Does Celebrity have talks on the ships?

[Presto2]

Hi, I know that P&O and other lines have guest speakers on their cruises.

Do Celebrity? A friend has asked and we can't remember.

They are thinking particularly about those cruises from Southampton. We have been on Celebrity before, but never from Southampton.

Thought someone on here may be able to help

[Orator]

Yes they do, 

[Presto2]

5 minutes ago, Orator said:

Yes they do, 

Are they major guests or do they have people who speak on areas of interest?

Eg music from a certain decade etc?  They are used to P&O and are wondering what to expect on Celebrity

[basenji56]

Generally not unless there are lot of sea days such as on a Transatlantic.  

[cruisestitch]

Could be anything-astronomy, history. Fashion, show business, how-to, you name it

[jwlane]

49 minutes ago, Presto2 said:

Eg music from a certain decade etc?  

My college friend does those for Starboard Speakers---different eras, Beatles, etc.

[AmberCascades]

On our recent Summit (repositioning) cruise we had one speaker who became a stand-up comedian late in life and did talks on the history of comedy and various comedians.  It was interesting and funny.

 

When we did Alaska we had a naturalist who talked to us about the types of wildlife we might see and also did other "natural" topics like volcanos and earthquakes, etc.

 

On our Antarctica cruise we had 3 speakers.  We had many, many sea days.   2 of the speakers dealt with wildlife type stuff and the 3rd one was a (former?) Hollywood script writer.

 

The number and type of speakers may depend on the type of cruise and the number of sea days.  

[marshacruises]

1 hour ago, Presto2 said:

Are they major guests or do they have people who speak on areas of interest?

Eg music from a certain decade etc?  They are used to P&O and are wondering what to expect on Celebrity

I suggest that they join the Cruise Critic Roll Call for their specific ship and date.  For our cruise in September, there was a post from the man who is going to be presenting the "beyond the podium" from his experiences with the NFL, and other topics.  Something for us to look forward to and it helps the presenter gain a bigger audience since we know to look at the schedule to find when and where he will be talking.  

 

 

 

[keesar]

On our last 10 cruises, there has been only one speaker.  It was a naturalist on our Alaska cruise.  When we first started cruising on Celebrity, there was at least one speaker on each cruise.   Major reduction in the Beyond the Podium Program.  

[AmberCascades]

11 hours ago, keesar said:

On our last 10 cruises, there has been only one speaker.  It was a naturalist on our Alaska cruise.  When we first started cruising on Celebrity, there was at least one speaker on each cruise.   Major reduction in the Beyond the Podium Program.  

I was surprised (and a bit disappointed) to see there was only one speaker on our recent repo cruise.  We had 6 sea days so we were expecting at least a couple of speakers.  I hope they don't do away with it altogether.

[Ex-Airbalancer]

On our Reflection TA , there was a couple of speakers, I usually don’t go 

One speaker was a DNA speaker , it was interesting but he was a terrible speaker , very dry 

[AmberCascades]

6 minutes ago, Ex-Airbalancer said:

On our Reflection TA , there was a couple of speakers, I usually don’t go 

One speaker was a DNA speaker , it was interesting but he was a terrible speaker , very dry 

 Sounds like a physics guy we had on one cruise.   We went only managed to sit through 1 1/2 talks.  One of the topics was "what is time?"  Sounded interesting.  He was boring.  I found out that the answer was "time is endless if you are listening to this guy"  hahahaha  Fortunately most of the talks we've attended have been interesting.

[cruisestitch]

12 hours ago, keesar said:

On our last 10 cruises, there has been only one speaker.  It was a naturalist on our Alaska cruise.  When we first started cruising on Celebrity, there was at least one speaker on each cruise.   Major reduction in the Beyond the Podium Program.  

More likely you are on shorter cruises or those with only one or two sea days.  Longer cruises with many sea days have tge speakers

[TowandaUK]

On our last cruise - 14 days, there was only one speaker. Matt Munro’s daughter. We didn’t go, but would like to have more speakers. 

