On Apex 8/21

[irvington]

Can’t sleep at 4:30 am so thought I would write up some thoughts and post when I can wrest the internet away from my 19 year old. To answer a question I posed earlier, I think there is just one log in per cabin unless you say something like $175+. I’m looking at it as an intervention by the Olympian gods to make me let go of the office.

 

The ship feels really empty but if they announced the number of pax I missed it. We had a successful move up offer to the Retreat which has probably hooked us for the future. The ship is amazing and immaculate and brand new in a good way. The high tech touches are really cool in the stateroom and the ship. We’ve sailed before on some of the Holland and NCL older ships and this is a huge cut above. Those were amazing port intensive cruises, but in a time of Covid where we may be on the ship / in our room more this is perfect.

 

Random observations:

-         Right now we are finding the level of service almost oppressive as it seems hard to get away from our butler and housekeeping person. I assume it will calm down. For someone who loves a lot of interaction and attentive service, it would be amazing. We didn’t really need all the orientation to how the tech and the cabin works, but as my son pointed out, for some passengers that could be essential.

-         I do like how you can put on ½ lighting or full lighting on in the cabin with one button.

-         They clearly have some program where they universally can pull up preferences. We told a server to just call us by first names in Luminae for lunch and then at dinner in Tuscan as soon as we told them our cabin number we were Emily and Philip.

-         We thought the lunch in Luminae was far, far better than our dinner in Tuscan. May have just been what we ordered but we may stick to Luminae from now on. Luminae- me: Bourbon and peaches cocktail and parsnip soup, stir-fry noodles, son: crab cake sandwich and white chocolate mousse, all excellent. Tuscan: asiago flan and beef sauce gnocchi – okay but really heavy, creamy, couldn’t finish.

-         Being with a teenager I get to visit eating venues even when I’m not hungry and can people watch. He had 1^st dinner in the buffet – they are serving for you, he reports food was excellent, we saw no one eating there at 6:30 pm other than front-of-house staff and two couples with toddlers. Very peaceful with no one there – unlike any cruise buffet I’ve seen, with lovely seating.

-         Retreat lounge was almost too empty. One large party traveling together and maybe one other couple. It is absolutely lovely (like the nicest business hotels I go to for work), charcuterie spread looked good even though we didn’t have any, would be a welcome quiet spot when the ship is fuller.

-         Son swam while I rested and reported the band at the pool was a good cover band, which surprised me since he can be a pool snob. He went to the main pool which was pretty empty since the retreat pool had a couple canoodling in it, and he felt a little pervy staying.

-         Part of the reason I’m awake at 4:30 is my son ordered room service and reports his club sandwich and strawberry cheesecake is excellent.

-         We ended up stopping at our muster station as we wandered around the trip and you answer like 2 questions and you don’t even have to watch the video

-         Mask compliance seems high so far. I think it is the right thing to do even though I hate wearing them.

 

 

Observations from our time in Athens pre-cruise:

-         We stayed at the Athens Gate as recommended here and it was perfect, lovely location and views from the rooftop restaurant, good breakfast buffet, had nice sandwiches for lunch (highly recommend the Green sandwich). Indian restaurant next door was quite good, as was Italian Bel Paese around the corner.

-         Acropolis Museum is a must do. We had bought skip the line tickets for it and the archaeological sites and didn’t “need” them since there were little to know lines, OTOH didn’t hurt to just be able to swipe our bar code.

-         We did the mythology tour from Alternative Athens, which I thought was quite good even though we both knew the stories that she told. I would check out that company in the future. Didn’t really care for our tours (forget the name of the company) to Delphi and Corinth even thought the sites were amazing. Next time I might splurge to just get a driver to take us.

-         Had two amazing cab drivers, recommended by our TA. John Kontzialis was amazing, contact through what’s app +30 698 473 0575 or email john.kontzialis@gmail.com. Son said he was the friendliest person he’d met, had water and wifi, super easy to deal with and great communication, lived in NJ for a while and perfect English. He was out of town the day we needed an airport pickup and he recommended Themos Krasakis, super nice, oriented us to town, very friendly and good English – on what’s app at +30 694 732 9595.

