countingbackwards

How much were you charged for the Elite package upgrade?  Was it $10/day + 28%?

Logically - the HIA just went up by $5 per day and many drink prices just went up by $1 per day.  It seems logical to presume that it’s only fair to raise the price limit by a dollar to $12 to keep things fair, and only hit folks with 1 price increase at a time (either when you buy the drink or when you buy the drink package) rather than 2 price increases for the same thing.

56 minutes ago, melusina said:

We booked our fitst ever cruise on Celebrity for May because of the itinerary and if we like cruising are considering a transatlantic on HAL in 2025. But i have to say, after seeing YouTube tours, that as you say the forced urban chic of Celebrity makes me think we'll be more comfortable on HAL. But - new experiences!

I’m sure you’ll enjoy both HAL and Celebrity…they’re similar to me in every way other than what I’ve mentioned.  I prefer both lines to Disney, RCCL, Carnival and most land-based vacations.

I will echo what others have said - new vs old ship can make more difference than the line.  HAL on the old Veendam was REALLY laid back and lacked crowds everywhere…which I loved.  Rooms were basic but large.  Not much in the way of dining or entertainment options.  Rooms were also basic and large on Celebrity M class, though their rooms were recently renovated and the M class has twice the passengers of the  so it doesn’t have the same laid-back vibe.  Celebrity M class is likely closer in character to the mid-sized HAL ships, which I haven’t sailed on.  
 

One thing though - the older ships with the bigger rooms work far better if you’re putting 4 in a room.  Otherwise I prefer the more modern but smaller rooms on new ships.

Pinnacle class on HAL is really quite similar in ship design to S class on Celebrity.  My comparison in my previous post is most accurately read as a comparison between those 2 classes of ships. 
 

Celebrity Edge class has no equivalent on HAL.  I’m sure they’re lots of fun though.

Having sailed both...I prefer HAL, but imagine that most who like one will have fun on either of them.  Here are the standout differences:

HAL has better food for beef eaters especially - included excellent MDR steak or prime rib is available just about every day.  X steaks were not as good - always overcooked.  Burgers at the Dive-In are delicious, whereas the Mast Grill burgers are awful frozen pucks thrown on a grill.  Fresh meats and roasts at the buffet on HAL that are well-prepared vs. overcooked and bland on X.

I prefer the X specialty restaurants in general, but they cost a lot more than HAL's so I'll go to max 1 per cruise - with HAL, a 2nd trip doesn't make me feel guilty for wasting more $$ on a meal that I already paid for.

X has the best bar - the Martini Bar has no peer on HAL.  But...those drinks are pricey.  I'm plenty happy with the drinks that are just as good on HAL without the big price, and as a result I order them more freely.

X has better coffee and tea at Al Bacio than anywhere on a HAL ship.  Snacks are better at the Dutch Cafe, but the priority for me is the coffee, and it's just OK.

HAL is more reasonable in all "after booking the cruise" costs.  Cheaper drink packages, cheaper excursions, cheaper specialty restaurants.

X is like Cunard and old-time cruising - a lot of the ship reserved for the high rollers.  I don't like the idea of a class system...the HAL system of being able to buy individual pieces (cabanas, Club Orange) is far nicer...even if I'm not a customer for any of it, I like to know that I can be.

Entertainment is just way better on HAL.  I love good, honest live music.  BB King's lounge is something I would happily pay for on land - especially when coupled with the HIA package.  What luxury to watch talented musicians play jazz and blues classics with "included" drinks flowing.  On X, they have big cheesy stage shows that aren't quite good enough to charge for on their own...HAL has the big cheesy dance shows to compete with that, but X has nothing that comes close to BB King (or the Rock Room for that matter).  During the day, I prefer the trivia games by the adult pool on HAL to the more energetic zumba etc. by the main pool on X.

HAL's atmosphere is elegant and relaxing; X's atmosphere is urban chic that feels somewhat forced to me.  We're still gluttons on a cruise ship consuming far too much food and drink...nothing about that is chic.

