HopefulCruiser123

I see me dropping DH off at the WC bar (which he will REALLY enjoy) and I’ll run over and grab a “chocolate martini to-go” from the martini bar and meet him back at WC and we will have 2 very happy campers. 😁

We have booked a cruise to Europe in Spring of 2025, and another cruise back home two months later with a different cruise line. We will be renting an automobile while in Europe. My husband is a paraplegic and while fairly fit, we both are not as young as we once were and we both have well-controlled medical conditions. I have very elderly and fragile parents and there is a good chance they will not be with us by the time we travel. I have played over in my mind that if one of them passed very close to our travel date, I would probably cancel the trip. If one of them passed while on the trip, I probably would not cancel or interrupt the trip. I didn't book the cruise insurance because I figured I needed to look at some kind of universal trip policy that would cover a host of potential risks. The known risks (the financial cost of having to cancel a trip on short notice) is not as big of a concern for me. But the unknown financial risks of a sudden and severe health emergency or need for emergency evacuation, or a vehicle accident while overseas.....THESE are the things I would want some insurance heft behind me. The trip is still pretty far ahead of us and things like the car rental (starting and ending point and duration) and where we will stay and for how long, have yet to be planned out. We haven't used a travel agent for the cruise bookings. But I plan to use one for all other aspects of our travel. At this point, I feel it is too early to try to hire a TA. Reading on this forum the whole issue of "preexisting conditions" and "canceling a cruise and rebooking, and how it affects the coverage" etc., have I made a mistake in not signing up for my insurance a week ago when I booked? Or does the fact that I view losing a deposit as a calculated risk I am okay with taking, make that a moot point? And if so, how late is too late to book travel insurance?

Update. We have booked the Equinox April 19, 2025 TA from Port Canaveral to Barcelona (we managed to get an accessible Sky Suite). Then we have reserved a balcony room on the QM2 from Southampton to NYC on June 6, 2025. That will give us about 5 weeks to kick around Western Europe. I tried to contact several travel sites specializing in Disability travel and was very disappointed. It appears they largely just sponsor tours and that is really not what we are interested in. I think I will find a good travel agent that can just help me to book car rental, hotels, other transportation through the various countries we will visit. One very helpful thing I learned on the Cunard board that might be of interest to some folks here is the use of a "luggage forward" or similar type of service to ship luggage home that is no longer useful for the trip and to ship from home to one of the hotels or to the QM2 luggage that will be needed for upcoming legs of our journey. This will make my task a lot easier and well worth the expense. Right now I am pursuing an accessible villa in The Algarve in Portugal for a week's stay. I'll post updates of some of the places we end up booking, or car rentals we end up sourcing as we move forward in the event these resources might be useful to others.

That's us Dancer Bob is talking about. Just go around us, that 's all I'm sayin.

Odd response. I appreciate your video. Thank you for posting.

Thank you and glad to meet a fellow traveler a whole year and a half in advance! Happy Thanksgiving!

So an update (with a happy ending). So yesterday I received a call from someone at Cunard (routine call to flesh out the trip). They thought the June 24 sailing was still on (even though we had cancelled it). I explained the situation and stated that June 6 would have been our preference so she searched the site and pretty much came up with the same result that I was getting. The cabins show as available until you actually select the cabin category and then it changes to SOLD OUT. There was a hold on one Accessible Princess Grill Suite and I told her we would be interested in that or a Premium Balcony (not one with an obstruction). She asked for some time to work on it and called me back a few hours later with an offer for an Accessible Premium Balcony, Aft on deck 8, port side. I asked her to call me back today and my husband and I discussed it and this morning we put a deposit on the balcony. I am very happy with this decision. It's much more affordable, drink packages aren't that expensive and thanks to all of you wonderful seasoned travelers, we will be doing a luggage forward for both of our cruises to help with the specific items for the various stages of our trip. It really helped to make the final decision easy. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Shippmates, OMIGOSH! What a GREAT idea! I just LOVE Cruise Critic. I was unaware of this option, particularly through the cruise line. Thank you so much and to all of you who have offered such great advice. I'll look into all of these things and see what might work for us.

Thanks. I'll give that a try and see what I learn. Despite the hassle of extra clothes, I really was a little disappointed with having to curtail part of the trip. But, not by much. We are going to have a fabulous time no matter what happens.

It was the Cunard website. We used a travel agent on our honeymoon cruise and the reservation got messed up several times. My husband wondered if we really had any benefit from using one the last time. I will say, in my professional career, I don't have a very good track record of booking travel for myself or others. Thank goodness I don't have to do it very often. I kinda like the idea of a professional.

