Deb0702

Thank you very much for the replies to my question and sharing your first hand experiences with this itinerary. This is why CC is such a valuable resource. I did not expect call takers at Cunard would have a clue about the route taken out of Vancouver. I also appreciated reading the Excellent trip report! And the point about the departure time and transit after dark were noted. With all the information I continue to judge this is the very best itinerary. We’ve never cruised with Cunard and I’m very much looking forward to it. Thank you!

We are shopping Alaska cruises and I keep coming back to this wonderful 10-day Alaska cruise out of Vancouver BC. The itinerary looks ideal. Except for one thing, which is the reason for my question. The itinerary map on the Cunard website shows the route departing Vancouver and cruising out to open water to the west of Vancouver island. Is this correct? My understanding is that cruise ships departing Vancouver normally cruise the inside passage to the east of the island. In fact all the the itinerary maps I’ve seen on the online booking websites show QE departing Vancouver and cruising to the east of the island as would be expected. It is only the Cunard website that shows the different route. Can anyone say with authority which route is correct? I haven’t called Cunard, but will if CC members don’t have the answer. But usually they do! 😊

We did the Millenium cruise Hong Kong to Singapore in February 2017. We had such a great time we’re cruising her again this year Shanghai to Tokyo. Can’t wait!

Brava!! What a beautiful interesting and inspiring report. I want to go!!

FYI, I found out from a local tour operator that tender service typically ends at 2200 for Celebrity with an overnight in Halong Bay.

Yes, but is there a "last tender" when a ship stays overnight? We want to stay out late in the evening of February 14. Do they stop the tender service at a certain hour? That's what I need to know. We don't want to miss it and end up spending the night onshore. That would not be good..

That should be your working assumption. Here is Celebrity for Feb. 2017. It may not be your sailing but . . .

 

Tue Feb 14 Halong Bay: TENDERED

Arrive 7:00 a

Wed Feb 15 Halong Bay: TENDERED

Depart 1:00 pm

Does anyone have knowledge of the last tender for the Celebrity Millennium overnighting in Halong Bay? We are scheduled to overnight on Feb 14 - Feb 15. My plan was to go to Hanoi on Feb 14 and return late that evening, around 2300. But I just now realized that I have no idea at all about the last tender time that day. Will my plan even work? Does anyone have first hand knowledge?

Thanks so much for your help!

Thank you for all of your helpful responses. We are still hoping to see the Tattoo on our own and considering spending the night off the ship in a hotel to make everything less complicated. It will make for a pricey evening, and I hope it's worth it. I watched a Youtube video of the entire performance from a prior year, and it looks like it is! I really appreciate the suggestions. If you have more, please let me know.

 

Thanks,

Shelley

This is what we did. We spent the night at the Doubletree using Hilton Honor points. Advice would be to book your hotel as early as you can. Prices started to skyrocket about 60 days out, if I recall, and rooms available for loyalty programs may be limited.

Thank you for posting your beautiful pictures of Shetland. I got very teary going through them. We were there in August and something happened to me that I don't understand. I really didn't want to leave.

Like you, we rented a car and went to Sumburgh head to look for puffin. Unfortunately there was not a puffin in sight (I thought I saw one far off, but then decided it probably wasn't). But we did see something very unexpected.. Orcas! A group of 5 with a young one. I was so delighted that all disappointment about the puffins was instantly erased. How I love surprises!

I am ready to go back to Shetland. I know I will someday. :)

I had read mixed reviews about the Mary Gibbons tour, but you liked it? I wish there were a Celebrity ship doing the British Isles like this Princess we're booking (or the Norwegian we're contemplating switching over to). They're both British Isles intensive. The Celebrity I found online didn't do nearly enough British Isles / Ireland but did Amsterdam and Zeebrugge (which I've already done). If it had done solely Ireland, Scotland, and England, I would have booked in a heartbeat. We have Elite/Diamond on Celebrity/RC so that would have been great. I should send them feed back on their itinerary (LOL as if they'd listen).

