Cdresser

Loving this review! I was on Summit last week and this is keeping the wonderful memories alive. 

There were a couple ofmpeople I talked with on the 10/4 Summit cruise who extended their cruise. One man was on his fourth b2b and his answer to the question of whether he was staying for another was "I don't know, ask my wife." 

Hi DCPIV, we are neighbors on the ship. We're in a royal suite but we have Glenn and Kseniia looking after us so I think we are on opposite sides of the ship. Anyway, thank you for doing this report. I wanted to do one but I am having problems with my tablet and it  can't get my portable keyboard set up.

This is our first post covid cruise but we have experienced the same enthusiastic friendliness from the crew as the repeat cruisers.

It's amazing sailing with so few passengers. Our only wait was for lunch at Luminae on the first day because we showed up along with most of the suite passengers at 12:45. The staff did a great job of scrambling to accommodate all of us. I was worried that would be a continual problem but it hasn't. 

One note about vaccine cards...this was the first time we had to use ours so we hadn't examined them closely. On DHs card, the person who did his second shot put the lot number and their initials but did not put the date. This caused a 15 -20 anxious wait in the terminal while they found a supervisor to give him the "go ahead" to board. Everyone was very pleasant and apologetic, we understood their need to be cautious, but the bad adrenaline rush was not how I envisioned starting my cruise. On the other hand, the applause from the crew as we boarded brought unexpected tears to my eyes.

I just came from the solarium where I had the whole pool to myself. I savored the experience because I don't think it will happen again.

Thank you so much for posting this review. I will be on the Summit on Monday for a 5 night cruise and was wondering how the short cruises were going.

We will be in a royal suite and I hope to do a semi live report while on board. 

Curious, do you know if they were selling Persian garden day passes?

One reason the extra cost was worth it to us is our vacation time is limited since we are not retired. If we had the time, I'd follow jelayne's thinking - skip the upgrade and go on an additional cruise.

It depends on the minimum bid offer. I can say from experience that $2500pp to move from an s3 to an Edge Villa was totally worth it. We loved having the retreat right outside or door as well as the extra room and hot tub on the deck. However, if you have mobility issues then it's not a good option. Looking at the layouts, the only ones on e class I would bid for would be the villa or the penthouse - even with a moveup bid the Iconic is waaaay out of my price range. I didn't think the royal suite layout was that great and the Celebrity Suite only offers extra room and doesn't have the extra amenities of the upper level suites.

On 4/24/2019 at 7:01 PM, hvbaskey said:

I originally placed the Tracker in the thread initiated by CruisingChick on April 23, 2018.  However, the tracker gets lost amongst all the many questions/comments (understandably).  Thus, I have decided to create a single thread for tracking purposes only (filtering out everything else).  

The purpose of this thread is strictly for compiling information into a spreadsheet.   I will be running this tracker for ~ 6 months to see if any interesting trends come about and/or for general information purposes.  Will reevaluate its usefulness thereafter. 

IF you wish to participate, answer the following questions as best as you can and I will transfer the info to the Tracker. 
Please do not ask questions here (redirect your questions/comments to the CruisingChick thread of April 2018).

 

CELEBRITY MOVE UP TRACKER (effective April 19, 2019; but can back-fill data, if available)

• Ship:  Summit
• Length of Cruise: 5 nights
• Cruise Sail Date: October 4, 2021
• Date email offer received: n/a
• Captain’s Club Tier [“PREVIEW” = first Celebrity Cruise]:  Select
• Booked through Celebrity Direct OR via TA: TA
• Current Cabin: Royal Suite
• Bid?  Yes/No: No

If YES -  Bidding Details:

• Cabin Category: place winning category, if accepted (all category offers, can be mentioned in comments) 
• Bid Offer:
• Notification Date:
• Accepted / Rejected

General Comments (offer details, etc.)

Min Bid for penthouse was $1000pp. I'd like to do the PH sometime but I'll pass on such a high minimum bid  to upgrade on a 5 night cruise (and since the PHs are currently booked I doubt it would be successful anyway).

Welcome back to cruising and thanks for taking us along with you!

I hope you are savoring your last night in the villa. Thank you for sharing your trip with us. For me especially it has  brought back memories of my magical vacation in the Edge villa in 2019. 

Interesting, I'm on the Summit 5 night cruise October 4 and Costa Maya is supposed to be our stop on day 4. I haven't had an email about a change but won't be surprised or disappointed if a change does happen. 

I was able to request (and receive) Rosa Regale to substitute for a bottle of alcohol when in the Edge Villa in 2019. I also obtained Drambuie for DH and neither were on the list provided by the Shoreside Concierge. If there is a bottle of wine or alcohol you want and they have it on the ship, it never hurts to ask. My experience has been they will provide it if it is within reason. I haven't tried to get Veuve Cliquot as a sub but I am tempted to ask on our upcoming cruise just to test the boundaries;.

39 minutes ago, wrk2cruise said:

You said you were in a regular veranda stateroom.  On "M" class ships these rooms are 168 sq ft which is over 20 sq ft smaller than what you had on Equinox where all veranda staterooms are the same size.  On M class only Concierge Class and Aqua Class are pretty much the same size as the veranda on Equinox.

