arealcheapskate

I'm just repugnant and remove the tips straight away when I board.

We wait about 30 minutes (sometimes less) and just move the towels. 

Have had some salty looks from people when they return an hour later (if at all) but most are too meek to actually say anything. 

If anyone has an issue, we just say take it up with security and/or housekeeping. 

What's weird is on Apex they had a streaming tv option where you could basically chromecast to the TV, that seems to have disappeared?

On 4/25/2024 at 9:03 PM, wrk2cruise said:

I know someone that won the free cruise.   It's really a casino comp'ed cruise so you have to pick from their limited list of sailings.  I'm assuming you have to pay taxes/fees and anything you spend onboard like drinks wifi gratuities.   Far from free.

 

We won a free cruise on the deal or no deal, redeemed for 13 night best of scandinavia cruise. Paid $540 in taxes. Upgraded our room to veranda via moveup for $100 per person.

Not bad for 13 nights... 

If you want to look at the cruises on offer just go here https://bluechipcluboffers.com/CertificateOfferCodeLookUp.asp

The code is 24xxDONDXX 

Where xx is month, XX is ship name. For example 2405DONDBY

That being said the odds of winning the cruise are so remote - it's a total ripoff. 

It's not always a ripoff. We upgrade an insided casino booking for a 13 night cruise for $100/pp total to a prime veranda. Pretty good deal. 

34 minutes ago, JLMcruise said:

Only had to hold for 12 minutes!!!! The lady stated if you have 2 things open it will make you reset your password. I always leave the app open on my phone. I never had that happen before.

 

 

Customer service literally makes stuff up on the fly, I wouldn't trust them to tell me what colour the sky is. 

Same thing happened to us. Had to reset the password to get back in.

I’ve had this issue many times, switching to incognito usually helps. Not sure if it is a residual cookie or cache data or perhaps a plugin like Adblock. But it is an inconsistent problem.

1 hour ago, the penguins said:

 

1) you object to auto grats and then go on to say " just because I spend x amount on a cruise doesn't mean I want to tip a certain percentage". What you don't clarify is that having removed Autograts if you then go on to tip staff individually or if you don't tip anyone. Which is it?

2) I assume that you never have a drink at the bar, wine with meals or a coffee in the Al Bacio as all of these have a 20$ gratuity added to the cost.

1) I brought up the percentage thing because another commenter mentioned that they allocate a fixed percentage of the overall cruise to tip above and beyond. We tip neither a percentage nor the automatic gratuities. You could say we don’t tip anything but again as I said, we pay for the cruise fare. Whether this includes enough to pay the staff is not my problem, it’s the CL. And perhaps the staffs’.
 

2) don’t really have a choice there because it becomes a fee and not a gratuity, as you can’t remove that.. What I will not, however, do is keep any removable amount on my account. If I could remove the “gratuity” on those purchases too I would do it on the spot.

We usually book AUD fares instead of USD and find they are not only cheaper, but include the service charges (read:gratuities (described this way by Celebrity not me) in the fare.

15 hours ago, Pinboy said:

it bothers me that people ( too many) look for excuses not to tip .

A few points to make here - I don't need an excuse. I'll let someone else pay my way. 

I will flat out just tell you that each cruise (if it's a USD booking) we go and have them removed from the account. I don't even do it at the end of the cruise to try to get the "benefit" - just straight at the beginning or perhaps Day 2 to get it out of the way. 

No shame and no guilt. If the cruise line can't pay a fair wage - it's not my job either. If the employees aren't being paid fairly, they will speak with their feet and if they don't that's okay too - I'm not going to lose sleep. Same reason I don't lose sleep when I buy cheap clothes, or an overpriced Apple product made in China with less than questionable labor sourcing. 

Just because I spend x amount on the cruise doesn't mean I want to tip a certain percentage. 

I always find these threads so amusing because they always devolve into some sort of lecture on ethics and morals. I'll be the first to say if not tipping makes me unethical or some sort of pariah, I'm happy to wear that label. After all, my username checks out. 

We wait 30 minutes, then move towels or books whatever onto the next chair over. 

If someone has a problem we tell them to take it up with guest relations.

Have never had an issue. People are too meek. Seriously, if you aren't using it - you lose it. 

Just now, Pushka said:

Australian consumer protection rules for any Australian booking online regardless of which country the cruise is in. And gratuities are included as is any applicable tax. 

I'm not talking about the country it's in. I'm talking about a USD booking - issued through the Miami office with no gratuities included on the confirmation. 

When you check-in and provide your country of residence those terms take precedence. 

For example, with our Casino booking only the Miami office was able to book it. 

Ordinarily you need to provide your address / country at the time of booking. This matters because promotions can be different, and pricing as well. 

Thought this might be good to know for some of you - if you have made complimentary or discounted bookings in other countries etc. 

We just discovered today that whatever country of residence you set on check-in overrides the default booking currency terms. 

For example we had a USD casino fare that would ordinarily auto-charge gratuities daily, but it turns out that if you choose Australia - this automatically tells the system not to add them. Regardless of whether you purchased the cruise fare with gratuities inclusive. 

Nice way of not having to go to the customer service people and remove them. We are resident in Australia and the law basically says the fare has to be inclusive of that.

Additionally the liability for luggage delay, loss and damage is not excluded on the Australian terms as it is in the US terms. Basically the US gets shafted. 

“Primary Country of Residence” means the country where you primarily reside at the time of booking the cruise. This should be indicated by you, your agent, or other representative at the time of booking the cruise or at online check-in.

Australian Terms here: 

Cruise prices include the following where applicable: full onboard accommodation, onboard main meals, entertainment onboard ship, gym, some fitness classes, service charges to stateroom attendants; port charges and taxes. 

