CalTexCruiser

Thanks all for your replies.   1pm or later sounds great.

I tried the strategy of arriving at 1:30pm when embarking in SF on Ruby Princess, but still waited 3 hours in line.  But that was a perfect storm of lots of covid patients on board waiting to get off, a crappy terminal (Pier 39 which should never be used as an embarkation/debarkation port), and rainy weather.

3 hours ago, sixpackeddie said:

We are currently on the Reflection in an upper level suite.

 

There are currently only 3 butlers on our ship that take care of Celebrity Suites and above. All the Sky suites are being taken care of by 2 Butlers from Michael’s Club. 
 

On the Reflection, I counted 20 upper suites (Celebrity Suites and above).

That means each of the 3 butlers assigned to the 20 upper suites would serve about 7 suites.

This is a VAST improvement before the latest changes.  Previously, our "dedicated" butler when we stayed in an upper suite may be assigned up to 18 suites total.

Hopefully, for the OP, this translates into butler service that should be much, much better than before, notwithstanding no specialty dining room service.

The folks getting Royally Screwed(*) are in Sky Suites with the 2 assigned butlers.

* "Royally Screwed" is a trademark of Royal Caribbean.  All rights reserved.

We have a cruise departing Ft Lauderdale at 4pm.

For the experienced Princess cruisers out there, when do the embarkation crowds generally thin out?  

If we arrive at 1:30pm, would that still be too early?

We'd like to time it so we can check in and walk on without any lines.

I must have missed the discussion on buffet utensils.  Are there an insufficient number, or are they of the wrong type, or are they in a state of disrepair?

Won't be long now before this thread gets shut down.

On 8/2/2023 at 12:21 PM, Lastdance said:

Stay tuned, as Celebrity is re-defining luxury...TBD!  Maybe Luminae will be an upcharge for the lowly suites, or ...?  Your guess is as good as mine; your next cruise in a lower suite may be your last, but only time will tell.  Best of luck booking and cruising it forward.🤑 I hear now they are using AI(artificial intelligence) to determine what happens going forward.

I think you are on to something re Luminae.  One complaint I have of Luminae is that it gets very crowded and loud during rush hour, especially on the Edge class ships.

To enhance the experience of Celebrity's valued customers, Sky suites get X # of visits to Luminae per week, and any excess visits will be charged a nominal fee per person comparable to specialty dining charges.  

If I'm in an upper suite and want to try the innovative Retreat Butler and Team, can I request that rather than a dedicated butler?

1 hour ago, drwbrt said:

I may need to post separately, but this seems to have the right knowledge base in here. If you bid upgrade to a suite, does the access to concierge lounge come with that upgrade?  IIRC Royal Caribbean does not allow things like the genie the come with upgrades through the bid system. Was wondering if Princess did anything similar. 

Yes concierge lounge comes with the upgrade (note that only Royal class ships have a concierge lounge).

More photos of your new Retreat Team

2 minutes ago, OysterD said:

LOL.  Welcome the new Retreat Team.  Please stay out of the way while they are buzzing down the hallways delivering to our valuable suite customers.

13 minutes ago, cruisefam38 said:

 I can imagine those little robots rolling around with coffee perched on their little flat heads.

The doorbell rings, the passenger opens the door, the robot says, "Greetings Cabin 9017, here is your morning coffee, cream, no sugar.  Have a good day."

 

No need to imagine robots rolling around.  In many Asian buffet restaurants (both here in the US and in Asia) where customers are able to order specific items from their phones while sitting at the tables, these robots are already delivering food items.

It won't be long before robots are able to deliver room service on ships after you've placed orders from your app or called the room service chatbot.

The Retreat Team will include both humans and robots to make for a streamlined experience for Celebrity's valued customers.

1 minute ago, zitsky said:

So butlers became Retreat Host and now Retreat Team?

Actually butlers became Retreat Hosts then became butlers again and now Retreat Team, unless you are staying in an upper suite in which case they are still your butlers/hosts.

If (and that is a big IF) done correctly, I suppose the Retreat Team concept may actually enhance the customer experience.  On the Edge series ships there are so many Sky Suites that sometimes any particular butler may be overwhelmed. 

