Sujormik

Not much chatter about Celestyal here in cruisecritic.com, but I’m still gonna try to get some good advice! We arrive in Santorini early in the morning but are not doing the ship excursions so I know we have to wait to tender until after their groups debark. And there will be other ships in port and I know we will have to wait at the cable car. We have a private guide meeting us and will spend the day with him seeing the sites. Here’s my dilemma: our ship doesn’t leave until midnight. Which is good, but it means we have several hours after our guide leaves before we need to get back to the port. Also good. I’d really like to get to someplace like Imerovigli for dinner and sunset (Santorini sunset!!!) but am worried about getting there and back to the port without a car. Definitely don’t want to rent a car for half a day. Is anyone aware of reliable ways to get from the more remote parts of the island to the port? I’m aware there are very few taxis. Would really love for this to work! Thanks.

I have a private tour scheduled for May, do you mind sharing who you used? We will have ours for about 5 hours, but our ship doesn’t leave until midnight. I’d really like to find a restaurant with a sunset view for dinner but am getting worried about finding a taxi to get us back to the cable car after dinner.

Thanks again for sharing your trip for us celestyal newbies! I’d love to hear about your day in Athens too, if you’re up for it!

Thanks for the tip, wish we could get off first, but I may arrange our tours to begin a little later and not rush to the tenders. we are in St Petersburg, not sure if that’s near you in FL!

Your reports are so helpful, thank you. I’ve already decided to go with private tours on each of the islands except Ephesus, just don’t want to deal with waiting around for other people to tell me how to spend my limited time! Think we will try to eat meals on the islands as much as possible too!

Following, this is already so helpful. We’ll be on Journey in May, and I’m surprised at how crowded Santorini was for you in March! We aren’t expecting much from Celestyal so thanks again for your detailed posts.

But wondering if anyone will be on Idyllic Aegean May 19-26. We are looking at private shore excursions/tours if anyone wanted to discuss sharing. Maybe this thread will be allowed.

You need to let them know, and I don’t think they’ll discount your fare, but you should be able to disembark early.

I’ve been reading that it’s an absolute disaster. Filthy ship, hanging electrical wires, no ac, toilets not flushing. I came on to see what’s been reported, surprised nothing more here.

Your photos are gorgeous! I’ve asked a weird question on this forum, hoping you’ll take a look at it. Thanks.

My husband has a business meeting in LIsbon in May 2024. Because our air will be covered, we want to extend our travel to finally visit Greece! But our dates are fixed and we don’t have a ton of flexibility. The 7 night circle offered by Celestyal would work with a bit of tweaking and I wonder if anyone has any insight. We’d like to do a 7 nights Athens-Athens but not actually board the ship until day 2 in Thessaloniki. We are willing to pay for 7 nights and only stay for 6. There will be people boarding at Thessaloniki so that shouldn’t be an issue, but I’m wondering if you who know the line think it’s worth asking about. We could also simply board in Thessaloniki and exit Athens and miss the last night instead of the first, if that’s allowable. Does this sound insane? I welcome any insight. Thanks.

Didn’t realize about the title search option, I promise I did search Riverside in the main search function!

Anyone know anything about this line? Thanks.

There were at least a dozen on my cruise.

When you check in at a restaurant they ask your name and room number. I just had wine/beer with meals, didn’t do the bar. The package includes unlimited wine & beer at meals.

I keep getting emails about the 3 free nights and $600/cabin OBC, and sale prices on upcoming sailings, but when I click to the website the lowest price is double or more than what’s advertised. And nowhere to explore the extras without going through the whole rigmarole. Has anyone actually gotten the sale prices on these upcoming trips? Specifically looking at the one in Croatia/Greece ending in Istanbul on October 4. Just curious I guess.

I have been posting on the On Marina Now thread from our first O cruise. I’ve been fairly critical but you should know there were a lot of positives too! We loved our penthouse, the linens were great, towels replaced all day long. We don’t drink soda but our ice bucket was refilled often, as requested. Most of the food was really good. We had no issue with the decor. The gym was good. Etc. We may get on a Viking sometime, though no cruises for us now for awhile.

That’s what we figured. I do wonder what the crew gets fed, not likely miso sea bass right?🤣

I love me some Maltesers so that’s a trick question! I think we saw popcorn at the bar on another cruise which got us thinking about it. And you’re right about buying stuff ashore…we giggled about the crew members bringing huge bags of foodstuffs from shore.

No, at this point we are not looking to sail Oceania any time soon. What I’m trying to convey (unsuccessfully it seems) is that I don’t really feel like I’m “complaining” in that I expect a response/remedy. More I’ve been trying I guess to summarize the nature of the service we received which was so far below what we’d expected (and imo paid for). I know O isn’t Regent. But I expected just a step below that and I was disappointed. As far as the manager approaching us in the GDR, which I saw you asked about and then deleted, someone above noted that after they said something their service improved considerably and people were all over to better provide. I was surprised that we didn’t get ANY attention after that first day post-commentary from RedGinger. You know they take your room number when they seat you, we were clearly flagged the first day but for the manager to NEVER stop at our table? That’s just bad service and thus I can’t recommend O. Also, we really enjoyed our trip. I see I’m coming across as a whiner and that’s not my feeling, I’m just conscious of things and wanted to share/track them. We thought overall the food was quite good. Loved our PH. Enjoyed the private deck (much calmer than the pool deck with all the kids on this sailing) and especially the hot tubs, sauna and great towel service everywhere. Another nitpick though, while I’m at it😉, we really craved some popcorn or pretzels a few times and there seemed to be nowhere to get that. There was a movie one night and we nabbed some popcorn from there, but it seems like an easy thing to have around for an afternoon snack that’s not frou frou tea cakes and sandwiches! We weren’t drinking in the lounge so didn’t see they offered some nibbles in there. Had no idea room service menu was on the tv, our fault for not carefully looking at it but I don’t think we turned the tv on virtually the whole 10 days. Not sure we would’ve eaten in our room but I’d think a paper menu or card suggesting we look at the tv wouldn’t be a bad thing. I have no agenda, swear. Wanted to love O and for now we were underwhelmed. After we try another “almost” luxury line maybe O will look great by comparison. Thanks for letting me express my thoughts, I do appreciate the forum.

Yes! Delicious!

The chocolate with orange peel was good, don’t recall the name. Apple miso was not. Missed fat Elvis, sadly. Jam and toast was ok. Blood orange sorbet wasn’t super bloody but was tasty with chocolate shavings.

I found Red Ginger and Polo a bit darker than Jacque, GDR and Toscana. I always bring something to read too!

Not an influencer, just new to O and wanting to share good, bad, ugly. Our final dinner in GDR was about on par with our other GDR experiences this past week. First 2 of us were served the wrong appetizer (ordered A, served C), quickly replaced but weird. Entrees came out and my food (chateaubriand) was not hot. I didn’t want to wait further and asked if I could just get some hot (temperature) sauce and I’d be fine with the room temp meat. Was offered Tabasco and finally someone understood me, insisted on bringing a new plate out. It was delicious. No manager came to address the one person with no food. In all the service issues we had, no manager ever came to our table. Our friends were amazed, had never had the service issues we encountered all week but saw for themselves what we experienced.

What’s a concierge bag? The blue one with white handles? You can have ours if you want it!