lostchild

My wife did a blowout before our cruise photoshoot, and to be honest, the price is not really much higher than normal salon around here. BTW, a man's haircut starts at $35 here and usually with tip is close to $50.

We were on Apex in June and thought the food in MDR (any of the 4) were good. The menu is huge because you could order the "signature" dishes from any of the 4 restaurants. I really love the octopus appetizer from the Greek restaurant so I ordered it in any of the others. Having said that, we do eat most of the nights at OV cafe because the food there were also excellent. The reason is time and what to wear. We are more a SoCal casual family. We don't eat together, and we don't really dress up for dinner. We like t-shirts and sandals, and we want our food "now" LOL. But other than the speed of food coming out in the MDRs, I thought they were great.

I remember most of the tables were setup for either 2 or 4. There were 2 groups of bigger party the night we were there. Since the projection is setup up above, I don't think they could move the tables too much. I can see why you would have a problem with 5. They will need to locate a table of 4 that is next to a 2. The restaurant is pretty small unlike bigger one like Eden.

Apex in Europe has a grill to order minute steak station for lunch and dinner. I had a steak pretty much every time I was at the OV cafe, sometime 2 steaks if I was hungry. They have a chimichurri sauce there that's pretty good. I don't remember if it says it is Ribeye or other cut of steak. To be honest, when a steak is that thin, it is usually tender even if it is a lower cut or overcooked. And they could also never get it to be medium rare when it is so thin. I asked for medium rare every time and I usually get medium well, but sometimes well done. They don't really taste that much difference. I was tempted to just ask for rare and see how it would come out LOL. Didn't try it though.

It is NOT $50, less than half that. The don't have Uber, but they have 2 other apps you could download and use. We used one of them, Viggo. Taxi is not that expensive either. Maybe 5 euro more.

We didn't have drink packages last month. We bought 2 water (in the aluminum bottles) and reused them the entire 12 days cruise. Those bottles were great for the shore trips. We just refill them at the cabin bathroom tap. Water taste great to us. At home we have reverse osmosis water, and we use aluminum water bottles as well. The ship's tap water, I think, is also reverse osmosis water, so it just tasted like home water to us.

It was free when it was docked at Oceankaj Terminal 2. It's about 3.8 miles from the New King Square where the drop off is located. I have it all on my Google Map Location history. The bus ride takes about 30 minutes, but could be waiting 10 min for the bus to be full. Even though coming back is also free, we always rode back on Taxi or Viggo app. Viggo is all EV all the time. Most of the normal taxi there are EVs as well. I think one way is about 12 to 15 euro, so $20 per day for the shuttle is still pretty good deal. I actually saw people walking, pretty sure is to the cruise terminal because there is really nothing there. I am not sure why they choose walking as there are only 2 ships there, Apex and Silhouette, and both offered free shuttles.

We also had free shuttle when we were in Copenhagen in July. In fact, Apex (our cruise) was docked right next to Silhouette. The shuttle to Tallinn was not free. I don't remember how much though.

The MC could go up or down pass your room a few times a day if it is operating. On our last cruise, the weather was bad, so the MC only get to move during the first 2 days. The rest of the cruise it was stationary and closed. Then MC SS is just like a normal SS just cheaper to book, I think.

Ah, so even with premium drink package, you still have to pay the extra $100pp for the wine I guess. That just seem unreasonable especially if no one in the group drink at all. Since there were 3 of us, we ended up ordering many of the dishes in the tasting menu we wanted to try. We just shared ourselves. I think there were 1 or 2 we wanted to try in the tasting menu but not in the regular menu. The waitress was nice. She let us order some extra appetizers and main courses. I think we ended up ordering 5 appetizers and 4 main dishes.

Tasting menu requires wine pairing. And if you don't have a drink package, it is $100 extra for the wine per person. I think if you have premium drink package, you don't have to pay the extra $100. We don't have a drink package and we don't drink alcohol at all, so we can't order the tasting menu. It was disappointing.

You can't join CC until 18, but you can have an account on the Celebrity cruise website before 18. My son has one, so he could sign in on his phone to access the Celebrity App. And if he logs in to the website, he can see all his past cruises. I was told that when he turns 18 and join Captain Club, he would get all the points back.

When the wind is strong or it is raining outside, they close all the IV windows and lock them remotely. They also do it when they are washing the windows at the port. So, they probably have a way to remotely lock certain room's window if needed.

Unless you are really picky about your coffee, the one at OVC is just fine. Although it is quite a walk in the morning if your cabin is near the bow of the ship. Every morning, I woke up, go to the buffet and eat breakfast, fill coffee with the to-go cup with lid and a croissant back to the room for the wife. It's about 1000 steps according to Google Fit LOL.

