Celebrity is not more expensive

[Dolebludger]

No, it means that X is a large ship line that has a luxury area or areas. When we cruised in the Retreat around 2018 and 2019, it offered us a lux experience at a price much less than lines like Regent. Maybe not quite as good as lines like Regent, but a great value. Now, the retreat is priced at the lux line level, or more. 

[goofysmom99]

OK, while I was enjoying lunch here on the Summit, I decided to compare Panama Canal transit cruises on Summit and Silver Moon for TWO people, rather than just myself. 

 

April 2025, Ft Lauderdale to Los Angeles, Panama Canal transit.

 

Summit, built 2001, refurbed 2019, 2218 pax lower berth, max 2599, 91000 tons, crew 999

16 nights

Aqua A2, all included price including gratuities:  $15,535

     Cabin plus balcony 232 sq ft (191 + 41) 

     $486 pp/night

Sky Suite S1, including gratuities:  $18,927

     Cabin plus balcony 308 sq ft (251 + 57)

     $592 pp/night

 

Silver Moon, built 2020, 596 pax, 41000 tons, crew 411

18 nights

Veranda Suite, $15,500 (port-to-port), all inclusive (and excursions)

     Cabin plus balcony 390 sq ft (325 + 65)

     $431 pp/night

 

Celebrity IS more expensive - an A2 cabin for 16 nights costs the same as a full suite for 18 nights on Silversea!  Blu is good but not THAT good.  And those prices are as of about two hours ago.

 

BTW, cabin furniture on Silversea looks comfy, like a real leather chair and sofa, not a dorm room style hard-as-a-rock futon or silly chair-and-a-half (on which I'm sitting as I type).  But that's just incidental to the price disparity.

[cruise47]

On 3/3/2024 at 1:44 PM, Gracie115 said:

 

There is no question that O is much quieter in every way than X.  There is nightly entertainment in the theater, usually a piano player in the martini lounge and violin trios or quartets that perform in a few different areas.  But that's it for evenings.  We were fine with this, loved the violinists, went to 2 of the shows just to see how they were (okay) and that was about it.  But then that's been no different for us on X cruises.  We enjoy our balcony in the evenings and walking around the ship.  

 

Your post sound liked us. We are not a party couple.  We do enjoy fine dinning, long cruises and quiet spaces on a cruise ship to enjoy our companship.  

 

What is the true dress code on the O Cruise Lines ?

Edited March 4 by cruise47
Missed spell words.

[lorimay]

25 minutes ago, cruise47 said:

Your post sound liked us. We are not a party couple.  We do enjoy fine dinning, long cruises and quiet spaces on a cruise ship to enjoy our companship.  

 

What is the true dress code on the O Cruise Lines ?

The true dress code on Oceania is what they call country club casual. In reality, at night most women wear nice pants or capris and a nice top, maybe a sweater or a blazer. Also a casual dress. Sandals are perfectly acceptable. For men, it's khakis or nice casual pants and a collared shirt. You do see nice polo shirts and some sports coats. Designer jeans with no holes would probably be acceptable. 

 

During the day, you see shorts and gym-type clothes (t-shirts, leggings). At the buffet in the evening you could wear jeans or shorts.

 

We found it was a very comfortable atmosphere, especially since the dress code is the same every night. 

 

What I have come to dislike on Celebrity and their dress code is that the "evening chic" night is a sham - most people don't follow it anyway.

 

Silversea still has formal nights. On Regent it's country club casual, but no jeans or shorts or gym clothes allowed in any public area after 6pm. And they do enforce it.

[upwarduk]

On 3/3/2024 at 2:54 PM, Ellaleah said:

which is now just tips and drinks,

No, they have stopped the tips( (October2023).

Its Wi Fi and drinks in All Included.

[Gracie115]

1 hour ago, cruise47 said:

Your post sound liked us. We are not a party couple.  We do enjoy fine dinning, long cruises and quiet spaces on a cruise ship to enjoy our companship.  

 

What is the true dress code on the O Cruise Lines ?

 

Dress code is pretty casual.  We dressed as we have for X since they eliminated formal nights.  The only evening we were "dressed up" was the evening of the Captain's reception (2nd night) and while I was told we might "stand out" because the dress code is more casual we felt perfectly comfortable.  I had a new dressy outfit I just wanted to wear once, so I did and my DH wore a coat and tie.  We were definitely in the minority but there were others who dressed up a bit that night.  Other than that I generally wore slacks and a pretty top, DH wore golf shirts and pants.  

 

One thing that the O Vista had that was surprising for a new ship was a WONDERFUL library.  Very comfortable, quite large and literally hundreds of books.  Very nice.

