terrydtx

Does this mean the fillet and lobster will be on the non up charged menu one night?

Yes we had the beverage package but that was the price if you didn't have HIA.

What a mess disembarking was this morning. Both Koningsdam and Disney Magic were disembarking and it took over an hour to get off the ship and in our Uber. Good thing our fligh home is at noon. We are at the airport now. The terminal is not set up properly to handle 2 big ships disembarking.

From what i heard Celebrity will not be doing any future SA cruises which is why we booked on Oceania after our Feb 2025 Eqinox booked cruise was canceled for the 2025 season

The nice advantages are no to very little time waiting in lines for tenders, guest services and the MDR in other classes of ships. You have a separate entrance for MDR and you get seated with priority over non CO guests and you get the added extra menu items like in CO dining rooms. For example see my special last night above. Biggest advantage is the free cabin class upgrades to highest level available when you book

Tonight the CO special was Scallops Romanesco and it was again as good as any land restaurant. The food this week has been outstanding.

Lisa, Sorry to hear that you and Tom are a little under the weather. Dianne and I both had a slight head cold that lasted 24 hours which was strange, we brought Covid test kits and both of us were negative. We both are fine today. I heard from a crew member that there were some cases onboard of an intestinal virus that might have accounted for what you saw in the women's restroom. Congratulations on making 5 star also. For us it has been a good cruise and we both have been impressed with the CO dining room's service and food. I would put it up against the Celebrity Suites Luminae restaurant. Overall, the MDR menu and food quality, in our opinion, has been superior to what we had in our last two Celebrity cruises this past summer. Funny we overheard a conversation while in the tender this morning from a gentleman who was complaining about the food in the Lido, the other person asked how he like the MDR and he said he hadn't been there all week and might give it a try tonight. I wanted to say really the food in the MDR is so much better than the Lido. The only time we ate in the Lido was for a quick breakfast and then lunch today after we returned to the boat and I thought the food was very good.

On the Eqinox in June and Apex in September we never saw Prime Rib or rack of lamb. Only lamb was roasted leg of lamb. I guess it is hit or miss with Celebrity's MDR.

Here is the special lemon shrimp fettuccine i had tonight. It was as good as any Italian restaurant. ⁸j

In the CO dining room every night they display the non MDR entrees and the nightly special. The strip steak, salmon and seared tuna are available every night. They are displayed in my picture with tonights special Lemon shrimp fettuccine. They are all prepared in the CO kitchen.

CO for breakfast is busy the first hour they open. 7-8am. 8:30 is good time.

I was told that our cruise is at passenger capacity of just less than 2700 people. The K'Dam is not much less in size than the E Class ships, but it is a jump from the about 2000 pax size of the Vista and Signature class HAL ships. Take away the Retreat Lounge and Sun Deck and add the HAL HIA, CO will provide most of the other Retreat benefits for a whole lot less cost. The CO dining room is every bit as nice as Luminae, but with better food choices. The big complaint on Celebrity with Luminae is the frustration of the starters and Entrees choices and not being able to order off the MDR. The CO dining room has both the MDR menu and a special starter and entree every night not available in the MDR. CO is also much quieter and more intimate than the larger Luminae in the E Class ships.

Here is the prime rib last night in CO that we won't see on Celebriity ship anymore. It was excellent too and cooked a perfect Medium Rare.

The Seaview pool and bar on HAL is the equivalent to X Sunset bar. On this cruise smokers are smoking on both sides of the area with no HAL inforcement of the rules. I saw no signage about proper area for smoking either. It makes the bar and pool useless for non smokkers

I doubt HAL will change their smoking policy as too many of their loyal customers are smokers and there would be a mass revolution if they tried to eliminate casino smoking. We do not ever use the casino, so we just stay away from the area, but it is a shame that the smoke continues to prorogate into the shops area on deck 3. What HAL needs to do is seal off the casino with doors and put in a better exhaust system to keep the smoke out of the rest of the ship. This morning on deck 6 we could smell smoke in the forward elevator and stairs area which tells me the casino smoke is rising up the stair wells too. I hope I get a post cruise survey as I intend to let HAL know how bad the smoking was on this cruise. If you haven't done so, I highly recommend you add Club Orange to your cruise in 2025.

We are booked for next August on the Volendam and with Club Orange. I would book the Oosterdam but only with CO as the extra benefits for the small cost is well worth having. We are doing the South America cruise in March 2025, but after looking at HAL and Celebrity we are booked on the 18-day cruise on the Oceania Marina. We booked a Concierge class cabin for less that the 14-day X cruise that was then canceled earlier this year. You may want to check out Oceania as an alternative to HAL. If you like the size of the X Sky Suites you should look at a Signature Suite on the Oosterdam, which is what we had last year, it is about the same size as a Sky Suite and has a huge bathroom with double sinks. After our B2B Edge cruise in January we are done with Celebrity. Going forward we will be looking at either HAL or Oceania. BTW we had a really good prime rib in the CO dining room last night, something we didn't see on our last two X cruises.

I am sure that was how the guy below us on the Oosterdam got caught for the third strike and off the ship. After my 2 complaints the cameras must have kept better watch on his balcony. He spent a lot of time on his balcony smoking.

We are currently on the HAL Koingsdam and the MDR food has been 100% better than we had in September on the Apex. Here are some entrees this week in the MDR so far that we never saw on the Apex. Monday was our first dressy night so we had a more choices Rack of Lamb Monday night NY strip loin steak with grilled shrimp Monday night Double cut pork chop last night Tuesday Spice crusted prime rib-on tonight's menu Unless Celebrity returns to menu items like the above, they are not making any positive movements. Sunday night had not much on the menu we liked, but we ate in Tamarind thier Asian specialty restaurant and we had the Wasabi crusted tenderloin and it was spectacular, BTW the cost for Tamarind is only $30pp.

I am looking at tonight's menu and see spice crusted prime rib, something we did not get in our two Celebrity Cruises this past summer. Last night we had the thick cut pork chops and they were delicious and as good as any land restaurants. So far the food on this cruise has been far superior to our earlier Celebrity Cruises.

We got the email for our Volendam Cruise next August, we have the premium HIA already with the early booking promo.

Yes, I got the same story when mine stopped after I reached Elite level.

Every time I have been by the line is long so I go to the crows nest to get my espressos.

Last night at 7:00 CO was nearly empty as most on this cruise eat at 5 to 5:30pm. This is the first time on HAL ship that smoking was an issue too.

Unlike the E Class ships the HAL Pinnacle ships all have the Crow's Nest up on deck 12 in the front of the ships with spectacular views. Ours has both a full-service bar and a specialty coffee station. The Crow's Nest has one of the best bar servers we have encountered so far, his name is Darwin, he has a great personality and was fast and efficient. He told us about a wine tasting yesterday afternoon in the MDR so we had him sign us up, I hope he gets some commission for his sale. We tried lunch again yesterday in the New York Pizza and I had a tasty, corned beef sandwich. My wife had a slice of well-prepared pizza. The bar and drink service around the NY Pizza was slow and appeared understaffed. Just like X, HAL has lots of chair hoggs and I saw many unoccupied chairs around the Lido pool with personal possessions saving them. Here is a picture of the wine tasting yesterday. We Paid $25pp for it but all 4 and 5 star Mariners got free invitations, All of the wines were Pacific NW wineries and rated by James Suckling 90 points or more. One of the wines was a Skol Blosser Pino Noir and it is available by the glass for only $13.

Another big difference, it seems the premium Wi-Fi on this ship is much faster and more reliable than we had with the premium Wi-Fi on the Apex last month. The K'Dam was recently upgraded with Starlink like the Apex.