We had a wonderful itinerary on Celebrity. We started in Amsterdam then went to Gurnsey, Cobh Ireland, Dublin, Liverpool, Belfast, Shetland, Inverness Scotland, Edinburgh (overnight), then Zeebrugge and done. It was a great cruise, especially the overnight in Edinburgh for the military tattoo. I rank it right near the top of our all time best ever cruise experiences. Are you contemplating a cruise that goes to Edinbugh in August for the tattoo?

If you solicit me to write a review of Mary Gibbons tour I will do it. Just start a new thread with the subject line along the lines of "Has anyone done the Mary Gibbons tour to Newgrange?" I will respond to it (give me a couple of days) with our experience and a couple of pics. I learned the hard way just last week that were not supposed to post unsolicited reviews. I posted an unsolicited review of our tour operator in Belfast and it was promptly deleted.

I've booked a cruise that will include a stop in Dublin, which I was excited about not only for the city but the prospect of visiting nearby Newgrange/Tara. However, I noted that it wasn't an excursion offered by the cruise and, after doing some research, I've come to realize that several factors contributed to making such a visit problematic at best: the limited number of visitors allowed per day, coupled with a first come / first serve ticketing strategy, and local tours that would run longer than would be comfortable without fear of missing the ship. I'm beginning to think it's an excursion best postponed for a separate land-based visit. That being said, I still wonder if I can't experience a bit of the Neolithic/megalithic Ireland within the more immediate confines of Dublin. Anyone have any experience with this? It would be nice if, like the ruins of ancient Greece or Rome, there were hidden little gems nestled in the midst of a city park or just off a bustling high street. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hello,

We recently returned from a Celebrity British Isles cruise and stopped in Dublin on August 10. Our ship was in port 0630-1845. We took a cab with drop off at Trinity College, where we had time to see the long room and the Book of Kells, right when it opened. We shopped for souvenirs, then walked to our pick-up point for our bus tour to Newgrange. We went to Newgrange on the Mary Gibbons tour. I'm a huge lover of old stones and I just had to see this place. We also went to the Hill of Tara. It was a great tour and I was so glad we were able to make it happen. After the tour we returned to Dublin and wallked around for a bit, stopping at Temple Bar for a Guinness. Then we took a cab back to the ship. Our day was complete! :)

Thanks again for writing up your review and sharing your wonderful pics. Really good stuff and funny too, my husband and I both had some good laughs.. the death climb of death hahaha. Happy sails! :)

Wow such great pictures! I did not see the Ravenna sunrise, but the sunset was the best sunset of the entire cruise. Looking forward to Kotor. :)

Oh goodygoody gumdrops! We were on this cruise too. Looking forward to seeing your pics and reading about your experience. :)

Interesting. Thank you. I think our cruise pre-dated the new system by a couple of months. We each earned 60 points for that cruise.

We've been on 1 cruise with Celebrity in Sept 2013. It was an 11 night Med cruise on the Reflection and we booked an AquaClass Suite (AS). Apparently they don't have these suites anymore.

I'm curious, how many points would you calculate for our cruise?

We did the twilight Trastevere tour in 2013 and it was fantastic. We loved it! After the tour they gave us great little maps showing every place that we stopped. This year we're doing the Testaccio morning tour while we're in Rome for a few days before our cruise. I'm expecting another great tour. :)

Thank you for sharing this info. :)

Brava Melissa, Brava!! I loved every single picture and most of the words. (I only wish we could take out the words about the luggage.) Your observations and writing style are so honest and refreshing. And smart too. People can learn a lot from this review. Research your restaurants and menus and try new things. I also loved the part about not trying to re-create a previous magical experience. Best wishes to you and Ken. I hope someday soon we will cruise together again. :)

Hi All, has anyone recently gone on Celebrity's 11 night Eastern Mediterranean cruise from Civitavecchia (stopping in Mykonos, Santorini, Istanbul, Kusadasi, Piraeus and Napoli)? My fiance and I have booked this cruise for our honeymoon on the Reflection next October (I think this cruise was previously run on the Equinox) and we were hoping to get our hands on the daily itineraries to get an idea of which nights might be formal nights. We want to book dinners at some of the specialty restaurants in advance but don't want to book them on nights that are already formal (because I love making him dress up!). Any suggestions or links to the actual daily schedules would be awesome!

