AstoriaPreppy

We’re boarding the Silhouette in a few days, so this is good to hear. When you say “way above expectations,” is there anything specific onboard? Curious to know what to expect.

This tells us much more about the demographic of Cruise Critic members on this Celebrity board, and not the actual passenger base of Celebrity Cruises. If you went by the trip reports, comments and polls on this board, you'd think everyone ate in Luminae every night and was pining for the return of an elite happy hour with passed hors d'oeuvre and a cheese cart 🤣

Does anyone have experience docking in Gdynia on a Celebrity cruise? We're stopping there in a few weeks on the Silhouette, and trying to figure out if the line will have a shuttle into town, so we can walk to the station and take the train to Gdansk. It doesn't seem to be a common stop for the line, and their port info only suggests that there *may* be a shuttle into town. And yes, I know a taxi would be an option, but we basically had to sell a kidney last year in Livorno to get a cab to the train station... really looking to avoid a repeat of that situation 🤣

Ship: Celebrity Silhouette Length of Cruise: 12 nights Cruise Sail Date: 5 July 2024 Date email offer received: 18 April 2024 Captain’s Club Tier: Elite Booked through Celebrity Direct OR via TA: Directly via celebrity website Original Cabin: 3168 (inside stateroom deck 3) Bid?: Yes New stateroom: C2 Concierge, deck 9 Bid Offer: $265 pp, $530 total Notification Date: 19 June 2024 Accepted / Rejected: Accepted Full breakdown of our bids: AquaClass® Stateroom $405 USD per guest $810 USD Sunset Concierge Class $315 USD per guest $630 USD Concierge Class Stateroom $265 USD per guest $530 USD Sunset Veranda Stateroom $315 USD per guest $630 USD Veranda Stateroom $250 USD per guest $500 USD Ocean View Stateroom $120 USD per guest $240 USD

Assuming you're taking the airport limo bus, you can definitely activate at any JR station in Tokyo, so that shouldn't be an issue. That said, instead of getting a Welcome Suica, I'd recommend using a digital Suica card. At least on Apple, you can just create and add a Suica card directly in your wallet now, without having to use a physical card anymore. It's active immediately, and you can top off on your phone (not at a JR ticket machine).

Speaking from experience, on the Millennium, in Yokohama in 2019, this is a horrible idea. Debarkation was slow (Japanese officials are nothing if not thorough), and the line for taxis was 30-45 minutes long. It was absolutely one of the worst debarkations of my life (and I've gotten off the ship multiple times at the Manhattan cruise terminal in NY).

TBH, the one kind of cruise video I find eminently useful is the cabin video: things like storage, bathroom layout, sofa (or lack thereof) is valuable to me... and it's easy to look past bad production values when it's just someone in their stateroom. What I really (REALLY) dislike about influencers and content creators on cruises are the ones who film indiscriminately, in public spaces, without considering other passengers. We took a cruise to Iceland a few years ago and there was a couple filming constantly, doing livestreams, having screaming calls with relatives on FaceTime in public spaces while cruising fjords in Greenland, etc. They were spectacularly obnoxious and completely oblivious to everyone around them, almost to a fault.

TBH, people in their 20s aren't generally taking cruises around Japan: these cruises usually longer than a week, are a pain to get to, and cost more than the usual 7-night Caribbean trip out of Florida. My first time in Japan was actually on a Celebrity cruise a few years ago, and my husband and I were the "young" people on the cruise... both in our 30s. We absolutely met other youngish people, but we were the exception, not the rule, so be prepared. Of the American lines that sail Japan/Korea regularly (HAL, Princess, Celebrity, NCL) you might have the best luck finding youngish people on NCL/Celebrity, but again see the above caveats. The best advice I can give is to *not* do cruise line excursions. Japan has spectacular public transportation that is easily accessible from the cruise piers in almost every port. The country is very easy to navigate as a westerner with a phone, and you have a much much higher chance of interacting with people your age outside of the cruise crowd. It's what we did in almost every port, and I have zero regrets.

As a frequent flyer, this makes me so happy to hear! For years MCI was hands down the worst airport in the US, and the new terminal looks 💯

Quick update: we ended up canceling our Celebrity excursion and are just doing Berlin by commuter train on our own. After a bit of research, I discovered that there's nonstop IC trains that are exponentially less expensive than the excursion, round trip from Warnemunde to Berlin Hbf. We'll depart around 8 am and return at 5:30 pm, arriving at the train around 8 pm. We've done commuter trains while traveling in the past, and are pretty independent travelers, so this seems like a great option to maximize our time in Berlin.

