catgirl411

Did Panama Canal 14 day December 2020 over Christmas and New Year’s on Emerald Princess. I was worried about whether there’d be masses of over excited kids but it was great. No problems at all. Perhaps it was the 14 day length or the cruise line or the itinerary but there weren’t all that many kids and the teenagers and college age kids were fine.

Perhaps the sticky bun specialist is back on duty

I didn’t think of it that way. I was thinking of “falling down drunks”. But I guess the juxtapositioning of the comment with the fried foods part makes your interpretation reasonable. As someone who is currently on a weight loss journey, now I’m insulted by their remarks. And I need knee replacement so I have limited mobility. Frankly I think the most annoying people on any cruise are the demanding, complaining, entitled ones.

Posters keep saying that OP meant disabled people when they talked about people who can hardly stand. I think they meant people who were so drunk that they could barely stand up. I can’t imagine they were mean-spirited enough to diss disabled people.

When I read all of this stuff about pirates, I visualize the movie Captain Philips with Tom Hanks. Scary!

Yes, that’s true. I don’t think it is 24/7 though…nor does the person delivering it perform (lol). The service can be spotty though, depending on the wifi but lot’s of people use it.

Looking forward to your summary. As retirees who have been to the Caribbean multiple times, we’re not surprised at your lack of excursions. Like you we just enjoy the floating Hotel experience.

Thanks for all of your reports. I am really going to miss your daily reports that helped me feel like I was there.

Omg! I am obvious out of my league here. Are you serious…a $4,700 coffee machine! I’m sure it makes amazing coffee but that amount represents a serious portion of a week’s cruise fare. You must really love coffee!

Isn’t it unfortunate that some negative posters (and there are quite a few that are frequent posters so it may seem like there are more than there actually are), have dampened other cruisers’ anticipation of their upcoming cruises. Pre-cruise time shouldn’t be full of anxiety (we had enough of that as the pandemic progressed)…it should be full of excitement and joy! Thanks for sharing your experience. And I highly recommend following some live cruise reports..they are pretty upbeat too.

I’m 66 and DH is 70. While we aren’t as young or mobile as we once were, we are also not looking for a geriatric experience. For us that was HAL. It doesn’t disturb us that x’s marketing skews a bit younger.

While I take the point that many are making that food has deteriorated when compared to previous experiences, (and also that food, and many other aspects of cruising are subjective), I really find it very hard to believe that X is deliberately trying to alienate its frequent cruisers. Seems like a very odd strategy. I refuse to believe that any large corporation wants to eliminate its loyal customers as a strategy.

Since we were often the only ones in the piano bar most nights we got to know the piano player so that was interesting. And yes, I forgot that we were able to have more than 1 meal at the specialty restaurants and that was great. 30 years ago we sailed Windstar in French Polynesia…now that was like a private yacht.

Yes, it was strange. In January 2022, we were on Oceania’s Riviera. There were about 470 pax on a ship that normally carries 1200. Most nights we were the only after dinner guests in the Piano Lounge and the MDR was essentially a bowling alley. Too quiet.

Well, the crowds were to be expected. There’s no way cruises could continue to operate at reduced capacity. Those of us who cruised in 2022 got spoiled from that perspective. If you want smaller numbers of passengers then I guess you need to travel on smaller ships.

Following along. We are booked into a Sky Suite for our October TransAtlantic. We’ve been on Reflection before but this will be our first Retreat experience. Looking forward to hearing how it goes for you.

The bathroom break is legit, as is a short lunch or swimming in the pool but anything else is just selfish. I’ve frequently seen stuff on chairs as early as 8 am and come back after breakfast to see the chairs still unoccupied. This whole chair thing is one of the reasons we get balcony cabins. Then we have our own reserved space and don’t have to face the hassle of finding a vacant lounger around the pool. I have the same problem with hot tub hogs.

Yes but your “pointed questions” may make people feel like their opinions are being challenged and they are being interrogated. Their opinions are theirs and yours are yours.

I’m not sure what you are expecting. You were unhappy with your experience as were others on this (and other threads). There are also people who are happy with their experience. I can’t imagine that Celebrity is going to contact you at some point to tell you they’ve “fixed the problem”. Therefore you are stuck with places like Cruise Critic to see what others are experiencing. In addition, a trusted TA can help you based on what their other clients are saying. And as for descriptions on the website those are marketing words and should always be taken with a grain of salt.

I have to say that I don’t get the obsession with room service. In over 25 cruises, we’ve had it exactly once. That was this past August when we had our first ever suite and it was breakfast the day we sailed in Glacier Bay. That was glorious and I would gladly have paid a service charge if required. Most of the cabins we’ve been in don’t have a proper table eat at so we don’t find the experience enjoyable. But to each their own preference.

So happy to see some happy campers in this thread and I am happy to have found some Live reports from Celebrity ships which are quite positive. Frankly I hope that the contented passenger outweigh the unhappy ones on our October TA. Some of the unhappy group (certainly not all) make everyone’s experience on board less pleasant. And as someone with three post pandemic experiences in the last year, (1 on Oceania and 2 on Princess), I can say that no cruise is perfect but there is always more good than bad imho.

Back in January 2022, our Uber driver had trouble finding Terminal J,even though we pointed the ship out to him. We drove by the ship twice before he was able to get directions from a porter at one of the other terminals on how to actual get to J. It was tricky!

Going to miss your reports. I’ve been enjoying living vicariously through you! Our last cruise ended January 2nd and the next one isn’t until mid-Oct so that’s a big gap to fill. Thanks for your helpful, upbeat posts.

Thanks so much for taking us along. We will miss your regular reports from Beyond. What is your next adventure?

Your chair rating is fascinating. Ever since my husband had a somewhat failed hip replacement 2.5 years ago (now awaiting corrective surgery), we’ve spent a bunch of time on cruises (and in restaurants on land) trying to find what works for him. This involves lots of trial and error with much shuffling from chair to chair and with scary moments where his attempts to get up from chair “failures” seems on the brink of upsetting tables around us. I never knew how critical the correct chair choice could be! So many lovely looking chairs are massive fails from an accessibility perspective…sigh..