[irvington]

A few more random observations:

- may just be unusually windy, but feeling a lot of ship motion on the way to Mykonos and hard to open door out to the balcony without a lot of elbow grease, hard to have it open due to noise

- the bathtub in our sky suite is out of this world

- still only ship's tours on Mykonos, frequent reminders by staff

- we aren't doing the ship photos but there seem to be lots of ability to get photographed - I think we were asked almost 10 times yesterday.

 

Hoping anyone else on this sailing will chime in. 

[little britain]

On in 2 weeks! Keep it coming! 
What is the demographic on board? Ages/ nationalities?

Please can you try and find out the numbers for this week and the next few weeks?

Is it still the “funny” Captain? 
What is the dress standard👗 for Elegant night? 

[jameslee]

I was wondering I plan to go on this cruise too. When we are returning to the states the ship will administer a covid test. Will that covid test be accepted by the airline? Our cruise apex ship will return Saturday but we plan to fly Monday

[Cg52]

8 hours ago, irvington said:

Can’t sleep at 4:30 am so thought I would write up some thoughts and post when I can wrest the internet away from my 19 year old. To answer a question I posed earlier, I think there is just one log in per cabin unless you say something like $175+. I’m looking at it as an intervention by the Olympian gods to make me let go of the office.

 

The ship feels really empty but if they announced the number of pax I missed it. We had a successful move up offer to the Retreat which has probably hooked us for the future. The ship is amazing and immaculate and brand new in a good way. The high tech touches are really cool in the stateroom and the ship. We’ve sailed before on some of the Holland and NCL older ships and this is a huge cut above. Those were amazing port intensive cruises, but in a time of Covid where we may be on the ship / in our room more this is perfect.

 

Random observations:

-         Right now we are finding the level of service almost oppressive as it seems hard to get away from our butler and housekeeping person. I assume it will calm down. For someone who loves a lot of interaction and attentive service, it would be amazing. We didn’t really need all the orientation to how the tech and the cabin works, but as my son pointed out, for some passengers that could be essential.

-         I do like how you can put on ½ lighting or full lighting on in the cabin with one button.

-         They clearly have some program where they universally can pull up preferences. We told a server to just call us by first names in Luminae for lunch and then at dinner in Tuscan as soon as we told them our cabin number we were Emily and Philip.

-         We thought the lunch in Luminae was far, far better than our dinner in Tuscan. May have just been what we ordered but we may stick to Luminae from now on. Luminae- me: Bourbon and peaches cocktail and parsnip soup, stir-fry noodles, son: crab cake sandwich and white chocolate mousse, all excellent. Tuscan: asiago flan and beef sauce gnocchi – okay but really heavy, creamy, couldn’t finish.

-         Being with a teenager I get to visit eating venues even when I’m not hungry and can people watch. He had 1^st dinner in the buffet – they are serving for you, he reports food was excellent, we saw no one eating there at 6:30 pm other than front-of-house staff and two couples with toddlers. Very peaceful with no one there – unlike any cruise buffet I’ve seen, with lovely seating.

-         Retreat lounge was almost too empty. One large party traveling together and maybe one other couple. It is absolutely lovely (like the nicest business hotels I go to for work), charcuterie spread looked good even though we didn’t have any, would be a welcome quiet spot when the ship is fuller.

-         Son swam while I rested and reported the band at the pool was a good cover band, which surprised me since he can be a pool snob. He went to the main pool which was pretty empty since the retreat pool had a couple canoodling in it, and he felt a little pervy staying.

-         Part of the reason I’m awake at 4:30 is my son ordered room service and reports his club sandwich and strawberry cheesecake is excellent.