US Terms here: 

For Guest’s convenience, a discretionary service gratuity (“Gratuities”) will be automatically added daily to the onboard account of each Guest, except as otherwise provided below. Gratuities are subject to adjustment, at Guest’s discretion, onboard the Vessel until the morning of disembarkation. Gratuities will not be automatically added to the Guest’s onboard account if they are included in the Cruise Fare, as reflected in the Guest’s booking confirmation, if the Guest pre-pays them, or if the laws of the Guest’s primary country of residence do not permit them to be added automatically.

7 hours ago, NutsAboutGolf said:

What speeds are you seeing?

I had premium, wife had basic. Used the router with her basic login but over VPN, same speeds. Around 6mbps down and 1mbps up this was in Australia. In iceland a bit faster - not sure about the caribbean. 

Just now, billc23 said:

I will look into that router. I currently use a VPN that has different protocols and quickly scrolls through them to find one that works.

That one is like the top of the line one - there are cheaper versions of the same router without wifi 6 etc. I just wanted something future proof. 

Chances are with your current VPN service you'll be able to just plug those details into the router and it will channel all traffic over that router so your devices can all connect. 

What I do is connect all on the same router so I can stream to the Chromecast I bring. I am not sure when or if they removed Streaming video services on the television maybe someone else can correct - but Apex had them and edge did not. 

4 minutes ago, Shadow9612 said:

Why do they do so? If 40mbps is possible, why limit?

Quality of service. 40mbps is possible but not consistently and reliably. It's better to deliver 6mbps to everyone, all the time (all things being equal).

1 minute ago, DaKahuna said:

 It is not impossible.  MSC appears to be blocking travel routers using MAC address and / or deep packet inspection.  By looking at the source MAC address on the outgoing packets they can detect the device manufacturer and block based on manufacturer.  The same can be said for use of deep packet inspection.   I am glad Celebrity does not do this.  

 

With wireguard can just use udp2raw to get around this - but it does slow the connection somewhat. I too am glad Celebrity doesn't do this or we would probably cruise elsewhere. 

Just now, jwattle said:

No, I'm referring to what you may find the next time (if you go again) as a MRS...kind of like "this is why we can't have nice things" because people take it to extremes.total of 43 bottles between us for a 5 night cruise.

Fair enough, sorry I misinterpreted. 

Although the RA did tell us when they have a party cruise with lots of young people in those suites, they have had to replace the entire bar in litre quantities twice a day. I reckon with the prices we paid for the Massive Suite we more than made up for a difference. Probably the reason the rockstar suites only get a single fill compared to the MRS. 

43 sounds like a lot but most are half bottles so like 375ml and towards the back half of the cruise they brought us litre bottles. 

5 minutes ago, jwattle said:

Which means that taking that many bottles off really puts a hit on the profit margin...it also might help inspire a change in the policy...food for thought.

Why should anyone change their behaviour based on what a company may or may not do in the future? It's not a charity, it's a cruiseline. 

Their ongoing viability as a company does not concern me - that is for their accountants to sort out. 

2 hours ago, jwattle said:

I'm going to say what others may/may not be thinking, but this is the type of thing that makes the MRS suites go up in cost...just a thought.

Perhaps - but for every one of us there are probably 5 rooms that don't drink anything. TBH I think the regular rooms are probably worse for revenue compared to a regular cruise line - I saw plenty of people not drinking anything except soda. It seems about 10-20% of the ship did about 75% of the drinking. 

The Basic wifi limitation is artificial and is purposely restricted by Celebrity. 

We use a GL-AXT1800 router with a wireguard protocol VPN. It bypasses all the port blocks/social media blocks/speed limitations and the internet works as the premium would. (Video calls etc). 

Because it's not a traditional VPN it's impossible for them to block as it uses the same port as a secure HTTPS connection. In addition we can tether as many devices as we like - they don't seem to throttle the speed. 

Just as an update to this we ended up getting a total of 43 bottles between us for a 5 night cruise. 

Our RA was totally onboard and ended up restocking us twice a day and moved up to the litre spirit bottles. We have been handing them out like party favours when we go to dinners etc. Those little bottled old fashioned things are great too because they were $15 each and they just hand them over to you at the bar. 

No customs / or duties since it was domestic.

At the restaraunts we would use our 2 bottles per night and share with the table next to us and leave the bottle with whoever it was and they always appreciated. No real limits on the number of drinks. 

Attended their TA live stream yesterday and basically no answers. "they will be back" 

MNVVs extended a year but refunds are "case by case" 

What a crock of garbage. Won't be selling or advocating for their product anymore. 

4 minutes ago, CruisingWalter said:

 

Honest question for those of you who sailed in Australia.  How full were the ships?  From the little information I was able to glean, it didn't sound like the sailings in Australia were sailing full.  Just curious for those who actually sailed the ships in Australia, were the ships sold our or sailing light? 

They were relatively packed - but due to heavy discounting 50 percent off fares (for example around $600USD for 5 nights total not PP for a Sea Terrace XL). Depending on the sailing but some sailings had lots of suite availability even the day of departure for upgrades. We upgraded to a massive suite on the spot for $1000usd for 5 nights. In the states the suites book out a year in advance sometimes as you know. 

The itineraries were garbage though. Tassie and back with 2 nights in a port. The only nice ones were the NZ ones. 

1 minute ago, wintrev said:

Dear CEO

 

What a joke!!!!

 

Are you going to pay for me to fly halfway around the world just to use your product????

 

Why did you keep selling cruises when you knew this was going to be the end result???

 

 

The best part of this email is the link: 

www.virginvoyages.com?utm_source=cordial&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fm_projecthope

LOL "Project Hope" is the name of the marketing / email campaign.