 

Thanks so much!

You will have a wonderful honeymoon on this cruise! Here is a link to the dailys I uploaded to Google docs: Reflection Eastern Med Daily

Enjoy! :)

Oh Melissa, I'm just so sad and sorry about the way your trip ended. And I keep thinking how the money is the least of it all. I know how thoughtfully you planned all your shopping and souvenirs. I'm so sad that you lost your mum's pajamas. Your favorite dressy dress. Important things. I just thank goodness you still have your cameras and all your wonderful pictures.

Seriously, you tell us when and where and we'll cruise the Med with you & Ken again. Anytime, East, West, wherever, we are there. We feel like you two are our new friends for life too.

We enjoyed some of the very best experiences that cruising has to offer: news places, childhood dreams, spectacular sunsets, a beautiful ship, new friends, romance and bling (lucky girl!). The good was very, very good. But a do-over is needed for a happy ending. :)

Haha yes I finally found us in that picture - how funny is that?! I can't say I am shocked we didn't see you - I don't think we ran into you once on the ship - how weird is that?! I think we only bumped into you at the Palace in Istanbul right?

HAHA, I never set foot in the casino and you never even laid eyes on pool. But still it is weird we didn't see each onboard. If we're ever again on the same cruise we'll have to fix that. And hopefully next time I won't be on pain meds. That slowed me down quite a bit and I was in bed early almost every night.

On a side note there was a small group tour of the exact itinerary that we passed on joining as we wanted to be alone but I am sure it was still very nice and a fraction of the cost.

Hey Melissa, I've been looking to see if I could spot anyone from our group in the background of your pictures, but I don't see anyone. However I found you and Ken in one of the pictures I took that day. Do you see yourself? Funny! I didn't see you at all that day. It really was a awesome day wasn't it?

We took a ton of pictures inside the New Acropolis Museum, I'm sorry you didn't get any. We had a guide and he told us that pictures were not allowed on the first floor, but we could snap at will on the second floor, so we did. No one told us to stop. In fact it looks like a security guard's arm in this picture.

If I had insurance I would absolutely still be having this discussion - just likely not with you. I have said before it's not all about the money. I had a 45 minute conversation with someone in the executive office of Celebrity Friday night and about two minutes of it was about money.

 

As for what is wise or not for Celebrity - I trust the executives at Celebrity to make that call.

I'm really very pleased that someone called and talked to you. That means a lot. No matter what happens from this point it has to be satisfying just to know that you've been heard out, especially regarding the customer service shortcomings. Best wishes!

So you are saying that because they are willing to give Mel $600. they are admitting they are negligent? I say this is what they would consider good will. They have limited the amount they are willing to pay for baggage loss, but have not admitted they are negligent. If they didn't want to they wouldn't have to pay anything in this case because there is no evidence at all that they were negligent.

 

As far as the $300. not being reasonable, I'm sure they could raise the amount and charge us accordingly. They aren't going to do it for free. The next sentence in the contract tells us how we can pay for more insurance on our bags up to $5000. There are also many independent insurance policies and also coverage from many major credit card companies.

Yes precisely. That is exactly what I'm saying. It is the cruise lines responsibility to deliver the luggage back to the passenger and they failed. They are responsible for that failure. The same hold true for the airlines doesn't it? If your luggage is stolen off off the carousel the passenger doesn't make their claim against the airport. It's the airline that is ultimately responsible and that is where you make your claim. They received your checked luggage and it is their responsibility to deliver it back to you. The airline can take it up with the airport security and I'm sure they will, but that is not your problem.

Do you suppose that cruise lines lose passengers' luggage so frequently that it would become a major burden if they increased their liability limits to a more fair and reasonable level, say on par with the airlines? I wonder...