I just had a phone call from my travel agent that Celebrity will not be able to honour our flights on March 10th because being March break in Ontario, they cannot find flights out of Ottawa that day to Miami. I went to Expedia.ca and found 3 flights out of Ottawa between 6 am and 7:05 am.

They offer a flight the day before and they would pay for the hotel on the 9th.

Inconvenience no 1: The day before is a Friday and my husband would have to take the day off WITH NO PAY (not calculated in our budget). It would cost me an additional day of holidays (I can live with that). My husband cannot cancel his holidays being a bus operator, they were booked many months ago.

Inconvenience no 2: The hotel that they are offering us is the Marriott Airport in Miami which is a mile and a half from the airport and about 6 miles from downtown. So almost in the middle of nowhere, unless we rent a car (again not calculated in the budget).

Would I be so bad to ask for a hotel downtown, or for Celebrity to pay for some meals on the 9th, or even wine on the ship. This was a holiday to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary.

We stretched our budget on booking a cabin in concierge class. I guess I sould not even dream of asking for a suite (a few are still available).

Thank you for all your comments, I have to give my answer tomorrow.

J

The best way to do any cruise, to me, is to arrive at least 1 day before. That way if anything does go wrong, flights delayed, luggage lost, flights cancelled, etc., you have a chance to recover before you sail. It never hurts to ask, the worse that can happen is you get a no for an answer. I totally understand stretching the budget, but I would opt for going down a day early. You still have a little time to maybe save an extra little bit for a cab or rental car. Best wishes and happy anniversary!

When asking for the perks, it really depends on who will be asking, you or the travel agent. Personally, I would take their offer of flight and hotel and take the last flight out on Friday evening, sleep late at the hotel Saturday and go directly to the port. When you notify them you are disappointed but okay with that, tell them about your anniversary and everything in a nice, polite, appreciative way and then ask the possibility of upgrading to a suite because it is your lifelong dream. It certainly cannot hurt to ask. Just stay positive and nice! Those are the people that get extra consideration when it is available to give.

tncruiseman
We decided that we were going to take Celebrity's deal -- sort of. I talked to my travel agent and asked him to ask them if we could negotiate a bit. We were going to renew our vows on the ship (35 years), I was about to make the reservation when this news came along. I do not need that ceremony to know that we love each other, but it would have been nice. Instead, the money will go towards our pay loss.

So, what I asked my travel agent to do is to ask Celebrity, if they could put us up in the InterContinental (downtown) instead of the Marriott Miami Airport, if he could obtain a bottle of wine for us for dinner one night and if it is possible that we could have an early flight so that we could enjoy the hotel.

I don't think that my travel agent will work for us, he thought it was pretty frivolous demands. I do not have to tell you that he just got his last contract with us. He didn't know if he could obtain an answer today but he would phone me back on Monday.

I already have a draft of a letter ready that I will fax to Reservations as soon as hear from him if the news is not great. And thanks for the tip, I will add the suite if they do still have some available.