SmilingOctopus

Just got of the Edge 2 days ago. She is indeed going on drydock after the current cruise. So after next Saturday they'll head to Marseille, France for 2 weeks. As far as I heard no major changes, some staff mentioned basic things like technical maintenance, new carpets left and right, things like fixing up the pool areas, etc

If you're talking about the main dining room, I believe they'll just arrange a table for 10. Not really anything private as far as I know. Perhaps you could contact celebrity about their 'special occasions' offers, but I have no experience with any of those.

For the speciality dining, you can indeed cancel up to 24hr prior to the booking for a full refund. Also, with the Labour day flash sale I managed to book Eden for $44.90 instead of the original $65 I believe. So they do some good sales once in a while. If your cruise is still a while from now, I'd keep checking the cruise planner once in a while to look out for some good sales 🙂

This one perhaps gives a nicer overview of things. And given that it was sent to me by Celebrity under a month ago, I'd assume it to be more or less up to date.. Beverage_Package_Brochure.pdf

Exactly! So basically you will need to pay the difference +20% gratuities, if you are above the 10$ price point. So in the case of the 15$ cocktail you'll pay 6$ extra (5+20%)

I'll be on board in 2 weeks, if I find some differences with the reality, I'll write it here 🙂

If it's of any help, celebrity sent me this pdf some weeks ago. As far as I know this is still valid at the moment. It also states that it includes alcoholic drinks up to $10. Beverage_Package_Brochure.pdf

Exactly this. Some weeks ago I called to combine the ongoing sale with my Captain Club level and they said it's either one or the other. In my case the ongoing sale gave the better price, so I went with it. It was 9.99$ + grats per day.

Given current trends I wouldn't be surprised if the next announcement will be that they've listened to the community and that gratuities will be part of the base price starting 4 Oct 😂 It would actually be a good thing in my opinion, making things less complicated for a change..

I'm curious to see the price difference for a given cruise on October 3rd vs 4th. Will be interesting for sure 😄

It often takes a few days until the company adds all the "all included" options in your cruise planner. Last time it took something like 3 days for me. Suddenly you'll see those in your order history, and also the debt will be gone by then. 🙂 It will then look like something in the picture below. One is for the added Wifi, one for the drink package. Normally once those are done, you'll also see the gratuities added on the Manage Reservation page.

I believe that they might just be actually updating all of it. Over recent months there's been a lot of confusion (including from my side) about drink packages. Simply because the Celebrity website contradicted itself on various pages, with lots of different information on premium and classic packages. So with some luck they're just improving it to be more consistent. Obviously, given current trends from Celebrity this might be naïve and wishful thinking from my side 😄 On the other hand, this is the pdf which was emailed to my by Celebrity a couple of weeks ago, lets assume this is still valid for the time being. Beverage_Package_Brochure.pdf

Thank you so much for taking the time in your vacation to 'fact check' these things. Hope you'll feel better soon! I hope that you'll manage to make the best out of your cruise!

And nowadays, it gives you longer to see more and more good things disappear, while looking forward to your cruise 😄 Jokes aside, you make a fair point any way

In my opinion, the best for me so far has been to book early when I need to fly transatlantic to the departure port. Since flights and hotels indeed go up a lot when closer to the date. While when I'm looking for a cruise close by, last minutes have worked out quite well. Managed a really good deal just last week for a September cruise for example. It's just my way of going about it, but booking very early makes a lot of sense too, when its refundable. Especially given the current prices which are going higher then ever...