JLMoran

Confirmed, @Matt. Thanks for the fix!

 

No you didn't. You found a BA codeshare nonstop from JFK to Athens. The only place BA flies nonstop from JFK is London-Heathrow (formerly also London-City and Manchester, and I think even Gatwick...but now, just Heathrow, and definitely not Athens). What you likely found was the American Airlines seasonal JFK-ATH nonstop - I am guessing you are looking at BA1642, which is actually AA334 - American Airlines plane, American Airlines crew. This is important because the airline you are actually flying on will dictate who you check in with, what terminal you use at the airport, and such. So definitely be aware of the "Operated By" part of this. 

You are absolutely correct about this -- I am indeed on flight 1642, which does note "Operated by American Airlines" and departs JFK from Terminal 8. I was guessing that might mean I'm checking in through AA rather than BA, and using an AA terminal, but that's fine. I'm still taking it since the total airfare was still appreciably less per person than any other option, including ones that flew from JFK to Athens with just one stop.

No fan of AA, but I'll deal with them once (and only for the flight there) for this once-in-a-lifetime trip. Especially since it lets us arrive in Athens at 8:50 AM and have two full days there, instead of a day and a half or less. Hopefully will manage to sleep a bit during the flight so the jet lag isn't outlandish.

 

See if you can try to find a BA confirmation/booking number and check it on their website.

I re-read the confirmation emails from my TA on my computer, rather than my phone, and found the airline confirmation codes. Went to the BA site and entered both, have confirmation it's all the same class and flights. Still can't reserve seats this far in advance for the return flights, as that's apparently limited to top-tier loyalty members. (and I can't even get the option to reserve while paying a fee right now, maybe because I need to first sign up for their program or something)

Forgot to note that on the good news front, my cruise fare for this trip dropped by over $300 per person back in July. I missed that email from her (got routed to spam folder ), so that was a pleasant surprise when she mentioned she had gotten that for me. Almost enough to pay for one flight ticket. Hopefully the fare will go down a bit more in the coming months, maybe along with the airfare.

 

I really hate calling people - If I'm ordering takeout from somewhere, I will only choose places that have an online order option  

Were you Sandra Bullock's "character model" / reference source for The Net?

So the flights for my 2022 Med sailing on Regal Princess finally opened up, and I figured I would book the flights through Princess' EZAir service to get the group rate pricing and lock in a flight with no payment due until final payment. Just like Air2Sea or Flights By Celebrity, right? HA!!!

First off, "EZAir" fails to live up to that name in one gigantic way -- You cannot book a flight for your cabin and another linked cabin at the same time!!!!

That's right -- if you want to fly with someone booked in another cabin that is already linked on your cruise reservation (like, y'know, your kids) you must first book your own flight and make note of the flight booking number. Then, you have to log in separately for the second cabin, start its own flight booking in EZAir, and then enter the first flight booking number in a "fly with friends" part of the form to actually try to get on the same flight. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I had found a British Airways non-stop flight from JFK to Athens for the flight out and it only had 5 seats left in Premium Economy. So I wanted to grab that for the four of us, but every time I went back to that "Fly With Friends" field and entered the kids' cruise booking number; because funnily enough, this is exactly how Air2Sea and Flights by Celebrity works. But all I would get was "Booking not found".

So I emailed my TA and asked if she was familiar with EZAir, and if maybe our cruise reservations weren't linked and that's why I was getting "not found". This was on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, so I figured I might not hear back quickly. But I didn't get a call from her until Wednesday, because Princess had the EZAir service shut down for the entire Labor Day weekend, and then when she started calling them on Tuesday it would pick up but be dead.

In any event, she had an EZAir rep on the phone with her, and asked the rep to explain to me how I go about booking the flights for both of our cabins. The rep flat-out refused to do that, and said that she would have to book the flights for me. And what followed was something straight out of my worst car purchasing nightmares. It was 20 minutes of high-pressure sales push, barely any time to register the details of the flight and figure out if it lined up with our planned schedule well enough, and absolute disdain every time I tried to ask a reasonable question like "with that flight time, do you have an idea of when I'd need to be at the Rome airport?"

The rep found the same British Airways flight I'd found, and amazingly it still had 5 seats available and was still the least-expensive flight option. She booked that one from JFK to Athens and the return flight from Rome back to JFK, and so far so OK. But then she proceeded to set up the kids' flight -- and the price came back different than the final price for my wife and I. I asked why it was different and was literally told, "I don't know, I just get the pricing as I'm going through the booking. Do you want this flight or no? I need to know now."

For clarity -- My own booking started at $1,600-ish per person but bumped to $1,900-ish because one leg of our return flight was going to be in Business Class instead of Premium Economy. I had no idea at this point if the price I was quoted for my kids was the starting price, or the price after factoring in whatever class that first leg of the return flight was going to be for them (if it wasn't also Business Class). And this woman from EZAir would not tell me!!! It was simply accept the flight and let her move on, or bail. So I accepted it.

