critic2023

Yes, I'm very annoyed with this. I'm a solo cruiser and I just bit the bullet and booked a cabin at full price because it's a cruise I've had my eye on for a long time. I completely understand cruise lines charging solos for double occupancy, but to not offer us the same sale price that couples are getting for the same room is absurd.

Eagerly awaiting the 2025/26 Asia schedule! Some very interesting itineraries just leaked from Virgin, but they're spring/summer 2025, and I don't think that timing will be great for me unfortunately. (If it does work, I probably won't know until they've long been sold out.) Winter 2025/26 works much better for me and Asia is calling! I had a Singapore/Thailand/Bali cruise for January 2025 that I unfortunately had to cancel - hoping to maybe book something similar around January 2026.

I've been getting the same issue. Their website is pretty notorious for not being great, but this is a new one. If you're persistent it will eventually work but I agree that it's very annoying

Horrifying. Hopefully Celebrity in their due diligence in conducting background checks and thoroughly investigating and potential complaints/suspicious behavior if there were reports. Unfortunately, those kinds of things are only effective if someone has been caught before... if it was their first time or they've been able to get away with it somehow, a background check won't do anything. Just makes me sick to think about it.

There was no welcome aboard champagne when I was on the Beyond this May either. Disappointing, as I'd seen it in all the videos I watched prior to the cruise! Now it's not that big of a deal as I immediately went up to the buffet for lunch and grabbed a glass of prosecco, but having a glass handed to you as you walked onboard is a nice touch that I would have appreciated.

As others have said, solo should get you 120 points, 60 for each person who "should" be occupying the room if it were full. If they don't give you double points, it should be easy enough to fix by calling!

Hi everyone! I have my eye on a couple itineraries from the newly released 2025-26 deployment schedule. Since they are a ways off, I'm trying to figure out when the best sales are and it would be cheapest to book. I am a solo cruiser and these ships do not offer solo cabins. I'm not opposed to booking a normal cabin on my own, but I've noticed that most of Celebrity's sales offer a certain discount for the second cruiser in your cabin, which obviously does not apply to me. Are there certain sales or promos I should wait for in general, or as a solo cruiser specifically? Thank you in advance!

I don't like Celebrity making a policy more restrictive rather than less, but truthfully, this doesn't make much of a difference to me in practice. The only things that would make me want to cancel a previously scheduled shore excursion that close to show time would be weather or political unrest... and more often than not, I think I would be making that call inside of 24 hours anyway. Points off for Celebrity in theory, but in practice, I doubt it will make much of a difference.

I think they should only be banned during theater performances. I agree etiquette is lacking sometimes (you do not ever need to be on speakerphone in a public setting), but it is possible to quietly and respectfully use your phone pretty much anywhere else.

I'm not one to shy away from splurging on a vacation, but you'll never catch me dropping $75 for one single dinner at Eden when I could eat somewhere else (with great food) for free. I enjoy the ambiance in Eden so I'll just sit there with a drink if anything.

To each their own. I am not retirement age so it's not even an option, but even if I were, I think one single B2B would be my limit - and even then, only if the itineraries were drastically different. I love cruising (wouldn't be here if I didn't!) but for me anything more than 3ish weeks is just way too much time to spend on a cruise ship and away from home.

Took nearly a month to get my deposit back from a cruise on the Beyond that was cancelled when they decided to move it to the Caribbean.

I have no room to speak ill of Tito's, since more often than not that's the brand I have stocked in my home bar. But to call it premium is quite a stretch 😂

Mine starts very similarly to yours. Wake up at a leisurely time, have coffee delivered to the room to drink while I get ready. Then head to OVC for breakfast with a mimosa or two. (This is all probably so late that I barely even make it to OVC before it stops serving breakfast.) Not much of a pool person myself but I love the Solarium, so I'd probably head there to relax and either read or scroll on the phone and keep in touch with friends back home. From there, probably lunch and a drink or two, then a nice nap back in the cabin. After that I'd get ready for the evening's theater show. Hit dinner, the show, and the martini bar, not necessarily in that order. If I have an early wakeup for a port call the next day I'd call it a night early, probably back in the room around 9. If it's another sea day the next day I'll try to stay up for the later entertainment options.

I sailed in a solo infinite veranda cabin on the Beyond earlier this year. For the price (re: no single supplement), I was quite happy with it. That being said, I would never pay full veranda price for it. I booked a Norwegian fjords cruise on the Apex next year and I chose an oceanview cabin instead of an infinite veranda. It was about $1k less for the oceanview and as much as I'd like to have a veranda for the fjords, I don't feel like an infinite veranda really fits the bill or justifies the price. It would be nice if it were marketed as an intermediary step between an oceanview and a veranda (and priced accordingly). But to me it just feels like a bigger/better window, not a balcony. So all that to say yes, it is just a bigger window and not really a balcony. My best tip would be to avoid them on the 6th floor because the lifeboats obscure the view below and make it feel even less like a balcony.

I agree. Almost all the cuts I've heard of so far don't impact me. I'm perfectly content in an inside, oceanview, or veranda cabin and would never spend the extra money on a higher class cabin, but if I did I'd be very annoyed that they were taking away the perks I paid $10k+ for. I've never grabbed a cookie at Al Bacio, but I think for the price we all pay - right down to the cheapest inside cabin booked during a sale - charging $2 for a cookie just looks bad and cheapens the brand. It's not enough to get me to go with another line yet, but it's a trend that concerns me.