shipshape sam

For sure, retro fitting is popular. Just go see ALL the changes made to Celebrity's M class ships. All the changes were not done at one time. My guess is they made some changes, then decided to make more changes. They added cabins all over the ship and basically eliminated public space to do it. Not sure they did any enhancements to public areas for ALL passengers. They did convert space for suite passengers.

Are you referring to the ship that sails to nowhere as I understand it? If so, then no. I do need to look it up. One thing I also like is longer cruises. My first 4-5 cruises were the 3 day cruise on Royal's Sovereign of Seas. Was working and running and growing a business and it did allow us to cruise in late 1990's/early 2000's. My sweet spot for sailing is 14-15 days. Have never done a B2B, but if each week(my assumption of cruise length), was different, ie. eastern then western caribbean, that might work. Just not sure of how I would like first disembarkation/second embarkation day around ship, especially in the morning.

Opinions are like betting on a horse race. Everybody has one. They stated this was their opinion(s). They also stated pretty early in video, that HAL did not appeal to them, duh. My opinion is that HAL lines up more with Celebrity than the others. Not many kids/families on HAL or Celebrity for example. They appeal to older customers, although Celebrity is working on appealing to high income earners. Hard to compare HAL to Virgin or even Disney and Royal. The tried to be fair, but depending on your version/flavor of value, you will get a variety of ranking. I personally have never sailed on Virgin, all adult, but would like to someday. I place a high value on live music, especially rock and roll and blues groups. Thus, it would be hard for some other cruise lines to get a closer valuation to HAL. I don't care for production shows, I do like eating quality food and like presentation as part of the eating. So........ other cruise lines have to wow me in those criteria otherwise, lose on the value proposition. Anyway, it is fun to talk about what people would like to see HAL consider IF they ever build/buy again.

Keep the nightly entertainment venues for rock and roll, blues and 2 pianos. Each of these were packed every time they played. Loved it. Already booked Rotterdam VII again. I was a little disappointed in MDR and who were our wait staff. Food was fine and when we wanted something, we just asked the wait staff that was passing by our table. Head waiter was only one we were sure we were assigned to. Dutch Cafe was very good. Understand the Dutch theme for the treats. Throw in a few cookies, tarts/etcc would be great. Lido was good and we liked the deck area that was aft of the Lido for drinks, and shade and view of wake. For sure, smoking was a factor on our sailing and the tables were used for other than eating, but hey, you got to sit somewhere and play cards or other games outside and you got to light up somewhere. I don't smoke or sit around and play games.

We stayed in Girwood last August and enjoyed a raft trip that included a short train ride and paddling around some ice bergs before paddling downstream and back to train pickup. Conservation center is neat too. We watched with granddaughter a National Geographic like program and knew the names of some of the animals when we were there in August 2022. Moose feeding/interaction is hit or miss for a fee at conservation center though. Can't totally control them. 🙂 I am printing out your post as we want/hope to go back to Alaska and if lucky, spend a week on the Kenai peninsula. Then head north to Fairbanks for the Aurora in late August or early September. We had a great couple of days for the Aurora late August 2022 and there are some neat daytime attractions , like to large boat trip and the mine trip

We sailed HAL earlier this year and enjoyed our time at their private island, Half Moon Cay. For sure it is not close to having all the slides et al., but we actually enjoyed how Coco Cay use to be except they now have a dock and not the hit or miss for Coco Cay when we sailed on Sovereign.. I do want to go back to Coco Cay with our granddaughter and hope to do that next January on Royal. Will also plan a trip to Labadee, again with granddaughter and on Royal. I am with you on wanting a more upscale sailing on Celebrity. I would give Celebrity a shot here as we have just stayed onboard if we did not want/like a specific port of call.

The lamb shanks are the best of the 4 restaurants special entrees, at least we think so. We ate there 3 times on our 7 day sailing on Beyond in January 2023.

Never got ours. Never even got an email or anything for reaching that level.

Duplicate posting. Sorry.

They have shows too. I will say Celebrity has a very nice OceanView cafe on the E class of ships.. Eden was interesting too, but again it was 'show' oriented.

We sailed Beyond in January 2023 and it was an excellent cruise. We were told that ship was at about 65% capacity so that could have been less demand on services of that sailing. We had a great time and loved Beyond. Want to sail Ascent. Both Beyond and Ascent have upgrades over Apex and Edge from what I recall. Also like S class ships. No plans to go back to M class with all the added cabins and reduced public spaces. We loved M class in their heydays. We are actually sailing Royal for a couple of cruises with our daughter and her family including a 7 yr old daughter. Would never bring kids on a Celebrity ship.

