dlretired

Just received info from Celebrity.

Ship will arrive Southampton Sunday evening between 6-7 PM.

Embarkation passengers have two options:

1. Board the ship between 11PM Sunday evening and 1AM Monday.

2.  Board the ship between 7 AM and 10:30 AM Monday.

Port call in the azores  will be skipped.

Celebrity will reimburse up to $200 pounds for hotel.

Onboard credit equal to I day of cruise.

Email did not contain info on Disembarkation in Southampton.

My wife and I have sailed with HAL about a half dozen times. We just attempted to book the 26 day April, 2009 Trans-Atlantic + Med cruise on the Noordam.

Even at this early date, both early traditional seatings were closed and according to the HAL rep, "They have no plans to open either of them even for waitlisting".

Since repositioning cruises do not usually sail at full capacity, I find this decision by HAL to be dissappointing and arbitrary at best.

They obviously are trying to force people into the "Open Seating" option by closing the traditional seatings even though neither of them at this time are really full.

In my opinion, HAL's dining room policy should be, " As You Wish Dining----As long as you pick the "Open seating" option. By adopting this policy HAL's excutives who made the decision to impliment this plan can point to the statistics and say, "Look how popular Open Seating has become, this has been a complete success and we need to encourage more passengers to select Open Seating".

I suspect that eventually, HAL will decide to adopt NCL's model of dining in which there will be no traditional fixed seating dining choice.

I don't choose to get up at 6 in the morning every day in order to assure an early eating time of my choosing.

It seems that HAL has decided that our money is not worth the effort on their part. Guess we'll have to look elsewhere for a cruise line that doesn't treat its potential customers in such cavalier fashion as to offer no real choice in dining options.