CruisingAlong4Now

So Seabourn didn't return your money? I'm confused on why you feel you can't trust them? Did they return your money?

Valid for four years sounds good.

Never heard of cornhole.

"I erased confirmation e mail as soon as the cruise showed up in my personalizer " Just a general comment on relying on a vendors databases. This is an example of a vendor changing their records after you have seen them. With so many of us getting e-bills and e-statements from banks, mortgage administrators, and other vendors, this is a cautionary tale. I recommend downloading the statements from your banks or other vendors and storing them on your backup media. This is especially true for financial records. You should at a minimum keep your year end statements since they generally contain all the transactions within that year.

Not all cruise lines or ports require you to disembark on the turnover day. Another difference between B2B and a single cruise of the same duration is the turnover of people. On a B2B, some people leave at the end of the first cruise and new people join the cruise. If you like the first bunch of people and they leave after the first cruise, you might feel that you've lost your friends. On the other hand, if the first cruise has a bunch of loud boozers, you'll be happy to see the back of them and look forward to new people joining the cruise.

The major benefit for most people is that doing a B2B rather than two single 7 day cruises at different times means that they only have one RT flight. If you tend to cruise 7-day cruises and you do a B2B, you effectively have a 14 day cruise. There's nothing special about a two 7 day B2B compared to a 14 day cruise (although some cruise lines have a small discount for booking a B2B rather than two single 7 day cruises).

Yes I understand - huge proportion is a mass market.

I would find it boring to start and end at the same port. Why go someplace twice on the same trip? Crystal often runs their ships in a continuous run: eg Miami to Los Angeles to Brisbane to Hong Kong to Tokyo to somewhere else. You can sign up for a short segment or take longer cruises with the b2b of multiple segments.

This is appalling. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/tourism-cruises/article243398711.html Sounds like all the passengers are on land. https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/final-cruise-ship-still-carrying-passengers-docks-in-germany-after-6-months-at-sea/

Notwithstanding your misinterpretation of my example, not all discrete pricings are discriminatory and to claim so diminishes true discrimination.

The term "discrimination" is pejorative. Not every price difference is "discrimination". Many times it reflects relative cost of living. Have you looked at the Big Mac Index? The Bic Mac index has been published annually by The Economist since 1986 and is rated as a simplified indicator of a country’s individual purchasing power. As many countries have different currencies, the standardized Big Mac prices are calculated by converting the average national Big Mac prices with the latest exchange rate to U.S. dollars. In Jan 2020, the Big Mac cost $5.67 in the US and $4.41 in Britain. It ranges from a high of $6.61 in Switzerland to a low of $2.15 in South Africa. https://www.statista.com/statistics/274326/big-mac-index-global-prices-for-a-big-mac/ There are enough real issues of discrimination in the world; let's not add country specific pricing to the list.

US and UK rules are different regarding deposits. Where are you located?

I will never sail [insert cruise line here] again because of the way they treated me. Well, since the other boards also have people who will never sail [insert cruise line here] again, I guess the number of people will stay the same. There may be a transfer of cruisers from X cruise line to Y cruise line, but that will be offset by a number of cruisers transferring from Y cruise line to X cruise line.

I left the credit balance on the credit card. Unfortunately since I charge almost everything, it won't take very long to get to zero. 😔

Fr: "Un test préalable Covid sera obligatoire pour chaque passager avant de monter à bord," Berlitz did not include this phrase during my classes, so I am not sure if this means that passengers must have had a covid-19 test prior to coming to board the ship, tests will be administered at boarding, or there will be some new test. I could not find this information on the Ponant website so I am unsure of what is happening.