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We were on a Celebrity cruise in 2015 to Israel and they announced they would not be stopping at Haifa or Ashdod after we boarded the cruise. Several passengers left the ship after a couple of days, flew to Israel and rejoined the ship several days later. So it just depends on when they make the decision and whey they let you know. Celebrity has never been the best on keeping passengers informed, IMHO.

As a big fan of the french onion soup on Celebrity I have to say the last cruise on Edge the french onion soup was very substandard. There was no cheese on top and no onions in the soup. I actually commented to the waiter that this was not french onion soup and well below the Celebrity standard.

I think this is the key. Depending on who your travel agent is you may not be able to upgrade even within the 21 day window or you may be able to bid right after the final payment.

Thank you for posting. For the MDR is the seating back to normal or are parties still seated by themselves. One of the things we liked about cruising was getting a large table and getting to meet a wide variety of people. On our last cruise with Celebrity they were seating everyone by themselves and larger tables were only for parties travelling together. .

I would refer you to the "Recently Returned" for Flora. I am sure your question is answered there or someone could provide you with the information. The blog is at: Celebrity Flora Cruise Roll Calls - Cruise Critic Message Board Forums

It seems some readers have misinterpreted my post. I have nothing against tender ports. As many have mentioned there are many wonderful ports that can only be experienced by tendering. The issue I have is with poorly done tendering. A tender plan with 20 minute wait times may entirely be suitable in October in Cannes but (in my opinion) is entirely inappropriate on an exceedingly hot day in July. By deploying just one more tender boat Celebrity could have drastically reduced the wait time and greatly decreased the stress on their passengers. And I am no stranger to heat, I have lived in southern Arizona for 40 years and am well versed in how to coexist with the heat. We live every summer with temperatures exceeding what Cannes and other European cities are experiencing. This does not mean I get in my car in the sun in July, roll the windows up and turn off the air conditioning. While that may work out well in January it is inappropriate (in my view) in July. And I do not dislike Celebrity, as you can see from my signature we have been cruising with Celebrity for over 20 years and there are many things they do very well, but in my opinion tendering is not one of them and I think people should be informed. I think Celebrity has a "one size fits all" strategy for tendering and they are unwilling or unable to alter that strategy based on conditions.

Yes, rather than improving the tendering operations just blame it on the weather. If it had not been so hot the tendering would have been fine.

Also, there have been no announcements about covid, no passengers wearing masks except some on tenders.

We are currently on Edge and our waiter the first night told us the ship was less than half full. I can believe it since it feels the ship is deserted. There are no lines for anything, restaurants have maybe 50 people in them at 6 pm. Not complaining but I don't see how Celebrity is making any money on this cruise.

The tendering was done by Celebrity, not the port. There are priority tendering for suite guests and Elite members but that is only for the early tender boats. Once those have been transported then everyone is transported on a first come first serve basis. At no time did I see the tender boats were full even for the priority tendering in the morning. I am not saying Celebrity should not visit tendering ports but as long as they do such a poor job we will avoid them. Certainly, with the hot weather it would seem they could have done tendering every 5 minutes rather than every 20 minutes. They also could have run the air conditioning on the tender boats to make it more comfortable as they did in Portofino. I do not know why they are not doing that but my guess is it would require 4 tender boats rather than the two they are running with the associated cost and manpower.

For the past several years we have tried to avoid Celebrity cruises that have tendering stops. The reason dates back to an Australia cruise several years ago on Celebrity. I do not remember the tendering port but it was in Western Australia and the temperature was very warm, over 100 degrees F. Just as several groups of tours were returning Celebrity decided they needed to move the ship and stop tendering for approximately an hour. So over a hundred passengers stood in the heat with no shade, no water and no place to sit down. Since many Celebrity passengers tend to be older this should have been a concern for the captain and hotel manager on the ship. To their credit the people in the town were holding a craft fair nearby and when they saw the line of elderly people standing in the heat they brought over their own chairs, cool drinks from their own coolers and shade awnings from their booths all while the Celebrity tender personnel looked on and did nothing. With this experience in our mind we were concerned when Celebrity cancelled our Adriatic cruise and we were shifted to the Edge with two tendering ports. The first port was Portofino where the tendering went wonderful and I thought Celebrity had actually improved. The tendering at Portofino used air conditioned tender boats that ran every five minutes. So today we get to Cannes and have to tender again. According to the ship the temperature is 97 degrees with 63% humidity. The tender boats sit at the dock with no air conditioning, no air flow and bake for 20 minutes before they return to the ship. It appears the passengers on this cruise are younger than the typical Celebrity cruise but even so it could not have been comfortable. So it appears Celebrity still has little or no concern about the comfort of their passengers and we will continue to avoid cruises on Celebrity with tender ports.

We are on Edge currently and while we booked the traditional dining at 6 pm when we boarded the ship they had changed us to Select Dining. When we called they said they were no longer doing traditional dining. We asked our waiter about it today and he said due to Covid they were no longer doing traditional dining since they could not seat different parties at the same table so it made more sense to eliminate traditional dining. He said he believes when cruise occupancy increases and covid declines they will resume offering traditional dining.

For example the mumps has a p0 of 10 and measles 16 and while at one time there were massive outbreaks of measles and mumps that rarely if ever occurs today because nearly everyone has had the MMR vaccine.

Well rho naut means the number of infections you can expect from a single person in a population where no one has previously been infected or vaccinated. While it is a good measure of the difference in variants to spread it is of little value today when large numbers have either had Covid or been vaccinated or both.

I think an earlier post mentioned Celebrity is a business so they will perform non-government mandated testing which they feel will maximize their revenue. Some people will be hesitant to cruise without testing because they believe it will increase their chances of contracting Covid and either being sick or quarantined. Others will not cruise for fear they will have a positive test right before their cruise and won't be allowed to board. So their vacation will be ruined. Most of the cruisers I have spoken to are in the second group but that is a relatively small sampling of cruisers. What can be easily seen is that ships departing from European ports have a lot of vacant cabins. Our cruise in July from Rome has over half of the cabins vacant and this, I assume, does not include any reserved for quarantine. Once X believes more cabins will be filled by removing non-government mandated testing I am sure they will do so.