HappiTravels

We were on Silhouette 27 Dec sailing. We had a balcony cabin and the premium drink package. The cruise was phenomenal. Cabin clean, room attendant (Jerry) great; the 3 bartenders (George, Christian and Elayna) at Molecular were beyond amazing. Never waited for a drink at any bar. Dining at Murano and Tuscan exceptional. MDR food was fantastic. NYE was more than so much fun. Embarkation and Disembarkation unbelievably fast and efficient. Will be writing a cruise review, however, since there have been a few negative reviews on Silhouette int he past few months, just wanted everyone to know....cruise was fantastic.

Thanks for the positive words. We are sailing on Jan 10th and I am even more excited now after reading your post.

Last year on the Reflection my 12 year old daughter started to choke on something and it caused her to cough so hard that she vomited. The staff went into overdrive immediately. We were sent to the doctor who felt that there was no threat of noro but asked if we would keep her in the room until the next day. They really bent over backwards to look after any needs that she might have but they don't take any chances. They completely disinfected our room from top to bottom. On the last night we were given a totally different tag for disembarking ( # 99). Our luggage was all wrapped in plastic and came out on a totally different conveyer.

You obviously are going with the right attitude. Nothing in life is perfect and just roll with the punches. We were on the Reflection last December and had a wonderful vacation. Very few complaints. Enjoy your cruise.

If you take the Solstice, they have a great naturalist on board Brent Nixon. He gives talks everyday and a running commentary as you are going up Tracey Arm Fjord. Also, if weather and ice permits Celebrity does a great excursion once you get to Sawyer Glacier which is you furthest transit up the Fjord. They have Catamarans which you get on and take you closer to the Glacier. They also will take you to the other Sawyer glacier which the Solstice can't get to. One of the best excursions we ever did, lots of whales, seals and other wildlife. The catamaran then meets the ship in Juneau.

 

If you are looking at a veranda,, suggest an Aft Veranda so you can see both sides while Brent Nixon gives his commentary. If you only go with one side, you will miss the other side which could change on the way back. This is the day you go into Juneau.

We did the Solstice in August 2013 and Brent Nixon made the cruise so memorable for us. He is a such a great narrator and so entertaining. I think half of the passengers became his groupies by the end of the cruise

We have never done the self-disembarkation but we will definitely do it on our upcoming cruise. Last year when we got off the Reflection in Miami one of our suitcases was nowhere to be found. The staff were as helpful as could be in trying to help us to locate it but here we are nearly a year later and that suitcase has never resurfaced. All Celebrity pays is $300.00 which is about the value of the case itself, forget the contents. I went to file a claim on our travel insurance and they wanted receipts for everything. Seriously, who keeps receipts for every stitch of clothes and shoes that they buy. It was an expensive lesson and i will hold onto my luggage from now on.

We are booked to take our daughter who turned 13 last week on her 6th Celebrity Cruise. She has special needs and the staff treat her like a VIP and she absolutely loves it. We don't sail during traditional school holidays but there are still always a good number of children on board. Personally I think that it is the staff that make the cruise so memorable for the kids.

I just thought that I would come back with an update on my lost luggage. After 5 weeks Celebrity decided that my luggage was officially lost and offered $600.00 as I had some of my stuff and my daughters in the case. I will now need to open a case with my travel insurance company and hope that they will offset the rest of the costs. Thankfully I wasn't carrying any electronic equipment or jewellery. When I created a speadsheet of our ordinary belongings that were in there it was just over $2000.00. What a pain to have to replace this stuff.

We have learned that the safest way to get our luggage is to pretty much ignore the time on your disembarkation form and just get off a little earlier. You get to your luggage section before most others and it's much easy to find and retrieve your luggage.

 

(I'm sure this is a sin....let the flames begin....)

Our disembarkation was a little different than any that we have experienced. My 12 year old daughter picked up a nasty cough that was running rampant through the ship and one night in the OceanView she coughed so hard that it caused her to vomit. I am not sure if anyone else has been in this predicament but the staff go into overdrive as soon as someone vomits. We were sent straight down to the ships doctor and after examining her they determined that she definitely didn't have Noro and wasn't confined to the room. They still did a thorough sanitization of our room and took her clothes and laundered them. They were following protocol.

