Algebralovr

Greetings all!

We are sailing on Celebrity Reflection in February, and Southwest has decided to no longer offer the flight home that I've used the last few years. Previously, I've flown a non-stop from FLL to STL that left FLL around 1:30 or 2pm. The one I've found doesn't leave FLL until 7:05pm. My other option is 11:55 am, but since I'll need to transfer from POM, that makes me nervous.

We're considering just renting a car and hanging out at Hollywood Beach or somewhere like that for the day, but part of me wonders if we could make the 11:55 flight. We have pre-check, and should be traveling fairly light, but after the experience we had last February coming off the Equinox on a Friday afternoon, when we were supposed to leave the ship at 8am, were held until after 9am on the ship, then didn't get past Customs until nearly 11, the 11:55 flight makes me nervous.

The idea of not flying until 7pm means I'll need to get lunch and dinner, or at least one of these, before boarding the flight, then we will get to STL around 9pm, but it will feel like 10pm, and we will still have a 2 hour flight home after getting our luggage and car.

Might as well book a room and start out the next morning.

Thoughts?

If you purchase wine ahead of time, can you bring to dining room without corkage fee? Thanks!!

 

 

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You should be able to bring it to the dining room without a corkage fee, when it is ordered from Celebrity. To make sure there isn't a problem, simply ask your steward to send it to the dining room for you. We've done this with the bottle of sparkling wine included in the CC class rooms, then shared it with whoever was at the table with us. If you take it to the dining room yourself, it can be a hassle plus if it needs to be chilled, it won't be.

The good news is that a (recently)expired passport will still allow you to easily renew in the US. Our passports expire in October 2017. We will cruise in Feb 2017, but are unlikely to cruise again after that until the holidays. As a result, we will probably send our renewal applications in right at expiration that year.

The Surface Pro 2 should be very good. If you do not already have a small laptop or tablet, I would actually recommend a small laptop. You can find them for under $400, they have an SD card slot, and have all the connections you might need. I got a Dell Inspiron 3000, which has an 11 inch screen, 500 GB HD, etc, for around $280 by looking for coupons and sales.

EB checks you in at the 36 hour mark, but before the system checks in EB purchasers it checks in the A LIST and Business Select folk. If one of the A list passengers cancels their flight after being auto - checked in, but before the 24 hour mark, their spot is reassigned to people checking in at T-24.

EB is a cap shoot. I've always gotten A or high B, once as high as A 20, once as low as B 05. What it does is make sure I don't have C boarding group at the end of a cruise. If in A or high B m it means you and your partner can sit together, and if the flight is not full and you sit near the back of the plane, you will probably get the middle empty. They state in writing there are no guarantees though.

Spirit and Allegiant have the highest fees around, but can provide the means to get what you want. Keep in mind that if the flight is canceled for any reason, they do not have another plane available to book you onto, or another flight available. Still a possibility if they go where you need better that anyone else, but you take your chances.

Good luck!

Quampapetet, I saw that you got a number of good replies to your lighting question n ow. Yay! Somehow it doesn't surprise me that Curt (Cle-guy) had an answer. Given the reaction you have, I assume you will still contact special needs at Celebrity and make sure they update the lighting in your room to all LED. They had my DD'S food allergies notated in her reservation very early, so hopefully they will take care of you appropriately.

Hope you enjoy Summit! That is the ship we are looking at for February 2017, unless Celebrity announces a new one before that.

I am so disappointed. We are going to be on the 11/1 transatlantic ending on 11/16 and wanted to book an 2016 Alaska cruise while on board.

 

Does anyone think/know if there might be a little 'flexibility' in that regard?

We always cruise in February, and the new offerings always start coming out in March. Last year, the loyalty booking manager told me that if I couldn't get another cruise in, my best bet was to book a cruise out as far as possible that I might like to take, then once the new schedule was available I could transfer it to the cruise I really wanted.

It is possible for the airline to put your bags on an earlier flight, but it would likely only happen if there was another non-stop before yours.

We've not had it happen after a cruise, but it did happen when we flew home from Disney a couple of years ago. Of course, the airline had quite a few flights out of MCO and we were on one of the last of the day.