The Retreat Team would allow the workload to be more evenly distributed, ASSUMING that there are enough members in the team.  Hopefully Celebrity did some analysis to optimize the number of members to include in the team, but I fear it will be trial and error leading to many frustrated suite passengers.

I think perhaps people are jumping the gun on this

On our cruise 5 months ago, the housekeeping manager told me both the room attendant and butler work under him

I was surprised at this since in the past the butlers were under the suite manager.

Perhaps Celebrity’s plan is to have one person perform the roles of both attendant and butler for Sky suites, rather than have 2 persons which may be inefficient.  This may work if they have Sky suite only room attendants who can focus their attention on suite customers and not have to deal with non-suite cabins.

53 minutes ago, sunviking90 said:

They are taking from Peter to give to Paul with a much better spin on it.

Thanks.  Since I want to be Paul, I just paid Princess an additional $ 1,440 for my 12-day upcoming cruise to purchase Princess Plus.

I'm confused. Can someone boil this down for me like I'm a 5 year old?

2 hours ago, MBP&O2/O said:

Well, there is one solution ...

Except the sign would be revised on a Seabourn ship to state:

If your DOG 

does a POO

Please throw it overboard.

5 hours ago, jennmaybe said:

We are booked in a regular balcony cabin for our Mediterranean cruise in October. I got the email to upgrade to a club class mini suite starting at $250 per person.  Is that a good deal?

1 hour ago, CalTexCruiser said:

 

$ 250 will get you 6 or 7 specialty dinners depending on which restaurants you go to, so you could factor that into the equation.

 

Plus club class mini suites are in better locations.

 

I wasn't too impressed with club class dining--it's literally a cordoned section of the MDR (at least on the Discovery Princess) and the food was standard MDR fare (with one extra dish per night).  (Some) waitstaff in club class is better than the waitstaff in the main section of MDR.

I didn’t read your original post correctly and missed that you are upgrading from balcony to club class mini

i thought the 250 was from regular mini to club class mini

from balcony to club class mini, 250 pp is a good deal IMO

4 hours ago, jennmaybe said:

We are booked in a regular balcony cabin for our Mediterranean cruise in October. I got the email to upgrade to a club class mini suite starting at $250 per person.  Is that a good deal?

$ 250 will get you 6 or 7 specialty dinners depending on which restaurants you go to, so you could factor that into the equation.

Plus club class mini suites are in better locations.

I wasn't too impressed with club class dining--it's literally a cordoned section of the MDR (at least on the Discovery Princess) and the food was standard MDR fare (with one extra dish per night).  (Some) waitstaff in club class is better than the waitstaff in the main section of MDR.

We are also curious about this.

We are booked next spring Singapore to Dubai on the Encore.

Usually book upper suites on Celebrity but the Seabourn itinerary filled a lot of our bucket list.

If you have unlimited specialty dining make full use of it

we find Luminae can get busy and a bit hectic at rush hour and enjoy the relative more quiet dining experiences in the specialty restaurants 

1 hour ago, Crystabel said:

 

Thanks for the video showing the collision!!

Reminds me of when I was learning how to dock a power boat in the SF Bay and the winds (20+ mph) would blow the boat right up against the dock even when I tried to apply power to move away from the dock.

Although one would hope an experienced pilot/captain would do better than a novice.

@CelebrityBrownWater may start a trend...may not be long before we see the following screen names:

NoLobsterInMDR

HorribleBuffetFood

PoorExperienceInLuminae

G*d*mnChairHogs

SlowWifiSpeeds

14 hours ago, TheHawk1 said:

I saw a recent picture of it on FB. Some gelatinous thing on a plate. You couldn’t pay me to try it.

If that is the case then Celebrity has done a great disservice to pigs feet.  Why try to transform it into some blob in an attempt to hide the origin of the food item?  Just serve it in its original form (cooked of course).

Same thing with chicken feet, an ox's tail, pig's ear, beef tongue, and other variations of food from an animal's extremities.

Anyone have a picture of the Pigs Feet Carpaccio.

Pigs feet if cooked right can be quite tasty—the thick skin and tendons if tenderized are quite succulent