ccotting

Nothing to see in Dunedin. Could be a great stay on the shop day.

 

 

We enjoyed the Dunedin museum as it had an exhibit on the earthquake at Christchurch. Very compelling photos, video and artifacts such as a port a loo (no sewer post earthquake) and examples of the twists the electrical cabling turned into. As Vancouverites, we live in an earthquake zone, big wake up call to be prepared for us.

 

Many fellow passengers went on the brewery tour or for tea. The Taeri Gorge train ride was amazing and we loved that.

I'm thinking of booking a Mediterranean cruise next October. We have one booked for September, but that's not going to work for us, so we are considering changing our reservation to October. I have read that October is fairly rainy. My question is for those who have been in October, particularly to Italy. How much rain did you experience on your trip? A rainy day here and there would be ok, but I would be disappointed if it rained on the majority of the cruise. We've cruised Alaska several times, and weren't too bothered by the rains, but would hope to have some sunny days mixed in on our Mediterranean cruise. Thanks in advance for your help.

LIke all weather, it’s hard to say. October can be stormy but I was lucky when I went for a circle Med for a whole month and we had lovely weather all through. I think it depends on your itinerary planning and where you are going. We circled from Piraeus and did a lot of ports Eastern med.

We have booked the Celebrity Solstice for a B2B cruise of NZ starting in Auckland going down the coast and through the Sounds then over to Australia with a stop in Melbourne and ending in Sydney. The second leg starts in Sydney and goes through the Pacific Islands to Hawaii. We will have a few days to tour Auckland after our flight from St. Louis, Missouri and would like tips on what to do in Auckland before our cruise starts and also the port cities down the coast of New Zealand.

We will only have a few hours between cruises in Sydney which is unfortunate. What can we do in that time, besides the Opera House?

We loved the Botanical gardens, walking distance from the pier. The Anzac memorial is amazing, a cab ride and worth it.

Are you going next year? We will be joining you for this BtoB!

I haven't personally sailed Radiance - but my parents have, three times. It's their absolute favourite ship and they have nothing but good thing to say about it!

Likewise. Our absolute favourite ship. Wonderful crew. A 'happy ship'. You can tell when the staff are well managed. And we love the ship herself. Excellent collection of art work. You can easily spend a day just examining the art. I wish they would publish a guide to it so you can learn more about the different artists. Even in the buffet, great oils of sailing.

The T-pool in the Solarium is fantastic. Not quiet a giant hot tub but great. You'll see. A major design flaw leaving it out of the S class design.

 

Also, only hearsay as I haven't been on M class in a while but I hear there are no footstools on the balcony in concierge.

 

The one downside is the buffet layout. More cafeteria than like the S class.

 

We like the M class, just haven't had a schedule that works with ours.

 

enjoy

Yes, no footstools in Concierge. We had a huge balcony with a C1 cabin in sandwich between suites on the 6th deck and just 2 regular upright deck chairs. When we requested footstools we were given the stools used for people to sit in the shower. They worked but it was hardly 5 star!

I enjoyed the ship but the overall decor is more dark colours and I think that’s why so many call it dated even though it is not old in years.

Check your cruise planner, we are on Solstice for the transpacific in spring 2019 and our drinks package was a great price. i don’t remember getting any notice or email!

Thank you! Helpful!!

Just in case anyone who has TSA Pre membership, rather than Global Entry or NEXUS, reads your note SCT - they will not be able to use it when cruising or flying back from their cruise, it's completely worthless in Canada, whether at airports, piers, railway stations or land borders. There is no TSA up here - CATSA do security at ports & airports in Canada and you will not see any mention of TSA or TSA Pre on any signage, only GE/NEXUS (and FAST for commercial truck drivers at land borders).

 

To use 'fast track' security queues up here you need NEXUS (works both ways) or Global Entry (works heading toward the US only), and you must show the actual physical card to get in the queue. Immigration 'fast track' queues are also only for NEXUS/GE cardholders, but that's the same as in the US since TSA Pre has always been worthless for immigration purposes. You have GE I note from some earlier comments - that's why you got the nice treatment, the silly sausages who only apply for Pre get bupkiss;-)

 

Since NEXUS incorporates both GE and Pre benefits, and GE incorporates Pre benefits, it's easy to confuse which does what where - but Pre is only useful when you are actually dealing with the TSA, not CBP or CBSA. I honestly don't understand why anyone with Pre would not pay the $15 extra to get GE instead - especially given how many credit cards will refund the whole $100 fee - or actually save money by getting NEXUS, the best $50 you could ever spend, if it's convenient to visit the Canadian border for interview.

OK, so just to make it simple, works outward bound to Alaska, boarding into the US. Not inward bound to Canada as it is a US program. Correct?

There certainly was priority security for GE (Nexus) and dedicated/priority immigration clearance last September.

