markeb

As in most restaurants, you’ll get much better wine by the bottle than by the glass. The package pays off if you’re mostly happy with the by the glass offerings, have a beer or cocktail or two, and throw in some bottled water. Then you get the discount on a good bottle or two. And don’t pay too much attention to the pennies!

With the premium package you get a 20% discount on the bottle price. You’ll still pay a 20% gratuity but on the discounted price. Easy math is $100 bottle @ 20% discount is $80 plus $18 gratuity is $98. With gratuity you pay $2 less than the posted price, but $22 less than the bottle would cost without the package discount. ($100 + 20 = $120)

Hasn't that always been true? I've never seen Luminae open for lunch on a port day (other than embarkation day).

I guess it's too simple to just point out that RCG has invested heavily in Florida with cruise terminals in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Port Canaveral, and Tampa. Every cruise that leaves one of those locations increases the return on those investments. And those cruises are mostly leaving full. Including plenty of cruisers willing to fly from the West Coast. Seattle and especially Vancouver give them advantages that wouldn't exist in Southern California. They can reach Alaska easily from either location, and Vancouver as a non-US location allows them to do one way cruises to Alaska or Hawaii. Europe and even Australia have become big "other markets" for RCG. If the OP has an actual business case for San Diego I'd love to hear it. Although having multiple user names on the same platform usually gets one banished. I'd have to look at the user agreement on CC...

Well that greatly simplifies the definition of modern popular music! Keep having fun out here! 😁

Agree. Although I'm stuck with Disney+ since they're now the "other than UK" distributor of Doctor Who. How does a ...

We'd have to sit down over a beverage and update my baseline on Baroque versus Classical. Not sure I'd know the difference. Would be a fun exercise. Nirvana for their impact on popular music. Green Day for still being around and still making great music. Foo Fighters doesn't count. Taylor or Adele would depend on the day of the week and the mood I'm in. Are we talking Red and earlier or 1989 and later? Taylor's early stuff is more storyteller, like a lot of Adele, but her voice is better now. Adele is just Adele... Les Miserables. Of course!

I wonder if that would crash their servers like she crashed Ticketmaster...

I'm almost exactly a decade behind you. I can handle all of that, maybe even a little bit of ABBA, in moderation. The overproduced music of the late 80s pretty much led directly to grunge and the rock of the 90s. So we can skip most of the late 80s. We're a quarter of the way into the 21st Century. It's OK to play something more recent. I was truly amazed in November that the house band on Equinox knew at least two Foo Fighters songs! Mind you, they were both off The Colour and the Shape which was released in 1997, 27 years ago. And I think they'd been specifically told not to do anything harder, which is kind of difficult with the Foos. Equinox put on what ended up being a "tribute" to Queen one night in the Grand Foyer which was maybe the worst butchering of Freddy Mercury I've ever seen or heard. Be careful what you ask for! And for the record, my favorite album of all time is Born to Run and it will be 49 years old in August. Not hearing that on a cruise either...

Back to the Future is one of the Kennedy Center shows we're looking at. People seem to like it, but I haven't seen it. If you haven't seen Hamilton, though...

Because they can make more money sailing from Florida? Just like California? 😃

Good question! We have a Kennedy Center gift certificate and need to make a choice or two soon. We haven't made it to Broadway on our last couple of trips (just did two quick nights).

Or they need a US flagged ship and comply with US labor and tax laws... Edited to add: Oops! Forgot immigration and customs!