-         We ended up stopping at our muster station as we wandered around the trip and you answer like 2 questions and you don’t even have to watch the video

-         Mask compliance seems high so far. I think it is the right thing to do even though I hate wearing them.

 

 

Observations from our time in Athens pre-cruise:

-         We stayed at the Athens Gate as recommended here and it was perfect, lovely location and views from the rooftop restaurant, good breakfast buffet, had nice sandwiches for lunch (highly recommend the Green sandwich). Indian restaurant next door was quite good, as was Italian Bel Paese around the corner.

-         Acropolis Museum is a must do. We had bought skip the line tickets for it and the archaeological sites and didn’t “need” them since there were little to know lines, OTOH didn’t hurt to just be able to swipe our bar code.

-         We did the mythology tour from Alternative Athens, which I thought was quite good even though we both knew the stories that she told. I would check out that company in the future. Didn’t really care for our tours (forget the name of the company) to Delphi and Corinth even thought the sites were amazing. Next time I might splurge to just get a driver to take us.

-         Had two amazing cab drivers, recommended by our TA. John Kontzialis was amazing, contact through what’s app +30 698 473 0575 or email john.kontzialis@gmail.com. Son said he was the friendliest person he’d met, had water and wifi, super easy to deal with and great communication, lived in NJ for a while and perfect English. He was out of town the day we needed an airport pickup and he recommended Themos Krasakis, super nice, oriented us to town, very friendly and good English – on what’s app at +30 694 732 9595.

Fabulous info…you might want to edit out the TA info, you aren’t allowed to post that on here and they may remove your whole post and that would be a shame.

[wendyam76]

2 hours ago, jameslee said:

I was wondering I plan to go on this cruise too. When we are returning to the states the ship will administer a covid test. Will that covid test be accepted by the airline? Our cruise apex ship will return Saturday but we plan to fly Monday

Apex has the medical staff from Eurofins onboard and they will administer all the right tests - just remind them who/where you are flying. My only concern would be the timings - we were tested the day before departure - so you may want to check on that.

And to the OP - thank you! We loved our trip on Apex - the crew cannot do enough for you. I did start trying to think of things for our Butler to do as they kept asking! For example I would ask them to double check your internet access - I think even on the basic package you each can log in. We were in a Sky Suite, but originally, and not through a Move Up bid and I certainly logged in two devices at once. 

Wendy

Edited August 22, 2021 by wendyam76

[kabmab]

Great post, loved your account of your trip so far!  Would love to hear more, and especially curious about passenger numbers for upcoming weeks as we're onboard  week of 8/28.  Tks, and have a great time!

[Cg52]

25 minutes ago, Couple-Somerset said:

 

I think the 2 recommendations were for Taxi drivers not TA

Oh that’s great. I just didn’t want a great post removed.

[Seany527]

Thanks for posting. Have you ever stayed in the Haven on NCL? If so, I would like to hear your comparison between the Retreat and Haven. 

[little britain]

4 hours ago, Couple-Somerset said:

 

Hey, that's cheating !!!! 😁

Shucks…. I’ve been rumbled!! 🤦‍♀️

[Miaminice]

@irvington

Thanks for reporting! 
We have two week to go until we follow you.

If you have the time could you let us know if and how they currently offer the express disembarkation / walk off?

Thank you!

Edited August 23, 2021 by Miaminice

[dritan]

Thanks OP. Will hopefully be on board next week. Any info on theatre entertainment would be much appreciated.

[CalTexCruiser]

Thanks for sharing OP

 

I’ve been wondering… is there a Chefs Table on the Apex?

 

I see it mentioned often for the Edge but haven’t seen a mention of it for the Apex

[kevanmia]

1 hour ago, CalTexCruiser said:

Thanks for sharing OP

 

I’ve been wondering… is there a Chefs Table on the Apex?

 

I see it mentioned often for the Edge but haven’t seen a mention of it for the Apex

 

It is bookable in the Cruise Planner so I'm guessing the answer is yes.