Technically, Celebrity crew can get in big trouble serving unopened alcohol to passengers, but sometimes if you tip well... Also, 4, 5, or 6 drinks in a couple hours is what we in NY call "Sunday Brunch." 🤣

There are three Celebrity ship classes: M, S, and E. In order of age; M stands for Millennium Class: Millennium, Infinity, Constellation and Summit. These are all panamax ships that can fit through the old canal locks. S stands for Solstice Class, with the ships being Solstice, Equinox, Eclipse, Silhouette and Reflection. These are all post-panamax sized ships. E stands for Edge Class: Edge, Apex, Beyond and Ascent, with Xcel currently under construction. In terms of ships to skip, the only ones that read old/tired (and I'd suggest avoiding) are the Infinity and Constellation. The Millennium and Summit received full renovations pre-pandemic, which included gut renovating all the staterooms and many of the public areas to more contemporary standards. The larger ships have an absolute "wow" factor that you don't get on a Holland America ship. The Solstice class features giant atriums with glass elevators, while the Edge-class vessels introduced since 2018 have really innovative and upscale spaces. Re: exercise, Celebrity ships have full gym and spa facilities that are run by Steiner (like every other line). The one notable differential from other lines is that Celebrity has a number of Peloton bikes available on each ship, in their fitness facilities, which we enjoy using.

I'd note that some of the "there are no millennials" reports come from friends, not your first-hand experience. As a millennial, I'd say that it tends to be highly dependent on timing and or itinerary. On some of our Celebrity cruises, we've had tons of people our age... other times (patagonia/South America in February) were the youngest passengers. It's hit or miss, but I'd say Celebrity definitely skews younger than Princess/HAL in our experience.

As others have pointed out, there are two places tenders go in Santorini. If you have an excursion booked, you'll take a tender to the "new port," get on a bus and do your excursion. If you're touring on your own, you'll take a tender to the "old port," which is where the cable car/stairs/donkeys are. As of last year, a lot of excursions would tour you around Santorini via bus, then drop you in Fira where you got a cable car ticket for the ride back down to the tenders at your leisure (the stairs are treacherous and filled with donkey poop, speaking from experience). The issue is that Santorini is getting WAY more people and ships than the cable car can efficiently handle. It's from the early 80s, and not like a modern gondola system that you'd find in a ski resort or Disney World. I think the Fira cable can can handle around 30 passengers MAX per trip up/down, which at the end of the night results in thousands of people stuck in a slow moving line winding around town, and hour+ waits. We did the Oia on Your Own excursion on the NCL Gem last year, and decided to not heed the tour guide's suggestion to take the cable car down early. Instead, we went and chilled out at a cliffside bar as the sun set, only to discover a total mess as nearly every passenger from the five ships in port waiting for the cable car back down. It sounds like the solution from some providers on the island is to just tour you around, and then take you back down to the new port via bus for a tender directly back to your ship. It's not ideal, but will absolutely save both the lines and the passengers major headaches on guided tours.

Essentially, you buy cards, like bingo. Each numbered case is a little pull-tab. A randomly selected card buyer will be called on stage to play the traditional Deal or No Deal game show: pick a case, and then open cases each round before receiving a buyout offer from the “banker” (aka the algorithm). Everyone not picked to play on stage plays a different game using their cards in the audience. Let’s say the contestant on stage opens case 16. If the value of case 16 on screen matches the value of case 16 on your card, you get a “match.” The more matches you get in the audience, the larger prize you can win. Prizes for audience members differ based on cruise line and ship…. I suspect they may be customized based on the amount of sales for the came session, but I’m not positive on this. A few weeks ago on our Carnival sailing the two match prize was a free bingo package at a future session, and three matches was $35 in casino free play.

When we did this sailing on Millennium in October 2019, we departed and arrived at the Daikoku terminal on the opposite side of the bridge. Getting there was a major PITA from both Tokyo and Yokohama (no public transportation), and the terminal was more like a random tent on what we ended up calling "parking lot island." You'll have a much better sailaway from Osanbashi.

About three weeks ago, on the Venezia.

This is absolutely not true. Passengers are able to continue to order drinks and pay out of pocket once they've exceeded the 15 drinks included with Cheers. Personally speaking, I've received a 16th night cap as my comp VIFP beverage the last night of a cruise multiple times.

I can attest to this... last year I received *two* casino comp cruises out of LA on Celebrity The first one was offered when we sailed NJ-Iceland in 2022. Coming back to our cabin one afternoon, we found a letter saying we both had a casino comp for later 2022/early 2023. The letter specifically noted this was a book on board only offer. We both assumed it was a mistake, as we are very (very) low-level gamblers, but the future cruise desk confirmed the offer and we jumped at the option. Coming back from that cruise in January, we received an immediate bounce-back offer for ANOTHER cruise in the next few weeks. I ended up jumping on this offer again, as they offered me an aqua class cabin that I took as a solo cruiser (working remotely from the ship that week). The staff was very confused that I was back only two weeks later, and many remembered me by name. TBH, we also received casino comps on Carnival in 2022 which we certainly weren't qualified for (~$100 loss over the course of a 7 day cruise). As best as I can tell, this was a combination of unfilled capacity along with an algorithm trying to identify potentially new high-rollers/high-spend gamblers to receive more comps in the future.