The balconies on HAL are nicer than any line I've been on.  The teak deck and footstools included in base balcony rooms make it feel more appealing to enjoy your balcony than the more industrial feel of X balconies (I haven't been on the IV on Edge class, only M and S class balconies).

Now having said all that - I love cruising both lines.  I'd go for whichever was the better price on a given itinerary.  Of course, HAL has better itineraries most of the time and lower prices, so it's a while since I've been on X now.

I'm (usually) a value shopper when it comes to vacations, whether they're cruises or something else.  When you book a year out, you get to pick your room, but the pricing will be based on an "average" for similar cruises so it won't be the best value.  If you book within a month or 2 of the cruise, you can get advantageous pricing that came up due to circumstances.  As an example, in March, I got great pricing ~1 month out on an aft balcony on the NS that came up due to a cancelled dry dock for the NA that thus was cruising the exact same itinerary, departing 1 day earlier...so suddenly a lot of people moved their reservations to the NA from the NS, and lots of rooms were available.

A 2nd one, in 2019, I nabbed a 12-day Med cruise mid-summer on the Veendam departing from Venice that had a free kids offer right around final payment date...put 4 of us in an OV cabin, and had the least costly Med vacation imaginable, that was on an awesome ship that got into some smaller ports.  Those OV cabins on the Veendam (which I had been in before) were actually quite spacious, and the stairway to the promenade deck made them feel almost like balcony cabins.  It was absolutely worth the minor compromise to get a vacation of a lifetime and show my kids a bit of the world.  I would happily book a room like that again (think that the Volendam has a similar design).

For regions like Alaska, the Med or the Caribbean, where there are literally hundreds of cruises by different cruise lines running near-identical itineraries, my strategy is to wait until after final payment, and choose one that was under-booked on any decent line for some reason and grab it.  If it's a longer or more unique itinerary or you're targeting a specific ship, then that strategy would make less sense.

I would add - the difference in prices for nabbing an under-booked cruise are far more significant than the benefits of the early HIA promotion.  That promotion is valuable only if you have specific dates or ports, and can't risk just taking whatever is a good deal.

As to flights...when booking a cruise, I'll have a 2nd browser window to look up air pricing at the same time as I'm investigating the cruises.  You'd be surprised, but at about 2 months out, sometimes there's some cheap airfare to be had too.  Value vacationing is all about optimizing the airfare and vacation pricing in combination, then pressing the "purchase" button on both within minutes of each other.

I took that tour in 2016 - it was the Santo winery and it was really nice. Haven’t done many ship excursions (a grand total of 2) since I normally go my own way, but did enjoy this.

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The Summit is great fun - especially with the premium drink package and martini bar. Haven’t been on NCL, but my 2 cruises on Celebrity have been anything but boring.

In comparing with Disney...the entertainment is obviously better on Disney, but that doesn’t make it more fun...just a different kind of fun.

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One thing to remember is that this type of issue is very culture-dependant...rules are rules, but be careful about being judgmental as to the appropriateness of others' clothes...

For example, I lived in Bermuda for a few years, where brightly-coloured Bermuda shorts (solid colours only) with knee socks were considered more dressy than a pair of slacks. I wasn't a fan of the look, but it taught me that the concept of "dressy" clothes was a function of my own expectations, and nothing else.

Our own expectations may differ from those of passengers from countless other countries/backgrounds that may be on board.

That being said...if they ask for no shorts in the dining room, then it's no shorts in the dining room. But shorts aren't, in and of themselves, offensive dining room clothes, and I don't even see them as a good example of sub-par attire given the fact that I've seen them at many a formal meal in my time in Bermuda.

I've done both twice, and love the aft wake view. Sounds are hugely important to me, more so than visuals - and the sound of the wake when the ship is in movement (especially when you're sleeping) is wonderful.

The other thing I love about aft cabins is the feeling of privacy. Yes, people can see you from the railings, but that's not what I mean. When you're in a "regular" side balcony room and you look left or right from your railing, you see this huge, impressive ship that goes on seemingly forever. It's a cool feeling from a mid-ship room to do that - but it's even cooler when you're at the back of the ship, and there are only a few rooms on either side of you. From the "out of sight, out of mind" camp, this is a way (other than NCL's Haven) to feel like you're on a small ship, even when you're on a big ship.

