Does Celebrity think we're stupid?

[Bruin Steve]

I just booked a cruise on Eclipse for December...

 

Now, when they first started offering "all-inclusive", there wasn't a "cruise only" choice.  We really didn't know how much we were paying for drinks, tips and wifi since it was just packaged into the price. Mostly because of this, every Celebrity cruise we've done since the pandemic has been all-inclusive.

 

But, now, there's an option.

 

So, when booking this December cruise, I noticed the best price seemed to be a veranda guarantee.  It's a short cruise, I'll take my chances...it won't be the worst thing to get a lifeboat in front of our balcony...but not a bad gamble as they only have one unassigned obstructed view cabin showing right now...and lots of unobstructed.  So, we go to the next step--the "cruise only" vs. "all-included" choice...and here's what comes up:

Cruise-Only

 

Enjoy dining, entertainment, daily activities and more; tailor your add-ons later.

/content/dam/celebrity/new-images/promotions/banners/upgrade_best_price.png

$429 USD*

avg per person

CONFIRM & CONTINUE

All Included

Get our most popular amenities—drinks, Wi-Fi, and tips—prepackaged when you add All Included. Save $200-$800, only when you complete your booking now.Learn More

/content/dam/celebrity/new-images/promotions/banners/upgrade_best_value_orange.png

$1,449 USD*

avg per person

CONTINUE WITH ALL INCLUDED

 

Okay--$1020 per person for the "perks"...Remember, it's a SIX-night cruise.  Gratuities are $18 per day--$108 pp for the cruise...Right now, they are selling the classic drink package for $70.99 per person per day...add 20% gratuity, that's $511.08 per person for the cruise (at least that's the math they use on the X app).  Wifi--$23.99 per day per person.  So, $143.94.  Okay, forgetting that, for us, we're Diamond Plus, so buying these seperately, we have discounts as well...but, lets ignore those for now...

 

$108 PLUS $511.08 PLUS $143.94...Equals...$763.02!!!

Celebrity wants to sell us All Inclusive...because we'd be paying them $2,040 for $1526 in extras!!!

You give them an extra $514...WHY???

And I am sure lots of people are paying that....

 

 

 

[PROCRUISE]

Because MOST people don't do they math, they just hit the Continue With All Included and think they got a "deal!"

Edited July 31, 2023 by PROCRUISE

[May B]

Hi Steve, nice to see you here.

 

Glad you have figured them out! Caveat emptor, somebody once said.

 

Have a great cruise. We actually also just booked a six-night for Dec., on the Connie, which leaves four miles from our condo here in Tampa. Our last two Connies have been disappointing, food-wise, but now our expectations are ramped down and we should have a great time, anyway.

[RichYak]

If you price the same cruise choosing a veranda cabin in the same class (not a guarantee), you should get the same AI fare. For some reason, guarantee fares and AI fares don't seem to be play nicely together. It's like choosing AI negates the guarantee discount but you still don't get to choose a cabin.

[cw2go]

2 minutes ago, RichYak said:

If you price the same cruise choosing a veranda cabin in the same class (not a guarantee), you should get the same AI fare. For some reason, guarantee fares and AI fares don't seem to be play nicely together. It's like choosing AI negates the guarantee discount but you still don't get to choose a cabin.

AHHH! Gotcha! Good To Know!

 

Patty 

[Bruin Steve]

3 minutes ago, RichYak said:

If you price the same cruise choosing a veranda cabin in the same class (not a guarantee), you should get the same AI fare. For some reason, guarantee fares and AI fares don't seem to be play nicely together. It's like choosing AI negates the guarantee discount but you still don't get to choose a cabin.

Actually, it's stranger than that...

Obstructed view where you get to choose that one remaining cabin is $771 cruise only, $1290 AI...

Unobstructed is $819/$1338!!!

[neverlaysup]

28 minutes ago, Bruin Steve said:

I just booked a cruise on Eclipse for December...

 

Now, when they first started offering "all-inclusive", there wasn't a "cruise only" choice.  We really didn't know how much we were paying for drinks, tips and wifi since it was just packaged into the price. Mostly because of this, every Celebrity cruise we've done since the pandemic has been all-inclusive.

 

But, now, there's an option.