I'm not going to speculate publicly on what this similar-name relatives did, but it's clearly bad enough to be a major red flag for the US government (not Carnival). Carnival didn't target your husband, the Department of Homeland Security did when it got the passenger manifest, your husband's name popped up, was immediately flagged, and then flagged again because of an incorrect DOB. You might as well have entered his name as "Jerry Nothingsuspicioustoseehere" on the manifest. It behoves you to make sure this doesn't happen again, not a cruise line or airline. If the government flagged your husband once, there's a good chance it could happen again on another line/flight. You're very bent out of shape over shared bus fare (on a bus that everyone else in your party used to board the cruise). If I knew I shared the same name with someone on a federal watch list, $280 in bus fare would be the furthest thing from my mind... I would be tripping over myself to make sure getting flagged by the feds didn't happen the next time I wanted to take a vacation! TBH, in the time you've spent griping on this forum, you could have instead applied for a redress number for your husband. It's likely that this might happen again on another line or flight in the future, it's completely free, and will guarantee your DOB mistakes or paperwork snafus won't ruin any vacations in the future. https://www.dhs.gov/dhs-trip

A few notes for non-New Yorkers: 1) It's illegal for a yellow cab to not use the meter. The only flat fare route in the city is JFK to Manhattan (not vice-versa). 2) It's also not legal for a yellow cab to turn down a ride if they're accepting fares. That is, the cab driver can't turn you down because they don't like the destination. Legally they have to take you, and use the meter. More details on cabs in NY here: https://www.nyc.gov/site/tlc/passengers/taxi-fare.page

There is 100% an easy solution to make sure this never happens again: get a redress number from the US Government. From what I've read, it sounds like your son and/or nephew may have 1) both the same name as your husband, and 2) some past legal issues that would get them flagged by Homeland Security or the TSA while traveling. Redress numbers exist for people in these situations: you apply, then DHS does a background check and verification to make sure person X is not person Y (who is getting flagged). They then issue person X a number to use when flying/sailing in the future to make sure they're not mistakenly flagged as person Y. In this case, you could have just given Carnival that number when checking your husband in, and all of this would have been averted.

When Oasis-class was developed, they were way too large for typical cruise ports... ie, Ocho Rios. Not in a beam/draft/length size way, but in a getting people on/off efficiently way. That's why ports like Falmouth were developed. Royal could build a massive facility to their specs, and move a lot of the typical stuff that happens when re-boarding a ship (queues, x-ray, security, etc) off the ship and onto the landside space. It's become common practice now, but when those ships were launched at the end of the 00's, it was revolutionary.

Hmmmm... maybe that's the case for us as well? I don't remember seeing details about a coach before, but it's absolutely in there now. Here's the description: --- Overview Berlin is about a 2.5- 3 hour train ride. Throughout the journey, your escort will provide you with water and light snacks, Berlin city maps, and an "emergency kit" with essential phone numbers to prepare you for your exploration activities in Berlin. Your escort will also inform you of your departure time and location in Berlin. After a day of exploring on your own, you'll take the train back to your ship. The coach will transport you from the arrival/departure train station to the city center. Highlights Explore Berlin at your own pace. Discover your own Berlin—see the Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, or browse the city’s unique boutiques and shops. Sit back and enjoy scenic views of the northern German countryside on a relaxing train ride. Important details and advisements During the transfer to/from Berlin guests will be escorted and assisted by an English-speaking host. Guests may be required to pay between 50 cents and 1 Euro to use the public toilets. Guests must be at least 18 years old to consume alcohol. Alcohol may be served, please drink responsibly. Please note that shops are normally closed on Sundays in Germany and only souvenir shops will be open. The train ride between Warnemunde and Berlin is approximately 2.5- 3 hours each way, subject to daily train traffic conditions.

Heading on a Celebrity cruise this summer, stopping in Warnemunde for the day. We’ve booked Celebrity’s Berlin on your own by train excursion, with pickup in Warnemunde on the chartered excursion train. One question: I’ve seen *multiple* reviews, comments, complaints and gripes across multiple lines, mentioning the drop off and pick up stations in Berlin being different for this excursion. However, none of these comments mention which station the train stops at on arrival and where it leaves on departure. Most of the times it’s an exasperated passenger saying “no one told us” or “we were so confused and had to take a taxi,” etc. Does anyone know specifics? It would certainly help us plot out our day in Berlin knowing what station we’ll start the day at and what station we’ll conclude.