Ace! Good to know!

When we were there...two ships were in port in Canada Place...and I’d say there were about 8 agents. Who knows what happened the day you were there, but I sincerely doubt it’s the norm.

 

Cruise lines are very sensitive about the embarkation experience, I don’t think they would let a situation like that continue.

 

 

 

 

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Unfortunately Paul, this has been an issue for some years now and feedback from the cruise lines has not had any impact. Passengers travelling to the US from Vancouver Cruise Port and Vancouver airport are passing through US customs prior to Boarding. The airport however has Nexus and TSA fast track, something the cruise port does not offer. As well, the airport is far better staffed by US Border services. There seems to be some inconsistency in Border services staffing for the cruise port so it is good to hear some passenger comments above noting a better experience. I think it can also vary with the composition of the passengers boarding. It didn’t used to be a requirement by US Border Services for a photo of everyone or fingerprinting but, depending on your home nation, now that is a standard requirement for many visiting the US. More process, more time. Add more passengers and no change in number of Border agents and you can have quite a mess some days. Sadly for my home town pride, many blame our city.

Staffing for US customs is the responsibility of the US Government. While the Canadian authorities and the cruise lines can provide feedback, it’s up to the US to determine it’s border management. As a native Vancouverite, I feel so sad when I read comments such as Linda’s about the wait to board the ship. It is a sign of a good relationship between countries to have this sort of arrangement and we can be grateful in general but it is trying to have long waits.

I have a feedback as a Canadian.... write your Congressman, not Cruise Critic. They have the influence.

Interesting I was just told that today. I tried to log into my Celebrity cruise account to check on prices and my bookings, but was unable to. It rejected my username, email address, password. So very frustrated, I called the reservations toll free phone # and the first question they asked is what search engine I was using. As soon as I said 'safari', they advised me to use google chrome. I changed to google chrome and no problem. Go figure....a big corporation.

If you research the issue you will find several discussion threads about the same issue and using all the different web sites. No single one is trouble free. Equally having thought I had sorted this I found the system had switched my account and that of my husband yet again so we had to repeat all our steps again. Some quick comments: it has to do with how the code has been written to tag your account to your information, in some cases (as in ours) similarity of information between spouses has led to difficulty. In others, the issue seems to simply be related to tagging to email not other information. For those individuals, the member information seems to be lost. As a dedicated apple fan I resonate with the response I received earlier from someone who remarked "apple must be thrilled to have one of their corporate partners suggesting clients use another product (I paraphrase)". Lucky you. I think this is poor coding and a lack of customer service response. Been through lots of migrations in my work life. This one stands out for both poor outcome and dreadful customer response.

Yes but first you need to log in and THAT'S what I couldn't do.

When it mixed your account with your husbands did the password reset come addressed to your husband? If so, use his answer to the security question. That worked to get me in.

Had this same password log in problem too. Using email or username, still did not work. I reset using my email, and was able to log in, but... now I am attached to my husbands account. He reset his password to his email and he is now signed in as me.

 

We are in a standoff on who is going to try to call Celebrity to fix this. Wish they would have switched my account with a Zenith!

Exact same happened to us. You don't need Celebrity call in. Log in to the account you can get into and go to personal information page. Edit that to you with your name, birthdate, celebrity captains club number and save. It will then tag you. Just make sure you have the right email. That's your starting point. Accounts are tagged to email. So you edit the personal information to reflect the email you want.

Is there a secret menu of dishes in the MRD if requested? Ie Indian, etc.

We were told it could depend on the passenger list and, if there were many South Asian passengers, the ship would add more dishes to accommodate. I would ask about the buffet menu and if they have any 'special theme' days where they might feature curries etc. Sometimes these are announced and sometimes not. Radiance of the Seas sailing out of Vancouver has had wonderful curries and pappadums. I have been on other ships that have not had such good curries.

We were on a cruise from Vancouver where a young couple who had found great success in their careers were treating Mama and Papa from the 'old' country to a cruise to Hawaii. The parents struggled with the menu and the Head waiter who was of South Asian ancestry took them in hand, attended at table nightly and arranged for curries and dishes they understood for the whole cruise. Wonderful kind service!

I use Apple products(and Safari and Firefox) and I was finally able to login and see my account and future cruises by: choose sign in from main X site (top right corner of page) BUT do not use your username, use your email associated with your X account then put in your password. I had called X and do not want to clear my cookies, and it was X staff who suggested to do the email and not let the computer populate the user/ password

 

Hope it helps

Yes, that’s the correct thing. Unfortunately, my email was associated with my husband’s name. It was lucky we figured it out. During password reset the message came to my email addressed to him. I couldn’t get in because I was giving my answer to the security question, not his. Once we understood that, I used his answer, got in and changed the personal information associated with my email. Husband had to go in and do the same for his although it had his email but was not coping well with 2 emails against the same club number.

