MISTER 67

I’ve been buying Citizen Eco-Drive watches for years, IMHO Citizen is the best watch for the money with Seiko almost as good. Invicta watches are OK if you are looking for a decent low priced everyday time piece but some as was mentioned are too darn heavy.

Yep, our first cruise was on the Fairwind 41years ago, we had such a great time my wife was in tears as we were dis-embarking, Sitmar was the best.

Amen to that, our first few cruises were on classic ocean liners like the Sitmar Fairwind, the Carla Costa, The Costa Riviera, The Seabreeze and the Regent Star. I always wanted to sail on the beautiful Oceanic but things never worked out.

Merry Christmas to some of the nicest people on the planet.

Enjoy your time there, the beach is great.

Will you be stopping in Nha Trang when you cruise to Vietnam, spent a year of my life there way back in 1968, I understand it’s quite a destination these days.

This is more than a change of direction, people took this cruise to sail to tropical islands and beautiful beaches, instead they are going to ports with freezing temperatures with snow and ice, I hope they brought their ice skates.

We are old time cruisers and don’t care much for the modern day production shows on most of the lines right now, way too loud and with what my DW calls dark angry singing and angry dancing.

We’ve been on 5 Celebrity cruises and 9 overall since the startup in the fall of 2021, 3 of the Celebrity cruises were on the Equinox with one each on the Infinity and one on the Reflection, we have 4 booked for 2024, 2 on X and 2 on Princess. All the Celebrity cruises were pretty darn good with no problems with food or service in the MDR. As far as the OVC we think it’s the best buffet of all the major cruisel lines, food and variety has always been very good. Have things been as good as before the pandemic, probably not as we aren’t happy with costs of just about everything going up while there have been cutbacks here and there, there’s been high inflation and the cruise lines took a beating because of the pandemic with no income so we have a choice, we can continue to cruise or find somewhere else to spend our vacation dollars but check out prices of Las Vegas or Disneyworld and we still get the best bang for the dollar cruising.

We had to ask.

We’ve been on 5 Celebrity cruises since the post pandemic startup and all 5 have been just about exactly what you experienced, the gratuities keep rising and X is a dollar a day per person more than Princess and HAL who we also sail with. Yes, things were better before the pandemic and there have been changes like the room service charge but to tell the truth with 72 cruises on our resume we have never ordered from room service, don’t know why but we enjoy eating in the various restaurants around the ship. Celebrity is still giving us twice a day cabin service with mints on the pillows in the evenings, they also always have some kind of snack in the bars when you are having a cocktail, little things like that are a plus, we were on the Sky Princess last week and had a nice cruise but there were no snacks with cocktails and no mints on the pillows.

I saw a 20 something with a tong last week on a Celebrity cruise but don’t recall ever seeing a tong on an HAL cruise but like someone else said, I don’t hang around the pool area much at all.

We were on the Enchanted Princess last week, ship was full and truthfully I can’t recall anyone sneezing or coughing including my DW and me and we happened to wind up on some packed elevators. No protocols at all but a few people wore masks.

Thanks for the feedback, you just about answered all my questions, maybe things will be better by August 3.

I have checked the regular CC reviews on this ship and they are all over the place so I came to the boards where I think we get a little better perspective on things. Any feed back on the condition of the ship along with dining and entertainment ratings would be appreciated. We are veteran cruisers and have taken 72 cruises and are low maintenance but I like that the cruise we are looking at sails out of Tampa which is the closest port for us living about 90 miles away in Punta Gorda. We love the size of the Enchantment as we sailed on her sister the Rhapsody before the pandemic and we had a great cruise with great service, very good food and entertainment on a perfect sized ship.

We basically sail with 3 lines, Celebrity, Princess and Holland America. Since Covid cruising has changed pretty dramatically with a lot of cuts with higher fares and a lot of nickel and diming. Things got pretty bad with HAL and we wont sail with them anymore until we hear things have improved. We sailed on the Sky Princess last week and had a nice cruise but we could tell the food budget has been cut a bit, we never had a bad meal but things just were not the same as in the past, we never had a great meal. My wife is a wonderful cook and could tell that some ingredients were lacking along with the lack of butter in desserts. Ship was beautiful and we had great service and pretty good entertainment. Twice a day cabin service but no chocolate mints on the pillow. That brings us to Celebrity, we have cruised with them 5 times since the startup and found them to continue to offer an excellent product but at higher prices than Princess and HAL. We've had some pretty good meals in the MDR and IMHO the buffet is the best of the major cruise lines not only in taste but also with the variety being outstanding. Service continues to be excellent and we still get mints on the pillows. We have 4 cruises scheduled in 2024 and 2 are on Princess and 2 with Celebrity. We are old time cruisers since 1982 and are set in our ways and refuse to patronize specialty restaurants, don't drink much so no drink packages for us and we can do without the internet for a week or so.

Agree but the Volendam and Zaandam are a bit too small, we love the Signature Class ships, the Eurodam and the Nieuw Amsterdam are favorites of ours, just the perfect size. The Koningsdam and her sisters are OK but like you stated they are the new style ships that have taken away the traditional promenade deck. I'm waiting for one of the lines to bite the bullet one of these days and build a ship with the traditional promenade deck.

I guess we have been a little luckier than you, BTW last we we sailed on the Sky Princess also out of PE, that was our 72nd cruise and we boarded the ship at 10:55, a record for us for boarding that early.

We've taken 6 Celebrity cruises since the post pandemic start up and we have always been admitted to the Celebrity terminal building between 10:30 and 10:45 with boarding time between 11:20 and 11:30

We are 4 Star Mariners with HAL and we no longer sail with them for the same reasons you mentioned and a few more including the decreasing food budget with HAL where they are actually rationing butter pats and cream cheese, portions at dinner are really tiny, on our last HAL cruise in February I had some grilled sole and it was gone in 3 bites.

While on board we booked the Enchanted for May and looking at the deck plans we were very happy to see that there is a Crooners on the starboard side of deck 6.

Nicest one would be the Crown Grill Bar on deck 7. Bellini’s off the Atrium on deck 5 isn’t bad but could be noisy.

I agree with you as they replaced Crooners with the seafood restaurant on the port side of deck 7, it actually interfered with passenger flow as I was stopped and told to go around the Atrium on the starboard side. I had no problem with Alfredo’s also on deck 7 as it did not block passenger the passenger flow. We had no other problems with the layout of the ship, we did think they should relocate the pastry area in the buffet more towards the main area which is a bit more aft. BTW I’m a voracious reader and read 3 books and started a 4th on the cruise and I love the quiet area in the rear on both sides of deck 7, the starboard side is for smokers, there you will find the old style steamer deck chairs with nice comfortable padding, great place for reading and taking in the views and sounds of the ocean.

Welcome to cruising in the 21st century, have you sailed on Royal Caribbean or Celebrity?

We also cruise all 3 lines that you mentioned and since the start up after the pandemic IMHO HAL has had more issues than Princess and Celebrity, we will not spend our money with HAL any longer with 2 less than stellar cruises on the Rotterdam and Nieuw Amsterdam which is still our all time favorite cruise, in that same time we have had 5 cruises with Celebrity and 3 with Princess, all were very good cruises but being honest there were some cutbacks on Celebrity and Princess but ones that we can live with. We just returned this AM from a very nice cruise on the Sky Princess and booked the Enchanted Princess in May and already booked on the Celebrity Equinox this coming February, maybe one of these days things will improve on HAL and we can sail with them again