20165

Has anyone used the Private Journeys in the Caribbean? We saw the option on the website but have no idea how it works. We would like to use it on our Caribbean cruise in late December. Anyone have any experience with this? thanks

I appreciate the OP experiment. We usually only book air after 1pm but this coupled with our more recent experiences makes us a little more comfortable moving that back to 11am or after which opens up a lot more flights for us. thank you

Wow, i appreciate this thread. I know the Rolex's were preowned, but didnt realize the purses were too. I dont remember seeing a sign on Silhouette a couple weeks ago, but will definitely look next month on Apex. My wife isnt real keen on used purses so that may keep her from spending a lot of $$$.

Was trying to follow along with this thread, but not sure i quite understand if this works the same as it did on our NCL cruise last year. We have the premium drink package on NCL and we could order VC by the glass at dinner and it was covered under our drink package. If we ordered a bottle, it was not other than a discount, i think 20%. If that how it works on celebrity?

It 16yo, we checked last year, however hes been using cruise ship gyms since he was 14 and has never had anyone ask if he was old enough. Is there an age restriction for the Fitness Center? Fitness Center guests must be 16 years of age or older to use the facilities. Teenagers and children are welcome to enjoy the running track on the open deck. Guests 16 years of age and older will have full gym access between 6am to 10pm daily as well as a diverse range of complimentary fitness classes.

Well we will have the answer to this next month when we take our 16 and 19yo on Apex over the holiday. As stated, im sure it depends on what your kids want to do, but ours specifically requested no more RCL or NCL. They just want to relax and do some diving at the islands. We were on NCL Getaway last holiday and they really just spent most of their time either in the gym or on their ipads somewhere on the ship. They didnt even want to to do the water sides. They just looked forward to the shore excursions when we got to each port. I thought the slides were fun though...

We had facial recognition last week when we disembarked in miami. It was wonderful. From the time we walked off the ship to a cab had to be no more than 5-10 minutes. We are sailing out of Ft Lauderdale next month. Does anyone know if they have facial recognition?

Because when i looked online, it gave me the option to prepay gratuities which i thought was odd. So i called celebrity and they said quote 'they dropped off your reservation somehow' and they readded them. I verified that the drink and wifi package were still there and they said they were fine. An hour or so later when i looked on line, the option to prepay gratuities was not there.

I booked directly through Celebritys website.

i was actually surprised to see beer carts in the pool area with glass bottles on our Silhouette cruise a couple weeks ago. They actually handed me one in the bottle while i was in the hot tub which in hindsight, probably wasn't the best idea because it wasn't my first... Luckily i didnt drop it.

We never saw the option online to upgrade so im guessing you have to call? If you figure out where to do it online, please let me know. thx

Actually, that's a really good question. We just handed them our passports 2 weeks ago when we boarded out of habit but i wonder what would happen if i handed them a drivers license or birth cert. Ill give it a try next month.

we did this two weeks ago on Silhouette. 5 day cruise, it was $72pp for us to upgrade from classic to Premium. We did it at the customer service desk because we were there working on another item. They had some chart they looked at to see what it would cost for the 5 day cruise. below is the line item on my bill. Im sure this varies, but roughly $15 per day per person extra. 11/3 BEVERAGES 30025896 BEVERAGE PACKAGES 144.00

We have the same situation with our son whos passport expires in jan and we are cruising in Dec. We were stressed about getting a new one until my wife and i took a cruise on silhouette last week and they didn't even look at our passports. Not saying its a lock that will happen in december and we'll take his birth cert just in case, but they didnt seem overly concerned about passports in either check in or disembarkation.

Definitely keep an eye on the AI. Our last cruise, the gratuities dropped off, but wifi and drink package stayed. Odd. our cruise next month, all dropped off so the TA had to do something to add them back on. Im boarding the ship with all receipts just in case though.

We had an Aqua cabin last week on Silhouette and Blu was very good, but we only ate there once because we wanted to try some of the other speciality restaurants. There were some other perks like the thermal spa and yoga mats in our room, but we didnt use any of that so the poster above that suggested buying a specialty dining package may be a better option or at least for us it may have been.

ok, that may be it then. we have 2 balcony cabins next to each other.

