Reduced Capacity Cruises

[CTSandy]

3 hours ago, sunonfire said:

How was the main dining room? Were the guests spread out? What about service? Usually the buffet is open for embarkation - was the main dining room opened also for lunch on embarkation day? 

I was on the same September 17 sailing - the main dining room was pretty empty and spread out.  We had a window seat on Deck 5 restaurant - the table next to us was an 8 or 10 top and two people were seated there, one setting away from us.  Service was excellent and staff were so happy and gracious to welcome cruisers back.  First time I’ve cruised where servers had plenty of time to share lengthy stories with us.  We all talked about how Covid impacted us - our servers talked about their concern that they were never coming back to the ships.   All staff we talked to had so many good things to say about how well they were treated by Celebrity, happy to hear that.

 

i don’t believe the dining room was open for lunch.  We were concierge and they didn’t offer the usual embarkation day lunch.  We just headed for the Oceanview, which was not crowded.

[KBucks31]

1 hour ago, 59impala said:

Hi, Im wonerding whether Celebrity are selling reduced capacity cruises right through until September 2022. 
We are considering a cruise on the Apex, Amsterdam to Rome departing September 11 2022. It seems odd that all the infinity verandah cabins are sold. Would this be because they only have sold half the capacity at this stage and will release more as the covid situation becomes clearer??

Does anyone have any clues, or is it just because this is a great itinerary and is nearly sold out??

Thanks in anticipation.

I am wondering the same thing.  Can anyone else comment who knows the accurate answer?

[verizon]

13 hours ago, BigAl94 said:

Many seem to ignore the fact that reduced capacity cruises are driving cruise lines closer to bankruptcy.

What make you think so with all this upgrade cabins.

Celebrity is looking for Qualities and not Quantities.

There are not much diffrent in revenue to the cruise line.

Look at the stock prices of RCL, it is up and not down.

Edited September 26, 2021 by verizon

[chemmo]

20 hours ago, billybeachboy said:

I recently sailed on Celebrity Silhouette which had only 850 approx pax on board, the entire shipped lacked atmosphere as most venues were empty, on one occasion the theatre had no more that 30/40 punters in attendance.   One plus point was no waiting for the lift!   🙂

I think we were on the same cruise….We did find the ship much quieter than usual but enjoyed the fact. The area near the Martini bar was lively most evenings and the ensemble lounge had guests when music was playing. Certainly no waiting for bar service!
 

We had to smile when entering an empty solarium that two guests had ‘reserved’ their sun beds with books and towel clothes pegs! Even more surprised when we took an early morning stroll (8am) up to the suite deck to find a couple placing possessions on the two bed like covered sun beds on the lower level. As these beds are significantly apart they must care about their comfort above each other’s company! As the weather was nice (Liverpool) but not red hot hardly necessary and a little greedy!

 

We did miss the usual events in/run by the Retreat Lounge…Whilst we never really put them high up on our list of things we enjoy we missed them when they were not there! 
 

Having visited a very busy Sainsbury’s in the week where many staff and customers were not wearing masks and some customers seemed to have forgotten all about social distancing my husband and myself both felt we had been significantly safer on our cruise…

[billybeachboy]

28 minutes ago, chemmo said:

I think we were on the same cruise….

  I think we were..

I agree re the Martini bar area & cannot get over that people reserved sunbeds in the solarium,  Hilarious!!

Now, it's time to look for another cruise..

[chemmo]

2 hours ago, billybeachboy said:

  I think we were..

I agree re the Martini bar area & cannot get over that people reserved sunbeds in the solarium,  Hilarious!!

Now, it's time to look for another cruise..

We have booked our next already….With the situation so fluid we have booked a ‘safe option’ cruise from Southampton to the Canary Islands for next October. If by the Spring we feel more confident we may swap it but we really do not fancy flying at the moment. 
 

As the new itineraries come out for the Caribbean we may book something in for 2023…

 

Knowing how accommodating Celebrity UK have been to us swapping and changing over the last two years has made us more confident to book…
 

 

[sunonfire]

10 hours ago, goofysmom99 said:

I got off the Summit today.  315 pax and crew ~700, 14.8% occupancy.  I was usually alone in Cafe al Bacio.  One evening, I was the only person in Rendezvous, outnumbered 4 to 1 by a very good jazz quartet.  Suites had the highest occupancy percentage, but there were still vacancies.  Very much a "private yacht," as the captain referred to it.  Happy, attentive, chatty crew.  Nice thing is that you can use all that OBC to give extra gratuities.  Figured they needed it more than the casino.