 

So, when booking this December cruise, I noticed the best price seemed to be a veranda guarantee.  It's a short cruise, I'll take my chances...it won't be the worst thing to get a lifeboat in front of our balcony...but not a bad gamble as they only have one unassigned obstructed view cabin showing right now...and lots of unobstructed.  So, we go to the next step--the "cruise only" vs. "all-included" choice...and here's what comes up:

Cruise-Only

 

Enjoy dining, entertainment, daily activities and more; tailor your add-ons later.

/content/dam/celebrity/new-images/promotions/banners/upgrade_best_price.png

$429 USD*

avg per person

CONFIRM & CONTINUE

All Included

Get our most popular amenities—drinks, Wi-Fi, and tips—prepackaged when you add All Included. Save $200-$800, only when you complete your booking now.Learn More

/content/dam/celebrity/new-images/promotions/banners/upgrade_best_value_orange.png

$1,449 USD*

avg per person

CONTINUE WITH ALL INCLUDED

 

Okay--$1020 per person for the "perks"...Remember, it's a SIX-night cruise.  Gratuities are $18 per day--$108 pp for the cruise...Right now, they are selling the classic drink package for $70.99 per person per day...add 20% gratuity, that's $511.08 per person for the cruise (at least that's the math they use on the X app).  Wifi--$23.99 per day per person.  So, $143.94.  Okay, forgetting that, for us, we're Diamond Plus, so buying these seperately, we have discounts as well...but, lets ignore those for now...

 

$108 PLUS $511.08 PLUS $143.94...Equals...$763.02!!!

Celebrity wants to sell us All Inclusive...because we'd be paying them $2,040 for $1526 in extras!!!

You give them an extra $514...WHY???

And I am sure lots of people are paying that....

 

 

 

Look at the same cabin in a higher category and you will see the AI price is LOWER. You need to be super careful when booking and look at the cabin pricing on multiple categories. Here is the exact same cruise in the next higher Veranda category.

[Julma]

We have a working Excel spreadsheet for just this purpose.  Sometime it works out to do AI, sometimes not.  By the time you figure all the status discounts it can be very confusing.  

[Ken the cruiser]

I guess that's one reason we have found ourselves booking more Princess and NCL cruises these days rather than Celebrity. But then we like longer 3-5 week cruise combinations and the $120+ pp/day Celebrity is charging for AI, when you add in both their Premium Drinks and Internet packages, definitely adds up on those longer cruises. For the same service on Princess, we pay $60 pp/day for their Plus Package and about $70 pp/day (plus $20 pp/day for the daily gratuity charge) for NCL's new FAS Plus package, which has quite the assortment of perks!

 

Then when Celebrity adds on an additional $75+ pp/day for a refundable deposit booking, that's getting a little crazy, especially when PCL and NCL pretty much offer the refundable deposit bookings for no additional charge.

 

But that's cool, as Celebrity has a few itineraries we really like and have found if we book those when they first come out, we usually get a pretty good deal when compared to their price about 12-18 months before the sail date. For example, a Mar 2025 Constellation cruise, with 3 days in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, the nonrefundable pp price for an AQ cabin is now about $1,000 more than when we booked it with a refundable deposit the first week it was available for booking. 🤔

[jelayne]

I just looked at a booking my friends are making this week.  It is a 

11N cruise in a Veranda

Adding AI adds $961 pp to the fare.  Gratuities at $18 are $198, Classic beverage package w/20%

$937.  So even without adding wi-fi AI is a better deal.  

 

Must be the Guarantee messing it up.

[neverlaysup]

5 minutes ago, jelayne said:

I just looked at a booking my friends are making this week.  It is a 

11N cruise in a Veranda

Adding AI adds $961 pp to the fare.  Gratuities at $18 are $198, Classic beverage package w/20%

$937.  So even without adding wi-fi AI is a better deal.  

 

Must be the Guarantee messing it up.

From my own experience doing tons of mock bookings, the GTY AI price is always ridiculous on the X website. When I do the same mock booking on my TA site, the AI difference on GTY is the same as other cabins and is consistent. I'm not sure why X does this!

[Bruin Steve]

It's not just guarantee bookings...I've seen others that are way out of whack as well...

For me, it becomes VERY hard to book AI even when the pricing is at a slight advantage.

 

As Ken pointed out, Princess charges about $60 per day.  When you factor out the gratuities...and figure they allow drinks up to $14 or $15, it's like paying for three drinks a day and getting the fourth and after free and free wifi.  And since we don't otherwise get any free "loyalty" drinks on Princess, their AI really makes sense.  We've done all of our recent Princess cruises we've done the AI--no brainer.