I don't work in advertising and only took one marketing class for an MBA, but I vividly remember a case study about the Ford Ka in France. Every marketing student or MBA student goes through the analysis and recommends that Ford use the behavioral based segmentation and targeting strategy proposed by the marketing firm they'd paid big bucks to analyze and recommend a marketing approach. Ford went with age and gender because they always had and the car failed miserably... I sometimes feel like Celebrity is in no man's land. Trying to go over the wire but retreating constantly, and doing non-value added silly things. They really do need to attract the next generation or RCG should cut them off (bluntly). But someone, probably upper management way out of touch with their future target market, has decided to, for instance, raise the volume throughout the ship, because when they were a freshman in college in the late '70s or early '80s loud music made a party. The party had nothing to do with the people who were there and enjoying the other people, it was the loud music. (Full disclosure: I'm pretty fond of a good rock band with appropriate loud volume for the venue with an appropriate mix. I'll also get really annoyed when someone refuses to trust the venue's sound guy and ups the guitar to 11 and leaves the vocals at 6; it really doesn't work. Maybe the Ramones or the Sex Pistols, but not any modern band.) I don't know if Celebrity is doing in house marketing or using a large marketing firm. Or if they're being really stupid and just paying for advertising and not doing the upfront work. As you say, they may well have different segments depending on the ship. They almost certainly have different segments based on itinerary. And unless they're just taking the money and running because they're big enough they can, that marketing firm is trying to tell them how to move to the future while only alienating a portion of their current segment. Because they will eventually have to sacrifice some of their current segment to move forward. See BMW and Porsche and the near total lack of a third pedal (manual transmission). They've cut off a lot of traditionalists but have generally increased sales while navigating global fuel consumption requirements. And the cars are generally faster and easier to drive. Sucks to be a traditionalist but that's business. TL;DR: Tough call on whether the marketing person is off or the C-Suite won't listen to them. All things to all people usually results in poor things to most people...

They have to go to Cabo, or some other non-US port. Otherwise it's a domestic cruise. Separate issue from the PVSA but they tend to get lumped together.

Not sure how that’s different from most advertising. The old joke was that no one in a sports car ad could afford the car and by the time you could you didn’t have the flexibility to get in and out of the car. It’s idealized and aspirational, like most advertising.

1969… (Looked it up.) It can stay in FLL. I’d take White Wedding instead!

These are always fun threads… I actually think Celebrity is trying to target a lifestyle. Affluent young and young at heart who enjoy relaxed luxury. We can argue whether they’re truly delivering that product and how effective they are with their targeting. I think age is a proxy and advertising firms tend to operate better with traditional demographics than behavioral segments. They can’t grow market share targeting their current customers.They need new ones. “Modern music”? I don’t know that I’ve heard much of anything onboard that was released in the past 15 years. Most of it’s over 25 years old. The Beatles came to America 60 years ago, Hotel California is 47 years old and Nevermind is 33 years old. Adele’s 21 is 13 years old; there are very brave house bands that attempt Rolling in the Deep on each cruise. Some of what the DJs play is probably current but it’s not something I know. But it’s hardly modern pop music!

Go the first night and talk to your waiter. It's possible dishes can be prepared without the sauce. The vegetarian dishes are typically very good. On our last cruise in a Sky Suite the waiter voluntarily brought my wife an absolutely wonderful Indian vegetarian dish because we had talked about loving Indian food. They're not going to make steak au poivre without the sauce, because it wouldn't be steak au poivre at all. They may be able to hold a sauce or serve it on the side for grilled or baked meat dish where the sauce is added at the end. (And she might be surprised...)

Unfortunately, in their efforts (apparently) to increase plain language in their legal requirements, Celebrity (in fairness, probably across RCG) has made many things less clear. I've never known of anyone to assess a corkage fee at boarding. The security screeners work for the ports, not the cruise line. Each cruise line has its own rules. While I don't disagree that your interpretation is supported by the way the policy is written, it's not the way the policy has ever been applied that I'm aware of. I don't recall the reports you're noting, and that would have been a thread that lasted for days or weeks! The old policy was clear that corkage fees were only charged in public venues. That may well be clear somewhere else in current documents, but not here, where you'd be most likely to look for it.

There may be some Brugge only places, but of the traditional Belgian chocolatiers that have a presence in Brugge, my choice would pretty much be Mary Chocolatier. In Brugge at Katelijnestraat 21, 8000 Brugge, Belgium. It's one you're not likely to find outside of Belgium (never have; may not have looked hard enough). Their chocolate is pretty amazing. When I'd travel to Brussels for business, I'd buy Leonidas for the office; I bought Mary to bring home...

No one has started a tipping debate for a few days. There has to be something...

And since jeans are allowed, which was the question in this post, there would be nothing for staff to enforce.

Ah. I think JB's got you. We were taking you too literally! People separated by a common language! 😁

I don't think we understand your question. Yes, you connect to the service through your device's WiFi. There are wires on the ship connecting the WiFi access points to the ship's routers. The ship connects through its routers to Starlink, the low earth orbit satellite network. Exactly like your ISP at home, other than using Starlink instead of Comcast, Fios, or some other ISP. But there is no wired (ethernet) connection option from your device to the routers. Are you concerned about internet security on the front end (wireless) connection?