RE  OBC to give extra gratuities - were you able to designate a specific crew member or did the money go into a pool for the crew? This has been in question before the pandemic so I am curious what Celebrity is dong now. Thanks.

[goofysmom99]

2 hours ago, sunonfire said:

RE  OBC to give extra gratuities - were you able to designate a specific crew member or did the money go into a pool for the crew? This has been in question before the pandemic so I am curious what Celebrity is dong now. Thanks.

I went to guest relations and got the additional gratuity form.  Then I ignored the little boxes and wrote in "Personal Retreat Host, Daisy" and an amount.  Then Room Steward, Jasmin, and an amount.  And so on.  You may designate a specific crew member to a point.   For Luminae, where it's pooled, I just wrote in Luminae.  If you write in a specific waiter's name, or even maitre d's, it's still pooled.  I verified this all the way to the top.  It's the same for the MDR where they're also pooled.  I didn't feel bad about pooling a chunk of change because there weren't many pax to tip them individually in the first place.  Giving it back to everyone works for me.  There was absolutely nothing I wanted to buy since I have all the jewelry I'll ever own and the Apple products are pretty old (40 mm Apple Watch 5 for $399 which is now ~$200 on ebay).  I have 3 more cruises in the next 30 days with a total of $1800+ of OBC to use/give away.  I intend to give some to Cafe al Bacio next time.  I was so often their only customer, I got to know them all and I'm very much looking forward to seeing them again later this week.

[Denny01]

We are on an Apex Thanksgiving cruise that departs this Nov and is usually very popular. I’m a ‘data nut’ and track how many SRs are booked on my cruises and less than 2 months from now, the cruise is 64% booked. Normally, our cruises approach 90% this close to the departure, especially a holiday cruise. 

 

The Retreat SRs are a bit less than 50% booked; All balcony types are 67% booked; Oceanviews are 82% booked and Insides are a bit over 50% booked. 

 

And as to the post about ‘ignoring’ that cruise lines could go bankrupt……I don’t use a business so it can make money, I ‘use’ a business because it’s providing a service/item I want/need at the time I want/need it. Right now, I think a cruise ship is probably safer than my town. It will have a much higher percentage of fully vaccinated and many wearing masks, all staff, and so on, so I’ll cruise. We are all aware that 1/2 empty and even more cruises are a problem, but what are we to do…..X is offering a 20% discount and keeps extending it. How business is done. I’d hate to see Celebrity, my current favorite cruise line, go under but I’m ‘ignoring’ that? 

 

I guess I should cancel my cruise because it isn’t good to take advantage of a 1/2 empty cruise? OK, I’ll order a 2nd (or 3rd!) Martini to help out! I’m just that kind of a giving guy! 

 

Den

[CruisinKikster]

24 minutes ago, Denny01 said:

We are on an Apex Thanksgiving cruise that departs this Nov and is usually very popular. I’m a ‘data nut’ and track how many SRs are booked on my cruises and less than 2 months from now, the cruise is 64% booked. Normally, our cruises approach 90% this close to the departure, especially a holiday cruise. 

 

The Retreat SRs are a bit less than 50% booked; All balcony types are 67% booked; Oceanviews are 82% booked and Insides are a bit over 50% booked. 

 

Where do you find these data? I'm on the Thanksgiving sailing on the Reflection, and I'm wondering what "reduced capacity" will look like on that. I'm used to doing 100% capacity over that week, and one reason we Iike Celebrity is that even full, there's not a lot of standing in line or fighting for space. So anything less than 100% will be nice (for us), but I am still curious what that might look like. 

[DCPIV]

We were aboard Summit a couple of months ago. At that time, they were intentionally keeping her at 25% (roughly 450 passengers aboard a ship designed for about 2200). The Captain said that they weren't concerned about making money as much as they were about demonstrating that cruising could be done safely. 

 

The plan was to increase passenger loads gradually over the next several weeks. However, that plan was scrapped while we were on board due to a handful of factors (not the least of which were demand and quarantine regulations when she returned to Florida).

 

It seems that Celebrity are taking things as they come for the time being, and that's all that any of us can do. 

[canderson]

7 minutes ago, Denny01 said:

We are on an Apex Thanksgiving cruise that departs this Nov and is usually very popular. I’m a ‘data nut’ and track how many SRs are booked on my cruises and less than 2 months from now, the cruise is 64% booked. Normally, our cruises approach 90% this close to the departure, especially a holiday cruise. 

 

The Retreat SRs are a bit less than 50% booked; All balcony types are 67% booked; Oceanviews are 82% booked and Insides are a bit over 50% booked.