Last week, the craft beers were spread among a few venues - mostly at Cellar Masters and the Rendezvous lounge, but a few at the pool bars too (ie Blue Moon). All bars seemed to have a few interesting (if not craft) beer selections.

There's good and bad with this - the bad is that the selection is a bit thinner and you may have to run around the ship to find a specific beer. The positive is that you'll find a nice beer at pretty much any bar, so it's easier if you're with a non-beer-drinker.

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We were off the Summit on time today, and were in one of the last groups to get off, so I don't think that debarkation timing was a problem . I suspect it has something to do with either the Coast Guard inspection, or the few loud noises we heard on board yesterday evening and this morning (there were some rough seas coming home)...

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Cup Match is over a long weekend...won't affect the 2 full days the Summit is in Bermuda (Wed-Thurs).

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As the originator of this thread, I wanted to post an update: I just checked the Celebrity website, and noticed a bunch of interesting new entertainment options will be on offer during my cruise, that have not received much "press" around here. These options help to offset the negatives that I highlighted, so in the interest of fairness they must be part of this discussion.

These items include:

-Indulgence, which I can't really tell what it is but seems to be kind of a "flash mob" of entertainment

-Liquid, which appears to be an interesting use of the T-Pool area to create a cool lit-up night club area

-Sin City comedy/burlesque show

-Scratch DJ school

So…the apparent cutbacks were perhaps not cutbacks at all, but instead budget reallocations - and these new entertainment options have the potential to add a lot of value to my vacation. As such, the "one-sided" element of this thread topic's title doesn't really apply anymore - these are in fact changes, not cutbacks.

Looking forward to going on board next weekend and seeing what it's like!

If you think they have done something wrong, then stand up and file a lawsuit against them.

I guess that what people say about the US being a very litigious place is true then?

The law has nothing to do with this...being that Celebrity markets to hundreds of jurisdictions with different laws, anybody's presumptions of what they legally can or cannot do are probably both right and wrong. So how about we stop talking about lawsuits, and start talking about standards?

Celebrity should be held to a very basic standard of delivering on what they advertise from final payment onwards. They need this to be their own corporate standard in order to avoid these discussions. Where their corporate standard is below this very basic level, I would presume they will anger customers and perhaps some consumer protection boards. But there's no need for that - all they need to do is lock in their offering from final payment onwards. Not very hard to do I wouldn't think.

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All this reference to a legal contract are irrelevant. The contract wasn't arrived at by my lawyers sitting across the table from Celebrity's lawyers to negotiate fair terms to a cruise. The contract has no real bearing - consumer protection laws exist precisely because of "contracts" written up like these.

What I am talking about here is fairness in operations. When I can no longer change my decision without consequence, but the cruise line decides to change the product that they have sold to me before it is delivered, that is simply not part of the "game".

Quite likely, Finance has told somebody that they need to improve the bottom line this quarter (not next quarter), so the operations guys react by making little changes to slightly increase revenue and decrease costs immediately. Thing is...there should be a guideline to this, they should not be allowed to decrease the value of my purchase between the time I buy it and the time I use it. If somebody told them that the changes can only be made and publicized 75 days out, then they would have to just have a bit more foresight and plan ahead. That is a VERY reasonable request to make of them.

Really, I ask those who seem to think I am making unreasonable complaints here: what is unreasonable about holding Celebrity to the same 75 day standard that we're held to?

I may well have made the same choice to book this cruise, but maybe not. I wouldn't advise anybody to avoid booking with Celebrity as a result of these cuts - in fact, I may be in line for my best vacation ever that will make me a long-time Celebrity customer. I'd like to keep this discussion to its main point.

There were some other changes made to increase pricing, such as the change in the spa stuff, but that had been publicized before final payment so I had a fair chance to consider that change and whether it was likely to impact on my vacation. That's fair game. The list of items that I posted that got cut between final payment and my cruise...that's just not fair.

