alistairg

They are now saying they might arrive between 5 and 6 pm on Sunday and will only reimburse hotels if they arrive after 6pm.

Yes I had that calculation, but then I thought it was already Saturday for a minute 🤦‍♂️

My parents are on the ship. They have just left Lisbon. They were being told originally that they would have to get off the ship immediately no matter what the time was which seemed extremely unreasonable to me. I am ready to book them a hotel for Sunday night and a train home Monday morning, I really think they should be allowed to stay on the ship. I told them to think of it as an extra free night on the ship, but they are very apprehensive re crossing the Bay of Biscay.

The drinks were never officially part of SS so that’s fair enough. The butler was part of it when people booked and Celebrity are on dodgy ground changing it after booking and trying to claim it’s just the same service. The “delectable delights” are actually still on the website and again they were certainly there when people booked. I’d kick up a fuss about this just in principle. Anyone can call for room service, this is clearly described as something over and above that.

We are in a SS on the Apex on 16th of October. We booked this quite specifically as we liked the Egypt and Israel itinerary. We have not been on Celebrity in 10 years. I like Celebrity but I felt the suites were overpriced relative to Royal. Our Last cruise was on MSC World Europa in YC (wanted to give it a try) and 3/4 previous cruises were in Star Class on Royal. We have another Star Class cruise booked in February. SS is a bit of an odd man out as it similar same service to Sky Class on Royal (it was more with the butler), but the room the size of a Junior Suite on Royal. The price of a SS is roughly similar to an Owner's suite or even a 2 floor crown loft on Royal. These are much larger rooms. The size of a CS or almost an RS. Thus you really would expect more service for the price. The most comparable product would seem to me to be the YC Deluxe balcony cabin on MSC and again here an SS is around 50% more expensive and has now done away with butlers. We are not heavy users of the Genie/butler. We don't drink and filling the fridge with soda and water would have been nice but we can get them ourselves I guess. The website still lists "daily delivery of delectable delights" for a SS. Is this still happening? My wife really likes to have something like a cheese plate in the afternoon. Would you get it if you asked the head butler to arrange it? I have also noticed that the Luminae menus were available in the app a few months ago but have mostly disappeared. I hope this is not a prelude to poorer food in Luminae. Anyway considering the pricing and reduction in service we are likely to stick with Royal or possibly MSC.

Thanks people, my parents are gong on the cruise so they will ask about the possibility of starting later when they get on. He tried to cancel the extras, but cannot do anything as they are within 24 hours of embarkation. Good to know these should be refunded as they have a lot of stuff booked.

My brother's wife just had to go into hospital and they leave on the Anthem of the Seas tomorrow, so she won't be able to make it. They do have insurance if they cannot go. If she is OK in the next couple of days, are they able to fly to Lisbon and pick up the cruise there. I did this a few years ago when someone in the party forgot a passport but I don't know if the rules have changed. I have told hm to try and cancel all his drinks packages and excursions, but I don't know how late you can still do this?

Single cream is what we would pour over our Black Forest gateau in the UK! Makes a piece of chocolate cake lovely and moist. My American wife is horrified by me wanting to pour cream over chocolate cake. For some reason cream is very country specific. When my wife makes whipped cream she adds sugar and a little vanilla to it, making it very sweet. To my thinking cream should be plain and less sweet than he dessert you put it on. The other similar item that we have here, but you hardly ever see in the US is custard. Americans have vanilla ice cream with hot desserts, we have custard. I have been gradually converting my in-laws to this. They had copious amounts of sticky toffee pudding and custard on their last visit with us.

With a lot of American relatives I finally decided to figure out what half and half was as they sometimes ask for it and I had previously told them you don't get it in the UK. Turns out half and half is what we call single cream in the UK. (Half milk, half full cream). We call full cream double cream in the UK. Virtually no one in the UK would ever consider putting cream in coffee and even less so tea. Indeed it is pretty much only a thing in the US and Canada. Coffee creamer is also virtually non existent here (except powdered Coffee Mate) 63% of milk sold in the UK is semi skimmed (called 2% in America) and only 27% is full fat.

I am guessing you are in the same boat as us 😀 - the flights to Singapore will be more than the cruise. The solarium and silver lounge/dining room were reserved for suite guests and diamond members and above when they were running the gold/silver system out of Shanghai. I don't know how this has changed since the ship has moved to Singapore. My guess is that the silver lounge is now equivalent to the diamond lounge. On the Shanghai cruises the windjammer was crazy busy and to be avoided. The silver dining, which is a quieter buffet was a really nice addition. The gold dining is more similar to Coastal Kitchen and will I assume now be for Sky suites and above. Service was outstanding on our previous cruise on the ship.

