NavalCruiser

Just wondering why these are now becoming prime cabins on ship on the newer boats they are becoming suites & above.

In my opinion, they could be great, but they have some faults which make them less appealing than they might appear at first glance.

When we sailed to Hawaii on the Celebrity Century (a lovely ship, and a cruise I would really like to do again), we were in one of the aft cabins. We had a following wind which must have been very close to the sames speed as the ship, so there was no airflow at all on the balcony. Since the stern balconies on Summit are very deep, the balcony was almost stifling, and we spent very little time there.

Also, stern balconies may be overseen by a bar on the deck above, and, unless they are very deep, may not be very private.

For my wife and I, we'll never do a stern balcony again.

We sailed to Hawai'i in 2006 in Summit, in cabin 1136, one of the the stern cabins (Celebrity called them 'suites' but they were the same size as normal cabins, but with a huge balcony). We did find, especially if the wind was straight on the bow, that the balconies got little breeze. This may have been partly because we our cabin was not one of the outer ones, and thus was protected from three directions. Only when we had a following wind did we feel any breeze, and that was only if the wind was greater than our forward speed.

What we really noticed was engine noises. I don't know for sure that Summit had any engine problems on that trip, but I do know that there were definitely unusual variations in engine speed and sound, and she trailed one engine, on at least two occasions, for quite an extensive period of time.

Had it been any warmer we would probably have been uncomfortable, but, as it turned out, we spent more time on the sunset bar directly over our cabin than we did on the balcony. But we also decided that we would never select that 'suite' again.

So let me get this straight. You pay a couple of hundred dollars per day for the cruise, which is supposed to include all meals, then you pay another $58 per day for specialty dining. What happened to 'all-inclusive' (excluding booze, of course). I get the feeling that Celebrity is well into nickle-and-diming us to death.