Well! Who knew? I've been planning a long, European trip with my husband for spring 2025 when we will finally turn our small business over to a successor and retire. I waited breathlessly for Celebrity to post the 2025 Transatlantic cruises schedule from the US to Barcelona. To pacify me while I waited, I purchased learning courses in Portuguese, travel books, maps. My husband is a full time wheelchair user so I scoured the internet for wheelchair vans, or at least doable rental vehicles that could haul us and all our stuff across Spain, Portugal and France. I wanted to purchase an electric adaptive third wheel for his manual wheel chair to help navigate what I envision will be a sea of cobblestones. (he is skeptical). I studied what our return trip would look like and it appeared (since we really don't want to fly with all our "stuff") that the QM2 would be a great way to travel back to the US about 6 weeks later. So my European road tour would end in Paris, then we'd take the Eurostar to London for a few days then to Southampton and boom, bam, bang....we'd be sailing back home in style on the QM2!. Last week the schedule finally came out and there was one Celebrity ship that fulfilled the first phase of my master plan. So I booked an accessible Sky Suite on the Equinox. It was priced right, 16 glorious days (most at sea) in the very same cabin we had on our honeymoon cruise on her sister ship The Silhouette. Drink package is included, we have access to the Retreat. I was on a roll. Next, I wanted to get those maps out so we could plan all our stops so that I could determine the optimal date to book the return trip home on the QM2. We've decided to purchase a full wall map of Western Europe and put it on the wall in our Foyer to study. This morning, as I drank my morning cup of coffee....I just moseyed on over to the Cunard website and (oh look, they are having a Black Friday Event) started searching for my ride home and found the perfect date. June 6th popped up and I thought "Perfect". I had thought a Princess Grill Suite would be ideal. So I advanced my way through the booking, stopping halfway thru my reading of the epic novel The Passage Contract to go refill my coffee cup. I settled back into my chair. Now I was getting to the good stuff. I clicked on the Princess Grill. SOLD OUT. It read. Ooops. Okaaaaay. We can live with a Britannia Club Balcony. SOLD OUT. I worked my way back to the Britannia Balcony....SOLD OUT! SOLD OUT! SOLD OUT! I blew coffee from my nose. I checked the Queens Grill. SOLD OUT. A little panicked now, I backed out to the next sailing two weeks later. I did find a Queens Grill. It really is a little more than I wanted to spend for a one week cruise and it doesn't include a drink package. And it would mean the added expense of another two weeks in Europe. I launched out of my chair and raced into the bedroom and slid into the home base that is my sleeping husband and quickly apprised him of the situation. He muttered something and I think he said "okay, whatever you think is best". It could have been something else, but that is what it sounded like to me. Fearing the web page would time out before I got back to my computer, I snatched my purse off the kitchen counter and I punched the throttle and raced back to my computer. Getting my already slightly shell shocked credit card ready (I'm really surprised they haven't called me yet to see if it is really me booking and buying all this stuff), I booked the cruise, paid the $3000 deposit and then filled out many (but not all) of the documents and questionnaires required until I ran out of time and had to leave for an early morning appointment. While I was gone......the receipt for payment arrived and my husband opened it. When I got home he said, "you know you paid for the whole cruise up front, right?" No. I did not know that. So I called Cunard and the very helpful gal on the phone says this happens a lot and the easiest thing to do would be to cancel the cruise with me on the line and then I could give her my credit card information again for the $3000 deposit. So we did that and the card came back declined. Because the $14,000 for this morning charge will remain on there for a few days before it drops off, I no longer had room on the card for another deposit. I told her I could use another card but she said no, to keep it clean just call back Wednesday afternoon. So, with the urgency somewhat forestalled, we have had time to weigh the pros and cons of the timing, the cost and of even how prepared we are for the QM2. I hope to sail this ship someday, but maybe not on the back end of a trip where we will be hauling 6 weeks of luggage and equipment. I would really love the idea of dressing nice in the evening and in order to do that, we would need to bring different clothes than the clothes that we will be bringing for the rest of our trip. We already have so much stuff we are bringing. So, sometimes things happen for a reason. We'll probably fly home and ship some of our belongings home ahead of us. We'll have a little longer in Europe without having to extend our total vacation beyond the original goal. Having been given an opportunity to cool my jets, I am kind of relieved. I'll call Cunard tomorrow and tell them I am going to let the cancelled trip go. So, if there is anyone on these boards looking for a Queens Grill from Southampton to NYC on June 24 2025.....there is one that is about to be on the market.

We just booked a Transatlantic from Florida to Barcelona in April of 2025. There are only a few crossings and only this one went to Barcelona. We plan to tour Europe and then sail back on the QM2 about a month or so later. (I haven't booked the home trip yet)

I am thinking of booking a transatlantic in 2025 (has a hold on a Sky Suite until tomorrow). I was wondering the same thing.