The friends live close enough to the airport that he just ran over to get their bags before the airline could get them out to them.

We had to wait for FedEx to bring ours, as we live 100 miles away. That took an extra couple of days, and the FedEx trucks are always quite dirty, therefore our bag was quite dirty.

I'm starting to really wonder about the qualifications of the staff in the spa. My plan is to get my vacation mani/pedi at home where I know the education of the nail tech.

Hi

My two daughters and I had a pedicure on Eclipse August 14 with Canyon Ranch it was not an experience any of us enjoyed(apart from the view) we were all told off about the state of our feet and given a very hard sell my girl was quite rough and caused two toes to bleed quite a lot. gratuity is 18% but we all felt a lot of pressure to give more and one daughter did buy creams as her girl had already put them in a bag I most definatly refused any to buy we all agreed we would never go again.although to be fair our toe nails did look nice .

 

Catherine

That is terrible! There is no reason for toes to bleed during a pedicure. Being told off about the state of your feet was unprofessional and should have resulted in a complaint to the manager.

We were on Equinox in June, and tried a few things. I tried a port day special, which included a 50 minute massage and mini-facial. I started reacting to something being used during the facial (it was burning quite a lot) and the technician tried to tell me it was supposed to do that. My DD had a massage, and the girl shorted her on time but still charged full price. My sister was pleased with her facial, but sis lives in Switzerland and is used to the extremely high prices she pays there.

Celebrity has family rooms that sleep 5, but they only have one bathroom. The ones on the S - class ships have a room with a king bed for the parents, another room with bunk beds for 2 kids, and a sofa for the 5th person to sleep. It has a table and chairs in the shared room and a balcony to enjoy. Pricing will vary depending on time of year.

Those who have spent time in the kids club seem to like it for the ages of your kids, and if you take a sailing when most children are in school, there will be few children but more one-to-one with the kids club staff. They do not have the water slides and climbing walls, but your little ones won't be upset at not being big enough, either.

Hi Barb.

Curious what you didn't like about your Elation cruise?

We are headed out on the Elation Saturday.

I don't want to prejudice you against the cruise, so I don't want to be specific. The waiters in the MDR were good, the cabin steward was good. However, the staff refused to enforce the smoking rules, and there were way too many announcements and people hogging lounge chairs in the sun, making it difficult for us to find a place to hang out.

It has been a while. I hope you have a great time.

NOLA is a bit of a tertiary port for the cruise lines. As a result, pick the largest and newest ship, sailing the longest cruise and pick the highest category room within your budget.

Friends have sailed NCL from NOLA, and were happy in a suite. Carnival Elation for a 4 night cruise pretty much poisoned me against the line.

I've never used priceline. I checked it out for the hotel after your recommendation but, I'm confused. You set the price, they charge your card if they accept your offer and then they book it? It looks like you don't know what hotel you will be booked into until you give your credit info. I'm a bit leery as we need two rooms. If we book separately, we could get separate hotels???

I never use Priceline or any of the consolidator sites to book hotels. I look for quoted prices with specific hotels on those sites at times, and have called the booking number of the hotel itself to find out their price. Most will book at the consolidator price if they can show it. One difference is that they won't give loyalty club points if you book through a consolidator.

Since you need two rooms, I would just book directly with a known hotel.

We have a family cruise planned for New Year's 2015/2016. Each of the young adults is bringing their SO or a BFF to spend time with. I've already started reminding them they need a passport. I don't care that it is a closed loop cruise, I demand they bring a passport. I'm paying for the cruise itself, and I insist on documentation that will make it easy and take care of potential problems. I will start nagging them in Sept 2015, so that if they need to order a new one, they will have time to get it.

I also plan to request a copy of their birth certificate, just in case.

Check the Hyatt House Diana Beach. They have the shuttle from the airport covered, and when I called to ask, they said there was a shuttle at a cost to Port of Miami. I believe it was $12 per person,but could change.

It will probably be a wash as to whether that is better than renting a car, but with 7 you might need 2 cars or an extra large van which would probably cost more.

