Buenos Aires pre/post cruise totally AWFUL

[Hlitner]

We recently returned from a 14 nt Infinity cruise (Feb 11) and want to warn readers to avoid Celebrity pre and/or post cruise packages in Buenos Aires (BA). The company used by Celebrity in BA is totally incompetent. You can expect bad transfers (1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hour delays on transfers from the airport to your hotel), virtually no support at the hotels (on our post cruise there was nobody at the desk for 2 days), bad transfers from hotel to ship and vice versa (our luggage arrived at 11pm in our hotel after an early morning 1 mile transfer from our hotel), etc. We did speak with the Guest Relations supervisor on-board (we were never granted a meeting with the hotel manager or chief purser) and were simply told "this is South America" and we "should get used to this level of service if we wanted to cruise in South America." Discussions with 2 of the Concierges in our post-cruise hotel indicated that problems with the Infinity land arrangements was very common and frustrating to the concierges. When none of our baggage showed-up at the hotel after our cruise (more than a dozen passengers) the concierge tried to contact the ship (no luck) and the local tour company who handled the transfers (their answering machine said they were closed on weekends) to no avail. We finally found an "emergency phone number" for the local tour company and were able to contact somebody on a cell phone who did work to find our luggage (all or our luggage was transferred to the airport despite the fact that many of us were on multi-day hotel packages). It turned out to be a nightmare. One of our party missed-out on a special dinner on their only night in BA (post cruise) because they did not have any dinner clothes (it was the only reason they booked the post cruise package). We personally spent more than 4 hours making phone calls (once we found the "emergency number") prodding for the local tour company to trace all or our luggage (we had to beg, plead, threaten, etc) and actually saw the tour company hang-up on our hotel Concierge as she also tried to get them to do something to help. And to make matters worse, the local tour company consistently lied to both the concierge and us about the missing luggage (they tried to say their truck broke-down between the ship and hotel (less than a mile) even after another official admitted they mistakenly took all the luggage to the airport. The sad thing about the trip (we had multiple problems both pre and post cruise) was the attitude of Celebrity staff which was in a word "awful" and of no help. All we asked (during the cruise) was for the on-board staff to please notify Miami of the many shore problems and try to head-off problems that were bound to happen post cruise (turned out that was when they lost luggage, had no shore support, no office hours, etc). My advice to future cruises is to certainly cruise with Celebrity, but avoid any pre or post cruise packages. Make your own air and land arrangements! By the way, if you think this post is a bit of a "rant" be assured that I toned-down my comments and have not even posted info about additional land problems.

 

Hank

[kitty9]

Hank, so sorry for your experience. I truly feel it's the people/companies Celebrity contracts with that are the problem. I did a SA cruise from Buenos Aires with Crystal and took their pre-cruise arrangements and it was wonderful. The experience was so great it helped me decide to visit that city again in the future. We were promptly met and taken to our hotel, The Park Tower, and the rooms were ready for us, even though our flight arrived in

BA at 6am. Luggage arrived in the room in less than 10 minutes. Sorry, but the comment that this is South America get used to it, was wrong. It had nothing to do with the location, it was the company Celebrity uses. And I agree, make your own arrangements and things will work out better.

[Susan-M]

Hi Hank,

 

I too am sorry to hear about the terrible pre and post cruise experience that you had. The comment from the Guest Relations Supervisor re "South America" was inappropriate and inaccurate. In Ecuador, Celebrity managed to do an outstanding job from the moment we stepped off the plane until our 11 day trip was finished.

 

Hopefully they'll change tour companies in B.A. very soon so others don't have to experience what you just did. We normally make our own pre and post cruise arrangements, but there are so many people who prefer the convenience of having the cruiseline do the arrangements, and this substandard level of service shouldn't be a part of the package.

[cabo de hornos]

Also sorry to hear of your difficulties Hank.

 

I am particularly interested in further details on the hotel side of things, as we're heading down that way next Febuary on Infinity and are considering a pre-cruise stay in BA. Which hotel did you stay at in BA?

 

Also, which airline did you fly?

 

We've been to SA twice, starting from Rio on Mercury in 2002 (similar difficulties on arrival and embarkation), and ending in Santiago in 2002 and beginning in 2004 (both excellent pre/post experiences in SCL with X). X-cursions from Mercury were very good.

 

From my "X-perience", I would say it's not "always like that in South America."

 

Cabo

[ddonalds]

I travel to South America alot for work - and it certainly isn't "that's how it is in South America". I have found the service in Latin America is wonderful. I'm going to Argentina again next week, and service is always great. It does sound like there's a bad company X is doing business with. That's really too bad - BA is such a neat city.....