I agree, the user name is no longer active. As a previous poster mentioned “nice” of them to let us know!

I have also been able to register and use my IPad to view my registration. However I am still not able to review excursions within my reservation using an IPad.

Are you able to view excursions on your reservation?

 

Thanks.

Haven't got that far yet! Hope so!!!

I use Safari and Firefox on my computer with no problem. I have used Chrome in the past and it very poorly written . It couldn't access a lot of common sites. My online banking doesn't recommend Chrome or Edge for use on their site.

When the Celebrity phone attendant recommended I download it and offered to help me, I declined. My IT security program does not show it protected which makes your comment very interesting to me.

Just a bit of extra detail of what we did: For each of our emails, we requested password reset. Both email accounts had defaulted to my husband's name. I had to answer the security question with my husbands first pet, then it let me in. After that, in settings, I changed all personal information to me (name birthdate etc) and added my royal and celebrity numbers. We did this through both the Royal and Celebrity portals.

Fixed. We did the password reset. The system had mixed my husbands and my accounts. My first pet answer was not his!!! So each of us had to go in and manually change email, date of birth, name and then enter crown & anchor and celebrity numbers against our emails. Each of us one at a time. That sorted it out. Nothing to do with Safari, it works fine! Another winner of a response from the phone staff......

I haven't been able to get into the Celebrity website, it asks me for my security question, tells me my answer is wrong and that another user is using my email.

Speaking to Captain's Club I was told the problem is my web browser, that I must use Google Chrome.

I haven't had similar problems with any other website. Has anyone else been told this? Any Geeks out there with feedback? It seems bizarre to me for a major corporation to have their website fail to work with a major Apple platform.

I sympathise with the OP, as we had a similar situation a few years back of being ignored in Murano for nearly 30 minutes while all of the staff waited on a very large extended table of about a dozen of ships staff and the professional entertainers. We were left with our wine, but no food! We were not at all happy, and tried to attract a waiter- any waiter!- to come and deliver our meal.

 

The Maitre D apologised profusely and invited us back the following night , promising to make it up to us. We accepted and we did have stellar service the following evening.

 

However, my wife is extremely allergic to both strawberries and chocolate, which was notified on our booking and which Luminae and our butler took great care to ensure that neither strawberries nor chocolate did not go anywhere near her- however this information seemed not to have reached Murano as they sent a tray of chocolate covered strawberries to our suite with a note of apology! Our butler removed them pronto!

 

When we returned to Murano for the follow up meal, the Maitre D insisted on personally making a table side crepe Suzette for my wife, - with no strawberries!

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I’ve had the same experience on more than one cruise ship. When the other staff come into the speciality restaurants service declines. Service staff spend all their focus on the staff table, particularly if it includes senior officers. I mostly have cruised Royal and had this experience more than once but we were on Infinity earlier this year and had 2 trips to Tuscan. Our first was not quite as bad as the OP but not great, our second much better. We honestly would not have gone the second time given our first experience but had done Quisine twice and wanted to have a better menu (read big steak for DH) for a special day.

I often wonder if these meals are “comped” for the officers because they are so often in the speciality restaurants.

We just got off a cruise in Vancouver. The taxi ride to the airport took us only 30 minutes but it was very light traffic. In heavy traffic it can take up to an hour. It took us an hour and a half just to get to our gate after checking in for our flight. Luggage machine, Immigration and security lines were awfully long.

You were caught in holiday traffic. Given the date you have posted you were in the Canadian long weekend rush. Our May long weekend is the one before the American Memorial Day weekend. So traffic was light but the passenger traffic was not!

I have just been on Celebrity’s website and I cannot find where you sign up for email specials. I looked everywhere. Can anyone help me with this?

I can’t speak for those who are not captain’s club members but once your email is populated, you have to login to your captains club profile and update your email preferences.

Once my email was added, when you go into the profile it says something to the effect of not completed so there is an additional step of saying you do want the emails after your contact information has been included.

Just come off the phone to Captains Club, extremely quick for a change. They confirm I am subscribed which I already knew from my account profile and suggested they may be going into my junk, do I check that daily, of course I do and nothing from them of late. So it's another cyberspace mystery.

Just went through this. Although subscribed, the email did not populate into my booking. This may be consistent across the system. Captain’s club had to manually add my email to my current booking. Missed the flash sale which I could have used since I didn’t get the email. According to the rep, once your captain’s club number is added to your booking, your email should populate. Mine didn’t. Call and ask for yours to be checked.

I'm not seeing particularly high prices on the 3 RCCL cruises I have booked next year. We are paying an averge of $102 / day /pp including taxes and fees.

Jeepers! What are you booking? What type of cabin? Also are you getting Friends and Family rate?