Denny -

Not sure how you arrived at your numbers, but when we tried to do the math using the X web site on a couple of other sailings, we were reminded of a couple of things, primarily...  What none of us can tell is whether some of the cabins that show as unavailable are indeed booked or instead, blocked.  So in playing the cabin count game, the numbers only work one way for us.  It is possible to tell, roughly, how many cabins remain available, but we can't tell why.  Have seen on our cruises some very distinct patterns at times for cabin availability (e.g., every other OV available across an entire port or starboard side showing unavailable and available).  Further... Some X ships have been using passenger cabins to spread out the crew a bit, which further reduces the appearance of 'available' cabins on the X web site.  For example, there are NO forward OV cabins available on our next sailing, and we believe that is a function of turning these cabins into crew quarters.

 

One would need actual booking information to really have visibility into the actual % of capacity for any given sailing.

 

 

[Denny01]

44 minutes ago, canderson said:

Denny -

Not sure how you arrived at your numbers, but when we tried to do the math using the X web site on a couple of other sailings, we were reminded of a couple of things, primarily...  What none of us can tell is whether some of the cabins that show as unavailable are indeed booked or instead, blocked.  So in playing the cabin count game, the numbers only work one way for us.  It is possible to tell, roughly, how many cabins remain available, but we can't tell why.  Have seen on our cruises some very distinct patterns at times for cabin availability (e.g., every other OV available across an entire port or starboard side showing unavailable and available).  Further... Some X ships have been using passenger cabins to spread out the crew a bit, which further reduces the appearance of 'available' cabins on the X web site.  For example, there are NO forward OV cabins available on our next sailing, and we believe that is a function of turning these cabins into crew quarters.

 

One would need actual booking information to really have visibility into the actual % of capacity for any given sailing.

 

 

I’m not presenting an exact/scientific count, just what can be used by non-TA’s. Since the numbers I presented are after the final payment, I doubt there many TA-blocked SRs. But I agree the availability numbers can be off due to blocks used by TA’s earlier on.  

 

The point is, right now a holiday November cruise 6+ weeks from now appears, yes appears, to be 65% booked. And having done this type of tracking prior to the Pandemic, cruises close to departing were ~90% or so booked.  But it’s just data I got from counting open SRs on the X website; I’d originally used another website when X website seem to limit what they showed as available, many times a max of 25 per class SR. Now they show lots more and it varies. And yes, not exact, but what the heck, it gives you a feel of numbers.

 

By the way, it takes more than a bit of time to sit and count various open SRs and is probably a waste of time for most of us except nerds such as I! And you have to change the number of guests per SR from 2 to 3 to see the open SRs set aside for 3+. 

 

Den 

Edited September 26, 2021 by Denny01

[canderson]

@Denny01

Yes, the 'cabin count' was my approach, too, until it was pointed out to me.that given current novel conditions, there were some big holes in my calculations.  I didn't mean TA blocked ... X blocked ... so final payment date wouldn't factor into that.  With crew occupying pax cabins to spread them out, I realized my numbers would be even more out of whack.  

 

For M class, I think the only true 'set-asides' are the FVs for 5.  With almost no kids sailing now that school is in session, we aren't seeing many threesomes sailing, so I just assumed 2 per as close enough.

 

Still, after one pass, gave up the idea as hopeless apart from having a rough guess as to availability, not occupancy.

[laslomas]

Just off the Silhouette yesterday. The passengers numbered a little over 1400. so I think that the passenger count is still capped at 50%. I am not sure if this is due to Celebrity guidelines, or UK, as it sailed from Southampton.

 

 

Edited September 28, 2021 by laslomas

[upwarduk]

On 9/26/2021 at 11:44 AM, chemmo said:

We have booked our next already….With the situation so fluid we have booked a ‘safe option’ cruise from Southampton to the Canary Islands for next October. If by the Spring we feel more confident we may swap it but we really do not fancy flying at the moment. 

Same here. My husband didn’t want to fly, mainly because we wonder what testing procedures would be for both flying and cruising.

We eventually choose almost the same itinerary that we cancelled  for the Mediterranean that we should have taken in August 2020. I’m sure if we had Lifted and Shifted, it would have been much cheaper. I think many passengers must have done that, as there was little cabin choice( unless they will still be sailing at reduced capacity).

[chemmo]

35 minutes ago, upwarduk said:

Same here. My husband didn’t want to fly, mainly because we wonder what testing procedures would be for both flying and cruising.

We eventually choose almost the same itinerary that we cancelled  for the Mediterranean that we should have taken in August 2020. I’m sure if we had Lifted and Shifted, it would have been much cheaper. I think many passengers must have done that, as there was little cabin choice( unless they will still be sailing at reduced capacity).

