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I ended up getting the 2 bedroom family villa with large balcony. I was torn between the space of the forward facing penthouse and the courtyard penthouse and decided to do the best of both worlds.

1. Totally agree, sometimes you may get into the luxury segment (which Celebrity marketing will tell you they are, but they are not) for similar prices on some of their future voyages. 2. HAL entertainment is the biggest thing that has pushed me to try other brands (and I have been very happy with HAL for a long time). They have only 4 shows and it is the same 4 on every ship. The Music walk is great but on multiple trips they have cut the sets from 45 minutes down to like 2 or 3 songs, one of them being a long instrumental. And don't get me started on the BBC films....

You can on a space available basis since Blu is the designated dining room for Aqua class. The concierge or maitre D should be able to arrange it for you, particularly if you are flexible on day and time. Also, if you book an upper suite they will pretty much find a way to make room for you whenever/wherever you want. One thing I forgot to mention is that you can show up to Luminae whenever you want and you still get your same servers. It is basically the flexibility of open dining with the service of fixed seating. As I recall there were like 4 or so waiters in Club Orange and you sort of just got whoever. They were very nice and helpful, but it did not feel nearly as personal. We never really liked open seating because we like getting to know our waiters and having that relationship. So love getting the best of both worlds. I definitely have a lot to say on entertainment when I get to that! I absolutely agree Celebrity suites definitely beat HAL overall. That being said, Celebrity suites are generally more expensive and often a lot more expensive. You really have to think about if the added perks are worth the extra cost. If cabin size ranks high on your list of priorities then I would say Neptunes are better than Sky Suites (though obviously not a Royal or Celebrity suite, but that is really getting into a different cabin bracket & HAL has no equivalent).

I certainly love being pampered on a cruise...but I have to agree, it's a no from me on the unpacking!

I never tried Blu because Luminae was so amazing and we also loved Murano (but more on that later). This next cruise is longer so I may have to go one night.

Main Dining - Celebrity wins I really liked having a suite only dining room on Celebrity. Luminae is open for embarkation day lunch, and then breakfast & dinner daily and lunch when at sea. We were assigned the same waiter & assistant waiter for the entire cruise (but not necessarily the same table). The restaurant was split into two smaller more intimate dining areas. We always sat in the same one so we got to know the wait staff for that area very well. Luminae has its own menu that changes daily (except for breakfast). Depending on the ship you can also order off the MDR menu also so this gives you a lot more choices. HAL does not have an equivalent of this. HAL sort of tried with Club Orange but CO only has the main dining room menu with one extra entree. I found that the staffing level was much better and service quality was higher in Luminae. Our half of the restaurant had 3 waiters and at least 3 assistant waiters plus the beverage folks. There were more folks who worked in the other half that we never met. We found the food quality to be excellent and I would not mind skipping specialty dining and eating every meal there. Club Orange is a nice step up on the Pinnacle Class ships but it feels more like a main dining room rather than an elevated experience or specialty dining. It also is never open for lunch. On one cruise I thought the food was the best I had had on HAL but on others it was just OK, and on HAL I usually tend to do almost all specialty dining for the evening meals. A random selection of Luminae menus

Thank you all for the bon voyages and birthday wishes! I made it to Tampa, the flight was uneventful but quite turbulent at the end - I just saw in the news several people on a flight to Tampa yesterday. It is quite humid & has been raining on and off. Weather for the cruise is looking good though! I flew in on Delta and had a choice of a quiche, french toast or charcuterie board. I went with the quiche which was actually quite good. Tomorrow morning I am having breakfast with a friend and we have a group dinner at the Columbia Restaurant which is the oldest restaurant in Florida and the world's largest Spanish Restaurant. Can't wait to board the ship Monday!

Thank you! And yes, the sky suite is a rough equivalent of the Neptune but a bit smaller in terms of square footage. Celebrity definitely has a much wider range of suites than HAL.

Totally agree! Will be updating on that shortly 🙂

And finally, the Royal Suite on Solstice which is by far the best cabin I have ever sailed in. Loved everything about it. View from the entry door - behind me to the left is the day head. The hallway to the left enters the bedroom. To my right is the dining table & buffet/minibar area & straight ahead is of course the living room area. Dining table and mini bar/butler pantry View from living room back to the entry way. The couch on my left folds out to a bed (reportedly very low) Day head for visitors, or so the guests sleeping in the living room don't have to disturb you at night. And the bedroom (off to the right is.a small desk and the TV) Master Bathroom And I totally forgot to take pictures of the walk in closet!!