 

I was hoping you were on the 10/4 as the solo price is better and there are a couple of sought after S1 cabins available for $1998 solo.

I am on the 10/04 Summit sailing. We got a great deal on a royal suite so decided to go for it. There is a roll call for that cruise if your friend is interested. 

We really enjoy meeting new people on cruises but I had never considered the problem solo cruisers might have if they want to meet people by dining with them if they are in a suite and using Luminae. I am considering letting the maitre d know we'd be happy to have someone join us if there are solo suite travelers.

They do have the ingredients for their signature cocktails in the Luminae bar. I loved the vanilla mojito and it was only available there. A few nights when we dined elsewhere I still stopped by Luminae just to get the drink.

3 minutes ago, morpheusofthesea said:

Thanks for the tip. Now we don't feel left out because we were sailing in a Celebrity Suite. We did not plan on sailing on the July 3 2021 sailing, but the rave reviews prompted us to the Celebrity web site and lo and behold this CS suite popped up 48hrs before sailing. Excited about the Villa in 3 weeks. It is not the stairs, we do not use the elevators, just the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Then you won't have a problem because there is a bathroom on each level. I think the master bathroom is probably the size of an inside cabin- it is huge. Also, your DW will enjoy all of the closet space. I can't compete with her as a packing extraordinaire, but we had 4 full size suitecases and 2 carryons and had space left over. There's even a closet on the first floor.

Thank you for this wonderful group of poop deck observations. You have made me even more excited for my upcoming cruise in a royal suite on the Summit. Funny how everyone has different priorities. One of our favorite parts of being in a royal is the hot tub but we hardly use the rest of the balcony. I'll be interested to learn what you think of the Edge Villa balcony next month. We loved it - and the rest of the suite. Another couple on our cruise did not like theirs because of the stairs but I considered them to be a good rationale for more scones at tea time.

BTW, if you get invited to a helipad sailaway on the Edge, DON'T GO! The Edge does not have a helipad 😉

We did this in December 2019. They offer a number of options after the photo session. All of them were very pricey but the pics were gorgeous. At first we balked at the price but then I was struck by the memory of a friend who was recently widowed and realized that one day those photos might be priceless to one of us. We bought just the digital images of 5 pics and I think it was $500. 

There may be some confusion here. The OP is staying in an Edge Villa which comes with complementary specialty dining. Normally, Raw on Five and Sushi on Five are priced ala carte. With the complementary specialty dining that comes with the higher end suites, everything is free.

That said, when we were on the Millenium in July 2019, we were in Aqua and bought a specialty dining package on board that allowed us to dine in Sushi on Five for a set price rather than ala carte. I can't recall the pricing but I remember thinking it wasn't much of a money saver.

No restrictions at all regarding what or how many of each thing you can order. We were in an Edge Villa in December 2019 and had a great time trying all of the specialty restaurants on board. 

Since you are in a suite, I recommend tea in the Retreat. It's not necessarily "fun", but the little scones with clotted cream and jam are heavenly:).

The most fun for us was meeting and hanging out with people who were also enjoying a fabulous vacation.

I don't know if this holds for cruising since reopening, but when I was on the Edge there was a brunch held one of the days in the Bistro. You have to sign up for it on the ship and tickets go fast. The Bistro also serves lunch every day and we actually liked the lunch a little better than the brunch. Also, Raw on 5 was open for lunch on some days. (We were in an upper level suite thanks to MoveUp so we took full advantage of the free specialty dining and ate in every venue at least once.)

15 minutes ago, gbphipps said:

@graphicguy, I read in another thread about a helipad sailaway as a suite perk.  Was that available to you on your sailing?  We will be embarking on July 24th B2B with the 31st sailing.  We thought that would be a fun time if it was offered.

There is no helipad on the Edge.

My favorite drink recommendation is a little odd but definitely Celebrity specific - the detox smoothie in the spa cafe. Our butler on the Edge recommended it and after a few days of rich food and a bit more alcohol than I normally consume it was needed. It worked like a champ - my swollen ankles and slight malaise cleared right up. After that it became a daily morning shipboard routine for me.

Congrats and thank you for posting here and in the move-up tracker. We did an Edge Villa after winning a moveup bid back in 2019 and it was fabulous. Coincidentally, our last cruise was also on the Infinity in a Royal Suite. Here's hoping your trip is fantastic as ours was.

There is another recent thread on this topic you might want to read - Sky Suite vs Aqua. I think the prevailing opinion was that Sky suites are worth it depending on the price difference. 

3 hours ago, DCPIV said:

 

That sounds wonderful.  We'll be in an RS next sailing, and I would love something like that.  Do you have any other details on that smoothie, or was it just called "detox"?  

 

 Yes, there is something about cruising that makes excess the standard, and extraordinary measures are required to cope. 😉 

Just called "detox". If you go to the spa Cafe, they list the ingredients. I can't remember what was in it but it was delicious.