cgolf2

On 12/16/2019 at 9:09 AM, FionaMG said:

 

We have done post-cruise tours several times now, largely because of the convenience and the fact that the cost of getting from Fort Lauderdale to Miami International is included in the price. If our cruise had been from Miami, like it was last year, we would definitely have gone down the day room at a hotel route again; we used the Pullman last year. However, from Fort Lauderdale the combined cost of transport and hotel stay would have been practically the same as the excursion, so convenience won the day, especially since our flight was actually quite early for a trans-Atlantic - 4.45 pm, so by the time we arrived at the hotel we would only have had a couple of hours there. If the flight had been later I think we would have done the day room again because I did feel the excursion was over-priced.

 

thanks for doing the review. We are looking at doing the post cruise excursion because flight prices have us flying out after 5. We were curious how the luggage is handled during the excursion? Part of our motivation for doing the excursion is to kill some time where we don’t need to have our luggage with us. 

On 12/23/2019 at 2:09 PM, vacationlover_mn said:

For example, when we wore this, we fit in just fine 🙂

this is where I think dress codes are a joke. Not picking on the folks in the picture because we dress similarly every night and they look very nice imo. 
 

what I am saying is for women switch the floral print dress for a darker color solid dress and maybe nicer sandals and some would say perfectly formally dressed. Mind you that is in lightweight clothes perfect for the Caribbean. Now you same folks say guys need to wear heavy dress pants shirt tie and jacket and full dress shoes, and if a tux, more add ons in the Caribbean. Now me, I would need to wash it every night because I would be drenched. 
 

Sad that people can’t see guys dressed in nice lightweight dress pants, short sleeved dress shirt, and a tie as fine for formal night in a warm/hot location. Just my 2 cents even though many will disagree. 

22 hours ago, jd99 said:

Our first Celebrity sailing is this Sunday (Eastern itinerary).  We are excited and nervous.  We have been on more than 25 Disney cruises and love the experience - not because of Disney but because of the service, cleanliness and ambience but we were definitely ready for a change.  We've tried RC but didn't like it for a number of reasons  but our travel agent is confident the  Edge sailing is right up our alley.  I will absolutely post a report after our sailing for others who are newbies like us. Looking forward to exploring something brand new to us and experiencing a new ship.  Happy Holidays to all our fellow cruise critic members and cruising fans!  

We sailed Disney many times in the past and found Celebrity to have better food and service, and the cleanliness of the ship was on par with Disney. Of course the activities are different because of the average age on the ship, but we were fine with that since our kid is in college and not cruising with us. 
 

Saying that we also found the same on RCCL the two trips we have done so far. We had clunkers on Disney so maybe you just had bad timing on RCCL. Trying other lines opened our eyes, we previously thought Disney owned the customer service side of the cruise market, we were wrong. 

Here I thought the Edge bashing had stopped. We are inside and Oceanview cruisers by choice, because the fancy rooms and concierge perks were unused by us in the past on other lines and a waste of money. The Edge inside room was one of the nicer rooms we have had, if anything it had too much storage. 
 

For us as new cruisers to Celebrity we really liked the Edge, and based on the boards comments and people on the Edge we are staying away from the other ships  for now. We do have a forward facing oceanview booked on the Apex because the room setup looks awesome compared to a similar room we had on RCCL. 
 

I have given up defending my viewpoint because we aren’t the core customer group that sails Celebrity. After the Apex we will likely go back to RCCL for a while. Maybe in time we will branch out to the other ships but not for a while unless the boss says so. 

Due to ridiculous flight costs, we have a late afternoon flight. Looked at a couple of Royal excursions with transfer to the airport and was curious how are luggage would be handled? Does it go with you on the excursion or is it a separate charge for Royal to transfer it to the airport for you. If they do the latter is American Airlines covered? When we sailed Disney our usual airline of choice, Southwest, was never covered for bag transfers. 
 

We use our Disney lanyards, and they happen to be the top loyalty tier, lol. Those lanyards just happen to be made of a different material that is very comfortable to wear. Honestly I look like a dork anyways so the lanyard is an improvement 😉 For us they are really handy and on excursions use them to carry our ID and credit card as well. Usually off ship I slip it under my shirt or in a pocket. My wife usually just stuffs everything in a small purse she bought on a cruise. 
 

on our last cruise on the Edge I just cracked up at all the room cards on the bottom of the pool, seems a few guys forgot to take out of their pockets before swimming. 