I am from LA area. Usually when someone here take a cruise from here down to Mexico, it is a 2-3 day booze cruise. Pretty sure that's not the target customers of Celebrity Cruise. And I don't know anyone from here would take a cruise up the coast north and back. That would be missing the best part of the trip, PCH. So that means most of the people on those cruises would be people not local here. That's probably why there aren't that many Celebrity cruise going out from here... probably won't be any more soon when those ships could make more money elsewhere.

I think about a month ago, they got rid of the basic WiFi for purchase.

I seriously doubt that removing Amsterdam's cruise port would affect Amsterdam's tourism much. We just came back from our Apex cruise out of Rotterdam. We stayed at Amsterdam for a week before we went to Rotterdam. You still have to fly into AMS even if the port is at Rotterdam so might as well visit Amsterdam. Just from reading the roll call thread, it seems that most people visited and stayed at Amsterdam either before or after the cruise for a period of time. But I think even if you remove all the cruise visitors in all the ports of Netherland, it is still not going to affect Amsterdam much. The taxi drivers told us that they are trying to get all the cars out of Amsterdam by blocking road into the city and doing a whole lot of construction just to make driving hell. They want everyone to either bike or take public transport to reduce pollution and combat climate change. One thing we learnt on that cruise all the different European countries is that climate change topic is much more serious there than here. That's all they talked about. Well that and the war. Our hotel at Amsterdam was east of the city so every day when we took tram to the city, we passed by the Amsterdam cruise terminal. When there are ships there, the line outside around noon to 2 were super long with no shade. And there would be line of folks walking to the terminal from Amsterdam Central Station all slightly uphill with their luggage. We were thinking that this is what it would be like when we board Apex at Rotterdam in a week. Turns out Rotterdam cruise port was AMAZING. Maybe because there was only 1 ship there, the terminal inside was huge and everyone could have a seat and wait there in A/C. I saw a lounge for suite guests and no one was there because everyone got there immediately get to board. We were there 1 hour earlier than our scheduled boarding time and we just went straight in. This will probably change when Amsterdam port get shut down and every ship is going to Rotterdam.

We preferred the buffet than any of the 4 restaurants with our last Apex cruise. The restaurants feel very enclosed, and the tables are packed closed to each other's. Unless there is no one sitting at the table next to you, it is impossible to have any kind of private conversation. The buffet is just more relaxing and if you want to finish eating in 20 minutes, you could. Where in any of the main dining rooms, you probably won't finish your first course in 20 minutes.

Octopus appetizer

It is true, but I sense some resistance from the wait staff whenever we did that. I am not sure if it is just because not too many people asked for it or there is some extra work that they have to do. It's that little bit of hesitation that gives away their thought process. Maybe just because they didn't study the exclusive items from the other restaurants, they are not familiar with the ingredients to deal with food allergies and stuff.

By the way, for the zero proof cocktails, the watermelon one and the mojito ones tasted okay, not great, but okay. The other one, I think strawberry banana or something, is absolutely awful and undrinkable. It tasted like licorice water. If you want a better tasting "zero proof" cocktail than the ones they offered, just grab a can of sprite or just sparkling water, go up to the buffet and add the free POG (the Hawaiian passion fruit, orange, guava) juice to it! If you feel fancy, you can even add a few pieces of fresh fruits from the buffet to it LOL.

We actually love the infinite style cabin over the normal balcony. It's more like a sunroom with openable window and great if you want to lie down next the window all day long reading on a sea day. Our son was staying with us in the cabin and instead of having his mattress on top of the sofa, we moved it on the floor right next to the window. The length of the mattress is perfect there. He loves sleeping there at night. It is like sleeping right next to the ocean. During the day, all 3 of us fought for the prime position there to read or listen to music or do some work on the laptop.

Being on this forum, I kind of thought everyone on the cruise (like 90%+) would have a plastic holder for the color luggage tag they printed at home. I went to amazon to get some nice holders. I don't have a color printer, but I do have a 4x6 photo printer. I photoshop the tag image to print front and back side by side, print out the 4x6 on photo paper, cut in half and put inside the perfectly sized tag holder for Celebrity cruise narrow tag size. When I pulled out the tags at the hotel to put them on our luggage, my wife was impressed with my skill. So, when we got to the cruise terminal, I was expecting to see a sea of luggage with nice colored tag just like mine. Instead, I see a long line of people waiting to get to a staff member who would look up their room number, write with a black marker on the tag, and stapled it to the luggage. I went straight to the drop off and saw that 95% of the luggage there were the ones with the black marker written numbers. I think I overachieved on the printed tags LOL.

Check weather too for the cruise. On our last cruise, 90% of the time, the magic carpet was closed. When we walked by Solarium we see they have tables setup at one side and have a sign that said "dining on the edge" one evening. I think they probably kept moving people's reservations around until they figured out that there is no option but to cancel. Decided to offer them the same menu at the Solarium maybe at a discount.

So I asked my kid. On Apex basement, there is a ping pong table, a foosball table, and about 5 Xbox's. There was no air hockey table. They do have younger staff members there, so probably more relatable to the teens.