spiritdfilly

can someone post a picture of the wedding chapel -specifically on the regal princess and comment on their experience with their actual wedding at sea booking and how it all panned out?

my daughter is getting married on the ship this coming winter and I'd welcome feedback on the ups and downs of the experience with the wedding coordinator...thx :)

Hubby and I were also among those attending this particular CC M&G and found the CD's deliberate comment to be in really bad form. Just want to reiterate what others at that mtg. have confirmed- There was NO active solicitation, nor money handling taking place during the course of this distasteful and subsequently brief mtg. No, the CD was not trying to disarm us with his version of amusing repartee; he was insulting and whether his words were his own or he was following the cruise line's directive, we were all too taken by surprise to publicly comment at the time. Indeed, you COULD have heard a pin drop in the room following his ill-chosen remark. >It's not rocket science, that it is hardly an advisable marketing ploy- to bite the hand that feeds you!

All private tour reservations were handled discreetly off-line via private e mail, prior to boarding this ship and the few that required pre-payment were handled in a corner with equal discretion earlier than AND away from the area the cc mtg was to take place in. Except for a dance class going on where the mtg was set to take place an hour later, (and of course I could be wrong about any attention we drew to our small group), no staff seemed to be visibly circulating that would have overheard/seen anything that transpired. The person(s) who both researched and took responsibility for organizing said small,<non-profit> tours, saw them through execution with as much prudence and as privately as could reasonably have been expected either from CC monitors or, Celebrity itself and are to be commended for their effort and energies on behalf of interested and involved CC travelers.

A separate, but extended issue, are shipboard tour offerings....We are among those seasoned cruisers who prefer to avoid the overpriced cruise tours, which are nearly always more restrictive/regimented in terms of itineraries and timing. Often, these cruise ship tours are little more than crowded cattle calls, replete with shopping stops that kick back monies to the cruise lines for patronizing them. We take seriously our time in each port and weigh our options- all of them, carefully and I guess, we are among a growing group of people willing to take the very small risk of missing the port departure time because of our private tour. If Celebrity and other cruise lines choose to whine about revenues lost from the paltry number of CC members opting to explore shore stops on their own, then they need to share responsibility for this dip in revenue and become more adaptive in type/style and price point, in order to survive and rise above these purported losses. It's that simple. When they can organize far more reasonably priced small group excursions, less prone to arbitrary cancellations because they don't fill quotas, then other more sophisticated travelers will stop doing their job for them! I respect each person's right to take advantage of travel and touring that best appeals to them and in turn, expect others and the cruise lines to respect my right to cherry pick through the offerings and opt for alternatives when/if it suits me....Different strokes for different folks people. ~Happy trails all

spoke in person today with an oceania exec and was told the decision to cancel spb as a port stop on their upcoming itineraries had been made on sunday (after the vote) and that they would likely be releasing info on their website on what the alternative port stops would be as of this Thursday. she also said that some of their ships would be allowed to port in spb, while others wouldn't (about 50-50). it is expected that other cruise lines are will follow suit.

'happened to take an invitational tour of an oceania ship today>we asked and were told oceania execs. will release info on their website possibly as early as this Thursday, on it's decision to seek alternative ports to SPB this summer; that this decision (about which alternative ports) was already made after Sunday's vote and they'd suspect other cruise lines will be making similar choices to cancel SPB. they said they would be cancelling about 1/2 the SPB port stops on it's itineraries and allowing the other half to push fwd to SPB. It wasn't clear what the rhyme or reason was for allowing some to proceed and others not to... they added that this decision was not based on US travel restrictions, which to their knowledge hadn't been imposed as yet.