Saddened to hear this news. In the short time I have been on the Celebrity board she was one of the kindest and most helpful posters on the board and helped ease the concerns we had about switching to a new cruise line. 
 

Condolences to her family and friends. 
 

cgolf

On 10/22/2019 at 7:59 PM, zook50 said:

Just finished sub teaching (taught full time for 32 years and have subbed for another 3+), so just catching up on this whole thread.  Fascinating!!  My apologies if I'm "extending" the meandering response to the original poster's question.  My husband and I chose to have no children.  We have travelled extensively and had mostly positive experiences with kids.  Occasionally, we've run into an unruly or noisy or rude kid whose parent/guardian appears to have given up - sad.  Thanks to all the strong parents I've seen in my career and travels who tirelessly raise our good future citizens. 

 

That being said, I certainly understand some of the educators' opinions here.   When a student misses a week or two of school, it does have huge ramifications, contrary to what a non-educator (I'm assuming?) poster said.  We (teachers and assistants) have to catch them up upon return during our early mornings, noon hours, or after school.  They can't (and/or won't) do it themselves.  As another poster said, it's often the students who need the time in school the most who go on the longest holidays (not during school days off).  Expanding a child's horizons through travel is fantastic, but high school must be completed properly to ensure the child's future, including a job, acceptance to post-secondary programs, etc.

 

To end on a positive note, we were thrilled to have a family with a baby on our last TA cruise.  He was the only child on the ship and was definitely the most popular passenger aboard!!  Of course, it helped that he was a complete charmer😉 

 

We like all kinds of travel experiences, including family style resorts and cruises and a sprinkling of adults only holidays.

While I respect your opinion and for some kids that may be true about completing high school properly, I don't believe it applies to all kids. Our daughter graduated 11th in her class taking all the AP courses offered while missing one week a school year to do a cruise. IMO she should have been ranked higher because some of the kids above her took easier classes, and no AP classes and the GPAs were super close. For some reason her school didn't weight the AP grades heavier, so it was a disadvantage class rank wise for kids to take these courses.

She really didn't need any catch up when she got back though, because she had her homework with her on the ship and time was set aside each day to make sure she got her work done. I don't remember her ever staying late to work with her teachers at all, the only extra work for the teachers was making sure she had the work to take with her.

I would agree if she was a weak student we would not have been able to do this.

My 2 cents on this is if you don't want a lot of kids on a cruise, I am guessing Celebrity is a good bet based on my 1 experience on the Edge and the average age of the cruisers and what I have read when these threads pop up. The thing is though since Celebrity is ok with kids cruising the line, you could see many kids or no kids depending on when you sail.

From our time on Disney, you will see a range of behavior from kids and parents of those kids. From wild and out of control to super polite and quiet. Just because they are on X doesn't mean they will be better behaved, heck Disney is a more expensive line now. If any one wants to sail without kids than a line that doesn't allow them would be the line for you.

This seems to me like the argument about people that move near an airport and then push back in the community because it is too loud. X allows kids, we all need to deal with it. I am just glad it isn't kid soup like Disney:)

Question on the change language. We have a room with 3 in it, and my wife and I will get the beverage package. Down the road when we add the soda package to our daughter will my wife and I be hit with the extra charge because it is a change to an account even though not the to people getting the perk.

52 minutes ago, Arno. said:

We have the good fortune of cruising on Summit back to back for these performances.

It's so nice to experience a different form of entertainment. For those who don't like the occasional show, it's not as if all the standard stuff will go away. There will always be different forms of entertainment to complain or gripe about.

Perhaps it's a sneaky way to get more passengers into the casino at that time... 😉

If they wanted to push people to the casinos they would put the early Edge shows throughout the fleet that essentially was all current music;) 

We loved it, others appeared not to.

10 minutes ago, orchestrapal said:

 

VERY SAD👎😢

Why is that? We tried and we didn't enjoy it, everyone's tastes are different. The performers were very talented, just not something we liked. We did stay for the whole show. I also don't like to dance either, two left feet;)

All I can hope for on the Apex is that they have Edgy shows in the main theater like we saw in January on the Edge and not this.