So, the West to east Transatlantic did finally appear (there were three, and only one had the itinerary we were hoping for). We have a hold on the Equinox Accessible Sky Suite until tomorrow morning. We took the trip insurance and the prepaid gratuities. It is the same price as our 7 day Caribbean cruise in 2013 on the Silhouette, times 3. That is pretty much what we expected the cost would be. The unexpected part is all of the really, really abysmal reviews on the Equinox board. I have been so impatient to see the schedule hoping there would be an acceptable itinerary. There is a Princess Cruise on the new Sun Princess a month earlier, basically the same itinerary for about 25% less. It's not just about the money for me. We had such a good time on Silhouette 10 years ago. Lackluster food, slow service and unimaginative entertainment apparently are not deal breakers when compared to the timing of the sailing which will be the deciding factor. Our other option was HAL on the Oosterdam. Timing is the same. Reviews were mixed with a lean toward negative but with many more satisfied cruisers. AFT Neptune Suite for about the same as the Sky Suite. Decisions, Decisions. I could have worse problems.

We were in an Accessible Sky Suite, that might be why the table was bigger. I have seen some recent pictures and videos of the sky suites and don't see the large table. I would have to request one because DH's is a para and doesn't have the balance to reach and pick up a glass from a short table. Thus my logic says that might have been the reason for the bigger table?

Me neither. I just put a hold on a 2025 transatlantic in a sky suite. I have two days to reserve or look for a better option. I've been reading reviews all day long and they are far and away very negative. It's a really big expense when you considered that the chances it will be a big disappointment seem to have really gone up exponentially.

On our honeymoon Sky Suite on the Silhouette many moons ago, our butler was very visible, checking on us several times a day. We really didn't need him for anything. We thought he was extremely sweet. We felt a little guilty because he really wanted to be of service, but we are pretty self-sufficient and really like our privacy. He did serve breakfast out on our verandah one day, and we stood by while he set the table and laid everything out "just so", and when he left we had to stifle giggles over all the fussing. With that being said, I was very intrigued by the whole butler perk when we booked that trip and while it may not have been the thing that sold us on booking with Celebrity, it was one of the many things that sold us.

Hmm...I wonder when they will release the spring repositioning cruise schedule. I've been waiting for those to book.

am I wrong, or are all those departure ports in Europe?

I just searched and I don't see them either.

Guilty as well! Give me a date and I don't see all the other words around it (like "the week of"). I'll meet you with a cup of strong coffee on the morning of the 16th at the Celebrity website.

Thanks London Tower. Pretty much any vehicle we rent will be a one-way rental, but after a lot of studying, I think our car travel will end in Paris. From there we will take the EuroStar and accessible taxis. We've also given up on finding a WAV to do this. Our options open up with a regular car (minimvan or SUV with a lower ground clearance and wide enough door). Obviously, that is going to take a lot more research. I hope to book the first leg of our trip tomorrow when Celebrity announces their 2025 spring schedule.

Unfortunately, air travel in our circumstances is out of the question. Okay....I'll "reroute" and see what other options I can find.

Hello, I wasn't really sure if I should post this on the Europe board or on the wider version of the Disability board. We are planning a transatlantic cruise in spring of 2025. Not sure yet if we will sail into Southampton or Barcelona. We plan to stay in Europe and travel around for about 4 to 5 weeks and then sail home on the QM2 from Southampton. So at some point, we'll be in Southampton. My husband is a full time wheelchair user and we have one other assistive transferring device on casters that we plan to take. I had hoped to rent a WAV for the duration but I understand now that since the UK is no longer part of the EU, that is not going to be possible. Plus the whole driving on the "wrong" side of the road (kidding) is a little daunting. So it was suggested we take the Eurostar in London to Paris (if we start in Southampton) and from Paris to London on our return trip. The question is, how do we transport us and all our "stuff" to and from St. Pancras to Southampton? Once at the Eurostar (in either direction) I figure I will use the door-to-door delivery service to transport our belonging to the Port at Southampton. So, here are my two questions.. Has anybody here rented a wheelchair van in Paris or Barcelona and if so were you able to drop it off at a separate location? Can anyone recommend an agent that might be able to help me put all this together? I am hoping I am allowed to ask that last question.

I haven't figured out which Cruise line yet. I would LOVE IT if it was Celebrity, but their 2025 schedule does not appear to be published yet. And yes, Commodore (MS Caribe....blush...guess how old I am). BUT, I can top that with having sailed on my first cruise aboard the Britanis. I'll really want to take this assistive devise with us because the plan is to stay in Europe for a month-ish and then sale back via the QM2 (it appears). So I figure it would be very comforting to have this "cart" for the duration of our travels.