tserface

I think you will like Celebrity for the casino. If it were my first time I'd go on one of the S or E (Solstice or Edge) class ships rather than one of the older ones. You'd get a better impression and experience. The biggest difference is that Celebrity doesn't focus as much on entertaining families. There pools, but they are not as lavish as on some Royal ships. Also, there are no rock climbing walls, Flow Riders, North Stars, or other gimmicky cruise ship stuff. It's a lot quieter environment with fewer kids and slightly elevate (although not as much these days). It's also an older crowd. We like both Celebrity and Royal and go on each depending on the itinerary we want and whether or not we're bringing grandkids along. If you are Diamond on Royal you'll be Elite on Celebrity. You'd just have to call the Captain's Club and sign up and tell them your Royal status. That gets you some more perks. Life is about trying new things. Since you got a really great offer for this cruise, you don't have a lot to lose by giving it a try.

Actually, on my iPhone, it takes less than a minute to do this and there's no loss of data since it just sucks the data from the Princess website. It's a great way to clear up problems. Also, I bookmark the pages I use in CC and it always goes directly to them. You can bookmark threads, roll calls, pages, etc. For this page, for example, I use: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=197

We leave the TV on the channel that shows the front of the ship (with the sound down). Then it gets lighter as it gets lighter outside. There is some light that shows even in the dark so, if this bothers you, it might not be a good option, but it worked for us.

Yeah, to be fair, there is nothing compelling you to use your phone (at least at this time). It's just an enhancement for many of us. On our cruise last fall we were sitting in a bar and no one ever came to help us. So, I went up to the bar to order and stood there for around 10 minutes. So, I tried ordering on the phone and we had our drinks like 10 minutes later delivered right where we were sitting in the bar. The great thing about diversity is we can all kind of do it the way we like.

If you have to have WiFi to run WhatsApp anyway, why not just user your phones normal messaging app (iMessage?). Is it a locale thing? You are correct, we have to make sure to check our phones. For one, we don't want to be annoying having our phones make noise when we get messages. Also, it doesn't really do push notifications unless the app is running at the time. The app does kind of wear down the battery too. But, I still like it 🙂

We love the Medallion experience on Princess. We can find each other, send text messages, order "stuff" to be delivered wherever we want, manage our calendars, etc. We typically carry our phones around anyway since, these days, they are also our camera. I suppose you could get along just fine without the technology, but we think it enhances the experience even if you are not connected to outside of the ship WiFi.

As others have said, it's not going to be an issue. Even for formal night I got some totally black Rockport walking shoes that have never been an issue. Hope you are feeling better soon and that your injury doesn't hamper your cruise experience any.

The menu for LPC has been different each of the three times we've gone. That's what made it fun for us. We also thought the ribs were really good on the Summit. We've never done LPC with lobster and filet, but that also sounds delicious. It seems like Celebrity is downplaying lobster more and more. I think for LPC it's a fairly restricted menu on purpose because the point of the restaurant is the experience, not necessarily the variety of offerings.

I think they can reconfigure them if you give them a heads up in your reservation.

Why so defensive? I wasn’t directing this to you personally. on our recent cruise they did make the room twice a day, but the steward told us that was going to change. There were days that our room wasn’t made up until after lunch. He did a nice job, but just hade way too many rooms to do alone. On our kid’s recent cruise they were told they could have morning or evening service. The service in the MDR, for us, was so slow, and the food not good enough for the wait, last time we ended up eating in the buffet so we could make it to shows. Bar service was also slower. Yeah, I know, I sound entitled. Well, I kind of am in this case. I paid the price for the promised luxury experience and… My opinion, based on my experience, is the service is about half what it used to be pre pandemic. We used to always put 10’s on the surveys and now, begrudgingly, we’ve scored some things lower. No, that doesn’t mean we don’t like and won’t cruise Celebrity and, no, we don’t stop paying gratuities (in fact we often prepay them). I apologize if I made it sound like this was somehow your fault. It was just my opinion. I think, many people agree that the prices are rising and the quality diminishing. I know all the excuses, some perhaps valid, but it is what it is…

It is a little in the face to raise gratuities right after they started reducing the service provided. I know it’s only adding $.50/day, but since they’re only doing half the service they pretty much doubled gratuities recently too.