We saw the Nutcracker ballet once and both my wife and I didn't enjoy it. I watched intently and could never figure out what the point of the story was, reminds me of the Eden show;) The performers, both ballet and Eden, were very talented, just not for us.

52 minutes ago, 1980dory said:

Isn't it time to stop flogging this dead horse and start packing?  It seems like a whole lot of energy is being expended here in continuing this flogging and in the end no one is educated, convinced, changes their views or comes away with a happy perspective. At this point I really don't care because I'm going on a cruise soon and I have packing and prep concerns that are far more important.  I'm going to have fun and this flogging drags me down.

Maybe we could change the subject to something more upbeat like tipping, smoking, booze smuggling, chair hogging, etc.

The edge was the first ship that we didn't encounter chair hogs, must have been the abundance of shaded areas🤣 Flip flops should have been a necessity due to all the sunburned feet;)

I don't remember it being offered on our Edge cruise, and honestly I didn't miss it at all. The lobster we had on Disney and RCCL wasn't very good compared to what we get on land. Most times I ordered something else and the servers would feel the need to give me a lobster tail too.

So if it isn't offered I wouldn't miss it. The one thing I didn't see on Celebrity or RCCL was shrimp and cocktail sauce that we had on Disney in the buffet. They were a pain that they had to be peeled, but that alone was a meal.

This is an interesting topic, because we sold our daughter on the Apex because of the music we had on the Edge. If the Apex plays classical music and 50s and 60s I am not sure it is enough to cancel, for my wife and I, but not sure my twenty something daughter would approve. If they went with big band/jazz from the 1920s my daughter and I would absolutely love it, my wife not so much;) One reason we would stick is we got one of the front facing ocean view rooms and we are up to 3 perks now from the last sale, where the 3rd perk was truly free.

When we were on the Edge a big part of the draw for us was all the live music that fit our tastes, and yes we noticed it didn't fit the tastes of many on our cruise. Our hope was the E class would eventually draw more that enjoy that music and entertainment and the Apex would be a clone with different shows. Time will tell.

Probably the opposite of most, I am very happy to hear this. This kind of music on the Edge was on of the highlights of our cruise.

While I feel very bad for the family and especially the Grandpa for this tragic accident, these types of lawsuits concern me.

I have seen other cruise lines settle out of court before even though they would have won in court just to keep the publicity low. They also changed policies after that to protect themselves.

I hope that the RCCL/Celebrity ships don't react by keeping these windows closed in the future. I can only imagine how warm some of the areas would become without the ventilation. Also where does it stop, will all railings need to be taller in the future including verandas? 

Just once I would like to see a big corp, fight one of these lawsuits (if it happens) instead of settling out of court.

On 7/8/2019 at 6:27 PM, shakeNbake said:

Was there any noise issues with the outer door and the cabin being along side the passage way walk or other noise issues for cabin location?

Op here as my alter ego;)

This setup was very quiet, perhaps the quietest room we have ever had. I will say we were very careful about letting either our room door and the outer door not slam shut, and the people in the sky suite did the same. So if people were careless and let those doors slam, I am not sure how loud it would be, but would assume it isn't any worse than a standard room.

23 minutes ago, Ma Bell said:

I am pro Chic Night and like to see people make an effort but if you or anyone else want to wear your jammies be my guest. What I find interesting is how people ascribe motives to others. Do we have "thought police" now?

 

In all my years sailing with Celebrity I've never heard another person say a word to someone else about what they were wearing. We all make our own choices and don't need to make excuses for them. Just make a choice and live with it. I don't choose my friends by what they are wearing. 

We are on the same page, and I do make an effort, I just don't do jackets or ties (don't know how to tie one), but do wear nice clothes to respect the atmosphere of the dining venue.

Really hope this thread gets going again. I have caught some random pictures on instagram, but nothing to the level Lloyd usually provides.

1 hour ago, Ma Bell said:

Why are you quoting me?

I am cgolf 1, just don't have my iPad at work.

My apologies if I misquoted you, your comments read to me as pro formal night.

to the opinion part though, the only one that matters is Celebrity, they can choose who to let in and who to deny access to the different dining rooms. I am always baffled how heated these discussions get on all cruise boards, not just CC:)