It actually turned out to be a lower final price than what my wife and I paid, by about $200 pp; but the confirmation emails don't make it any more clear why than the rep did. I don't see the class of airfare purchased on any leg, nor the seats the rep says were booked for the outbound flight. All I see are the flight numbers, the departure and arrival times, and that all of those match up for all four of us.

And here's the icing on the cake. The rep sent the confirmation email for my kids' booking to the TA and was trying to drop the call before my TA even got the email to confirm she saw all the right info!! This woman was basically telling us she had no more time for us, her work with us was done, and she had to drop. The second my TA said she got the email, the rep disconnected and left us high and dry.

The whole experience left both of us feeling appalled. My TA said she has NEVER had anything like that with any other flight booking service from a cruise line. It certainly didn't line up with my Flights by Celebrity experience, where I had a rep spend a very pleasant and patient 30 minutes with me reviewing my flights and offering alternatives after my original booking was changed by more than 2 hours from its originally scheduled time. Our only guess is that the rep is on some kind of time clock that affects their job rating, and/or that they are earning a commission for each booking. (would explain the high-pressure "book now or get off my line" attitude)

I haven't logged into my Princess booking since then, but I really should so I can confirm there if the seat bookings are showing or if there's some other way to verify everything. Meanwhile, I'll begin looking for other flights and just try to confirm that we did get a solid rate and that I don't need to cancel this EZAir booking.

I'll definitely be more appreciative of my future Air2Sea or Flights By Celebrity bookings, web site glitchiness and all!!

In my experience, yes -- communications tend to be a bit slow. Not sure if it's because they have tight staff with tons of passengers they're managing, or some other reason, but patience with replies is definitely needed.

Is your sailing still some time off? They might be prioritizing communication with near-in passengers where time is more of the essence. My own communications were many months before scheduled sail date, so I didn't have a problem with going several days to a week between emails.

 

It's a 6 night sailing with only two sea days similar to yours, but I think we'll go ahead and see if we can grab a 1 day pass for one of those since we've never tried these before.

I don't recall if we had the option for a 1-day pass, I think it was for the full sailing only.

And forgot to mention, the number of passes is very limited. So do make sure to go to the spa first thing once you've boarded. Hopefully you'll get an earlier boarding time and get first dibs on the spots.

Wow, @AshleyDillo, that is the exact same menu as when I sailed on Freedom in 2018. Guess I won't be going to Chef's Table again until they make a significant change in the menu. Or maybe... I dunno... actually let the chef decide the menu and how it's prepared, like the name of this dinner suggests.

 

According to @Matt in another thread it IS open - I can see the option to add to my cart on Odyssey but when I click on it it says that no times are available so not sure if ships will let you book it ahead or if you have to ask once on board. Will be checking in to this. 

I had the same issue with an Anthem booking back in 2018, so this might be some kind of quirk with Q-class ships. I was able to get the pass on embarkation day, just had to go to the spa and purchase it there.

FWIW, I found the suite to be decent as far as what it offered, but I also felt like after spending that money I was kind of forced to find time to use it at least a few times. But this was on a short 5-night Bermuda sailing with just 2 sea days; your sailing is probably a better fit for using the thermal suite.

16 hours ago, AshleyDillo said:

Always better to ask for forgiveness than permission

Clearly you haven't slept on my couch.  

Congratulations, @FionaMG! And now you get to re-experience the excitement and nervousness of it all when you present the Christmas gift.  

@KLA, welcome back! Glad to see you're still here and still posting.

No profile icon that I see available from the top row of icons. If I go to a post I replied to and tap my icon there, I have a general activity list about 1/3 of the way down the page, after the Your Achievements section, but it's all activity and not just notifications directed to me.

I'll be in Barcelona for a single port day in '22 as well. So far the biggest / best things I've seen to do all revolve around the various works created by Antoni Gaudí that are located around the city.

• Sagrada Familia cathedral -- Must buy tickets in advance as they sell out quickly, and you must be prepared for a long time in line, but the pics I've seen of the interior are spectacular! Ticket options include on-your-own and guided tour that goes to some areas on-your-own can't.
• Parc Güell -- privatized park system on Carmel Hill

There's a third one that I'm forgetting, but if you search for Sagrada Familia on YouTube, you'll find a video covering that plus Gaudí's other publicly viewable works around Barcelona. But for me, those are the two "must-see" things in Barcelona, particularly if you have a couple of days there.

I have read / heard that Barcelona is rife with pickpockets in the tourist areas, especially outside Sagrada Familia; so do be careful if you go to either.

