asked to confirm the test has been taken, with a negative result, for you and each member of your party as part of your pre‑boarding health declaration at the cruise terminal. Adequate tests include over the counter tests, providing they fall within our list of accepted Covid-19 antigen tests. “ It’s my belief that Cunard is dealing with every cruise on a case by case basis. I had called Cunard to ask a couple questions about a week before this email came, and the agent told me that how many ports a particular voyage goes to can make a difference in the requirements. And yes, I’m not sure that the website even matches what came in my email…

Just commenting…..We are Americans departing from Fort Lauderdale on QE on Aug 9. We received an email about a week ago, telling us the same, that we must test ourselves but not a monitored test, prior to boarding. Americans have been a given the opportunity to get free self-tests for the past couple months. So it’s great for us, since the monitored tests may or may not be covered, depending on one’s insurance. Glad to hear this change in requirement is becoming more common, especially since they require vaccination in order to sail. Looking forward to putting Covid behind us all!