StellaTN

I received a $50 celebrity e gift card through my workplace wellness program. Has anyone had success using one like this to pay on their already booked cruise (through a travel agent) prior to final payment (not as deposit on a new cruise)? I had hoped to use it to pay part of our reservation ahead of time for Le Voyage, but I take it that is not possible? No way I can find to use it on the website for restaurants. This is so much more complicated than how NCL does it!

From what I can tell from the FB post - those with a package were having to sign a receipt even if they didn’t go over - so receipts for $0. It started Monday. But they are also saying within a day and a half they stopped it. Either a poorly thought out April fools joke, or something happened on Ascent to make them decide they needed a new policy for Q2, that they then walked back.

Yes

The menu is posted in your app - it’s under dining and then all the way to the right under loyalty and suites. The MDR will accommodate any dietary restrictions- they ask you before every meal.

I think the regular seatings are sold out for those time slots and what you are seeing are for tasting or the other price point. Plenty of spots will open up upon embarkation - you can reserve from the app once you board (albeit at full price). ETA: I believe the new regular price is now $125pp. No more $75.

Awesome! Hey - no shade here. I also prefer to book early and get the times and days we want rather than a package 🙂 Thus why we also book most of our cruises two years out lol. I do think they’ve lost their minds at charging $115pp for Le Voyage - ($277 for two w tip). It’s a shame bc we really enjoyed it last year (at $162 total for the two of us, with tip!) Hope you have a wonderful trip!

I noticed today the restaurant booking for our Feb 23, 2025 Ascent cruise just became available. OP may want to check theirs. Prices are up for Eden and Le Voyage! Went from $60 for Eden to $78 for 2025, and $75 for Le Voyage (base) to $115. We went ahead and reserved two, but will hold out for a sale for Le Voyage.

We went on a Trieste to Athens on NCL Viva in Sept 2023 and we did a San Marino excursion while in Ravenna. We really liked San Marino. I believe others available included visits to the Farrari factory and to see the mosaics of Ravenna. You can get a good idea of what there is to do by looking up excursions for that port on Viator or Trip Advisor. Enjoy your cruise! We loved every port!

We booked the Xcel for Feb 2026. Excited to get one of the V1 cabins with a real balcony. My understanding is that there are only 4 (maybe 6?). Less than a SV, a real balcony and a better location. I don’t think the V1 category was available for the Ascent?

I have an Ascent cruise for Feb 2025 and there are no dinner prices or reservations available yet (I’ve had it booked for a year!). We got great deals on our Beyond March 2024 dinners during the flash sale in Sept 2023. Seems to me they are waiting to price 2025 dinners till they figure out what the market will actually bear. I really wish Celebrity had more variety with their specialty restaurants. They need a Mexican restaurant and a proper italian place on the e-class ships!

We were on the fourth sailing of NCL Viva in the Med in Sept and we were completely shocked at how wonderful the food was. 9 night cruise and we had main dining 2 nights, specialty 4 nights (you get 2 certificates for free w booking and we pre-bought two additional), Mexican one night and tapas one night, both also with fees. Every meal was wonderful. Their new (free) indulge food hall with food-truck like ordering is a game-changer. No need for a buffet and people germ-ing up everything touching and coughing on the food. On Celebrity Beyond & Apex, we liked Le Voyage and Eden, but there was no where near the variety. Everything is steak and seafood over and over again, and it’s almost like they are intentionally avoiding any ethnic foods. Viva is the same size ship as beyond but has 9 specialty restaurants! This is the way. I wouldn’t call our experience with main dining on celebrity BAD (most recent sailing on Beyond was March 2023, next is March 2024) - but it all paled in comparison to our one NCL Viva cruise. Though, it should be noted, our celebrity sailings have been averaging $500-$550/day in all-included fares, and NCL was around $700/day, also all-included. Just some food for thought. You may now proceed to invalidate my opinions/experiences 🙂

This is the article I meant. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ramseyqubein/2023/08/20/7-differences-between-norwegian-prima-and-the-new-norwegian-viva-cruise-ships/amp/

I thought the Harr Travel walk thru on you tube was the best video of the Viva so far. It’s pretty extensive. I also saw a good Forbes article that covers 5 differences between Viva and Prima. There’s a few config/seating changes.

Check the airline policies as well if you will have to fly home!

Thank you so much for the excellent review and pics! We will be boarding in Trieste in 2 weeks. 1. Very interested to see any of the dailies if it isn’t too much trouble 🙂 2. I hear our sailing is sold out - I’m also interested to see pics of the venues with people in them (like Indulge at peak lunch time or Local. All the pics I can find are of empty venues 🙂 thanks again for fielding all these questions! You are the best!

I meant nothing is there at the port. I am sure Ravenna is lovely - but the port lacks infrastructure. I also have read taxis are very limited to get from port to city - there’s something like 30 total in the area.

For our March 2023 Beyond cruise, I was able to call up Celebrity in January 2023 and use OBC to book an upgrade from Classic to Premium drink package, letting them know my hubby only drinks beer and it wouldn’t make sense for him to also upgrade. At the time, many were reporting with the recent price increase (I think it had just gone from $10 pp/pd to $15??) - they were supposed to have to book for the whole cabin, but many were getting around this by calling (including myself). Now, we are booked for March 2024 on Beyond (10-day this time) and I would still like to upgrade (even at the new $20 pp/pd price point) - and my hubby still does not need the upgrade. I noticed that in the app, you can now actually do this yourself finally! But there is no option to upgrade just one person. Has anyone had any luck calling and upgrading just one person from classic to premium lately? (Since the app added the capability?). Looking for any advice on if this is still possible. (Please, no need to debate here on if it’s worth it - take that to another thread!) Thanks!