We are traveling with our two sons, 19-16yo, next month on Apex. We just booked the cruise last week with 2 cabins, one for us, one for them. We got our cruise confirmation on friday which had everything correct, us in one cabin, our kids in another. We found this odd because we have always had a problem doing this in the past, even on NCL last year when our oldest was 18yo. we still had to jump through some hoops even though he was an adult. So i discovered today when checking in that they made my 19yo 29yo. However, it let me correct it during the check in process so i guess we are in the clear?? Has anyone else had a similar situation and did you have any issues? Im surprised we didnt have to do anything special for a cabin where both people are under 21 but like i said, i sailed right through the checkin process with no issues and everything looks correct.

We did kinda an opposite experiment last week when disembarked from the Silhoutte out of Miami. Our flight wasnt until the next day so we wanted to see how long they would allow us to stay on the ship. Same type of timing as the OP, they were disembarking around 7:30 although it was suppose to be 7. We went to the lobby around 8:30 and they were asking us to leave at 9:30. So even waiting to be one of the last people off the ship, we would have easily made a 11:00 flight. Totally agree that there are factors that can change these times a lot. An example would be when we got on the ship, it was delayed because it came from europe and i guess there is more customs procedures they have to go through and i saw people still walking off after 11.

Is there anywhere on celebrity's website that shows the perks for our reservation? On our receipt from our TA it does say free drink package, wifi and gratuities, but we cant find that detail anywhere online.

Just a quick followup on this, we did use the $100 ATT plan and it worked great for outbound calls, but very spotty for inbound. Maybe 1 out of 3 made it through. The sound quality was great though. Actually better than some of areas when im on land... We also had the wifi plan so just used that for data.

We just got off a 5day Silhouette cruise and overall it was great. We actually booked another on Apex over the holidays. There are some questions that i wanted to ask about some things we weren't use to or were different then our usual RCL, NCL cruises of late. I know that tipping is not required, but i usually tip above the standard for good drink or restaurant service. RCL was a receipt you could write one in, NCL was cash, but i dont think i saw anyone tipping on the Silhouette and when i did a couple of times i was able to get some change, the service was outstanding. Meaning the bartender at the martini bar had our drinks ready when he saw us walking up to the bar. Is tipping different on Celebrity or are we just the oddballs that tip too much? Speaking of tipping, we went to the pursers desk 3 times during the cruise to break larger bills and they had absolutely no change. They turned me away twice and the third time they could tell i was getting agitated so they scavenged up some $5-10s from the different counters. Is that normal? Ive never had an issue getting change on a cruise ship. The ship was only 60% full which i thought was odd because the AI resorts we have been going to have been packed. I think the NCL ship we were on last december was also pretty close to capacity. Is that normal for Celebrity or were we just on a less popular itinerary? Like i said, one of the best cruises we have had in a while. It does remind me of Princess and HAL when we cruised them years ago. And it was actually quite a bit less expensive than some of the mega ships we have been on of late. Cant way to try the Apex next month and check out the infinite balcony. Ive read through some of the posts about it on here and although it doesn't seem to be for everyone, i think it will be perfect for us because we rarely just sit on the balcony and would much rather reclaim that space for the room.

Ah thank you. I have to go back to checking out the other websites again. Thats a pretty significant savings. thanks again.

Hi, we are booking a holiday cruise next month on Apex and we usually use the cruise line website to book, however, i checked a non cruise cruising website, pretty mainstream one, and its about $1700 cheaper for the 2 cabins we are looking at. Everything looks the same, room type, free offers, etc. Does that sound right? We have been under the impression that there was no real price difference between using a TA vs. the cruise line websites to book. Thoughts? Am i missing something?

Thanks Again for everyones help on this last minute cruise. Amazed how smooth it went for only booking 4 days out. Overall, great cruise and I think we are hooked on celebrity now. Ill post a more detailed review later in the week but overall great experience. thanks