We sail Celebrity and usually fly Southwest. Friends have use the Celebrity version of EZCheck (whatever they call it) and were reasonably pleased. The only problem was when the bags didn't make the connection in Denver from Seattle, since our flight from Seattle to Denver was over an hour late due to a storm. We ended up making it onto the plane, but our bags didn't. Granted, when the first plane opened the gate for us to disembark, the second plane was already boarding, so we understand the bags not making the flight.

Anyway, since they didn't have receipts from checking in their bags, it was more difficult to file the missing bags claim. The bags did show up on the next flight, and we're tagged with their names and info, so they got them back, but it was a hassle.

That said, we are strongly considering using the service in February, since our flights home are not until 7 pm. It will be a lot easier to spend the day with just a tote bag than the luggage.

Unless it's a holiday sailing I'm guessing you grossly over paid. Why? Because nothing is free. The amenites probably cost Celebrity less than half that much. We did a 26 day B2B on the Constellation, in a C2 conciearge for $2100 p.p.. with prepaid gratuities. We never take the drink package, we take the cold hard cash in the form of obc or prepaid gratuites.

Check a 7 day oceanview to the Caribbean. With the prepaid gratuites and drink package, they are paying you to cruise.

I haven't seen prices like that lately, unless you have the freedom to book a last minute Xciting Deal and don't have to worry about airfare or requesting vacation, and we're happy with a guarantee cabin. Prices have gone up.

We used Choice Air for our flights in June, plus we were booked into a Group.

As a result, we didn't get our last eDocs and our last luggage tags until 22 days before the flight. They finally came through though. If you get to 21 days before you are supposed to depart, I would be quite stressed, but I had been warned by my TA that it could take a little extra time. When nothing was available at 30 days, she canned and was told it could be another week to 10 days and we might not get them in time to be mailed luggage tags.

As it turns out, Choice Air waits until the last minute to actually ticket your air travel, even though you purchase it many months in advance. It created a little bit of a problem, in that two of our party were not issued boarding passes for the last leg of our journey home. We didn't realize that the two of them (there were 5 of us) didn't actually have boarding passes until we missed the connecting flight due to the delay in taking off in Europe. Luckily, the customer service agent for Air Canada took care of everything for us.

According to the Celebrity Web site, the beverage package should have been good. There is not a listed exception for the special Qsine cocktails, and it specifically says they are good in the specialty restaurants.

Given your experience, I think I'll print that out before we go on our cruise and take it with me.

This one might be worth a phone call, particularly about the different charges and lack of menu updates.

Really sorry to hear about that, Curt. Updating the iPad menus isn't difficult.

Previously, I recall people paying the difference in drink cost when in Qsine. I'm very interested in the responses you get from others, since we've never had a chance to eat in Qsine and wish to do so on February. Our beverage packages were honored in Silk Harvest, so I can't imagine why they would not be in Qsine. The glass of wine that was served elsewhere on the ship sound certainly have been covered up to the standard limit!

In January 2015, my wife and I are flying to Ft. Lauderdale the afternoon before our Eclipse cruise leaves from Miami (unfortunately, Southwest Airlines does not fly from our hometown to Miami). We will have four large suitcases plus carry-ons. The children of Israel left Egypt with less luggage.

 

Please let me know the easiest and least expensive way to get from the airport in Fr. Lauderdale to our hotel in Miami. Does Celebrity provide shuttle service, and if so, the day before the cruise? If not, what are the alternatives?

 

Thanks.

If you are staying at a downtown Miami hotel, SAS may decline to transport you since it is outside of their normal time of operation. I usually stay in a Ft Lauderdale hotel, then catch SAS to the port the next morning before the cruise.

Does anyone know if these would work to go from the Port of Ft. Lauderdale to the Port of Miami? We're looking at possibly getting off of one ship and onto another. Trying to figure out if there's a cheaper/better option out there for 3 people. Thanks!

In your situation, I would take a cab to the FLL airport for about $15-$20, then SAS or a similar company to Port of Miami. Total cost will be $60-65.