I

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On one hand I agree on the other hand I don't. First of all look at the cool stuff you'll be getting that I missed last week on Carnival Breeze. Couple that we really missed were the free pasties at the Cova Café and breakfast room service with hot options such as omelets. OK, those are just a few of the things I missed last week although I had a great time. And yea, a lobster dinner on the balcony is a great option on the Summit.

 

Last time I went to Disney, March 2014, Splash Mountain was closed. When I booked the trip many months before they never told me that. When I went to the website it still showed pictures of Splash Mountain. They never offered me anything in its place. No discount, no fast passes, nothing. How is that different than Celebrity getting rid of the Zumba classes? And yea Splash Mountain will reopen but they did get rid of other rides without a replacement.

 

I guess with your reasoning, which I do understand as all these changes are happening at the same time, there is no way to Celebrity to change things. For example if they wanted to take away the Zumba or increase Bistro on 5, how would they do it? Do they say beginning X date these things will be gone? Well that date would need to be more than a year in the future as people already have cruises booked more than a year out so they'd feel cheated. That is really not possible.

 

I am not sticking up for Celebrity as I don't like some of the changes either but I'm not sure how they, or any other travel company can change things so some people won't feel cheated. And face it, all companies are taking away perks and usually not adding new ones.

 

I know you guys will have a great time. There will be plenty to eat and drink and the gym is has great hours :)

While it stinks that Splash Mountain was closed, there are published refurb schedules with Disney that are typically up-to-date prior to final payment date…but also, an attraction or 2 in refurb there is part of standard procedure that you would find out about in pre-vacation research (unlike all these service cuts on Celebrity that could not have been foreseen). The equivalent to what's been happening on Celebrity would be if Disney were to suddenly exclude restaurants from the dining plan, restaurants that gave the plan its value, without advance notice. They do regularly change the dining plan, but never overnight like this.

At 75 days out, I can't make a change in my decision to cruise with Celebrity without taking a financial hit. Is it too much to ask that they be held to the same standard? They should absolutely be expected to publish any and all changes in on-board service, pricing, etc. a minimum of 75 days prior to sailing.

As I have stated and others have repeated: my concern is not that there have been cuts - it's the clandestine way they've been made. I know it ain't easy to deliver bad news to your customer base, but trying to get around delivering that news just makes it worse.

This isn't about whether the OP will enjoy the cruise or not, he makes it clear that he expects to enjoy it. What this is about is the changing the conditions on a contract. Even if Celebrity is within their legal rights, I for one find it disturbing.

 

We are going on the june 27 alaska cruise, and some of the reasons I chose celebrity was because of several of the perks that have been eliminated. I probably would have chosen them anyway, but I would have liked to have had that option.

 

Bill

Agreed 100%. This is exactly what I'm saying: I feel like I'm not quite getting the product that I signed up for. Of course I'm expecting a great time, but all these cutbacks in short order between final payment and the cruise is unfair.

I didn't read all the posts, but thought I pitch in my experience on this item since it requires timing. We've done this on several cruises (Summit + Reflection) and had the following experience.

1. When we called room service we were referred to our room steward for ordering.

2. We needed to know exactly what we wanted to order from the menu of that day so we could place our order through the cabin steward. On both occasions the cabin steward did't know what was on the menu for that day. The first time the steward ran up to the MDR to get us a menu. The second time we knew better and wrote down what we wanted to order and handed it to him.

3. All dishes were served at the same time, meaning they didn't arrive as courses like they do in the MDR.

4. The meal arrived to the room at the same time when the main entree was served in the MDR. This means that you need to place the order well enough in advance so you can locate your cabin steward, figure out the order, and have the meal retrieved from the MDR kitchen. This can feel like a long wait for little ones, so be sure to plan ahead.

5. You can place an order for first or second seating, but the meal will still be served when the main entree is served. I mention this because if you miss the first seating ordering window then it's a long wait for the second seating entree.

6. Both times our meals arrived hot and were great!

Thanks very much for this information - it is very helpful! My plan would be to go to the MDR, grab a menu, order room service from the MDR for us and perhaps standard room service fare (a burger or something) or pick up from the buffet for the kids, feeding them dinner first, and then eating ours on the balcony when they go to sleep.

