Hey all, I am new to Celebrity but have cruised with RCL for ~20 years and am Diamond Plus so am matched as an "Elite" Celebrity guest. I booked a Concierge cabin as a solo cruiser on the Eclipse and had a few questions I figured I would throw out there to see if anyone had any thoughts!
Food...
I am lactose intolerant and with RCL it was a complete mess on the cruise I went on earlier this year. While the wait staff is eager to help, unfortunately they are just untrained and I don't hold that against them personally. The chef's are trained as expected and make it very easy but obviously we don't interact with the chef's on a daily basis at every food venue. On RCL I had a lengthy meeting with the restaurant mgr and the head chef discussing these concerns. They specifically told me not to bother filling out the special needs form for lactose intolerance as its quite common and to just talk to a restaurant manager. I found most of these folk, while happy to help, are untrained in dietary restrictions. They did say I should preorder my dinners the night before though and if I am doing that I may as well just fill in the special needs form so I can also determine if it would be better to go to a specialty dining venue when the MDR menu doesn't have options for me.
My question is has anyone who has a food intolerance had better experiences with Celebrity? Do they label items in the buffet or any venue's menus? RCL doesn't label much if anything and their reasoning is that "due to cross contamination from guests we can't control allergens" when at the buffet and I get that but its a stupid comment as I don't even know if it was cooked with lactose or dairy ingredients at all. The head chef at the buffet ended up spending 20 minutes walking through pointing at each item telling me yes or no when I would visit and that's just a waste of everyone's time when a simple label would resolve that issue.
Spa?
Due to my RCL Diamond Plus status it is usually most cost effective to book a massage on the ship and use my onboard discounts. Celebrity looks like gives me 15% off for Elite status so I am trying to determine if the online *sales* are more or less than that. I've found some older reported normal price sheets online but not sure how accurate they are. The Celebrity website shows what they call discounts but they don't show original price so I don't know if the 15% discount onboard would be a better option. I usually book a massage once I am onboard and schedule it for that afternoon as we depart.