This has been our experience as well. We've ended up standing in the back for a few shows. Many of Princess's ships have pull up tables that are nice for setting drinks on, but the theater on RCL is much easier to enter. That said, I really like the feel of Princess cruises. It's more old school without the flashy water slides and rock climbing walls, etc. For younger people this makes sea days more interesting, but at our age we like playing trivia, bingo, reading, playing cards, and more docile things during the sea days. We hardly ever go out by the pool any more. When go with our grandkids and kids we typically go on a RCL ship (doing Icon next year), but when we go alone we like Princess and Celebrity. I don't think there's much difference in the food. The three lines we go on Celebrity, Princess, Royal all have about the same quality food. Royal and Celebrity are dropping some of our favorites like prime rib, and they only allow one lobster tail without paying more. On our last Princess cruise the waiter brought out an extra plate of lobsters to give us all seconds. I've heard rumors they are going to start charging for extras as well, on Princess, but that wasn't true on our cruise last fall. Princess specialty restaurants are still a lot more affordable and still really good food. We like cruise food, especially since we don't have to cook, server, or clean up, but the food is not as special as it used to be. I think all of the lines have dumbed down the MDR experience to get people to see more value in the specialty restaurants. We've never had trouble finding something to eat. Also, Princess is still doing bingo the fun, old cruis-y way that we like. The Medallion experience on Princess is getting really good. It's nice being able to do room service like ordering from anywhere on the ship. Royal and Celebrity charge way more for basic room service and you have to be in your room (maybe why the call it room service). We think games are more fun on Princess. On our last cruise they had a person who called herself Fortuna Luck, and she made bingo, and some other games, really fun. It was kind of cheesy, but we loved it. I think Princess and Celebrity have better itineraries, but Royal is focusing more on the ship experience as the destination. Princess has laundry rooms so for longer cruises that's really handy. You can also use an iron in the laundry room. Rather than like $50/bag to do your laundry, you can purchase soap, washer, and dryer for < $20 a load. Also, it's a lot less harsh on the clothes. I think Celebrity puts the clothes in like a blast furnace to clean them 🙂 We've been to Alaska on Celebrity, Princess, and Royal. The Royal ship we went on, Ovation, couldn't get into Glacier Bay since it was too large, but the Princess and Celebrity ships both did. I think some of the newer Princess (Royal class) and Celebrity (Solstice class) ships may not work in some of the Alaskan ports also, but Princess and Celebrity have smaller ships going there still. Bottom line: We'd go on any of the three based on the experience we're looking for at the time.

We're on Apex.

For our upcoming cruise we got switched from Select Anytime Dining to Select Early Dining at 6pm. They just sent us emails for each reservation we’d set up saying they were canceled. This is OK for us most days, but there are a couple of days where our excursions don’t return until after that time. Since it’s still ‘Select’ could we still go anytime and just wait for available seating on those days? It’s confusing since they seem to be calling everything ‘Select’. If it isn’t OK to go at a different time we could just do buffet those nights, but we’d rather go to the MDR is possible. Anyone else ever have this happen?

We were in Chicago last week and the hotel didn't do daily room cleaning, and several of the restaurants we went to had QR codes on the table for seeing the menu. To be fair, they did say they could bring us paper menus if we didn't have the tech to do the QR code, but we did so... Lyft and Uber seem to be working fine for us these days, but hotel prices have skyrocketed and there's almost no cleaning service any longer. A couple of hotels have told us they will give us clean towels if we come down and ask for them. I think Celebrity is going the route of only one time cleaning per day as well. Another cut in service. I know RCL has already started only doing morning or evening room setup, but not both.

