Seriously now-how many of you are REALLY looking at other cruise lines because of the CEO's changes going on?

[mahdnc]

1 hour ago, goofysmom99 said:

Not so far but I was already a zenith the first time I tried.  I'm sure that helped.  They may say no next time, too....then I'll ask for a fried egg, a slice of cheese, a meat, and make a breakfast sandwich. 😉

 

Occasionally I will write in "Eggs Benedict" on the breakfast card and have received it every time including our Constellation cruise last October.  However, I am impressed with your creativity.

[NMTraveller]

10 hours ago, Cruise till you drop said:

I guess I wasn’t impressed that one posts that they fell asleep during another persons post.  That was very disrespectful 

 

My intent was to show you liked long posts if they agreed with your point of view and fell asleep when they didn’t mesh with your opinion. 
 

That is all.

 

[NMTraveller]

15 hours ago, Spif Barwunkel said:

Once upon a time there was a little boy who loved boats, all kinds of boats. He loved boats so much that he played with them in the bathtub, in the street puddles after a heavy rain and in his neighbor's bird bath. At a very early age he vowed to one day become a boat passenger.......that should do it.

 

[Mrs_Tiki]

(Apologies in advance for the long post. For those preferring the Cliff Notes version, the answer is YES!)

 

We sailed X exclusively from 2002 - 2015, then switched to smaller ships (Windstar and SeaDream) for a time, then returned to X post-shutdown due to the ease of getting to FLL vs. the Caribbean embarkation ports used by the smaller ships.

 

We have a cruise booked on the Ascent in January, which we booked at a crazy-low price. If my math is correct, that cruise will make us E+. But it is likely to be our last X cruise unless the Retreat prices come down. As others have said, I don’t foresee that happening as long as demand holds up.

 

We are trying Seabourn next month and looking to book a SeaDream cruise in the spring. I continue to track spring prices on X, but right now I can book a mid-level cabin on SeaDream AND Economy Comfort airfare to SXM for less than the cost of a SkySuite.

 

And to those who say the products are not comparable, I agree. Standard SeaDream cabins are “cozy” at 185 sq. ft. and do not offer balconies. But the rest of the ship is like a stand-alone Retreat with only 112 pax. and 95 crew. The service is what sets it apart. And as a family-owned, privately-held company, there are no pricing gimmicks. Apart from occasional discounts for sailings with excess capacity, the price is the price, is totally all-inclusive, and varies only by location and size of cabin, We have sailed with the owner’s daughter and her family a couple of times and have always felt we received the same level of service as they. Although they were very appropriately ensconced in the Owner’s Suite! 

 

 

[Cruzinforpeace***]

On 9/6/2023 at 4:35 PM, Keys Kathy said:

I don't care who the CEO is, I am not sailing with them because of their prices and reduction of services and quality. Now they are reducing the offering of "All Included" I am booked with MSC and Virgin.

We just booked our next cruise with MSC.  X is way too expensive for the mediocrity delivered.

[Team Stag]

We are long time Celebrity cruiser who typically just went to the Celebrity website to pick where we were going to spend a week (or 2) of our vacation this year.  With that being said, we just returned from a long weekend cruise on Virgin.  January of this year we were not even considering other lines. 

 

We had great cruise with Virgin (but who really has a bad cruise?).  There was a lot we liked and somethings we didn't.  They didn't immediately become our favorite line but we enjoyed ourselves enough to buy a future cruise voucher.  So where Celebrity blindly got 2 cruises a year previously; they lost one of those this year & will lose one of those during the next 2 years.  

 

With that being said, we have had amazing trips with Celebrity and still love a lot of what they do.  I have one of those "Big" Birthdays coming up late next year & Celebrity definitely being considered for that trip.

[Keys Kathy]

I recently booked 2 Yacht Clubs, so we now have 3 on the books. We are looking at Princess for an April cruise. Yacht Club gives you a "Retreat" experience for a veranda price on X. Not worrying about them removing Butlers, changing tips, etc.