£1500 per night is for the cabin not per person. I would say from other bookings that we have been paying closer to £2000+per night for the first two people in a Star Class cabin. It is actually £7315 total for 3 people, at the moment the third person is only £129. I have booked through Costco which brings the cost down to around £6500 for the 5 nights. If I had enough people to fill the Ultimate Family Suite I would be booking it as the 3-8th people would only be £129 each at the moment which is a fantastic deal. (In fact I might look for something next summer if I can get this kind of pricing) Interestingly this is the second cruise we have booked where suites are materially cheaper to book in the UK vs the US. We have a Celebrity Apex booking in October this year where US pricing was around 30% higher than UK pricing, this time US pricing is around 10% higher. Historically we have booked via the US usually as it has been cheaper. I knew that Gold and Silver class had ended, although they still have the dining rooms labeled that way. When we sailed before on Spectrum the GLS was a Gold suite which was basically the same as Sky Class. There were no genies on sailings out of Shanghai. I seems that they have now reverted to Sea/Sky/Star for sailings out of Singapore and the room is Star Class. It is just a little disconcerting that the room description itself does not say Star Class. The mention of Genies on FB is a very good sign. I will check that out.

I just booked the Spectrum 5nt cruise from Singapore Feb 12th 2024. We were on the Spectrum out of Shanghai in 2019 when they had Gold and Silver suites. General info on Star Class on the RCI website says that a Grand Loft Suite on Spectrum is Star Class However, the room description itself does not mention this on the RCI website. Just of note the price for Star Class is very reasonable on the Spectrum. Around £1500 a night in a GLS before any discounts. I suspect they just have not updated the room description, but anyone could confirm it would be good.

1. Sorry did not visit the spa. We did visit the gym which was OK, but around half the size of the one on Wonder of the Seas. 2. The pools didn't seem too busy, but to be fair I only looked at them in passing. The inside pool in the Botanic Garden is a particularly nice facility and usually maybe had three or four people in it, I could imagine it being very busy if it was cooler outside. Similarly hot tubs seemed well used, but not overly busy. The YC pool is quite small and there was one hot tub next to it. It wasn't busy. They had reserved cabanas on the deck for the OS and RS which were very nice and service up there was good. the deck was quite busy. 3. I am not the best person to ask as my wife and I don't drink. My friend and SIL with us enjoyed the drinks selection and never felt the need to go above E13. The beer selection seemed a little limited. As well as no Asian beers they had no Peroni or Moretti for the mini bar. Basically every time my friend asked for something they said Heineken or Stella. So he asked for Heineken in one bar which they had on draught and twice they gave him a dark beer that obviously wasn't lager. When he queried it they gave him a bottle of Heineken instead of this draught beer. Something to mention on the WiFi. The speed was OK, but it had trouble resolving quite a lot of URLs. These were not streaming sites, and this continued after I upgraded to the streaming wifi, just various websites that I was using during the week. In the end I used a VPN to get a consistent browsing experience, so it definitely was not a speed or capacity issue.