I'm sure my kids would have enjoyed the Breakaway, and I'm sure they'll enjoy the Summit as well. They've enjoyed every trip we've done as they're not particularly hard to please and generally take to any event with a good attitude - a pool, a good kids' club, and being allowed to eat fun food are more than enough to keep them having fun - so that wasn't a primary selection factor in our cruise since they'll get that on any mass market line. One of their favourite trips was one to a resort in Miami that had nothing for kids other than a nice pool. But man was that ever a nice pool! They spent all day in it.

I would consider "changes" to involve give & take: perhaps enhancements to the MDR menu, being financed by the removal of the grand buffet, the cutbacks to the bev plan, the increased specialty dining charges, and an increase in fares collected from suite pax due to enhanced amenities that resulted in the loss of Michael's. Or even moving the craft beers to Cellar Masters with an explanation that many pax have complained that they'd like to have fine beers and fine wines in the same location to accommodate groups with varying tastes. But what has been done are not "changes" - they're reductions in what is offered onboard being made after collecting my fare.

Changes to atmosphere are not things that I can comment on, since this'll be my first cruise on Celebrity. And those would not really bother me anyways, since any resort is free to set up the atmosphere that they see fit so long as it doesn't imply false advertisement of what they're selling. They're just not free to change the terms of the agreements made the way they have, by simply removing features without providing commensurate upgrades elsewhere.

It may not sound like it - but I'm not a complainer at all, and if this reads like a complaint than perhaps it's a lesson to all that the perception of negativity is perhaps disproportionate to the negativity inherent in the comments here.

I am very looking forward to my family's cruise, and am just amazed that a brand trying to move upscale and increase fares (and onboard spend) is actually taking stuff away unannounced. That seems to be a particularly bad way to go about things, when you don't have the climbing walls, water-slides and Broadway-caliber shows to fall back on.

I'm not being negative here, and am looking forward to the cruise. The items I have listed are fact, not opinion, so aren't positive nor negative - and they don't take away the fact that I expect to derive a lot of pleasure from this vacation. Having not really had any time off since last July, I am overdue for some time off and very appreciative of the wonderful way we'll get to spend that time off. Really, for the bev package changes, I'll just upgrade to premium to avoid being concerned with it and make sure to enjoy. Thus falling into line with what Celebrity is after, but I may have upgraded our packages anyways.

But…in my line of work, "equity"/"fairness" are integral concepts, so perhaps that colours my view of things. I've just never seen anything like this, where I research a vacation and make a choice based on its features and amenities, and then those very facts change so close to my vacation. I'd understand somewhat if the vacation were booked 2 years out - changes happen in that amount of time. But there seems to be no WAY any properly run company could not have known about these changes when I booked 3 months prior to embarkation - if they were being up front about things, then there wouldn't be this negativity on the boards IMHO. It's the feeling of being swindled that upsets people. Had I known that there'd be no craft beers and no Michael's, I may have still booked or maybe not - the Breakaway was cheaper after all. But I'd have liked to be able to make that choice, given that there's no reason that the cruise should effectively be falsely advertised (Michael's was clearly listed as one of the "features" of the Summit, with no indication that it was only available until March 2014).

The one "killer" app that Celebrity has, though, for a family like ours and the cabin/itinerary we have, is the ability to have MDR dinner via room service if the kids are exhausted and we need to get them to bed early. As long as Celebrity don't remove that within the next 2 weeks, we'll be all set - because that was a major part of the reason we chose Celebrity (on the Breakaway, there seems to be no way to have reasonable in-room dining outside of a suite).

So I reserved my first cruise on Celebrity less than 3 months ago, that we'll be taking in 2 weeks. Before I get to the crux of the issue here…my family is is very looking forward to this cruise and we're sure we'll have a good time.

We are, however, getting concerned at the one-sided nature of the "agreement" we had to cruise with Celebrity.