[Keys Kathy]

On 9/7/2023 at 8:28 PM, awhfy said:

We have a b2b on Silhouette in Feb that we booked with all the perks & lots of OBC. We’ve always enjoyed Celebrity (Elite + with over 1500 pts). That being said we’ve booked a suite on HAL rt from Boston to touch Panama Canal. First time since 1995 that we haven’t had at least 3-4 Celebrity cruises booked. 

 

23 minutes ago, Team Stag said:

We are long time Celebrity cruiser who typically just went to the Celebrity website to pick where we were going to spend a week (or 2) of our vacation this year.  With that being said, we just returned from a long weekend cruise on Virgin.  January of this year we were not even considering other lines. 

 

We had great cruise with Virgin (but who really has a bad cruise?).  There was a lot we liked and somethings we didn't.  They didn't immediately become our favorite line but we enjoyed ourselves enough to buy a future cruise voucher.  So where Celebrity blindly got 2 cruises a year previously; they lost one of those this year & will lose one of those during the next 2 years.  

 

With that being said, we have had amazing trips with Celebrity and still love a lot of what they do.  I have one of those "Big" Birthdays coming up late next year & Celebrity definitely being considered for that trip.

We are trying Virgin at the end of the month. Did you go to the Pajama Party? Anything we should be aware of? Were you able to get seated without a reservation at the reservation restaurants?

[kirtihk]

6 hours ago, Mrs_Tiki said:

(Apologies in advance for the long post. For those preferring the Cliff Notes version, the answer is YES!)

 

We sailed X exclusively from 2002 - 2015, then switched to smaller ships (Windstar and SeaDream) for a time, then returned to X post-shutdown due to the ease of getting to FLL vs. the Caribbean embarkation ports used by the smaller ships.

 

We have a cruise booked on the Ascent in January, which we booked at a crazy-low price. If my math is correct, that cruise will make us E+. But it is likely to be our last X cruise unless the Retreat prices come down. As others have said, I don’t foresee that happening as long as demand holds up.

 

We are trying Seabourn next month and looking to book a SeaDream cruise in the spring. I continue to track spring prices on X, but right now I can book a mid-level cabin on SeaDream AND Economy Comfort airfare to SXM for less than the cost of a SkySuite.

 

And to those who say the products are not comparable, I agree. Standard SeaDream cabins are “cozy” at 185 sq. ft. and do not offer balconies. But the rest of the ship is like a stand-alone Retreat with only 112 pax. and 95 crew. The service is what sets it apart. And as a family-owned, privately-held company, there are no pricing gimmicks. Apart from occasional discounts for sailings with excess capacity, the price is the price, is totally all-inclusive, and varies only by location and size of cabin, We have sailed with the owner’s daughter and her family a couple of times and have always felt we received the same level of service as they. Although they were very appropriately ensconced in the Owner’s Suite! 

 

 

Nice to hear about Seadream.  We've been on Seabourn Venture (a new ship) expedition cruise (264 passengers): it's basically what you described about Seadream.  We booked the Seabourn Pursuit (another new ship started cruising just a few weeks ago, the same size as Venture) expedition cruise for next April while on board.

[Team Stag]

10 minutes ago, Keys Kathy said:

 

We are trying Virgin at the end of the month. Did you go to the Pajama Party? Anything we should be aware of? Were you able to get seated without a reservation at the reservation restaurants?

 

We did go to the PJ Party. It was lively and fun.  The Scarlet Night Party was awesome.  Great music, entertainment & dancing.  It was a giant party that overtakes the whole boat and ends up on the Pool Deck then the night club.  We lasted as long as we could 😂 .

As far as reservations, definitely one of my least favorite aspects of the trip.  We did not get up at midnight to book them; so we had 9:30 seatings for the few places we could get in.  They did status match us; so we got on the boat after the suite guests and immediately started updating reservations to earlier times.  We got everything we wanted as well as show reservations.  My wife missed out on some classes. 