[cujosmom]

Hank,

 

I would like to hear more of "your port problems". I actually had this particular cruise booked and then cancelled but we are going (hopefully) next November on the Journey.

 

Please come back and give us a review of your trip....the good, the bad, and the ugly of the cruise itself especially of Rio and the parade :D

[Hlitner]

I appreciate the kind comments above. Perhaps I should say a bit more since it is totally out of my character to whine (we prefer to wine) about cruises. My DW and I have been on more than 50 different cruise ships (11 cruise lines) and tend to cruise about 60 - 80 days per year...so we are not cruise novices. We are Elite with Celebrity and Diamond with RCI as well as Platinum with Princess etc etc etc. We also travel extensively on land throughout the world (often on our own) so we do have some experience in foreign countries. To be honest we were totally shocked when we tried to file an on-board complaint and were literally "blown off" by the staff. In fact, our travel agent had a rep on the cruise and she was willing to take-up our cause after the cruise. But, the reality is that we were not seeking any compensation (even though we spent a few extra dollars doing our own transfer from airport to hotel after being told we would have to wait more than 1 1/2 hours) but rather had simply wanted to make sure that management was aware of the problems ashore. Trust me that there were many more things we could have whined about, but its not our style. I could tell you about our table mates (they were on their 29th Celebrity cruise) who thought the food in the dining room was the worst in all of their 75+ total cruises (we did not agree with their assessment). Personally, we had very few complaints about the cruise and would even complement the shore arrangements made by Celebrity for the Carnival Parade in Rio. We would have no problem recommending Celebrity for a South American cruise, but as I previously stated, my suggestion would be to make your own shore arrangements if you are starting or ending in Buenos Aires. The Guest Relations Supervisor (the highest ranking person who would meet with us) was named Julia (she was the one who told us to accept lousy service in South America) and coincidentally she was from Brazil. I did not even mention that at one point in our conversation Julia basically called me a liar, but this is another story for another day. I have drafted a detailed letter which I am thinking about sending to the Chairman of the Board of RCI (copied to key Celebrity executives) but will hold this letter for a month until I have totally "cooled down" and can reflect on the very negative experience. For us, the land support in BA really put a damper on both our pre and post cruise, cost us precious shore time trying to work with the hotels to solve problems, and put a sour taste on what was basically a good cruise. We are off on another cruise this weekend (HA) so we will try and forget this negative experience until after this next trip. As to the hotels, we stayed in the Emperador pre cruise and the Pan Americano post cruise. Both hotels were fine, but as we have often noticed when booking cruise line packages, we are assigned far from the best rooms in the hotels and this was no exception to the rule. As to the Rio Parade it is one of those "once in a lifetime experiences." The parade is held on the last Sunday and Monday night of Carnival (just before Lent) and its in a specially built outdoor stadium called the SambaDrome. Each of the two nights the parade starts at 9pm and goes on until around 7 am. We had unreserved seats (they were good seats) and those in Suites got reserved box seats. The tour company transferred us to the Sambadrome at about 7 PM and than they had buses doing transfers back to the ship all night. This was perfect since each passenger could make their own decision when to return (depending on ones' endurance). On our night (it was the prized final night) there were seven Samba Clubs parading and they actually had about 25,000 members in the parade. Each Club had 8 floats (some were amazing) and thousands of parading members...each in gorgeous costumes. Celebrity provided tickets to the Sambadrome for all passengers (cost was included in the cruise fare) but they made the decision regarding who went on which night (they had an equal number of tickets for each of the two nights). On our cruise they had the early seating go on Sunday and the late seating go on Monday...although there were a few exceptions. The cruise passengers were among the best traveled group I have ever seen on a cruise ship...and most looked on this as the trip you do once in a lifetime. We had quite a few passengers from both the UK and Argentina and we enjoyed the fact that the South Americans eat late and party late. Since we are late diners it was nice to have large crowds for the late shows and even the Casino was busy past midnight. As to the overall "Infinity experience" we continue to feel that Celebrity is a good mass market cruise product often overrated by many of its fans. For us, its a good cruise line with slightly better than average food, lower than average entertainment, and average service except in the bars. I mention the latter because we thought the bar service (throughout the ship) was the best we have ever seen on any ship (and I am including lines like Crystal in this assessment). For us it was a great cruise but I regret depending on Celebrity for shore arrangments. We had been reluctant to do our own air/shore arrangements because of concerns about potential pod problems (M class ships) causing cruise delays or cancellation (turned out to be no problem). As to the air arrangements, Celebrity booked us down on American (via Miami) and back on Delta (via Atlanta) and the arrangements were pretty good (we saw no need to ask for deviations). There is one more quote I can give you from Julia which perhaps puts things in perspective. She told me that as bad as things were on shore (keep in mind that this discussion happened during the cruise and we had even worse problems after the cruise) she felt that things had really improved in BA over the past three years. Julia told us that Celebrity had problems finding any decent company to work with in BA and they were using the best. One of our hotel concierges thought this was funny (I told her this story) and said they hotel had never worked with a local company as disorganized as this local company "Turismo Nuevo Mundo." I will give you one detailed example. We arrived in BA at 7:20 am after a 10 1/2 hour flight and were greeted by the local company. After they asked (and received) our transfer voucher they informed us they would not transfer us for at least 1 1/2 hours because they wanted to wait for another flight due in from LAX about 8:45. When we said this was not satisfactory they told us that they did not want to do a transfer with only a few people so we should go "somewhere and have coffee." We took a taxi (at our own expense) which cost about $30 and later met other people that had waited for the transfer which did not happen for nearly 2 hours. Folks we met at the hotel who had come one day earlier said they had waited about 2 1/2 hours for their transfer from the airport. Keep in mind that its only about a 30 minute ride from the airport to any hotel in town. We also had major issues with the transfers from hotel to ship and again found ourselves grabbing a taxi (again at our own expense) to the port. Given the reasonable cost of taxi transfers in BA and the favorable prices in hotels, most would be much better off doing their own transfers and hotels.

