Charges for In Room Movies on the Summit

[funfamilytime]

I couldn't believe that Celebrity Summit Charges $14.99 PPV for movies in your stateroom.  The only channels that were free was the making of the Edge, Safety video, and port shopping.  Errrr, I was very disappointed.  For a $4K cruise and they can't offer free movies.  I think that was pretty sad!  It's not like I wanted to watch movies all day, but my kids enjoy watching a movie at night before bed.  But at $15 a Pop....no way.  

 

 

[jelayne]

That must be a change.  We did 4 Celebrity cruises last year and had both free and pay per view movies as well a number of news, sports channels. 

[orchestrapal]

3 minutes ago, jelayne said:

That must be a change.  We did 4 Celebrity cruises last year and had both free and pay per view movies as well a number of news, sports channels. 

 

I would hope they have that same line-up if not more this spring!

[funfamilytime]

Not on the Summit. If you got lucky, maybe you would hit a news channel if it came in clear.  Other than that, charge, charge, charge for ALL MOVIES they offered.    I was actually shocked.  I have never been on a cruise that charged for movies and or had nothing to watch other than "the port tapings" or a show they recorded of their dancers.

 

 

 

Edited January 8, 2019 by funfamilytime

[hcat]

Wonder if that is going fleetwide?

 

At first,  S class ships had awesome movies..huge choice for free.  Gradually shrank...

M class had less of a choice but 1 or 2 free movie channels..

 

No way I'd pay!

[Nebr.cruiser]

Our recent Silhouette cruise had the $15 charge for movies also--ridiculous.  They also used to have a large variety of free on demand movies--dozens and dozens of choices.  In November there were six!! 'free' movies, and little else to watch.

 

I know this is petty, but we like to relax with movies at times.  The movies in the small theater were also bad, some were repeated, some very strange choices and it almost seemed as if they planned the times of those movies to interfere with almost anything else you wanted to do on purpose.

[funfamilytime]

And that was the Christmas Cruise.    I felt the same way.....I was not going to pay $14.99 for a movie.  AND, they weren't even new releases.  They were old movies.  

[funfamilytime]

I agree.  The small movie screen they had on the back of the ship has sports playing most of the times.  They did have one or two holiday movies (but playing at dinner time).  Really??  Poor choices on the person planning times of the few movies they had.

[davekathy]

There's a TV in the stateroom. 

[funfamilytime]

Yes, I know. What do you think I am talking about.

[davekathy]

20 minutes ago, funfamilytime said:

Yes, I know. What do you think I am talking about.

My post wasn't a serious comment. Hence the winking emoji ().

Edited January 8, 2019 by davekathy

[snyniew]

I found out too after purchasing one and not realizing it was charged since I was used to the free On Demand ones (however it was like 2 in the morning w/ a few drinks under the belt). And they are only good for 48 hours so you're in trouble if you don't finish it in that time.

 

Guess going forward you'll just have to download some to your computer/Ipad/Tablet for in room viewing.

[helen haywood]

Interesting change!  Yes, there always used to be several free movies.  But we travel with our laptop and DVD case...

[woldridge]

We were on the Silhouette Dec.9- Dec. 21.  The first time I looked at the listings for free movies (first day on ship) there were only 3-4 movies listed.  But, after a few days I checked again and there were several movies listed, probably at least 15. Some were fairly recent, such as "Crazy Rich Asians." 

[funfamilytime]

You were lucky 🙂

 

 

[Baron Barracuda]

It's been a year since our last X cruise but they then offered ESPN Intl, a half dozen news stations, TNT, a movie channel called "Space" and I believe a cartoon channel.

[K12Guy]

Well, a cruise ship is a floating hotel and I don't know of many land hotels that show 'free' movies any longer. I like the suggestion of taking your video entertainment with you. That way you have the selection you want and you can save the fifteen dollars and have a glass of overprices wine whilst watching the movie of your choice. Or, have a glass of wine on the veranda and count the waves. 🙂 (smiling emoji)

[phoenix_dream]

All land hotels I stay at have free HBO and sometimes Showtime movies, plus a heck of a lot more channels than Celebrity ships!  I also like to relax at night in the cabin and I really wish there was something on the tv besides sports (mostly things more popular in Europe like soccer or rugby) and news channel after news channel.  They did add HGTV but that gets old pretty quick.  M class ships are the worst - at least S class has some free movies you can watch.  I don't know why the cruise lines are so against providing cabin entertainment on the TV.  Now that most people have drink packages, it actually saves them money to have people in their cabins watching the tube instead of out drinking. 

[PhoenixCruiser]

Well, a cruise ship is a floating hotel and I don't know of many land hotels that show 'free' movies any longer. I like the suggestion of taking your video entertainment with you. That way you have the selection you want and you can save the fifteen dollars and have a glass of overprices wine whilst watching the movie of your choice. Or, have a glass of wine on the veranda and count the waves. [emoji846] (smiling emoji)

What type of hotels have you stayed in? All the hotels we have stayed in always had decent channels, including HBO, Showtime, etc.

Does Celebrity really have no channels that are included?

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

[DrKoob]

On our recent Summit cruise to New England the television experience was the WORST I have ever had at sea after 25+ cruises. I know, I am on a cruise, do I really need to watch TV? Yes. Because my wife and I both caught horrible colds and just needed a day to be sick in our cabin. Wanted to take our minds off of how we felt by watching television. Good luck!