I definitely over stressed about it & really put a damper on first day.  As opposed to a relax trip to the port, we were rushing & trying to make the entrance time simply get the reservations.  We did see people turned away who did not have reservations.  We did see some that were giving in the option to wait and see if others didn't show up for their reservations then they could have those slots.  The shows - they held the reservations until 10 mins before start and then standby could be seated.  We never saw a show sold out.  And we regularly saw reservations pop up from time to time due to people canceling them (I'm guessing it sounded like a good idea on day 1 but after a day at the pool or in port; it didn't seem like such a good idea).  

[markeb]

I don't know that we're looking at other cruise lines as much as looking at other travel alternatives. Our cruising history isn't nearly as long or intense as most people on this thread. We went from HAL in the 2004-2006 timeframe in our early 40's to Royal Caribbean for the more active style they promoted, and really enjoyed it. Even Oasis, although we only cruised her once. I think we did eight cruises on Royal. Our last Royal Cruise was Norway and Iceland on Brilliance, one of the few longer cruises we were able to take. By that time, we were hitting our 50's, the chronic rotator cuff tear was cutting down on shipboard activities, and Celebrity seemed to offer what we were looking for. And the lack of smoking in the casino was a big factor, to be honest. We had a cruise on Explorer a year before Brilliance and the stairs from the casino to the Royal Promenade were an effective chimney pulling smoke from the casino onto the (non-smoking) main thoroughfare of the ship and made that are reek of old smoke.

 

For me, I don't care for the changes that are happening in the aggregate and because I feel they present a major change in the brand. But almost none of them would definitely impact us (other than the pricing changes, obviously). We don't eat much beef, neither of us really eat lobster, and we don't cruise for food. I'll travel for food; New York, London, New Orleans, etc. I've yet to see a menu that didn't have something that looked interesting, and potentially very good. Although I'll admit if my choices were another steak (regardless of quality) or going to the buffet for what's always been extremely good Indian food, I'd probably go to the buffet (side note: Royal used to always have regional dishes on their MDR menu, usually Indian and often veggie. They were always amazing. Then they went to centralized menus...).

 

We have a Southern Caribbean cruise in November and a southbound Alaska cruise in May. Full disclosure they're both in sky suites. I doubt we'll book another cruise at that point, with any cruise line. We spent a week in London this summer and loved every minute of it. We're going to Munich at the end of the month, probably with a day trip to Salzburg, and expect the same. We're going to research a trip to the interior of Italy (probably Tuscany, with maybe a day or two in Veneto). We'll give that 2-3 years and then see if the cruise bug hits again and what options interest us then. Maybe a small ship line, depending on cost and perceived value.

[TeeRick]

16 hours ago, markeb said:

I don't know that we're looking at other cruise lines as much as looking at other travel alternatives. Our cruising history isn't nearly as long or intense as most people on this thread. We went from HAL in the 2004-2006 timeframe in our early 40's to Royal Caribbean for the more active style they promoted, and really enjoyed it. Even Oasis, although we only cruised her once. I think we did eight cruises on Royal. Our last Royal Cruise was Norway and Iceland on Brilliance, one of the few longer cruises we were able to take. By that time, we were hitting our 50's, the chronic rotator cuff tear was cutting down on shipboard activities, and Celebrity seemed to offer what we were looking for. And the lack of smoking in the casino was a big factor, to be honest. We had a cruise on Explorer a year before Brilliance and the stairs from the casino to the Royal Promenade were an effective chimney pulling smoke from the casino onto the (non-smoking) main thoroughfare of the ship and made that are reek of old smoke.

 

For me, I don't care for the changes that are happening in the aggregate and because I feel they present a major change in the brand. But almost none of them would definitely impact us (other than the pricing changes, obviously). We don't eat much beef, neither of us really eat lobster, and we don't cruise for food. I'll travel for food; New York, London, New Orleans, etc. I've yet to see a menu that didn't have something that looked interesting, and potentially very good. Although I'll admit if my choices were another steak (regardless of quality) or going to the buffet for what's always been extremely good Indian food, I'd probably go to the buffet (side note: Royal used to always have regional dishes on their MDR menu, usually Indian and often veggie. They were always amazing. Then they went to centralized menus...).