 

Hank

[goofysmom99]

Given the reasonable cost of taxi transfers in BA and the favorable prices in hotels, most would be much better off doing their own transfers and hotels.

Hank

 

Thanks for the good explanation of what happened. Think we'll use a cab, too.

[cujosmom]

Hank,

 

Thanks again for coming back and giving us even more detail.

 

I don't agree with "that's the South American way of service" at all. Several years ago we did a land trip in Peru. We worked with a travel agent in Lima, Peru who helped make all our arrangements. Our trip was completely independent but she make arrangements for airport pickups, transportation, hotels, tour guides at each location, etc. at all our destinations - Lima, Puno, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Sacred Valley, Cusco, and back to Lima. Everyone was absolutely punctual and did everything that was promised so it was only Julia's "excuse" for bad service from Celebrity.

 

I've found that typically the service is very good on Celebrity unless there are "problems" and then the Guest Relations people can be rude and absolutely not caring whether the problem gets resolved or not.

[cabo de hornos]

Thanks very much for your assessment Hank. I don't recall seeing mention of X-tours of BA while you were there, but I have taken them off the ship with X, and they were fine.

 

I should also add that our X-cursion to Machu Picchu was also excellent. Upon our return to Lima, our guides arranged for an "extra section" of the Lima City Tour after lunch so that DW and "other mother" could join DS and, now, DDIL and me.

 

And our X-land tour in the Italy prior to our Millie Med cruise was also excellent, with our own air and transfer arrangements at the very beginning and end.

 

We were probably going to do our own air anyway, but sounds like we'll find our own way to EZE. I have more confidence in SCL with X.

 

Cabo

[Hlitner]

Cabo,

Since I do like X, I am assuming that the issues we had are unique to BA and the local tour company. My only problem with X is their refusal and perhaps denial that they have a problem in BA. Since you mention Machu Piku I will relay another problem that occurred on our cruise. A large group of passengers (we heard it was more than 30) had booked a post cruise excursion to Iguazu Falls. The tour was very expensive and involved an early morning flight from BA to the falls and a full day tour. Our ship was to dock in BA at 6am the day prior to the end of the cruise (we spent our last night docked in BA). For some reason the ship docked late in BA (about 8 am) and all those folks missed their tour (it was cancelled). The funny thing was that we were within 80 miles of BA more than 14 hours prior to our docking time so we could have rowed the boat to the dock. The pilot came on-board at 5pm the evening prior to our scheduled docking and we were literally within site of land. So why were we late? My assumption would be it was a problem with the Argentina authorities but who knows? We were also late into another of our ports, but again this did not seem to be related to pod problems since our cruising distance was never too far and we averaged no more than 14 knots for most of the cruise.

[erms]

Cabo,

Since I do like X, I am assuming that the issues we had are unique to BA and the local tour company. My only problem with X is their refusal and perhaps denial that they have a problem in BA. Since you mention Machu Piku I will relay another problem that occurred on our cruise. A large group of passengers (we heard it was more than 30) had booked a post cruise excursion to Iguazu Falls. The tour was very expensive and involved an early morning flight from BA to the falls and a full day tour. Our ship was to dock in BA at 6am the day prior to the end of the cruise (we spent our last night docked in BA). For some reason the ship docked late in BA (about 8 am) and all those folks missed their tour (it was cancelled). The funny thing was that we were within 80 miles of BA more than 14 hours prior to our docking time so we could have rowed the boat to the dock. The pilot came on-board at 5pm the evening prior to our scheduled docking and we were literally within site of land. So why were we late? My assumption would be it was a problem with the Argentina authorities but who knows? We were also late into another of our ports, but again this did not seem to be related to pod problems since our cruising distance was never too far and we averaged no more than 14 knots for most of the cruise.