We are doing a similar Med cruise in September with the new NCL Viva - and it leaves out of Trieste. They are also calling this “Venice” and it is also 2 hours away - but we have an easy Go Opti transfer set up and are looking forward to our 3 nights in beautiful Trieste pre-cruise. This seems like a much better option than Ravenna. FWIW our cruise stops at Ravenna on the second day - it really does look like nothing is there. We’re taking a bus to San Marino for the day.

If you havent purchased your airfare yet, keep all options open to save $$. Try searching flying into Dublin and then buying a separate Easy Jet flight down to Rome. You could save quite a bit. Also, depending on where you are departing from in the US, I often fly Southwest out of Nashville to a larger hub like BOS or ORD, then book my trans-Atlantic from there (usually on United, bc I have status/free bags with them). These two little hacks often save me 50% off the cost of booking a RT or Open Jaw Europe flight. Check out Aer Lingus, SAS and even Tap Portugal. As an example: Right now, BOS to DUB is only $1280 RT for Fri May 19 - Sun May 28. But BNA to FCO is $2257 RT for same dates. Good luck! Hoping to hear how it all goes!

Just a note for the OP - we have cruised twice on Celebrity Edge class (and two more booked for 2024 and 2025). You can solve that Infinite Veranda problem by getting a Sunset Veranda room (SV) - must book early, they fill up! We're going on the NCL Viva later this year, so your thread interests me. We tend to steer away from kid-friendly ships - would prefer adult-only.

On both our Celebrity cruises (Apex and Beyond), I've been underwhelmed by the desserts. They are just ok in the specialty restaurants (we had both Le Voyage and Eden), and bland to over-sugary with no flavor in the MDR. The cheesecake is ok, better than most the other MDR desserts - but it all tastes frozen or like something they'd serve in a nursing home to me. Too much sugar! To the point where there's no other flavor. Even the gelato is not great. The ice cream tastes like something at a Chinese buffet lol. (That said, we thought the rest of the food was quite good!) Maybe we are just picky with desserts 🙂

We were on the Beyond March 19 of this year. We also sailed on the Apex in March of 2022. The best meal of the trip was at Le Voyage - a bargain for the quality and service we experienced. Service was a little stiff, but the food was certainly not chain restaurant quality. It was the best meal we've had at sea. Will be booking Le Voyage on every future sailing. We also had Eden (on both the Apex and Beyond) - and it was also very good. The staff are a bit more chatty there, which I like. The MDR in March was good. 7/10 most nights. Would appreciate more variety, but didnt have anything we didnt enjoy. That said, we aren't huge red meat eaters - so werent that sad to see prime rib and filet disappear. I mean, Ill eat filet, but you would have thought it was the end of the world on these forums when the menus changed in January 2023. 🙂 Service was better at MDR for our 2023 cruise than it was in 2022. We also learned to bring a drink with us and we dont have to wait on the sommelier, especially if we are wanting beer or a cocktail instead of wine. Another thing to ponder: We have an upcoming cruise on the Norweigan Viva this fall, and Im really looking forward to the variety of restaurants. I think Celebrity has missed an opportunity to add unique specialty restaurants to their new class of ships. NCL has an amazing sounding food-truck like experience that gets rave reviews for lunch, and a tapas style restaurant, mexican specialty, japanese (in addition to a separate sushi restaurant) and a separate French/Italian/Seafood and Steakhouse - all in the same size ship with approx same amount of pax as the Edge class at Celebrity. All the Celebrity specialty restaurants feature steak...and steak...and sometimes seafood.

So we are going on the Viva in early Sept, and I've been reading all the Prima reviews to figure out what to expect. I noticed our Viva itinerary in Europe (and the subsequent US Viva itineraries that will be leaving out of San Juan) - are all VERY port heavy. As in, no sea days at all. I'm not crazy about that - but then it occurs to me that maybe this is NCL's way of addressing the pool issue - keep people off the ship most days! Sept will be our first NCL cruise - on the Viva in the Med. I'm hoping it is awesome 🙂 I'm thinking we really won't be on the ship as much as we are used to with Celebrity and Caribbean sailings, except evenings and late afternoons after ports. Looking forward to race cars, specialty dining and the observation lounge 🙂 (And Istanbul/Croatia/Greece!)

We were on March 19 sailing. I thought Stage Door was excellent, especially the lead that played Alexander Hamilton. The acrobats were great with Elements, but I wasnt a fan of the singing or production - we left early on that one. Arte was pretty good, I appreciated the production and how they made use of their amazing theater screens. The other four nights were comedians, a live band, and a singer. We skipped the singer and band, but the comedians were good. The bands in the martini bar were pretty good too. I appreciate that they are doing what they can to appeal to multiple demographics. As GenXers, I never felt the music was too "old" - which is often a problem for me on cruises 🙂

The points should show in your BOA app as soon as your card rolls over the month you earn them. It may not be on the main screen, you have to click on the rewards tab at the bottom then follow it a couple more places to get there. Theres a tab at the top once in Rewards that goes between summary and activity. Check that out. On the summary tab too, there's a blue long oval button that says Redeem - 2500 points minimum. Once the points post, you have to manually deposit the points into the My Cruise Points site, which is not linked in the BOA app. Then sometimes it takes a bit for them to actually turn into Celebrity OBC. I had to call, but magically, the day I called the points also showed up in my Celebrity OBC.