We do not take that many vacations - due to limited vacation time, kids' commitments to school and sports teams, etc. What we have taken to doing is a family vacation or a couples vacation, in alternating years. What this means is…1 vacation per year. Given our location and the logistics (and cost) of travelling with kids, it makes more sense to do less vacations and have them be memorable. We are quite looking forward to a great cruise in a corner FV cabin!

We have done a variety of vacations - Disney, land-based resort, other cruises, and more "roughing it" style vacations. Every one of those vacations, the conditions of sale DID NOT CHANGE from booking to cruising. Disney, for example, frequently changes dining rules etc. on their programs - but it's clear from day one what the rules are (i.e. - if you book in March for September, the rules that will be in place in September are clearly indicated upon booking if you are willing to ask the right questions).

With Celebrity, it seems that they collect the fare, but will then be able to do as they please as to the terms of what is on offer.

Based on the research I had done at the time of choosing my cruise, the following SIGNIFICANT changes have happened:

1) I was quite looking forward to the Michael's Club and it's collection of draft beers, as advertised on the website. But then, a press release went out, and Michael's Club's doors got shut, to be opened only for 10% of the people on the boat. Nobody at Celebrity has made it clear if/where the craft beer will be available.

2) My wife was looking forward to the Zumba lessons by the pool. Those have been cancelled.

3) The last sea-day brunch buffet that we had read about on the website got canned.

4) Pricing has been increased from $5 to $7 at Bistro on 5 (will they change its name now too??). This upsets me quite a bit - was looking forward to eating there as a family, but $7 is the tipping point where it makes no sense to bring the kids who might or might not like it - so we'll bring them to the buffet and let them go to the kids' club while we go to Bistro on 5…which removes a potential family activity from a ship that didn't have many of them to begin with. The other specialties on Summit might be increased too, but that doesn't bother me as much as I wasn't planning to bring the kids to QSine at $45 (or is it $50?) a pop anyways.

5) There are reports of decreased selection on the Classic beverage package.

6) NO NEW FEATURES are present to replace these items.

Now, I might have still chosen Celebrity regardless of these changes, I just find it abhorrent that within a 3-month span, so many cutbacks in service can occur without warning. If you make a deal to buy a car, and when you go to pick it up they've decided to drop 3 features, well then you will have the option to either back out of the purchase or get a discount. If Celebrity can't operate in this manner, fine, but where are the upgrades to compensate for the obviously lower value level that I'm getting for the dollar amount already paid? Is this industry so unregulated that a company can collect your fare, and then deliver whatever they want?

Frankly, my choices were Celebrity Summit vs. Norwegian Breakaway on this cruise. I haven't read of any cutbacks on Norwegian. What this tells me is that going forward, I can't trust Celebrity to provide the product that they advertise, even compared to other cruise lines, let alone other vacation types.

Let's hope that the product delivered is of a high enough quality that it will be a ton of fun regardless of the clear drop in value that I will be receiving for my dollar from what the 'deal' was when I paid. Unfortunately, this is feeling like a bit of a swindle at the moment.

In my haste to comment on the name of the pub, I didn't mention that I do really like the idea of Slush - the non-alcoholic options will be a hit with kids, and the alcoholic options will be a hit with the rest. I love frozen drinks, except that they tend to be too high in sugar - a natural juice-based frozen drink bar seems like an awesome idea!

You can eat a meal at the Swizzle Inn, but they are home to what I consider the absolute perfect afternoon snack: Jalapeño Cornbread with a pitcher of Swizzle.

Having never been to the new location - is it as good as the original?

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I'd also like to know what will be the setup on ships that have lost Michael's but have yet to have Gastro. Will Cellar Masters simply serve microbrew beers, and it's just the food that won't yet be on offer until a changeover?

I like microbrew and my wife likes red wine, so if Cellar Masters will be offering both, that'd be fine by me.

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This is a nice idea, but intentionally calling something a "gastro bar" on a cruise ship is absolutely hilarious, land-based definition notwithstanding. With all the talk of norovirus on cruiseships, a Gastrobar sounds like the invention of SNL writers more than the name of an upscale sea pub experience!

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I'll be there with my 6 and 9 year-olds. Not teens obviously, but I'd expect there to be some kids of various ages on board.

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