It was about this time last month when we had the PUP (3 pts) for the Captains video. Saw that I got the 3 pt. credit about a week ago. I can only guess that they are not seeing much of an uptick in bookings with the PUP promotions and thus not in any hurry to do more (not sure how they would measure it either). I will say also that they have not gotten rid of them either since they did the one recently. 🙂

I always wonder about spending more $$$ for suites and locations. We did an aft Facing cabin deck 6 in March 2023 on the Rotterdam VII and not sure it was worth the extra $$$. If you stay in your cabin a lot, if you spend lots of private time on your balcony, then there might be value. We had to make deliberate time to go sit on our aft facing balcony. We did use the balcony more when in port, but any balcony could have been used for us just looking around (mostly me while waiting on DW) The wake is great, but on Rotterdam, I can go to Deck 9 aft and watch the wake for 10-15 minutes and get my fill. I can only suggest trying one and then you can make your own determination of value. We do not spend much time in our cabin no matter where it is. We store our clothes there, clean up there and sleep there. Other wise in general, we are out an about.

Great Corn Beef sandwich there. On recent March 2023 cruise, I think I went by and had one of best corn beef sandwiches I have had. Needless to say, I went back 3-4 more other times. Went to bar on deck below to get my lunch beer and it still was another 4-5 minutes. Only negative is the time it takes because of the popularity of venue.

Picture looks great. Does it go all the way around the ship. We enjoyed walking on Rotterdam. It was not a straight line.

Congrats!

The lowering and raising of the curtain is loud. I like to open the curtains in middle of night to see what is outside. Was an issue that to raise curtain would wake DW with the loud noise, thus did not open to look. Otherwise it was kinda neat feature. The good or bad news depending on your love or hate of IV cabins is Celebrity has committed to IV cabins of E class ships.

For sure try another one, two or even three cruise lines to get an unclose and personal opinion of how the different cruise lines rate in your opinion on the various factors that are important to you. We do that and right now, we like HAL Rotterdam as it is 'new' to us. We liked Beyond on our January 2023 sailing and for sure there are differences that you have to choose between. I am sure we will sail Celebrity again, but also now doing some sailing with daughters family and for sure want those memories with granddaughter, so we also now have a couple of Royal Caribbean cruises booked. Then there are lots of land based trips we have done and even more we want to do..................

I can give you why we (have sailed on Celebrity 10 times (with many 14/15 sailings) and Royal 17 times with 2 more Royal already booked plus Carnival and Princess cruises taken, sailed on Rotterdam VII. We wanted to try something different and our TA mention Rotterdam and he himself having not sailing HAL in years and was impressed with Rotterdam and I was intrigued by the entertainment area with live music every night and not just a couple of performances, we had non stop music most nights. We also tried other aspects of HAL with some better than Celebrity and some not better, but it was not a pure better/not better comparison. For us it was the differences/variations. Just like if you sail a Celebrity E class vs S class vs M class. Different but still good. We had sailed HAL in mid 2000's on Westerdam and Zuiderdam, so we had previously sailed HAL.

What did you like about Club Orange? How is the dining better.different than MDR. We walked pass the dining area every evening on our way to MDR from the Half Moon bar. Not sure the cost either, but assume it is based on length of Cruise. Any info would be appreciated. Thinking it might be a nice surprise for DW.🙂

We were at a BnB between Fairbanks and Chena Hot springs on Aug 27-30 2022. I think those were the dates and got some great shots. First 2 days lots of clouds. Lasted for about 2 hours each night from around 11pm to 1am. We then went to bed. No not know if there were more NL beyond 1am. I want to go back to Fairbanks area a little later in season and stay longer. Would like to go to Greenland, but not sure about all the lights on ship. On a Seatle to Settle Alaskan cruise we saw NL on 2 night out. Problem was so many 'tourists' snapping flash photos! They were just black pics!😒 Loved the few pictures we got with the reflection off the water.

More than we want to pay most of the time. We used to buy packages, but now only once per cruise if that. Sailed Beyond this past January and ate in MDR for all dinners. Liked the 4 themed restaurants, especially the lamb shank. For sure there is value in speciality restaurants, just not enough for us anymore. 🙂

Have a great cruise!

We sailed HAL's Rotterdam this past March (HAL's newest ship) and liked it so much we have booked the Rotterdam again on the same/similar itinerary as you have. We have sailed Celebrity and Royal a lot and wanted to try a newer ship. We also sailed Celebrity Beyond (their newest ship) in January. I personally was intrigued by the entertainment area and I got a great experience. Loved the music EVERY night for most of the evening vs other ships having musical entertainment a few nights and limited in length. You could go see a show and most likely before and after the show go listen to live music. Wishing you a great experience on the Rotterdam VII.

Found my first duck in March on our first full day of cruise (not embarkation day). It was loosely hidden partially behind a vase in an elevator bank. I picked it up and looked around thinking the person putting it there was watching to see what (whoever) found it did with it. did not see anyone. I kept it and have shown it to my granddaughter and if all goes well will buy some and put them out on our family cruise. We will put them is a larger space where we can watch and not be obvious.