We were given luggage tags # 14 for disembarkation but when we went to put out our luggage they told us to not use them and gave us luggage tags # 66. This was all new to me but it means that they wrap the luggage in plastic and put it separately. There must have been a lot of Noro on the ship as there was a lot of wrapped luggage. The person attending to these bags searched high and low and could not figure out what could have happened to our suitcase.

What a coincidence that so many of the issues seem to be with the Reflection. Vulcan1971, one of the things that I wasn't sure of was the maximum that Celebrity covers. $300.00 is ridiculous. In most cases nowadays that barely covers the price of the suitcase let alone the contents. I would definitely be much happier to receive my luggage back than have to go through the hassle of an insurance claim. They are definitely very complacent about follow-up.

I am very sorry to hear about your lost luggage. You might want to read this thread. I don't know if they ever got theirs back.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1917602&highlight=lost+luggage

Thanks for sharing this thread. I wonder if their luggage ever showed up? At least we weren't dealing with a language barrier.

We disembarked from Eclipse in Miami following her recent TA. We have VERY distinctive luggage so found a porter and just said "four cases like these" pointing to our carry-on luggage.

 

Our first three cases were found quickly, just one case apart on the carousel. [The advantage of distinctive luggage, baggage handlers recognise they belong together!] No sign of the fourth case. The porter was wonderful and searched behind the scenes and the other carousels. He came back with a case very like ours. It even had they same distinctive luggage case but I could see immediately it was not our missing case. [it was smaller and had one, rather than two, handles.] He returned it to the carousel but I took the details from both the Celebrity label and the luggage tag. Like us, the guest was from the UK.

 

After a couple of calls the owner of the case answered her mobile [cell] 'phone. I established that she was off the ship at a local hotel and had our case. I then passed the 'phone to the official at Miami responsible for lost luggage. She made it clear that it was the responsibility of the person who had taken to wrong luggage to cover the expenses of sorting the problem out. Eventually the woman's husband returned to the port in a taxi to make the swap.

 

Although we had a higher number for disembarkation, we were able to disembark at anytime from Michael's Club and disembarked early. The number on the other passenger's case was higher than ours. So, not only had the woman and her husband disembarked before their time [despite not having a flight until the evening] but had also picked up the wrong [larger!] case form the wrong carousel!

 

The moral of this story [although far too late for the OP] is that it is much better to resolve this issue before leaving the port. It is likely that, if your bag is missing, someone has collected the wrong one. Clearly this can happen no matter how distinctive you think your luggage is and not everyone is able to correctly identify their own luggage. While you are still at the port, you may be able to identify an unclaimed bag that looks similar to your own and get the contact details from the labels. If you do not do that, you are at the mercy of the person who has taken the wrong bag who quite probably [as they have taken the wrong bag] not bright enough to work out what to do with it!

 

Incidentally, there is no way the person in error covered the full expense of this incident. We felt obliged to compensate our porter for all the jobs he forfeit by looking after us for a long time, our pre-arranged transport had given up waiting for us [we had not realised that most business cell 'phone in the US have outgoing overseas calls blocked so a UK mobile 'phone is useless in these situations!] and we incurred additional taxi charges to Fort Lauderdale and the cost of international calls on my mobile 'phone! It would have been polite for them to have offered to cover our expenses.

You are so lucky that it ended so positively. My next purchase will absolutely be distinctive luggage. Definitely a great investment. Although my missing case is bright Red. We had a fantastic person helping us at the port and we spent a few hours trying to get to the bottom of it but unfortunately we were starting to get tight for time and had to get to the airport. Thanks for sharing your story. It is frustrating that you have to be out of pocket for these expenses.

I have tried looking to see if I could find any similar situations on this forum and couldn't so here goes.

We got off the Reflection on Dec 20th and when we went to pick up our luggage one of our suitcases was nowhere to be found. We filled out a missing luggage report on site but have been home for more than 2 weeks now and we keep getting told that they are still checking the warehouse for our suitcase. Has anyone else experienced this and did their missing luggage ever show up? If not, how did you go about resolving it with Celebrity.

Thank you so much for all the great information. We are on the Aug 23rd sailing and I am now more excited than ever.

Last year on our first ever cruise on Carnival Splendour one of the ports was La Romana in the Dominican Republic. I really wouldnt be too sorry if I never got back there again. I am not sure if RCL stops there at all. I have also spoken to a few people who had a port of call in Haiti, not sure what cruiseline but that wouldnt appeal to me in the least.

I was also wondering what a rum runner is. Now I know, where do you get them?