 

 

What I assume most people don't know is that there was a death on board during our cruise (Buenos Aires/Carnaval) and the local authorities needed to take care of this first. Since I was the one to contact the onboard 911 number, I was "asked" to stay in my cabin so the authorities could speak with me.

[cabo de hornos]

Thanks for that information erms. How very unfortunate to have this happen.

 

I was going to suggest that the lengthy travel time to BA over the last reach may have been due to the slow speed at which the large ships must travel through the the Mar del Plata, which is very, very shallow, and with a narrow shipping channel.

 

As a result I believe it normally takes about 12 hours to get from the AO to BA. I found out the hard way, by trying to stay up until we got to the port. I gave up at about 1 am....we arrived at dawn, after passing P del E in the mid-to-late afternoon, I think, after coming south from Rio.

 

And yes Hank, I had heard about some issues in general with trying to do the Falls in one day, even directly from BA. I beleive there is a hotel up there if one has the extra time. Thanks again for elaborating on this.

 

Cabo

[Millie6]

We had exceptional service in BA with a company called WOW Argentina (www.wowargentina.com.ar).

 

We were on the Infinity cruise ending in BA on Feb. 11, and I had found the above company on a Fodor's Forum.

 

Before we left Vancouver for our cruise we had arranged with them two nights accomodation in BA at a very nice hotel (Melia Recoleta) for $340US including taxes (21% I think!) a welcome glass of wine and excellent breakfast. I had gotten sick while on board and by the time we got through the gauntlet of people lined up waiting for taxis to hotels/airport etc. and got to the hotel, all I had the energy for was to lie down. This was around 10 am, I think and check in wasn't supposed to be until 3 pm. Our room wasn't ready, understandably, and I was invited to go upstairs to the spa and lie down or in the comfy lobby. We decided to have a short walk and find a cold drink. Before we could get past the reception desk, they had our room ready - took them about ten minutes.

 

WOW also arranged for our excursion to Iguazu Falls that included transfers from the hotel to the domestic airport, return flights to/from Iguazu, transfers from Iguazu airport to our hotel, two nights falls view at the Sheraton in the park (the only hotel in the park, and the only one to stay at in Iguazu unless you like being half an hour away and fairly hot and dusty), including taxes and breakfast, transfers from the Sheraton to Iguazu airport, from the domestic airport in BA to the international airport. This package for the two of us was 4,200 pesos (approximately $1,355US). We only had to pay an extra 30 pesos per person for admission to the park.

 

I believe that the Celebrity Iguazu excursion was around $800-900 per person going to and from Iguazu in one day, which would have been much too rushed and tiring IMHO.

 

Karina Lobato looked after all our arrangements and met me personally in the lobby at the Melia Recoleta with all our vouchers and information for the park. (Everything else had been arranged via email before we set out for South America.) She also called us at both hotels to make sure everything was to our satisfaction, and emailed after we returned to express her appreciation for our service. We were extremely satisfied with WOW's service and would highly recommend them to anyone looking for travel service in BA and/or anywhere else in South America.

[cabo de hornos]

Thanks for sharing that info Millie.

 

One question: Can you comment on the need for a Yellow Fever vaccination to visit Iguazu Falls?

 

Cabo

[Millie6]

You're very welcome, cabo de hornos.

 

We were advised by the travel medical clinic here to get the yellow fever vaccination because of our visit to Iguazu Falls and did so. If we hadn't been going to the falls, we wouldn't have needed it.

 

I believe, but can't remember for sure, that anyone going to Brazil needed the yellow fever vaccination, so going to the falls, even staying on the Argentina side was close enough.

 

Millie

[cabo de hornos]

Thanks for that Millie.

 

That sounds about right, based on what I've seen on the CDC web site, except that I'm guessing you meant needing YF for being in that part of Brazil rather than say to Sao Paolo or Rio. We did not need YF in 2002 when spending a day plus in Rio while waiting for Mercury.

 

Glad you had a good visit to IF.

 

Cabo

[Millie6]

Thanks for that Millie.

 

That sounds about right, based on what I've seen on the CDC web site, except that I'm guessing you meant needing YF for being in that part of Brazil rather than say to Sao Paolo or Rio. We did not need YF in 2002 when spending a day plus in Rio while waiting for Mercury.

 

Glad you had a good visit to IF.

 

Cabo

 

 

I think you're right Cabo - I don't think we would have needed it for other regions in Brazil.

 

We did really enjoy IF, thanks.

 

Millie