Sorry, I was. There was a lot to do and we seemed to have very little time. No one had asked any further questions, so I left it until we got home. The first night in the YC restaurant seemed to be an anomaly. The service was very good every other time we were in there, we generally had the same waiter after the first night who was very good. The plastic water bottles did make one more appearance when back in Dubai, I don't know why. Generally the food in the YC restaurant I would say was solid but not great. A few desserts were highlights - the floating island, tarte tatin and caramel ice cream. I still feel there was a lack of variety in the meals. I found myself eating way more red meat than I ever would at home which was not great for my stomach. They were very good at catering for my wife and her sister's gluten free diet. The actual menu wasn't that exciting, but they just asked for things such as chicken breast and salads or adjustments to things on the main menu. There were still a couple of niggles. They closed the YC restaurant for breakfast at 9am one day despite the app showing 930am. We went to the YC sundeck instead. The unpleasant waiter from the first night told me to speak to the YC director when I tried complaining. I then figured out we could go upstairs, they didn't offer it as an alternative. The two times we had breakfast up there the service was much less professional than in the restaurant. The entertainment was alright. The shows are quite short, 35-45 minutes. We saw the musicals based production which was decent and the George Michael tribute act. He was OK, but lost the audience by doing a lot of ballads before doing more upbeat well known numbers. A large number of people left during the show. We did the Love Market tour in Dammam. We were fascinated to see Saudi Arabia and people seemed very happy to see tourists. There was not really a lot to see but we still enjoyed the experience. Two men were filming the tour. They were very friendly taking pictures with people, but I did wonder what was going on. We asked the tour guide if they were government officials and they said they thought they worked for local businesses. I wasn't buying it. My wife asked them and they said they worked for security for the royal family who wanted to know more about the tourists. For the drinkers, they were serving alcohol in the YC restaurant with dinner. I was astonished though that not only did they remove any alcohol n the mini bar but they took a bottle of champagne and gin that we had previously been given out of the room. I don't drink so didn't care, but once they have given these things to you, they belong to you and this is a very weird thing to do. Hide your booze if you want to drink in the afternoon. In Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha we didn't do any organised tours, nor take the over priced hop on hop off buses (much more expensive than in most cities and with less stops). Instead we just jumped in taxis and Ubers which are extremely cheap. My companions were particularly impressed with Doha. We had our meal in Butcher's Cut and it was good. The steaks were excellent, although the desserts and starters were uninspiring. Service was very good. We were seated in the area on deck eight outside the restaurant. We didn't find the people passing by a problem and enjoyed the people watching. Overall, my daughter perhaps best summed it up. She said why have they copied Royal Caribbean Oasis Class but with everything a bit worse? I said that was probably fair, but you had to take into consideration that it was much cheaper. She wasn't so fussed as she wasn't paying! I actually think my daughter's verdict was a bit harsh. The actually accommodation in our room was beautiful and better than you would get on RCI for similar money. I think if you were used to a Grand or Owners Suite on RCI which can be quite expensive, then a YC Balcony with butler service would seem like a nice upgrade in service, although a smaller room. Relative to Star Class which I wanted to compare it to, I would say the butler was 80-90% as good. I asked him how many cabins he covered and he told me seven. Genies usually cover three or four. TBH considering he was covering seven I don't know how he managed it. So maybe 80-90% of the service and 125% of the space for 75% of the price. My two niggles with the cabin remained annoying all trip. The lack of a separate WC, indeed we stayed at hotels either side of the cruise where they had separated the WC from the bathroom so two people could use the facilities. That would have helped a lot. The other was the bizarrely uncomfortable hot tub. With no seat cut into the base you had to constantly force yourself to stop floating around in it. On the other hand the sp itself has an enormous number of hot tubs and the largest main pool I have ever seen on a cruise ship. As to things I have seen mentioned in other reviews. We were in the buffet a couple of times and it was quite cramped for space and had much less variety than on RCI. We didn't try the MDR. I do think they need more specialty restaurants and the choices they have are odd. La Pescaderia was very quiet and of little interest to us. Chef's Garden Kitchen seemed very expensive and I couldn't get excited about the menu, although perhaps it would have been good. There was no free soft serve ice cream on deck, it was three Euros at one of the four places that sold ice cream on the ship. Disappointing as I am a big ice cream fan. I must mention the hot chocolate in Jean Phillippe which was fantastic. On the other hand the chai tea in the Raj Polo Tea House was quite disappointing which was a shame as it is a lovely venue. We didn't find the Russians as bothersome as some other people. There were clearly a lot of them about but we didn't really interact with them. There were a couple of instances of pushing in and so on, but nothing we couldn't ignore. The famous MSC IT struck when we got off the ship. My friend had multiple unexpected charges pending on his debit card, although one has since disappeared. We were not presented with a bill the last night of the cruise. Indeed I was quite uncomfortable with the way payments were handled all cruise. Consistently you were just presented with a tablet to sign and not shown the bill first. I think my friend was charged instead of me by mistake for one meal. Overall we had a great vacation and many of the niggles I am pointing out are only for comparison sake. I think once you set out to review something and note issues with it, it can soon spoil your fun. Hot tub picture added to show the lack of seating.

They have come through and fixed the restaurant issue. I think the service has got better as they have got used to us. Service very good in the YC tonight. It did seem that the previous issues were very much first night issues. People not that excited by the GF menus, the preference is to have things from the main menu and remove items with obvious gluten in them. Great selection of GF treats in the room tonight.