Edited March 4 by Gracie115

[jean87510]

On 3/3/2024 at 1:18 PM, Jim_Iain said:

 

I'm really interested on how many define Oceania -   They do not consider themself a Luxury Line but in between Celebrity and a Premium Line.     In the past the food has been a huge upside but recently like many of the forums I hear dissatisfaction from their long time cruisers on how cut backs and quality have deteriorated.    

 

Maybe when we began cruising on Celebrity we were enjoying the - second Golden Age of Cruising and may never see the return of previous standards.     Happy that we got to experience it.

Have you looked into Emerald cruises at all?  We actually just booked with them the other day for December 2025 Holiday cruise.  Although your Oceania room is probably the size of the Emerald ship!

[jean87510]

8 hours ago, paulh84 said:

The Celebrity to premium and luxury line arguments always leave out important context and details. However what I was shocked at was when trying to appease some friends by checking prices on Royal Caribbean's price for a 9 night ABC cruise. To make it an even comparison to Celebrity's All Included, the price for Grandeur of the Seas, which I would likely not even entertain sailing on, was 73% higher than we paid Celebrity for Aqua Class on Eclipse. 

Are you referring to the outrageous pricing on the April 2025 sailing?  This has been bizarre for months.  I snagged a GS a while back and now it's $15000!  I paid 1/4 of that when I booked.

Edited March 4 by jean87510

[zitsky]

Do Regent and Oceania have much entertainment?  

[Dolebludger]

They have small scale acts and performances. Anybody for whom “Vegas style” shows is a high priority needs to look for another cruise line. For us, the entertainment isn’t a priority. We are more than satisfied with low key. So we either cruise Regent or the Retreat, or something like it. Indeed, on the two cruises we’ve had in the Retreat, we never attended any of the ship’s shows. You just aren’t going to find “large scale” entertainment on a 750 guest ship. But the positive factor of this is that there are plenty of vacant seats in the theater, and no lines or crowds getting in.

[Nachosdelux]

25 minutes ago, zitsky said:

Do Regent and Oceania have much entertainment?  

Regent has better entertainment than Oceania, IMO.

 

For about the same price, I would take Regent any day of the week, over Celebrity Suite class.  I would say that Celebrity has priced suites out of the market, but they are selling well.  For about the same price (or less), Regent is a MUCH nicer experience.  

[Liao]

11 minutes ago, Dolebludger said:

They have small scale acts and performances. Anybody for whom “Vegas style” shows is a high priority needs to look for another cruise line. For us, the entertainment isn’t a priority. We are more than satisfied with low key. So we either cruise Regent or the Retreat, or something like it. Indeed, on the two cruises we’ve had in the Retreat, we never attended any of the ship’s shows. You just aren’t going to find “large scale” entertainment on a 750 guest ship. But the positive factor of this is that there are plenty of vacant seats in the theater, and no lines or crowds getting in.

Agree the entertainment is minimal, very much so, but the entertainment that they do offer is very top notch talent/musicians

[Dolebludger]

True that! And you don’t have to wait in line with a crowd to get into the theater on Regent. 

[Jim_Iain]

2 hours ago, jean87510 said:

Have you looked into Emerald cruises at all?  We actually just booked with them the other day for December 2025 Holiday cruise.  Although your Oceania room is probably the size of the Emerald ship!

I will have to take a look.  To be honest I had never heard of them.   Their ships remind me of Ponant.   Will have to explore them more.

[zitsky]

2 hours ago, Liao said:

Agree the entertainment is minimal, very much so, but the entertainment that they do offer is very top notch talent/musicians

Are we talking solo musicians, lectures, etc?  What kind of entertainment?

[Liao]

29 minutes ago, zitsky said:

Are we talking solo musicians, lectures, etc?  What kind of entertainment?

I've only been on Riviera and they had a lovely string quartet and a flutist.  They had a lecturer on the sea days, was quite interesting.  It was still a rather quiet cruise, esp. after 9ish.

[jean87510]

8 hours ago, Jim_Iain said:

I will have to take a look.  To be honest I had never heard of them.   Their ships remind me of Ponant.   Will have to explore them more.

It looks like a good fit for us as most of the guests are active 50-60 yr olds.  Price was better than Celebrity AQ and Royal suite class at the same time.  Only negative I see is no shows as it's a Yacht.

[riandei]

My .02 I agree that Celebrity is more expensive or equally expensive to silversea.

 

if i book veranda cabin on both and add in coffee, alcohol, excursions, room service, laundry

 

the price difference is minimal 

[ExArkie]

7 minutes ago, riandei said:

My .02 I agree that Celebrity is more expensive or equally expensive to silversea.

