TeeRick

We have not yet tried MSC Yacht Club but tempted to follow the crowd at some point. We have done a Crown Loft suite twice on Royal on Oasis-Class ships (Symphony and Harmony). It might be a consideration. They are in a small enclave deck (17) just with other CL suites. Just down the hall on 17 is the Coastal Kitchen suite restaurant and the Suite Lounge. But to get to the Suite Sun Deck you need to go down a deck and cross over.

Corner aft sky suites are the best! We have sailed these on several ships and at least once with the window equipment- which was really not an issue for us.

Have you tried the small, non-smoking casino on Symphony yet? We found the selection to be very limited in there. But the smoke in the main casino is bothersome to us.

We have sailed extensively on both Royal and Celebrity. Onboard experience is quite different for sure. We mainly do destination-type cruises on Celebrity. Longer itineraries, quieter, very few children. We have generally sailed in suites and the Celebrity Retreat product has dramatically increased prices and has decreased in value. So we are trying the Royal suite product again. It is less expensive overall since we have no need for a drink package with our D+ coupons and the included Suite Lounge drinks. On Celebrity this is all built into the pricing so our E+ benefits are not very valuable to us.

Here is my take on the situation. The vast majority of cruise passengers pay auto-gratuities and do not remove them. So the gratuity increases we have seen are not entirely due to other passengers removing theirs. But instead we are all paying the staff more as inflation has rocked the world since the pandemic. Yes I agree that in the US anyway that the "add a tip" line on every credit card transaction even for take-out has become quite unacceptable and it is built into the software systems. You can put aside the machine-made guilt and add zero.

We enjoyed CK recently on Symphony. The CK dinner menu has more choices than Luminae. The food and service was on par with Luminae IMO. Enjoy!

We were contacted by the Symphony suite concierges by email about a week before our cruise.

Yes you are correct. My response was poorly written.

Yes you need CK dinner reservations on RCCL ships, unlike Celebrity/Luminae as you mentioned. If you are in a GS or above, you will get contacted before your cruise by a concierge and they can make your dinner reservations in CK before the cruise. Or on the first day, go there directly for lunch when you board and make your reservations. If you are in a JS - if ICON is like other ships- you might not be able to dine for dinner in CK depending on availability. But breakfast and lunch will always be open and no reservation needed.

Hi @Lionesss have a great cruise. We did a similar itinerary in Feb on Symphony but it went to Labadee then, but now Jamaica of course. We were in a Crown Loft Suite. What kind of suite are you sailing in? We really enjoyed the CK and SL area on Deck 17 right down the hall from our suite. The ship was awesome as was the service and crew.

On RCCL the 4D or 5D+ drink coupons are really nice and can be used anywhere all day. We did not need to buy an expensive beverage package. A note about the Crown Lounge- on some ships (like our last cruise on Symphony) it was D+ and P-only during the happy hour times with the hors d'oeuvres. It depends on the sailing and the number of D, D+ and P's on board.

Not trying to alter this as a smoking thread- but we gambled quite a lot less on our last Symphony cruise because of the heavy smoke odor in the casino. Celebrity is smoke-free in all casinos.

We are E+ /D+ on these two lines so we sail each of them often. We like to switch it up too. We sailed a lot recently in The Retreat on Celebrity but then they started messing with it, raising prices dramatically and cutting services and suite amenities. So we strayed! We did O-Class this year (Symphony) on RCCL and very much enjoyed the CL suite we had. The ship is huge but has everything imaginable. Entertainment far better than Celebrity. Loads of restaurants and bars. Yes more kids, noise, and less of a serene experience but we don't mind that on occasion. Service and staff were outstanding. We did not do the MDR but mostly Coastal Kitchen and specialty restaurants (Hooked, Jamie's, Wonderland).

I mentioned all of that in my previous post #7.

At the top of the page on this Celebrity Cruises Board. There is a drop down menu "See Posts About: - Select Ship". The most recent posts come up first.