 

But, for me, with Celebrity, that $70.99 per day drink package price and $10 drink limit, it means my wife and I each have to consume SEVEN drinks per day BEYOND what we get for free anyway as Elite Plus (5:00-7:00 pm).  The WiFi is near worthless on this one...We only go to San Diego and Cabo and AT&T covers us in both...and we get the Elite Plus complimentary 240 minutes each...

 

So, even at a "discounted" amount--like that $519 pp (absurdly booking the one bad obstructed cabin by paying $342 per person more on the base rate), I'd do this math:  It's $519 minus the $108 in gratuities--So, really $411 pp for drinks/wifi...or about $68.50 per person per day...

 

For that, we get drinks after 7 and the right to waste a lot of extra time on the internet (past the 80 free minutes per day we have between us and all the free access while in port or docked)...So, we'd need to STILL have to drink about 7 drinks each EVERY night after 7 pm just to break even.  IT IS STILL NOT A GOOD DEAL.

[PTC DAWG]

Math isn’t hard.  Just do it.  

[Lena11033]

One of my cruises when I looked at 'all included' it was about as much as the cruise, so I ended up just doing the tips. I figure I'll add things on later as it prices out cheaper that way

[grandgeezer]

55 minutes ago, PROCRUISE said:

Because MOST people don't do they math, they just hit the Continue With All Included and think they got a "deal!"

The math is pretty simple as both prices are shown side by side. At this point the taxes and fees haven’t come into play yet. They are a fixed fee no matter what category you are bookings so forget about it. Take the cruise only fare and add the gratuities, subtract that number from the AI price, and that gives you what you are paying for the drinks and wifi. Divide that by number of day to get your per day cost. I’ve priced dozens of cruises comparing the guarantee cruise only pick your cabin vs pick a cabin and the finished price has never been cheaper for the pick your own.

[Ozzmund]

Speaking for all of us math challenged cruisers, thanks Bruin Steve.

[CaroleSS]

"Does Celebrity think we're stupid?"

Short answer......yes

[basenji56]

1 hour ago, PROCRUISE said:

Because MOST people don't do they math, they just hit the Continue With All Included and think they got a "deal!"

How many people say..."I think it is a good deal and worth the cost because I get off the ship with nothing on my account statement. Worth the piece of mind."

 

[cw2go]

7 minutes ago, basenji56 said:

How many people say..."I think it is a good deal and worth the cost because I get off the ship with nothing on my account statement. Worth the piece of mind."

 

 

I've read it here on CC several times! 😜

 

Patty

[Mark_T]

2 hours ago, Bruin Steve said:

Right now, they are selling the classic drink package for $70.99 per person per day...

That will be part of the difference as well since the cruise prices do not get adjusted when there are sales on the cruise planner prices...

 

... nor do all cruises and markets necessarily get the same sales...

[basenji56]

Even when all included was the only way to book on the Celebrity website, my travel agent always had cruise only fares.  I would always compare the two. 

 

Since I don't drink alcohol, the cruise only fare was the only one that made any sense.  I am Elite so get non-alcoholic drinks during the happy hour and specialty coffees during the Elite breakfast in Tuscan.

  

[OysterD]

You're right, sometimes the pricing just makes NO sense.

 

I've done mock bookings on a bunch of cruises before and sometimes found that booking in AQ (which has all included by default) has worked out cheaper than a veranda cabin with either then adding on the all included or sometimes even just adding on drinks tips and wifi separately. Completely illogical! The trick seems to be to just play around with various cabin and all included options to find what works best. 

 

I don't know if they do it on purpose or if there is a glitch in their system. Obviously a human can't check every cruise and every cabin/all included option for pricing discrepancies, but a simple bit of coding should be able to flag up anything like that and then they should correct it. 

[MamaFej]

I'm not sure that Celebrity thinks we are stupid, but I'm pretty sure they hope we are. 

[neverlaysup]

1 hour ago, MamaFej said:

I'm not sure that Celebrity thinks we are stupid, but I'm pretty sure they hope we are. 

After the last 50% off sale on drink packages that had the prices raised by 50% on day 2. They clearly think we are clueless and stupid.

[NMTraveller]

Is not that their new trademark?

 

From Relaxed Luxury to

Less for more.

Edited August 1, 2023 by NMTraveller