15 minutes ago, Ogilthorpe said:

I use a work around (Android Chrome):

Open the browser menu and select "desktop site". 

The icons will appear for use, and you can revert when done

Tried the same on iOS Safari, still got the mobile site.  On the plus side, when I rotate my phone to landscape I do get a more-complete set of editing controls (the icons for bullet list and number list, quote, link, etc.) that I don't get when in portrait mode. So I can start a bullet list in landscape, then switch back to portrait for easier thumb-typing.

You can add me to those affected on mobile. iOS / Safari.

I've done the Bayonne-to-Bermuda 5-night sailing on Anthem in mid- to late-October twice now. Both times the sail-out from NY / NJ was perfectly smooth and no issues at all. The final day of both trips was somewhat rough due to wind and rain, and I suspect also because the ship is moving a lot faster on that final day since it has to cover the same distance in one day that it gets to cover in a day and a half going out, which may cause the stabilizers to be less effective. But I was still fine wandering the ship and enjoying all the different areas. Only time I felt any seasickness was if we spent an hour or two all the way forward or aft (Solarium pool, Royal Theater, CK, etc); we really felt the motion in the Solarium, but even then the water wasn't sloshing out of the pools or hot tubs and everything was open. Still enough in those places to trigger my motion sickness after an hour or two, but once I went back to our mid-ship cabin I recovered quickly. No need for Bonine or anything else besides some ginger beer.

I used Private Journeys on Celebrity for a Covid-canceled Iceland & Greenland sailing. Same service as Royal's. They're very easy to work with, and can accommodate groups of varying size. I had a very specific excursion that I wanted to do (combo of a city walking tour with a whale-watching excursion that had some risk of returning after all-aboard time), and they were more than able to work out an arrangement for my group. They even repriced the excursion when I asked about adding more guests to it, and as expected the price per-person drops rapidly as you add more people.

But as Matt's blog linked by @AshleyDillo above shows, you can also be pretty general in your request and they're still good at finding something that will make you quite happy.

On 8/21/2021 at 8:21 PM, Jill said:

Holy crap there’s a bacon shortage?

8 hours ago, Traveler said:

I just couldn't say it faster "book it" !

Was that preceded by "YOLO", and/or followed by "Dan-o"? 

32 minutes ago, Pattycruise said:

will it be every other row blocked off like it currently is on the cruises? Are they making you hand sanitizer?

I know that they are requiring proof of vaccination and wearing masks while inside the theater. Not sure about the hand sanitizer part, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are. So in that regard, Broadway theaters are behaving very much like the cruise industry, and probably for the same reason -- they don't want a news story about an outbreak of anything besides massive applause on opening night of Dear Evan Hanson.

34 minutes ago, Pattycruise said:

When you can go to indoor dining before your show, like a cruise, or go shopping in stores, like a cruise

That's not up to Broadway, that's NYC and Mayor DeBlasio's call. And the press will pick the negative angle whichever way he rolls, because if he's not choking the life out of the restaurant and hospitality industry then he's putting millions of New Yorkers' lives at risk. And if they figure out the right spin for it, he'll manage to do both at once.

4 hours ago, JLMoran said:

If you're going to go to CK on [only] one night…

3 hours ago, Matt said:

That's our plan

22 hours ago, KristiZ said:

Athens is one of the places I would book a Royal excursion for sure, rather than 3rd party. The traffic is awful and I wouldn't want to risk missing the ship at the end. I also recommend something that gets off the ship EARLY, as the main tourist spots will fill up later in the day. (Plus hot!)

My family and I will be flying into Athens a couple days ahead of the start of our cruise so we have time to see at least some of the sights and tourist spots on our own. Do you have experience with taking public transportation or other transport to/from any of the typical tourist locations (e.g., Acropolis Museum)? Would be good to know ahead of time if we shouldn't plan on doing more than one spot per day because of traffic or other issues.

@sparklymermaid, sorry for the slight (but still topical!) hijack.

59 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

But even for them, I wish there was a quick and easy test to say "yes, you need the booster" vs "we'll just assume you need it since you had a kidney transplant" 

I am only guessing here, but my guess is that the driving factor is antibody levels in the blood. My MIL got her two Pfizer shots in between rounds of chemo, and a recent antibody test she took confirmed she still has antibodies but not the level. So she is going to get another antibody test that will confirm levels and then judge how fast to sign up for her booster.

@smokeybandit, part of the "discrepancy" might be that those are the numbers of people being tested right there at the port (e.g., didn't show up with required test result and got a rapid test). Bayley doesn't say and his wording there is unclear.

The other possibility is that on-board case counts are higher for a reason that's been theorized here a few times -- people are catching it on their flight to the port, then test positive on board around night 5 or 6.

Kind of back on topic: If you're going to shame us all and only go to CK on one night, then make it the filet night. You will never want Chops filet again.