We should be on board the Silhouette now heading for the Canary Islands but swapped for a September staycation as we did have some concerns. At the time we couldn’t lift and shift as there were none of the rooms we wanted next year. Fortunately one room for October next year came up two weeks before our staycation so we immediately booked it. Price wise I don’t think it was much different. Our staycation cruise as we used some cruise credit and Captains Club discount seemed a bargain!! As we rarely do 7 night cruises that made it seem cheaper still…

[cangelmd]

On 9/26/2021 at 11:13 AM, Denny01 said:

I’m not presenting an exact/scientific count, just what can be used by non-TA’s. Since the numbers I presented are after the final payment, I doubt there many TA-blocked SRs. But I agree the availability numbers can be off due to blocks used by TA’s earlier on.  

 

The point is, right now a holiday November cruise 6+ weeks from now appears, yes appears, to be 65% booked. And having done this type of tracking prior to the Pandemic, cruises close to departing were ~90% or so booked.  But it’s just data I got from counting open SRs on the X website; I’d originally used another website when X website seem to limit what they showed as available, many times a max of 25 per class SR. Now they show lots more and it varies. And yes, not exact, but what the heck, it gives you a feel of numbers.

 

By the way, it takes more than a bit of time to sit and count various open SRs and is probably a waste of time for most of us except nerds such as I! And you have to change the number of guests per SR from 2 to 3 to see the open SRs set aside for 3+. 

 

Den 

OK, I’m tired and my mind isn’t working, which is bad because I just got to work!

ive read both of your posts and I can’t figure from context - what is an SR? I know it’s a cabin class, “Suite Reservation”???

[cangelmd]

1 hour ago, chemmo said:

We should be on board the Silhouette now heading for the Canary Islands but swapped for a September staycation as we did have some concerns. At the time we couldn’t lift and shift as there were none of the rooms we wanted next year. Fortunately one room for October next year came up two weeks before our staycation so we immediately booked it. Price wise I don’t think it was much different. Our staycation cruise as we used some cruise credit and Captains Club discount seemed a bargain!! As we rarely do 7 night cruises that made it seem cheaper still…

We should be preparing to fly to Greece - the irony is that Celeb IS sailing in Greece and we could have gone anyway, on a half full brand new ship. I think we made the right decision, however, too many unknowns to fly that far. S we are headed to Utah to go hiking.

[canderson]

16 minutes ago, cangelmd said:

OK, I’m tired and my mind isn’t working, which is bad because I just got to work!

ive read both of your posts and I can’t figure from context - what is an SR? I know it’s a cabin class, “Suite Reservation”???

State Rooms.

[Team Stag]

22 minutes ago, cangelmd said:

OK, I’m tired and my mind isn’t working, which is bad because I just got to work!

ive read both of your posts and I can’t figure from context - what is an SR? I know it’s a cabin class, “Suite Reservation”???

I believe it is "State Room"

[cangelmd]

23 minutes ago, Team Stag said:

I believe it is "State Room"

Thanks I knew it was simple

[Denny01]

1 hour ago, cangelmd said:

OK, I’m tired and my mind isn’t working, which is bad because I just got to work!

ive read both of your posts and I can’t figure from context - what is an SR? I know it’s a cabin class, “Suite Reservation”???

Yup, SR is ‘staterooms’. Sorry.. I build a spreadsheet of all the avail SRs on the ship I’m going to take with the SRs listed in a column and decks across in rows and then see what is shown as available. Time consuming and dumb, but just something I like to do. 

 

Den

[jagoffee]

On 9/25/2021 at 1:30 PM, BigAl94 said:

Many seem to ignore the fact that reduced capacity cruises are driving cruise lines closer to bankruptcy.

Just the opposite in my opinion.  The cruise lines would be getting closer to bankruptcy if they were not cruising at all.  Their fixed costs are significant.  
The cruise lines are also contributing to the well being of their employees by operating.  

[chemmo]

1 hour ago, cangelmd said:

We should be preparing to fly to Greece - the irony is that Celeb IS sailing in Greece and we could have gone anyway, on a half full brand new ship. I think we made the right decision, however, too many unknowns to fly that far. S we are headed to Utah to go hiking.

I think all of us have had to make decisions about what we are comfortable with…You do have to way up the pros and cons and the pleasure vs the worry of travel at present. It was stressful enough arranging and having a covid test for a staycation, the thought of flying definitely too much this year!

 

Hope you enjoy your hiking in Utah, we were fortunate to visit briefly some years ago as part of a long tour. One of those places we always planned on visiting again although I think we are past hiking now!