To those thinking of a Christmas cruise 2014 and beyond

[wwcruisers]

We just returned from a 14 day Christmas cruise on the Eclipse, left 12/14 and returned 12/28. There were very few children on this cruise. We had a great time, staff was just awesome, even the adults (lol) even with the drink packages. Celebrity exceeded our expectations once again. The only reason we did not book over next Christmas was a plea from our children and grandchildren to be home for Christmas.

 

Several years ago we did a Princess cruise over Christmas which was also very good. They limit the number of children per cruise, which soothed my concerns somewhat. Everything was great on that cruise as well.

 

Don't necessarily give up cruising over the holidays unless you really don't care when you cruise. We love the decorations and atmosphere as well as decorating our room up like our home.

 

It's unfortunate you had that experience. I did notice the sales just before Christmas and had fears of just that happening. Having said that, we were so port intensive and not "sun worshipers", that there could have been issues, but the youngest one I can remember seeing was at least 10.

 

Kathryn

 

Thank you Kathryn -- (big sigh of relief) -- the Eclipse 14-niter (Xmas/NY) is what we have booked for our very first holiday cruise. One of the reasons we have grown to prefer X over RC is that none of our X cruises have ever seemed "over-run" with kids. So, the OP's description of Christmas on Equinox was giving me some concerns. We'll keep our fingers crossed that our experience next year is more similar to your recent holiday cruise. :cool:

[north29]

Cruise on the Eclipse, I should write a review, since this is my first on X. How ever, IMHO, this ship was not designed for people under 21, there was just not enough for them to do. Heck not enough for me or my lady to do on sea days, well that interested us. We were lucky only a few well behaved children on board, but they seemed to get antsy by the end of the cruise and I can understand why.

 

We were on a the Freedom last year though that we were going to miss the spring break crowd,LOL there were 800 kids of all ages on board. I do not know where they came from but, they were super well behaved. I guess the types of kids or should say parents that lack control of their children on a cruise ship is the luck of the draw.

[Strinkle]

Hi, we are booked on the Eclipse, Dec. 21/Jan 04/14, hoping there won't be as many kids on the longer cruise, comments from anyone who has sailed this time frame would be appreciated. Thanks

We did the Eclipse Christmas cruise in 2012 & it was wonderful. Kids were not an issue. I think the 14 days had a lot to do with it. I was thinking about the 11 day Equinox for next year because of the itinerary but now I am having second thoughts. I hope that Celebrity is listening to all this.

[BosoxI]

I guess when Celebrity advertises "Third and Fourth Passengers Free" it's safe to assume kids will be in abundance.

[20pluscruises]

I guess when Celebrity advertises "Third and Fourth Passengers Free" it's safe to assume kids will be in abundance.

 

Unfortunately, and not quite fair to the customers who purchased well in advance, I believe this was a last minute offer. How can you possibly plan around that? Can't.

 

...and who got the short end of the stick (nicer than the word I want to use)....the ones who spent more $$$$, booked on board ahead of time, booked well in advance through the site or TA, read good reviews from 2012, did their homework......and then ends up with this nightmare of a cruise.

 

I'll thinking there will be some very good deals in December 2014..........

Edited January 7, 2014 by 20pluscruises

[gb_cruise]

Celebrity built these ships with multi occupancy capacity so clearly want to maximise the number of passengers on board, as do every cruise line.

 

However X doesnt particularly target families either through the facilities on board or marketing. It is unfair that they build ships that can accomodate so many kids with parents and yet they know there are not the facilities for them.

 

Weve sailed on P&O ( a British line under the Carnival Group whos ships follow the Princess design) over Christmas and we had 700 kids on board however we rarely saw one since they had huge kids clubs and lots of staff to entertain them all day plus adult only pools.

 

It makes me wonder why families would choose X when other lines offer better facilities for their little treasures.

 

I feel for the OP. Sounds like a nightmare.

 

Let me just mention that Celebrity has excellent club programs for Kids and Teens. My children always thought the Celebrity programs were better than RCCL.

 

Our family has been on three Christmas cruises with Celebrity. I agree the ships were very crowded with children but most were not excessively unruly. The pools & hot tubs however were always very crowded with kids on these holiday cruises, but other venues were not.

[phoenix_dream]

I am very sorry for the cruise the OP had. Yes, the parents are responsible for their kids, but Celebrity is responsible for the entire ship and its passengers. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for Celebrity continuing to allow some of the behavior mentioned. If that much mayhem was going on, then they absolutely should have dealt with the parents and told them to shape up or ship out. A couple of families kicked off the cruise ship mid-way through for refusing to comply would have done the trick I supect:eek:.

 

I have never been on a cruise like the one mentioned, but have been on multiple spring break cruises, as well as a fairly recent post-Thanksgiving cruise out of SJU (won't repeat that ever again! Better behaved, but lots and lots of families and a ship extremely crowded and overrun with large families doing what large families do - and quiet didn't enter the equation!).