 

We have a Southern Caribbean cruise in November and a southbound Alaska cruise in May. Full disclosure they're both in sky suites. I doubt we'll book another cruise at that point, with any cruise line. We spent a week in London this summer and loved every minute of it. We're going to Munich at the end of the month, probably with a day trip to Salzburg, and expect the same. We're going to research a trip to the interior of Italy (probably Tuscany, with maybe a day or two in Veneto). We'll give that 2-3 years and then see if the cruise bug hits again and what options interest us then. Maybe a small ship line, depending on cost and perceived value.

@markeb as I have posted we have been spending our time and money on many more land vacations like what you are doing.  And vacation home rentals.  It was a short time ago that we took multiple cruises a year, mostly with Celebrity but also with RCCL.  This year we took one (Equinox).  RCG is making it pretty easy for us right now to become less addicted to cruising on their ships.  It has opened our eyes to many other non-cruise vacation options.  Enjoy your trips!

[hubofhockey]

23 hours ago, Mrs_Tiki said:

(Apologies in advance for the long post. For those preferring the Cliff Notes version, the answer is YES!)

 

We have a cruise booked on the Ascent in January, which we booked at a crazy-low price. If my math is correct, that cruise will make us E+. But it is likely to be our last X cruise unless the Retreat prices come down. As others have said, I don’t foresee that happening as long as demand holds up.

 

We are trying Seabourn next month and looking to book a SeaDream cruise in the spring. I continue to track spring prices on X, but right now I can book a mid-level cabin on SeaDream AND Economy Comfort airfare to SXM for less than the cost of a SkySuite.

 

 

 

 

Don't apologize for long posts.  Longer posts usually provide good explanations.  

 

I have always believed that Retreats and high end suite cabins are not worth it for us.  The constraints of the larger ships as to itineraries is problematic, so we would prefer to spend similar money or less on balcony cabins on more higher end lines with smaller ships.  

 

Windstar does intrigue me.  We like casual, so really not interested in Viking, Cunard, Regent, Silversea, etc, but have gone on Azamara and have an upcoming cruise on Oceania (after Celebrity Japan cruise in the Spring).  We always thought Aqua on Celebrity fit us well and Blu is a good dining experience and having the Persian Garden is nice on days at sea.  The one thing we like what the changes brought was the elimination of must pay for alcohol inclusion with Aqua.  It's a step in the right direction.  For Japan, not even crazy about the inclusion for WIFI since pocket wifi, which works on ships in Japan costs so much less.    In any case, looking forward to giving Windstar a shot.

[cgolf1]

We aren't, especially since I have heard that the food options have bounced back a little since our trip in February on the Edge (think we were around the rock bottom point before many complaints altered it some). Also, our trip on HAL showed us that it was an option for us, but not a primary option, Celebrity beat it in many ways.

 

That said since we sail insides or oceanviews and don't do AI or eat in specialty dining, so far the changes have been minimal for us. I also am not going to stop giving X my money because of changes to other classes of rooms that have no impact on us or that we will never book again. We tried suite class twice and it was not a style of cruising that we enjoyed.

 

Once the changes really impact the class of rooms we sail we will jump like we did on Disney, but to what I don't know since all lines seem to be transitioning.

[commodoredave]

On 9/6/2023 at 4:56 PM, Cruise Junky said:

I booked 2025 on Azamara.  I’m also in the market for a spring Alaska cruise that I was eyeing Solstice but now leaning towards Ruby Princess or Koningsdam.  We’ll see.   

You may want to check the Azamara board -- it has several threads lamenting the decline in service and lack of attention to customers, particularly by onshore management. It would appear Celebrity is not the only cruise line that has changed for the worse.

[Cruise Junky]

9 minutes ago, commodoredave said:

You may want to check the Azamara board -- it has several threads lamenting the decline in service and lack of attention to customers, particularly by onshore management. It would appear Celebrity is not the only cruise line that has changed for the worse.

I researched the Azamara board extensively before booking.  It would appear RCL left them in a mess upon the sale. Service onboard is being reported as excellent. The onshore (lack of) service seems to be hitting the reservations that we’re transferred with the sale far more than new ones. But, we’ll see.  

