Psilor

For some reason I haven't seen this review before, just found it now. Great review, beautiful pictures and valuable information! It really gets me interested in taking a Celebrity cruise in the Pacific one day :)

I have been on 4 cruises with the so called LAWN, and, well maybe I have not been up there at the right time but I never saw over 2-4 people using the lawn,. I would not be unhappy, if they did away with much of it and put in a much need activity there like a good, note good miniature golf course.

Well, that is certainly a relevant aspect. If only a few people use a feature it does not make sense for Celebrity to keep it, when they could replace it with something else which more people can enjoy (and therefore ultimately bringing more business to the cruise line). They have already partly done this on the two last ships in the S class - Silhouette and Reflection - where they replaced the Hot Glass show with the Lawn Club Grill, added the Porch restaurant on the side, and added private cabanas on the lawn to make use of that surface.

I would nevertheless make the case for keeping the lawn as is, based on not seeing it only as a feature for potential activities, but also almost as a work of art, or "ambience-creating" installation. If a ship for example has a big work of art on the wall in the atrium, it is meant to be beautiful to look at and create a certain ambience. Even though it is not used for activities, it has its own value. For me it is the same with the lawn. Even though it is not necessarily utilized to a large extent by a lot of people, it creates a great ambience, and gives the ship a certain "soul". Everyone knows it is there, and maybe walk across it a couple of times during their cruise, or spend at least a few minutes during one afternoon or evening on it. To me this is of great value to the whole experience, even if it is not well used in terms of "activity minutes", and a miniature golf course there would in my view completely ruin the character of the ship.

We sailed the Equinox in January, and the Corning glass-blowers there commented that there had been rumors that the Hot Glass show would be discontinued and removed from the three ships where it is currently present (Solstice, Equinox and Eclipse), but that these rumors are absolutely not true. So no, it is not likely that the Hot Glass show will be replaced by the Lawn Club Grill on any of these three ships. As another response already pointed out, the Lawn Club (i.e. the grass lawn itself) is alive and well on these ships and is a fantastic area for relaxation, sun-tanning, picnics, sail-away drinks, and more!

Hi Ilarsen,

This is because when you buy that package you will only book the first of the three specialty dinner nights before your trip, and it should be either the first or second evening of the cruise. The staff will have chosen which of the specialty restaurants you will go to that first night (which, again, is by your own choice either the first or second night of the cruise), but this is in practice possible to change once you have gotten on the ship by talking to the specialty dinner booking staff that are standing outside of the restaurant areas on deck five (and elsewhere). You also book the two remaining dinners (day and place) of the specialty dinner package once you have boarded with this same staff.

And yes, you can wait buy the whole package on board. In general, the more time that goes after you have boarded and until you make the specific dinner reservations, the less available slots there will be, regardless of whether you bought the package before your trip or on board.

@YORKI1: The placement of the bed and sofa in relation to the balcony varies between these two configurations for every other cabin, and is due to the fact that the cabin is broader where the bed is. So in order to fit the cabins together and using as little space as possible, they place them in this every-other type of configuration. I am sure there is someone on Cruise Critic who has calculated which cabin has which configuration on the different ships...

Based on a recent cruise on the Equinox (also Solstice class), I can for example say that Concierge cabin 1174 on deck 10 has the sofa by the balcony config that you desire, but cabins 1172 and 1176 did not, they had the bed by the balcony.

A big thanks to ROWSE for the great review! It makes us revisit our recent cruise, although it was on the Equinox :-)

Thanks az_tchr and SheriffJoe for your comments, which seem to confirm the view that separate premium "islands" on an otherwise non-premium ship will not be enough if a premium experience is what one wants. I am curious to try out other cruise lines, but at the same time I did feel that Celebrity was a near-perfect match, so not sure I want to gamble (considering I will likely at most do one cruise per year) :)

I recently came back from a great cruise with the Celebrity Equinox (Eastern Caribbean, January 2-11). It was actually my (and my partner's, and our whole party of five's) first cruise, so granted I do not have a lot to compare with, but after a lot of canvassing on Cruise Critic and elsewhere on the web I feel there are several interesting topics to discuss about the cruising concept. One such topic I raised in my review of the said cruise, but it actually fits better here in the discussion forums, so therefore I created this thread - "What is Premium?" And what will make people want to continue to pay for it?

What sparked this question was that I recently read an interview from February 2015 with Celebrity CEO, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo on the Travel Agent Central website (I found it when I was looking for news about the new Celebrity Edge project...), where she made a few comments to the effect that the segmentation into "contemporary", "premium" and "luxury" is less and less valid, partly because these labels mean different things for different people, but also because people can get any type of experience on almost any modern ship. The example given was that premium guests can get a great vacation on a contemporary segment ship like the Quantum of the Seas. (My apologies to Lisa if I in any way misunderstood her...)

While the example above is most likely true (most modern ships seem to have cabins, venues and restaurants that fit all three segments, or at least the contemporary and premium segments), I believe that to have a premium cabin and access to premium restaurants are not the only things that determine whether you have a "premium" experience.

I found on the Equinox that (except for the poolside experience) a big part of what "felt premium" was to be able to freely walk around on a ship that did not feel crowded; to sit on the grass lawn without it being full of people or with people playing and running around; to be able to go to a bar and very likely get nice seats even though we were a party of five; to be able to book a restaurant the same day (which we were mostly able to do except for with Murano, which was fully booked when we tried to go there a second time), and so on. This aspect of the ship not being overcrowded when moving between the different spaces, and the service level anywhere on the ship - that is what makes it a truly premium experience, and what I and my travel companions were and will continue to be prepared to pay a premium price for. It is not enough that we can pay for separate premium experiences on any ship (i.e premium cabin, premium restaurants, etc.).

So in that respect, when looking at the entirety of a cruise ship, the contemporary/premium/luxury segmentation is still valid, and I really do hope that Celebrity will continue to provide it, because otherwise, in the long run, why would Celebrity be needed as a separate brand at all?

Anyone else care to share their thoughts on this? Do you agree? Do you think my reasoning makes sense?