 

I think overall Celebrity is starting to jam too many people on its ships. Been cruising the line for more than 20 years and I never remember dealing with the types of crowds I have encountered in recent years. And it should be noted that I say that even though my first 10 years of cruising were all during spring break weeks!

[Tulsajsas]

We were also on the Equinox Christmas cruise but had a very different experience. My husband and I traveled with my parents and we often remarked how well behaved the kids were. Yes there were a lot of kids. The pool was extremely crowded. We instead chose to lounge at the lawn club where it was much less crowded and pleasant. We had more trouble from our adult neighbors who would smoke on their balcony. All in all we loved our cruise and the staff was phenomenal.

[poffles]

I guess when Celebrity advertises "Third and Fourth Passengers Free" it's safe to assume kids will be in abundance.

 

True enough. In my opinion, this has to be the worst way to fill a ship and would seem highly likely to be one of the greatest affects on demographics on board.

 

Just curious ... is this on all sailings all the time or just as a special? I didn't realize this was an offering.

[panmalv]

We were on the Constellation out of FLL December 23-28 2013-- another sold out cruise loaded with kids. However, I can't complain since 2 of the kids were ours (11 year old twins), albeit closely-supervised! While the cruise was a bit crowded at times, everyone seemed to behave well in general. I did not see any diapers in the pool or any running or jumping in the hot tub, and certainly no hitting or splashing as described. We did see some "different" parenting standards in the MDR -- the table directly behind us had a pre-teen who played video games on a full-sized iPad at the table each night. But I'm proud to say that it was our kids, who, in shock, pointed it out to us! The only other complaint, again from our kids, was that the Fun Factory was simply too crowded and loud to be fun -- not surprising. Overall, we had a nice cruise.

[lawgirl]

Well, I wrote a detailed letter to Captains Club and to the President. Their response was a nicely worded "too bad!"

 

They said they cannot and will not limit the number of children. Further, they do their best, but ultimately it is the fault of the children being inconsiderate. They will do nothing to rectify our situation (refund, OBC, etc).

 

Of course, they hope we sail with them again. The letter was pointless, as I got a big "we do not care" response. It does not appear X is going to do anything to help us regarding our experience, or to help future cruisers at Spring Break or Holidays! So, be warned.....

[beachchairs2]

if enough letters are received, it will get noticed...

 

yes, once you are off the ship it is difficult to get any action from them...

 

so for the future....take names of staff ignoring rules, take pictures of what it going on....document...go as a group of others whose cruise is being ruined, go to the top..hotel manager or higher...tell them you will send it to the press.....obviously negative publicity hurts the bottom line...in fact I would get in touch with a journalist to do a piece on the wonderful peace and luxury to be had on a cruise with celebrity...

 

obviously when there are so many kids, celebrity isnt able to enforce their own rules....

 

and generally there are that many because of promos of 3rd and 4 th go free....kids are brought free....that is the problem....

 

thank you for taking the time to write...

[CHEZMARYLOU]

We've been on 2 cruises with a lot of children. The one from Baltimore was a nightmare with kids behaving as the OP described. On the one from Newark to Bermuda they were very well behaved. We're hoping for a good experience on our July Alaska trip.

 

We've sailed over New Years the last 2 years with very few kids. This year the NY cruise also includes Christmas. We were chatting with a passenger who sailed a similar cruise and said they had a lot of kids because of Christmas. We are passing on a holiday cruise this year.

 

Mary Lou

[underthebluemoon]

Well, I wrote a detailed letter to Captains Club and to the President. Their response was a nicely worded "too bad!"

 

They said they cannot and will not limit the number of children. Further, they do their best, but ultimately it is the fault of the children being inconsiderate. They will do nothing to rectify our situation (refund, OBC, etc).

Of course, they hope we sail with them again. The letter was pointless, as I got a big "we do not care" response. It does not appear X is going to do anything to help us regarding our experience, or to help future cruisers at Spring Break or Holidays! So, be warned.....

 

 

Did you honestly expect they were going to give you a refund/or your money back?

Edited January 15, 2014 by underthebluemoon

[20pluscruises]

Well, I wrote a detailed letter to Captains Club and to the President. Their response was a nicely worded "too bad!"

 

They said they cannot and will not limit the number of children. Further, they do their best, but ultimately it is the fault of the children being inconsiderate. They will do nothing to rectify our situation (refund, OBC, etc).

 

Of course, they hope we sail with them again. The letter was pointless, as I got a big "we do not care" response. It does not appear X is going to do anything to help us regarding our experience, or to help future cruisers at Spring Break or Holidays! So, be warned.....

 

Did they respond at all to the diapers in the pools and hot tubs? I just sent my detailed letter off to them

[lawgirl]

To answer questions, no I didn't really expect much in terms of refund or OBC or discount on future cruise. .I don't know that I will sail X again given a few bad experiences in a row, so I wasn't even going to write, but several on CC asked me to. So I did.