[hubofhockey]

7 minutes ago, commodoredave said:

You may want to check the Azamara board -- it has several threads lamenting the decline in service and lack of attention to customers, particularly by onshore management. It would appear Celebrity is not the only cruise line that has changed for the worse.

 

Azamara has other issues that relate to the change in IT and migration from RCCL software to another platform.  Sycamore, their owner, had no other travel related business and the data migration was not clean.  I am a big Azamara fan.  Love the product, but canceled my next cruise as I am not going to live with their risk.  However, I love their product and their pricing is favorable.  Azamara, to my knowledge, hasn't cut anything or quality, but I can't speak to that first hand.  We hope to cruise with them again after they clean up their act.  I know some on the Oceania boards are unhappy with the Simply More pricing changes where they include in the price $800 (per couple) excursion credit, wine/beer with meals, and WIFI.  The fact is that whenever there is change, there are winners and losers, and it's the latter that lets their feelings known online.  

[Ken the cruiser]

I posted this on a PCL thread regarding Celebrity’s current cruise fares. But it hopefully explains why we’re looking elsewhere as well. 
 

Yes, Celebrity is a quality cruise line, and from my uninformed opinion over here in the peanut gallery, bases their price fluctuations on “supply and demand” more than any other cruise line we cruise with, and right now ever since the pandemic ended there is a huge pent up demand for people to go on a cruise, and they’re capitalizing on that demand. When the demand starts to ease back to pre-pandemic levels, I believe the prices will come back down. 

 

But so are many of the other cruise lines trying to tap into that pent up demand. NCL implemented a 10% military discount policy last November and then implemented their Free At Sea (FAS) Plus promotion a few months ago that made their original FAS much more dynamic, which BTW both of those additions personally were a huge hit for us. PCL implemented their 3 options when booking a cruise with their Cruise Only, Plus, and Premier packages, which we all know has caused quite a stir recently without including a grandfather clause. Even HAL has introduced their Have It All Early Booking Bonus package and enhanced their Club Orange package to include getting a free upgrade to a better cabin in the same Meta category. Both of which motivated us along with their unique 3-5 week itineraries to start booking cruises with HAL again.

[commodoredave]

5 minutes ago, Cruise Junky said:

I researched the Azamara board extensively before booking.  It would appear RCL left them in a mess upon the sale. Service onboard is being reported as excellent. The onshore (lack of) service seems to be hitting the reservations that we’re transferred with the sale far more than new ones. But, we’ll see.  

New sales, too. Check these threads: An Azamazing Voyage to Mediocrity which details a couple's nightmare trying to get mistakes on their reservation corrected for the last 3 months with no resolution. Also the thread directed to Carol Ceberas the CEO. On the positive side, it does appear that onboard service is still good, and that once the onshore troubles are fixed it may be safe to cruise with them again.

[commodoredave]

8 minutes ago, hubofhockey said:

 

Azamara has other issues that relate to the change in IT and migration from RCCL software to another platform.  Sycamore, their owner, had no other travel related business and the data migration was not clean.  I am a big Azamara fan.  Love the product, but canceled my next cruise as I am not going to live with their risk.  However, I love their product and their pricing is favorable.  Azamara, to my knowledge, hasn't cut anything or quality, but I can't speak to that first hand.  We hope to cruise with them again after they clean up their act.  I know some on the Oceania boards are unhappy with the Simply More pricing changes where they include in the price $800 (per couple) excursion credit, wine/beer with meals, and WIFI.  The fact is that whenever there is change, there are winners and losers, and it's the latter that lets their feelings known online.  

When the onshore problems are properly addressed and fixed, I would certainly consider cruising with Azamara. The more options we have for cruising, the better. 

[Cruise Junky]

2 minutes ago, commodoredave said:

New sales, too. Check these threads: An Azamazing Voyage to Mediocrity which details a couple's nightmare trying to get mistakes on their reservation corrected for the last 3 months with no resolution. Also the thread directed to Carol Ceberas the CEO. On the positive side, it does appear that onboard service is still good, and that once the onshore troubles are fixed it may be safe to cruise with them again.

