Cruising89143

So sorry for your loss.

I have all of the boosters including the most current booster and we still brought it home after a recent Freedom/ Symphony cruise in early November. Luckily it was very mild. Took an eight night cruise on the Solstice last month and no sickness. Hopefully we had built up immunity which helped. 🙂

MSC has a policy where your Voyagers Club status will drop back to classic unless you cruise at least once every three years and you must subscribe again to even get that if your status drops back. I think that they’re the only cruise line with that policy.

Someone currently on the Connie and Solstice confirmed it as well.

I wonder how full the ships are right now? The reason that I ask is last month we only had about 1650 guests on our Solstice sailing. I think the one prior to us was around 950-975. On our sailing all suites were fully booked so Luminae was busy. With 1650 guests, spreading them out between Luminae, Blu, specialty dining and the MDR makes me wonder just how busy the Oceanview was. I have no idea as we never ventured up there in the evening. I wonder if X is doing this until all ships start sailing closer to capacity? Not trying to take up or make excuses for X but thinking out loud. Maybe this is something that LLP should publicly address.

Yes. MSC is the only cruise line that’s private and we have no way of knowing their financials. I took a quick glance and if I looked correctly, RCG is over 19 billion in debt and Carnival Corp is over 28 billion in debt. That’s mind blowing or at least for me. RCG also has one Oasis class, three Icon class, two Edge+ class and two new Silversea ships under construction or on order.

I think that the only way out for the big three is filing for reorganization. Far too much debt. Right now they’re just kicking the can down the road. I may be wrong but for the amount that they all owe, I don’t see any other way. Celebrity is becoming more mass market by the day. The line that separates them from RCI becomes thinner each day.

Just read from another guest currently sailing on the Silhouette that the evening dining in OV has been drastically reduced. She stated that the pasta station and grill is now closed. According to this person about 3/4 of the area is closed and roped off. She was on this ship three weeks ago and she stated on this return in addition to the OV changes she also noticed the room service charge with the exception of the Continental breakfast, higher drink prices, no daily treats in Aqua. She did state that tea time in the buffet did not change. She stated that it was still “yummy”….. I don’t cruise in Aqua so I have no idea of what they received in the past. Just posting what she reported on social media.

I wonder how popular the retreat/suites will be once all of the FCC’s are used up? I suspect that was one reason why they were so popular. I looked at a few sailings in the retreat for 2023 and I refuse to pay those prices. Especially after experiencing the X retreat product last month on the Solstice.

I suggest keeping an eye out on Celebrity. Latest news coming from guests “currently on board” some of the ships is that X has decided to cut back on the evening offerings at the Oceanview. Not sure how deep this will go but it looks as though they’re trying to force guests to the MDR. Supposedly this just started this week. Happy New Year……🙂

Seems that if you read the other boards here, changes are now happening on just about every other cruise line. Some not as drastic but I think all of the cruise lines are so far in debt that is only the beginning. They will continue to look for more areas to save money. While some are stating that the current changes do not affect them that may be the case now but sooner or later one of the changes will. I’m not loyal to any cruise line. If I were, IMHO RCI actually offers better past guest perks than X does. I go with who will give me the best overall cruise experience.

I read the same comments on the RCI board. Seems that people cannot load the app on some new tablets. No longer supported.

What I’m seeing from Celebrity is happening across the board one way or another with other mass market and premium mass market lines. Today Carnival announced that they were raising gratuities and Wi-Fi prices.

Just finished watching the video on the making of the Aqua Dome. Definitely nothing else out there like it. Of course no one has matched the Aqua Theater on the Oasis class either. Looks like one of the other cruise lines tried to match Two70 from the Quantum class by moving it mid ship on their new builds but it did not look all that impressive to me. Some really bad site lines. Aqua Dome looks to be a great space with multi use day and night unlike the Aqua Theater.

The new charge is higher than RCI unless RCI raises their RS charge which is currently $7.95 plus the 18% gratuity. The other thing that I don’t like is the smaller martini glasses on X. RCI had the standard glasses and we actually found that RCI had better cocktails and bars than we experienced on the Solstice. Again, RCI may make a change also but right now they haven’t. I know that the cruise lines need cash but there will be no going back once things are back to normal “if that happens”…

Just more of Celebrity moving to the mass market segment. They have been mass market for a while but this move places them in competition with the other mass market cruise lines. I think X has an identity issue. They have no idea where they fit. They tried the “modern luxury “ tag. Didn’t work. They tried the “All Included” concept. Did not work. Right now we’re seeing an overpriced product. Based on our last cruise, X felt just average. LLP is no longer running this company. The bean counters are.

That would have to be really bad……😳😳😳

Same for us. The extra towels would be the sticking point. We stacked the chocolates off to the side.

Good for him. Awesome.

First of all, really enjoying you review. I had to comment about this lunch. We purchased the Key for a cruise on the Freedom due to the cost. It was dirt cheap and since it included Wi-Fi it made sense to purchase. With that said, the so called Chop’s menu was not good at all. We have dined at Chop’s many times and the food was straight up MDR quality. While it was nice to escape the WJ madness, we would skip this meal. We also had a very difficult time getting a table for two.

Interesting topic. In October/early November we cruised on the Navigator, Freedom and Symphony. All three cruises were impacted by the fellow guests. We had six previous cruises on RCI this year with no issues. On the Navigator we had a couple in Jamie’s located at the table directly behind us who questioned the server about taking complete meals “to go” as another couple had not made it to the restaurant. He said “no” as it was not possible. She then proceeded to FaceTime the other couple on the speaker phone to tell them to come to the restaurant. This became a long and loud conversation. After several glances to her she finally ended the call. Once the other couple showed up it was then a conversation of using certain comments including MF this and MF that. Then the two guys got into an argument on who was arrested last and the most. They had a very nice name for each other. 🙄 At that point we asked our server to finish and get us out. We were over it. On both the Freedom and Symphony out of Miami, we dealt with groups who refused to queue, crammed the elevators and hung around in loud groups and refused to move out of the way when blocking traffic. It got old. Fortunately we had none of this a few weeks ago on Celebrity. I feel bad for the crew due to the cruise lines not enforcing their code of conduct rules. Why confront a guest when corporate is not going to back you? Right now the cruise lines are in survival mode and anything goes as long as people pay to fill ships. I guess it’s just something that we have to deal with. We did add to the comments at the end of each cruise but I doubt that it mattered.

Agree. What I read made me LOL. With that said, I see this as the new norm.

Agree 100%. Same thing happened on Celebrity as well a few weeks ago. Lost count as it happened over and over. Grew tiresome.

Wow, glad that it all worked out. Very stressful way to kick off a vacation. Mom to the rescue. 🙂

The longest X cruise for us was a thirteen night Med cruise. Luckily the itinerary was port heavy. We just returned from eight nights on the Solstice and while we really enjoyed our cruise, we were happy to be going home when it was over. For us cruise food gets old quickly and the entertainment on the Solstice wasn’t that great to begin with so I could not imagine seeing it again the following week. For us it’s about seven to eight night max unless it’s an itinerary that has a lot of port days to places new to us.