 

And no, despite my listing very specific incidents and a few crew names, they didn't address anything in particular. It was basically a "shut up, too bad" letter.

[lawgirl]

I should also note that our sailing had a TON of open cabins after final payment and even up to a month out. I assume Celebrity had one of those kids sail free promos to fill ship. Do not know for sure, but it was sold out and it happened very quickly.

[2aussiecruisers]

Could someone please advise me the dates of school holidays in the US in March 2015. We have a B2B booked out of San Juan 7th & 14th March 2015 on Summit. As we come from Australia we are not familiar with US school holiday seasons. What can we expect cruising on these dates (children / teen wise). Must admit we have been fortunate and not encountered many kids on any of our previous cruises. Not that I'm against children, just don't want to be over run by them.

[CABINET]

How to people actually find out how many children are on board?

 

Is it an educated guess or do the people at Guest Relations give out the information on request?

 

I'm just being curious.

[Guernseycruiser]

We were also on the Xmas cruise. Whist we encountered some (not all) of the issues of the OP, we also encountered other issues:-

 

1) phone calls of just one ring, at least 3 or 4 times per day, even at past midnight. In the end we unplugged the phone

2) our neighbours having parties on their balcony at 2am in the morning

3) teenagers in the elevators deliberately blocking entry (I just glared and pushed past them)

 

I have to say that as soon as we contacted Guest Relations, all of the above were resolved straight away, I wish we had contacted them a day or so earlier. We also had follow up phone calls from Guest Relations to ensure that we were not experiencing these issues again.

 

For us, it was the passengers that were causing the issues, and not Celebrity. Once we had complained, all issues were resolved quickly.

 

We were also on the New Years cruise (B2B), and there were not nearly so many kids, and the kids that were onboard, were much younger and with their parents most of the time. This cruise did not finish until 10th January, when children would have had to good back to school before this.

 

It has certainly not put us off Celebrity, we were very impressed by their Customer Service (this was our 29th cruise, and 10th with Celebrity). Just if we encounter these issues again, we will contact Guest Relations straight away.

[ABoatNerd]

Excellent analysis on the Posters christmas cruise.

 

Celebrity Cruises is accountable to provide a consistent product offering every time inless they specifically state otherwise or due to unforseen circumstances.. Examing the Celebrity site and brochures it is clear the product delivered on the Christmas cruise is not as advertised and I presume there was no sign off on the situation when booking this cruise.

 

Expecting people to accept less access to basic amenities (due to kids or group bookings for that matter) is not an acceptable strategy.

 

The Poster can do the following:

 

1) Contact the US consumer regulator and make a formal complaint of misleading advertising

 

2) Contact the US health department and make a formal complain of a public health and safety situation

 

3) Contact CNN or other media as previously suggested

 

Contacting Celebrity is a waste of time.

 

The more customers meekly accept products that are not as advertised, the more they will get. This situation is not about the $ it is about receiving the Celebrity experienced as advertised.

 

ABoatNerd

[lawgirl]

Could someone please advise me the dates of school holidays in the US in March 2015. We have a B2B booked out of San Juan 7th & 14th March 2015 on Summit. As we come from Australia we are not familiar with US school holiday seasons. What can we expect cruising on these dates (children / teen wise). Must admit we have been fortunate and not encountered many kids on any of our previous cruises. Not that I'm against children, just don't want to be over run by them.

 

Your cruise is in the middle of most college spring breaks, though probably college students go more on other cruise lines. As to elementary and high school, those vary greatly, but some would be during your cruise I suspect.

[lawgirl]

How to people actually find out how many children are on board?

 

Is it an educated guess or do the people at Guest Relations give out the information on request?

 

I'm just being curious.

 

I was told by several various X staff members. I believe 700 was accurate as they didn't correct me when I wrote my letter. I assume if it was far less, they would have told me.

[20pluscruises]

I should also note that our sailing had a TON of open cabins after final payment and even up to a month out. I assume Celebrity had one of those kids sail free promos to fill ship. Do not know for sure, but it was sold out and it happened very quickly.

 

I suspect our cruise may have had many family members of the crew onboard...as I did see several walking hand and hand around the ship. Not to mention the ones who time and time again broke the rules with no ramifications whatsoever.

 

Also strange...the Celebrity site showed sold out....however, 25% of the cabins were still avaible a day or two before sailing on an big online site. I kept checking as I was excited to have less crowds. There were many comments about it on the roll call board. How they sold that many cabins in 24 hours is very odd....esp at Christmas time. Something doesn't add up????????

[CABINET]

I was told by several various X staff members. I believe 700 was accurate as they didn't correct me when I wrote my letter. I assume if it was far less, they would have told me.

 

Thanks for the information. I have noticed on a few threads that people have mentioned the numbers of certain categories of passenger.

 

Here in the UK almost all information seems to regarded as "confidential" or "business sensitive" so I am always surprised when information seems to be handed out. I guess we are just brainwashed here :D:D:D

Edited January 15, 2014 by CABINET