 

if i book veranda cabin on both and add in coffee, alcohol, excursions, room service, laundry

 

the price difference is minimal 

I've found that it varies a lot, depending on what one is looking at. My wife and I prefer ocean crossings to port-intensive sailings (something about vast amounts of open water...), so we look at transatlantic and transpacific sailings primarily. I set up a spreadsheet - my wife claims I set up a spreadsheet for everything, including deciding what to make for dinner, but that's a (slight) exaggeration - that incorporates all of the things on offer for each line, plus those things that we would be paying extra (daily service charges, for example, and airfare), pricing the least expensive cabin we would like, all of which is normalized on a per-day basis. Generally, for most upscale lines (such as Celebrity, Azamara - although one can always argue cruise line classifications) the entry-level suite is our reference, while on the "luxury" lines (such as Silversea, Seabourn), it is a balcony cabin.

 

My numbers showed that for this year, our most economical option was an Azamara Journey Club Continent Suite, which was slightly less than Celebrity, significantly less than Silversea and Seabourn, and less than HAL when one has to add in all the stuff not included on that line. For next year, we ended up on Celebrity Eclipse for a fall transatlantic (prefer westbound) in an aft corner Sky Suite. Even adding in the extras, since daily service charges are no longer part of the package, Silversea was still $400+ per person more than Celebrity.

 

However, wanting to return to Japan, we also booked a transpacific for next Spring. On that one, there was no comparison because Silversea was significantly less than a Celebrity Sky Suite when accounting for all expected costs. They were also just below Seabourn, but we ended up on HAL Noordam in a Signature Suite because their promotional package available at the time gave us almost all of the significant items included on Silversea and was $500+ per person less.

 

I have never seen anything on Regent that even comes close to qualifying as most economical for what we have looked at. Note that shore excursions rarely matter on these transoceanic comparisons. Azamara, for instance, has one port on our selected sailing. If we were comparing a port-intensive sailing and counting excursions, quite possibly Regent would be in contention.

 

My point, which I took my time getting to, is that the comparison has to be done every time because there is no definitive pattern one can apply universally. Not having brand loyalty is a great advantage...although Cunard's Queen Mary 2 transatlantic sailings do get some degree of preferential treatment from us. They have priced themselves out of contention recently, though.

[NMTraveller]

And a Yugo is less expensive than a BMW ...

 

Are you counting all of the extra fees that you pay with Celebrity?  Celebrity is not all inclusive by any stretch of the imagination ...

[RichYak]

15 minutes ago, ExArkie said:

Not having brand loyalty is a great advantage

I can't agree with this more. I would go so far to say that loyalty can be a deterrent. Having so many more cruise options available to choose from... I find it liberating.

[chisoxfan]

Appreciate the comments and want to note the X pricing also affects us who don't gravitate to suites. While we have been on recent cruises on Apex and Ascent in Retreat our sweet spot (no pun intended) is larger mainstream  new ships that offer many diversions particularly on warm weather getaway cruises. AQ on S class was for years an ideal compromise for us and we were generally happy campers. While beautiful ships they are now older and E class has abandoned us with IV's in AQ. Along with this the pricing of X has driven us to MSC YC, HAL Club Orange, and now Princess Sun (affordable suite) as much better values. Point being that X has disappointed us on the 'lower' scale offerings much as posters agree in general its suite product is not competitive. JMHO

[Oceangoer2]

16 hours ago, jean87510 said:

Have you looked into Emerald cruises at all?  We actually just booked with them the other day for December 2025 Holiday cruise.  Although your Oceania room is probably the size of the Emerald ship!

I've looked at Emerald but I thought they were small ship European river cruises?  Do they sail in the Caribbean or have larger ships?

[Jim_Iain]

Got an E-Mail today from Celebrity for Exciting Deals.    It has some really interesting last minute deals that could really be attractive.      One thing I did note as oppose to past was now that Tips are no longer included with Suites ---or other all perks deal ---- Gratuities in a Suite for an 11 day cruise were approx $500 per room.

 

If anyone is looking for a cruise might take a look at the Exciting deals
 

[Jim_Iain]

26 minutes ago, Oceangoer2 said:

I've looked at Emerald but I thought they were small ship European river cruises?  Do they sail in the Caribbean or have larger ships?

When I looked yesterday they have 3 ships (Yachts) that have between 64-100 Passengers, about the same size as Ponant fleet.

 

They have destinations of Med&Adriatic Sea, Caribbean, Red Sea and Seychelles & Indian Ocean.    I'm guess Red Sea has been pulled.