We've done a Princess and Celebrity cruise recently and we liked the food on Princess better. For one, the specialty restaurants on Princess are still affordable and the Celebrity ones are like 2x the price. The MDR food was slightly better on Princess and we didn't have to pay extra for lobster. In fact, the waiter brought extras on a plate to hand out without us asking (don't know if Princess is going to dumb down lobster night like RCI and Celebrity have done). Our Celebrity experience wasn't bad, but I remember us saying, "Wow that was really good" on the Princess cruise and we opted out of a few MDR dinners to go to the buffet because nothing sounded good on the menu (it could have been good and we just missed out). Since Celebrity is getting so much more expensive (drink package doesn't cover as much, specialty restaurants too spendy, have to pay for extra tiny lobster tail, etc.) we're considering Princess more and more. That doesn't mean we won't go on Celebrity as well. It just used to be our first choice and now it's just a-choice. I'm sure they won't miss us 🙂

It's unfortunate that you've been made to feel that way. I've felt that kind of pressure as well, but just kind of figure we've paid what the cruise line set up as the expectation so we only pay extra if we really want to for some reason. To me, it's like buying the drink package and paying for drinks anyway. It seems kind of dumb. I will pay extra if I want a drink that's not on the package.

We've sort of come to think of the pre-paid gratuities as kind of a service charge and anything else we add is the actual tip. We pay the service charge part, they may it really hard not to, but we only give out extra tips if we get extra service. We've heard from several sources that Celebrity is dumbing down the service some like only setting up rooms once a day instead of the usual twice like before. That way they can have a room steward do more rooms and get more of the gratuities. We also noticed they didn't reduce the service charge, just the amount of service. I expect that will affect our overall extra-tipping in the future. On a recent cruise our daughter had to either leave the pull out couch (for her kids) out all day, or do it themselves and make it up at night. It took up a lot of the room so they did it themselves. That wasn't really a huge deal, but certainly not the special service feeling they used to get cruising. I think Royal is doing this as well.

I'm super excited about this new ship. We're going on in around 10 months. It's different and new, but that's what keeps life exciting. I'm glad they are not just pumping out cookie cutter ships. This is exciting to see. Thanks for posting.

There are usually a few stations open late in the buffet. This is especially true if they know they have excursions returning later to the ship. I think you can also do room service, but you will have to pay the service charge. There are often small bites and desserts in Cafe Bacio as well. You could maybe grab some things like fruit, salad, or sandwiches during breakfast or lunch and store them in y our refrigerator in your room as well. As others have said, Celebrity doesn't do a very good job of having late night food options. It's probably because a lot of Celebrity cruisers go to bed pretty early and they'd waste a lot of food just for the very few who might occasionally care. Maybe room service would be the best thing for you. It will cost something like $11.94, but that's for unlimited items and I know they serve very late, if not all night. That might be a good option for you and your family and it's really not that expensive.

I think it’s fair to rotate entertainment on ships. They typically do contracts for multiple performances. If you’re going on several cruises in the same area in a recent timeframe you could expect some duplication. The cocktail hours have been the same for a long time, but if you get the all inclusive deal you can drink any time you want. We’ve been doing that on the last few cruises. Some people seem hung up on what other people wear. I don’t get it. What’s so fun about uncomfortable shoes and strangling yourself with a necktie. The whole standard of what’s “dressy” is antiquated. I’m not saying things haven’t changed a lot on X, but these things aren’t high on my radar.

I agree with you. We always just tip whatever we want without regard to feeling pressure. We always pay the service charges as well and assume the cruise line is not stealing them from their own staff 🙂

We got invited to the heli-pad on our last cruise on Summit. It's a very cool experience.

Once we arrived in Norway we saw something every night. We never saw much with the naked eye, but we saw a lot through our phones. Apparently, as we learned, this is kind of normal.

That's great to hear. It should be like that. On our cruise, there were people who were livid because they missed the first night. I know they can't call ever room individually, the the intercom can go into the rooms, and should, on these kinds of cruise. Our our cruise they announced it on the second night, but only on the public speakers and lots of people can't even hear them when their doors are closed. They suggested we turn the TV to a channel, and we did, but it never came across there. So... we just stayed up and slept in the next morning 🙂