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Thanks for the review. I've wanted to sail on an Edge-class ship since I first saw them, but we're just now getting to go on Beyond in mid-December. I'm very excited and your review gave me lots to look forward to!

Aperol Spritz is my go-to for by the pool. The Zacapa Old Fashion at the WCB is really fabulous. They made me delicious New York sours at the Ensemble lounge on the Eclipse this past May (it's a whiskey sour with a dark red wine float). Delicious!

I appreciate such a balanced review. We've yet to sail on HAL. I booked our first cruise on the Nieuw Amsterdam for next August to Alaska. I'm hoping that the entertainment shakes out and there are more options on that cruise. We just got off the Discovery Princess (our first Princess cruise) and the varied live entertainment was lovely. We especially enjoyed Take Five their dedicated jazz venue with a jazz trio every night. I really hope that I booked the right line. We love music and I hope that your HAL experience is more of an anomaly than the rule moving forward.

We just got off the Discovery Princess and I was very disappointed in the wine selection on the Plus package. We're not wine snobs per se, but I do like a good dry rose, a nice Cabernet, and a light pinot grigio. Hubby was happy enough with the pinot grigio, I think it was Canyon Road? But the Charles & Charles rose I got once in Good Spirits was nigh undrinkable. They found me a better one in the MDR thank goodness! I guess I was spoiled by Celebrity's wine selection, but Princess did have a much better variety of Bourbon and scotches. So it really worked out in the end.

We were there! It was fun. There was a costume contest and tons of people in costume. But, I will say it was not well advertised. Luckily, I caught the Cruise Director after trivia and asked about it. That's how I found it.

We were on this cruise and now hubby has a cold. He's still negative for COVID so maybe it is just a cold? I'm keeping my distance just to make sure I don't get it since I have a procedure scheduled for next week. We wore our masks in the elevators because they were so crowded at all hours of the day and night. And generally we kept our distance from most people, but we did a cooking class in PV with 4 other folks (and the chef, his wife, and an assistant) and a hot springs tour in Mazatlan with two others, but that was in a very crowded taxi. Then there was the flight home. So many opportunities to catch it and we weren't as diligent as we were back in May. Hopefully, it's just a cold for hubby and nothing else. I worry with his asthma that COVID could be quite serious even though he is triple boosted. We did meet a couple, quite a bit older than us, who were on board who were not vaxxed. I will hope for their sake's that they didn't catch it.

Oh! What a brilliant idea! On our cruise this past May I tried to take a photo with the crew members that deserved not just extra gratuities from us, but special recognition on the survey, but it'd be easier if I'd just write them down. I'm not sure why I hadn't thought of that.

So, hubby got the offer for a free veranda from BCC, which we thought was odd because he's Pearl and hasn't gambled much at all. I know total has to be less than $100. I wasn't sure about using the form so I phoned and got someone right away. I ended up getting a Veranda on Beyond for 7-nights on December 11th out of Ft. Lauderdale. Total tax & fees: $285. Unbelievable. I have already booked two excursions online because I had no idea there were discounts on those from the BCC! Is Celebrity truly having that much trouble filling the ships? Despite having to buy air fare in December, and booking excursions through Celebrity instead of 3rd party, it's still going to be a dirt cheap cruise. Booking the same room direct with Celebrity was over $2500! And that was the cruise-only fare. I'm super excited because I've wanted to sail on an Edge class ship ship I first saw Edge, but the fares were always out of reach.

We're new to Princess but are used to flexible dining. I made reservations for each night in the same dining room in the hopes that I can get the same staff if I like them. That's the way it's always worked out for us on Celebrity and Royal. And if anyone wonders why we don't do "fixed time" dining, it's because it's either too early or too late for us, plus I do like having the flexibility to change things up and not go to the MDR if we're too tired to dress up so we just hit the buffet.

We'll be on the Discovery Princess for Halloween and hubby and I are planning on going to dinner in costume. I do hope the cruise line gets into the spirit of it as well. It's always fun to see how much effort people put into their costumes and I can't wait!

Thank you for the info. I don't think we take our privacy online seriously enough. Yes, I make the conscious decision to create accounts on web sites, but I also never use my real name on them. And definitely not my photo. It's not being paranoid when our data is the product being sold, but there are things we can do to improve our privacy. Use a VPN when surfing, don't use google, use duck-duck-go or others. There are add-ons to browsers that can block things that track you. Those are all good. And fairly easy to do. As for the medallion and my last name, first name being freely accessible to other passengers, I don't think that's a concern for me. Others might feel differently and they should have the ability to remove their names from a publicly searchable list. And I would encourage any single traveler to ask for the name displayed on their door to only be initials that way it's not clear the gender of the occupant.

Wow! Thank you for such a wonderful, detailed review! I really appreciated your humor and all the photos. The Edge is the reason we started looking at Celebrity, but we haven't yet managed a cruise on an edge-class ship. We booked the Beyond for my 60th birthday, a Panama canal cruise and I'm so excited! We're in one of those infinite verandas, so we'll see how we like it. I can't imagine that it will be an issue for us, but we'll see.

Thank you so much for all of the information! I've booked our first HAL cruise on the same ship/itinerary for 2023 for hubby's 60th, but in late August. I didn't book a land package with HAL and I was wondering if that was a good idea. Thanks for letting me know that my instincts were good! I've done Alaska before, with my elderly parents and I did let the cruise line handle everything, including the pre-cruise land tour. It was great for us at the time because I was certain they would be looked after. But for hubby and I, I want to do it myself. Just trying to figure out how to get everything in that I want to do!