[lovescarborough]

No speakers at all on Silhouette in January. Over the years we’ve been to quite a few interesting talks so I really can’t understand why Celebrity have stopped them. Surely it doesn’t cost much to produce. In fact we’ve seen some cruise directors doing interesting talks too. 
Who remembers the good old days, not that many years ago , when they put on cookery competitions and audience members helped the chefs and acted as judges ? My hubby volunteered on one of these and I’ve still got the photos. They were great fun at little cost. 
Best of all were the crew talent shows .Some amazing singers and talented musicians ! 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ex-Airbalancer]

1 hour ago, TowandaUK said:

On our last cruise - 14 days, there was only one speaker. Matt Munro’s daughter. We didn’t go, but would like to have more speakers. 

Who ? 🤔

[Essiesmom]

On our Solstice TA a number of years ago, there was a man talking about investing, the head man of SETI (Search for extraterrestrial intelligence) and Nigel West (author, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) speaking in military intelligence (espionage, spying).  The only speaker I remember on Millie in the Baltic in 2000 was the cruise director.  He claimed to have studied marine biology, but after listening to one talk, I gathered he hadn’t graduated…. EM

[the penguins]

On 5/11/2023 at 8:44 PM, Presto2 said:

Hi, I know that P&O and other lines have guest speakers on their cruises.

Do Celebrity? A friend has asked and we can't remember.

They are thinking particularly about those cruises from Southampton. We have been on Celebrity before, but never from Southampton.

Thought someone on here may be able to help

Every Celebrity cruise we have done has had talks (Beyond the Podium programme) on sea days. We have cruised 4 times from Southampton post Covid and all had speakers. There were some problems during the start up as Speakers were reluctant to sign on when they weren't able to disembark on port days - they were subject to the same restrictions as the rest of the crew. Hopefully by now the programme should be getting back to its full pre Covid levels. 

[Markanddonna]

We had two on the Constellation on out TA. To be fair, I didn't attend because the topics were not interesting to me. One was rock music histort but I saw this guy n another cruise. The other was a woman who spoke on crime, like the case of Jan Benne Ramsey. 

[keesar]

12 hours ago, cruisestitch said:

More likely you are on shorter cruises or those with only one or two sea days.  Longer cruises with many sea days have tge speakers

 

Our cruises have been 7 days in the Caribbean.  At one time, we had two speakers on each cruise and talks on computer literacy.  Nothing in years unless you want to count a captain talking about a cat. 😑

[downsmead]

No talks on our 10 night Infinity Mediterranean cruise - no podium speakers or even port talks! The only one was one given by the captain which was brilliant as he has such a wicked sense of humour. 

[Veinless]

Talking is permitted. 

[cobeck]

We had a speaker twice on a 7 day Western Caribbean in March.  Speakers topics were related to our ports of call. 

[Ken the cruiser]

We are currently on the Eclipse cruising from Honolulu to Vancouver and Eddy Jenkins, our CC, just mentioned there will be 4 lectures tomorrow on the 1st of our 5 sea days in a row before arriving in Victoria. We’ve been on the ship since Sydney and have usually had 3 lectures on each sea day! I also have a Live From  thread going on if you want more details about them. 

[AmberCascades]

6 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

We are currently on the Eclipse cruising from Honolulu to Vancouver and Eddy Jenkins, our CC, just mentioned there will be 4 lectures tomorrow on the 1st of our 5 sea days in a row before arriving in Victoria. We’ve been on the ship since Sydney and have usually had 3 lectures on each sea day! I also have a Live From  thread going on if you want more details about them. 

Lucky you!  I love Eddie.  One cruise he did a talk about Wales (not whales) and the naturalist did a talk on whales (not Wales).  That was their schtick for a few days.  🙂  He also DJ'd a 60's dance party one evening.  

 

What are the topics of all these lectures?  If you don't mind taking the time to say.  Just curious.