Aft Wrap Neptune Suite - Eurodam Aft Wrap Neptune Suite - Koningsdam Deck 4 (More balcony than you will know what to do with, and my favorite HAL cabins at sea)

Before I get started, for those of you who followed my live last July, you know that mom & I did a HAL cruise in July with Seth when he was their brand ambassador. He has since gone out on his own and is doing group cruises. I had such a good time and booked a spot on the first one. It departs Monday & I will be doing a live over on the X board if anyone is interested in following. I am also in a Royal Suite and will be comparing to my HAL Neptune experiences. On to my thoughts on The Retreat vs Neptunes: I also sailed with Celebrity in November onboard the Solstice and wanted to share a few thoughts. This was before some recent cutbacks so we will see if my opinion changes. After 15 HAL cruises (13 of which were in Neptunes) I decided in November to give X a try. I had been looking at them for a long time and finally got an offer on a Royal Suite that I could not pass up. At the last minute my mom decided to join and booked a Sky Suite (they had a single supplement offer that made it cheaper to book 2 cabins than add her to my room). To be fair, I only have 1 cruise with Celebrity. As we all know experiences can vary greatly from one ship or class of ships to another. I also stayed in a Royal Suite which is a higher end suite and HAL has no equivalent to. More on that below. I will also be updating this thread over the next couple weeks to add my impressions from the Constellation which is an older class of ship than the Solstice. Suite Overview All Suites on Celebrity include access to a private suite only dining room (called Luminae - closest HAL equivalent is Club Orange), The Retreat Lounge/Michaels club (compares to the Neptune Lounge), and on newer ships there is also The Retreat Sun Deck which is exclusive to suite guests (No HAL equivalent). All suites on Celebrity also come with butler service. Suites also come with "Always Included" by default which is similar to Have it All. That being said you can sometimes purchase a no-perks fare. Always included includes gratuities, wifi (level of wifi depends on what type of suite you book), and a premium drink package. Celebrity fares default to a non-refundable deposit (which also features a $100 per person change fee to change sailing date or ships). You can upgrade this to a refundable deposit for an additional cost. Suite Overview - Celebrity has a much larger range of suites in their Retreat Class than HAL has. With HAL you have Neptune Suites & Pinnacle Suites and the only variation within category is the location. Entry level Suites include all of the above. The mini bar is not included, however this depends highly on your butler. Some butlers will not charge you and will stock with your requested items at no cost. If you don't have one of the butlers who will do this you can ask them to empty it and then get soda cans with your drink package and stock it yourself. Sky Suite: roughly equates to a Neptune. Neptunes are a larger and in my view better room. On all but the R class ships HAL also has aft wrap Neptunes which my favorites. Celebrity Suite: Similar in size or larger than a Neptune. They feature a separate sitting area and a bedroom that has a door that closes. Upper Suites - the below categories are considered upper suites and come with added perks. Unlimited free laundry/dry cleaning only starts here (they say 2x per cruise but it is really unlimited unless you try to sneak in a lot of laundry from your family of 20 who are not staying in suites). You also get unlimited specialty dining. You get complimentary non-alcoholic beverages in your mini bar and 2 bottles of liquor. Additionally you will be contacted a few weeks before the cruise by a shore side concierge who will make note of your preferences and you should find that your mini bar has been stocked Royal Suite: Slightly larger than a Neptune with a living room and dining area as well as a separate bedroom. You also have a day head/guest bathroom off of the living room for visitors. Penthouse Suite: Roughly equivalent to a Pinnacle Suite though I believe the Pinnacle is larger depending on which ship you are comparing. The Edge class ships (which are Celebrity's newest) have some larger suites also. That is all for the moment, but a lot more to come comparing the experiences in the next few days. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few photos for reference. Sky Suite (Celebrity Solstice, aft corner) Standard Neptune Suite - Eurodam

I normally do live threads the HAL board as I mostly have sailed with them - but you all have been so helpful and friendly as I have explored Celebrity I thought I would do a live thread over here. This will be my second X cruise, I was on the Solstice in November and had a wonderful trip (but was far too busy trying out everything for the first time to keep up with a live). For this trip I booked a Royal Suite (same category I had on Solstice) so I look forward to comparing the experience between ships and the brands. Like many of you I have also seen quite a bit of news recently in regards to onboard cutbacks, so I will certainly be reporting on that as well. Please let me know if there are any questions and I will certainly try to get answers while I am onboard. This cruise is actually a group cruise - some of you who follow the HAL boards may be familiar with Seth (HAL's former brand ambassador) did a number of group cruises while he was employed with them. My mom and I sailed on one in July & had a fabulous time. In August he started his own company doing group cruises. This is the first one he is doing so it will be very interesting to see how that goes! I am traveling solo so it will be nice to have a smaller group to connect with. I am also celebrating.a birthday onboard so that will be fun as well. I will be flying to Tampa on Saturday so that I have a couple days to relax and adjust to the new time zone. Excursions planned at the moment: Grand Cayman: Turtle Encounter and Cayman Turtle Conservation Cartagena day 1: Exclusive group Evening tour (stay tuned) Cartagena day 2: No plans currently (I have a very substantial amount of OBC still so I will probably try to burn some at the Spa as they are quite good at taking your money) Colon: Destination Highlight: Panama Canal Locks and Culebra Cut Cruise Puerto Limon: Destination Highlight: Vintage Railway Journey Cozumel: Small Group: Flavors and Traditions of Mexico Last Sea Day: Inside Access: Behind-the-Scenes Ship Tour Looking forward to bringing everyone along!