I did say hitting more, not that it wasn’t hitting at all.   Either way, we booked a 27 day HAL cruise yesterday for around the same time frame, so in either case, it’s not Celebrity.  

[Tyler414]

I went on a 7 day Virgin cruise this summer on Valiant Lady from Barcelona to Cannes/Nice/Monaco, Carrara (Pisa), Ajaccio, Ibiza, back to Barcelona.   This was a cruise I never planned to do, but because of a credit card points offer Virgin Red was offering, I basically got a free cruise for 75,000 credit card points and to me it was an absolute no brainer.... There are differences with all cruise lines, but at the end of the cruise I really enjoyed the cruise with Virgin.

Because of the wonderful Med. cruise this summer I decided to check out a Med. cruise for 2024.  The price difference between Virgin and Celebrity is thousands of dollars.  I love Celebrity (that may change after my March 2024 cruise) but I cannot justify the extra money to do a Med. cruise with them.  I understand the itineraries between the two line are completely different, but again I can't justify Celebrity's price....

Happy Cruising!!!!

Edited September 13, 2023 by Tyler414
spelling

[commodoredave]

3 minutes ago, Cruise Junky said:

I did say hitting more, not that it wasn’t hitting at all.   Either way, we booked a 27 day HAL cruise yesterday for around the same time frame, so in either case, it’s not Celebrity.  

I've decided to give Celebrity another try even thought our last cruise was disappointing. We are doing an 8-day Bermuda cruise with friends next May. Hoping for the best. 

[hubofhockey]

18 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

I posted this on a PCL thread regarding Celebrity’s current cruise fares. But it hopefully explains why we’re looking elsewhere as well. 
 

 

Yes, Celebrity is a quality cruise line, and from my uninformed opinion over here in the peanut gallery, bases their price fluctuations on “supply and demand” more than any other cruise line we cruise with, and right now ever since the pandemic ended there is a huge pent up demand for people to go on a cruise, and they’re capitalizing on that demand. When the demand starts to ease back to pre-pandemic levels, I believe the prices will come back down. 

 

But so are many of the other cruise lines trying to tap into that pent up demand. NCL implemented a 10% military discount policy last November and then implemented their Free At Sea (FAS) Plus promotion a few months ago that made their original FAS much more dynamic, which BTW both of those additions personally were a huge hit for us. PCL implemented their 3 options when booking a cruise with their Cruise Only, Plus, and Premier packages, which we all know has caused quite a stir recently without including a grandfather clause. Even HAL has introduced their Have It All Early Booking Bonus package and enhanced their Club Orange package to include getting a free upgrade to a better cabin in the same Meta category. Both of which motivated us along with their unique 3-5 week itineraries to start booking cruises with HAL again.

 

All cruise lines charge as much as they can for cruises.  In the mid 2000's, Celebrity blew Princess out of the water with the introduction of the Solstice class ships and even upgraded the Millennium class to conform.  Their popularity increased and prices went up.  You can now probably get better deals on Princess.  If you the products similarly, they you choose Princess for pricing.  My view is different.  My last cruise was on the Royal Princess, when it was a new ship in the newest class.  I didn't like the ship.  It was glitzy, had tiny balconies, actual long waits for elevators, and the quality of their Sabatinis restaurant tanked when they changed the concept and they also changed the concept of Explorers Lounge, which once had some really good live entertainment and then didn't.  We switched to Celebrity and Aqua Class and still enjoy the concept.  

 

If you value the Princess and Celebrity products equally, then it makes sense to book with Princess.  I can't get there.

[Cruise Junky]

20 minutes ago, commodoredave said:

I've decided to give Celebrity another try even thought our last cruise was disappointing. We are doing an 8-day Bermuda cruise with friends next May. Hoping for the best. 

Yes, I’m still doing their transpacific on Solstice next year. I didn’t cancel any current bookings, just booked elsewhere for 2025.