 

Nothing on at all. Barely got the map of where we were. When somethings would come on the reception was horrible and the selection even worse. HGTV that flickered in and out. Cooking Channel that repeated the same shows over and over again. Celebrity's television experience has gotten worse and worse over the years. They used to have some really old series they would run. That would have been better.

 

Now I totally get problems with satellite reception. Weather can screw that up and on this cruise we had some crazy weather. But couldn't they PLEASE put some movies, TV shows, anything on their server that we can access while at sea. The only option other than the aforementioned lousy programming were movies that were chargeable at $14.95 per viewing. Most of them were old. Something that I would find free on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

 

Last summer we did a quick HAL cruise to Alaska and their TV was AWESOME! Tons of free movies, the full catalog of BBC nature films and so much more. Incredible 4K televisions in every cabin. Makes X look sad in that department.

 

I have had people ask me why I didn't just stream Netflix or Amazon? Well besides only having Elite Plus internet minutes, in our aft cabin, the connectivity was HORRID! I ran a couple of speed tests and got barely .3 megabytes per second up (at home I get 50 MB up and down). And I didn't bring a lot of stuff to download because to be honest, we didn't expect to be sick.

 

In-room television is something that would cost X next to nothing (comparatively) to improve drastically. Supposedly all the televisions are fed by Macs. If that's the case, they should be able to stream TV in an instant. 

Edited January 9, 2019 by DrKoob

[funfamilytime]

I totally agree with you.  I have been on Princess so many times and all their movies are free.  And a great selection too.

 

It's not like Celebrity is an "economy" cruise line.  Give me a break!  I didnt' mention that the reception was horrible.  And I think we got the same cooking channel running the same shows for the entire week.

 

When you have kids, you want the entire experience (that includes in-room movies to keep them quite at night).  And yes, we bought the internet package that never worked!!  Yup, we paid for that 🙂 

 

But, to give them credit, the rest of the cruise was really great.  Except the room service - they never got it right.  The Manager sent me up some chocolate covered strawberries to make up for it though.  

 

[K12Guy]

10 hours ago, PhoenixCruiser said:

What type of hotels have you stayed in? All the hotels we have stayed in always had decent channels, including HBO, Showtime, etc.

Does Celebrity really have no channels that are included?

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
 

Good question. We stay in Marriott, for the most part. I seem to recall that most movies are on a pay per view system. But, we don't really watch TV as a source of entertainment. We used to watch the news, but it's now heavily tainted by some guy with bleached hair and orange skin so we have stopped watching news channels, as well. We sometimes have books with actual pages that need to be turned when read. Or maybe a story on a tablet. Or maybe just counting waves and sipping vino.

[DrKoob]

3 minutes ago, K12Guy said:

Good question. We stay in Marriott, for the most part. I seem to recall that most movies are on a pay per view system. But, we don't really watch TV as a source of entertainment. We used to watch the news, but it's now heavily tainted by some guy with bleached hair and orange skin so we have stopped watching news channels, as well. We sometimes have books with actual pages that need to be turned when read. Or maybe a story on a tablet. Or maybe just counting waves and sipping vino.

 

Since you don’t watch much television you probably never went past the hotel offering you their pay movies. I can tell you from experience that pretty much every Marriott has more than 50 free channels of movies and other entertainment. 

 

While I share your sentiments about television news and while we realize there are some people who are not television watchers did you miss the original poster mentioning that he was trying to get his kids to sleep. Or that my wife and I were sicker than dogs and just trying to find something to distract us from our misery. Sometimes you just want to watch something and be distracted not have to hold up a Kindle or a book. And as much as I would love to be “just counting waves and sipping vino” with the cold medication I was taking that would not have been a good idea and sitting outside counting waves was out as well as we had to skip a port. 

[K12Guy]

53 minutes ago, DrKoob said:

 

Since you don’t watch much television you probably never went past the hotel offering you their pay movies. I can tell you from experience that pretty much every Marriott has more than 50 free channels of movies and other entertainment. 

 

While I share your sentiments about television news and while we realize there are some people who are not television watchers did you miss the original poster mentioning that he was trying to get his kids to sleep. Or that my wife and I were sicker than dogs and just trying to find something to distract us from our misery. Sometimes you just want to watch something and be distracted not have to hold up a Kindle or a book. And as much as I would love to be “just counting waves and sipping vino” with the cold medication I was taking that would not have been a good idea and sitting outside counting waves was out as well as we had to skip a port. 

I didn't miss that. This is just conversation and I shared my personal experiences. Not being critical.

 

The bottom line is the OP is upset about having to pay for movies. I get that. Is that fair? Probably not, but it is business, whether fair or not. I have no idea what other cruise lines or individual ships are charging. Maybe some here does and would like to share. I suppose one could apply on board credit toward movies so there would by no cash outlay at the end of the cruise? Maybe read a story to the kids to get them to fall asleep?

 

Sorry you were sick and in bed. I had one of those days a few cruises back. Not good, at all.

[cruisemom42]

41 minutes ago, K12Guy said:

 

The bottom line is the OP is upset about having to pay for movies. I get that. Is that fair? Probably not, but it is business, whether fair or not. I have no idea what other cruise lines or individual ships are charging. Maybe some here does and would like to share.

 

Both of Celebrity's closest mass-market competitors -- Princess and HAL -- offer substantially more free movies and television shows (over and above whatever channels are received) than Celebrity apparently does.  

 

I recently ran into this $14.99 movie charge on Azamara, but chalked it up to it being a premium line -- rather like some higher cost hotel chains charge an arm and a leg for internet access whereas more moderate chains offer it at no charge.  However, I'm surprised that Celebrity has the same charge.