Thanks so much for your review! I really found it so helpful. I have really wanted to try the yacht club, but for a number of reasons MSC has no appeal to me. I don't know if this has made me want to sail with them or not, but a lot of food for thought!

Oh I think maybe it depends on the ship. I believe some use inside lounges and some outside decks. That would make a difference in strategy.

Wait I think I have it figured out. In about one month NCL will announce "our return to in-person muster drills has been an enormous success. For your convenience we will now allow you to complete the e-muster before hand for a $25 per person fee so that you can stay in your cabin while everyone else does the in-person drill" 😂

That is honestly what I am thinking...I know sometimes if people no-show they get a do-over the next day. I would never try either of these myself, but I could see why someone would risk it. Especially if you have claustrophobia or a hard time standing. I think I may go very early with a book and/or ipad so that I can hopefully get a nice seat.

From a strictly a guest perspective, the e-muster is an absolutely no brainer. So much easier and much more pleasant of an experience. I would think that the advantage for the cruise line is to give the crew real practice with crowd management (and all the other behind the scenes things we don't see like sweeping the ship if they do this during the muster drill). Ironically the people who show up late are rewarded as they don't have to stand in the crowded room for half an hour waiting for themselves to show up.

No experience with NCL, but we do Alaska every year. IMO the weather is just too unpredictable for this type of purchase. While peak summer months may have 3/4 weeks of warm weather, you won't know if your week is the cold and rainy one until you get there - and those high averages won't do you a tiny bit of good if it turns out to be that week. We got a cabana on our last HAL cruise and definitely regretted it. Sailed in July and other than embarkation day it was basically unusable the entire cruise. We did stay onboard and had lunch up there in Sitka while totally bundled up and after barricading the curtains with deck furniture. Had to give up after two hours or so - it was just too cold. The two weeks before us they had weather in the 70s and 80s and they did the week after us as well. I will not make this type of purchase again for Alaska - save your money for excursions and do it on your next cruise to Mexico or the Caribbean.

I definitely find it helpful to see what others tip - especially when trying a new line or type of service like the Haven. In particular it is helpful to know that the butlers & concierge are not included in the DSC as this will definitely make a difference to whatever formula I come up with on day 5 or 6 of the cruise based on the services used and quality of service received. Unless there is a major service problem I will almost certainly tip more than I did in a HAL Neptune or Celebrity Retreat as those folks were all compensated by the DSC and a gratuity is truly an extra.

I always make final payment at least a few days in advance. Just in case there is an issue I want to have time to get it fixed. As far as the cruise line is concerned paying on final payment date is totally fine, just know that it will most likely auto cancel at the end of the day if it has not been paid in full by the end of the day, so don't forget! Also you can probably pay one day before and be OK. It should take at least a day or two for the charge to post to your statement.

I will say I do not recall any issues with motion. We felt it much less than we do on the HAL aft wrap suites. But the seas were very calm so not sure what they would be like in rougher seas. If you are on the higher decks the ship does slant in pretty sharply as you go farther up so you are not really at the very back. And that is so nice of you to say. We are very close and love to travel together, though I can't always convince her to come along. I usually have to drag her kicking and screaming, but she always has a fabulous time once we are there.

Yes, we saw into that a couple times when we walked past. Basically the same room, of course no port hole looking out but otherwise the room looked very much like ours. I think ours is a bit longer and narrower since it is on the corner and the location of the door is different. But the actual cabin space looked very much the same.

So much fun to compare side by side, MSC yacht club has been on my list to try so this is extremely helpful. As were the Celebrity posts - glad to know it is not all doom & gloom!

So I took advantage of fantastic pricing & a single supplement waiver and got a royal suite (1609). My mom decided to tag along last minute and it was cheaper to get her a separate cabin so we booked an aft facing sky suite (1663). We did not have any noise issues on either one. The royal suite was, of course, delightful and I was extremely well taken care of everywhere. A Sky Suite is basically a very large balcony cabin with The Retreat perks. My go to is definitely going to be a Sky Suite absent great pricing on a Royal or Celebrity suite, the whole Luminae and Michael's Club team were fantastic. Butlers were great also, they definitely worked as a team - we had room service delivered by several different butlers throughout the cruise. The crew everywhere was really incredible and friendly. My butler was definitely more proactive and attentive - but we were well taken care of in both cabins. This may have been a product of spending more time in my room, and personality/experience differences between our butlers. It is a good distance from the elevators to the aft sky suites. On our next sailing we are going to try to get a sky suite as far forward as possible on deck 12 because my mom has a hard time walking long distances and I think it will be more convenient. The pro of the aft facing Sky Suite is you have both a balcony and a large porthole - note there are a few aft facing sky suites on 11 & 12 that are not corners which of course do not have a port hole. I really like the aft view and being above to see things on both sides of the ship, but if you are at all concerned about privacy on the balcony I would not book anything aft facing. Each deck comes out farther so everyone above you can see basically the whole balcony, and even on the top deck there are public spaces above that can see down. I also felt like seeing so many balconies from the aft made me feel a bit crowded, on these vessels I think I personally prefer something side facing where I can't see 40 or so cabins are right there. Including some pictures from 1663 for reference