Gracie115

Heard it on Apex every day on the TA last fall and while not as much on the Apex TA last month still enough to destroy the ambiance in Le Petit Chef when we dined there. There is no barrier to prevent that noise from being in that venue.

It IS on the Edge class ships.

Agree................ La Petit Chef was ruined by the blasting music from the Martini lounge...

This is also what we hope to find when we take our first Viking trip. It will be a river boat in Eqypt, that includes a post extension to Jordan. We have tired of the same old, same old itineraries from Celebrity with an occasional new one thrown in I guess to keep people booking. Just haven't felt our $$'s were being spent wisely with them anymore. Don't care about not having a butler, never had him/her do much anyway. While we've enjoyed the entertainment on X, it's become repetitive and we look forward to the smaller venues offered by Viking. We plan to do more trips like the Egypt one where you really get to know a country(well as much as is possible over a couple of weeks)

Ours on Apex in April had 2900....

Exactly

I just did a mock booking. Yes it's a guarantee and has nothing included. The price with tips, internet and drinks included is the difference. NOT a different rooms. THAT is worth is $2,293 per person more (the difference in the mock booking I just did)? It's a 10 day cruise. I stand by the statement that the pricing is ridiculous.

If this isn't an IT mistake it's absolutey ridiculous pricing......

We love Connie too. You still have Qsine and Tuscan Grill as Specialty Restaurants on Connie. The activities and entertainment are similar to all the X ships. It's a smaller, more intimate ship with a wonderful crew. We prefer both M & S class to E.

This....... exactly.....

On the TA we found the same thing, also found that several menus were repeated over the 15 night cruise. Which is different than we found on former TA's.

Sounds like it will be a wonderful cruise with low occupancy service is usually outstanding. The Reflection is a great ship, but then we love the "S" class ships far more than "E" class... good to know they have better pricing too.

Yes, agree. We are shopping around too. After 30+ Celebrity cruises we have none booked and don't see any we are even considering.

This was us... I remember saying to my DH "just get on a ship, any ship" and we did. We sailed 2 Royal cruises and then 2 Celebrity in the last 18 months. The 1st a Royal TA and we were so happy to be on a ship it didn't matter that there was only 1 port in 13 days. We took 2 Apex cruises, this after saying "pre-pandemic" we had no interest in the Edge class...that went by the wayside "post-pandemic." After our Apex TA that just ended a few weeks ago we just decided that while nothing was terribly wrong on that trip the cost just didn't justify our enjoyment. As you said it was "nice." We spent more than double what we had 4 years ago for the same type room. I think we should expect it to be far more than "nice." It wasn't.... our desire to cruise "any ship, anywhere" is gone. We are looking at more rewarding, more satisfying ways to spend our $$'s now. I'm sure Celebrity doesn't care as long as they keep filling their ships repeat business is unimportant.

Yes the world has changed but if Celebrity is trying to recoup their pandemic losses in part by huge increases in costs to the customer then the customer has every right, if they are willing to pay that price, to expect exceptional goods & service. I am in the hospitality business and YES it is very difficult to find employees, yes, we have increased our rates substantially, however we have not reduced what we provide to our customers. Sometimes we have to restrict how many rooms we have available so that we can insure proper service, which I know is common in the business these days. I don't see Celebrity doing that, they want to sell every room every sailing (and Celebrity is not alone in this). If you don't have proper staff to take care of your customers then at some point you begin to lose them. It is a dangerous strategy being played that may or may not pay off in the long run for them. For us, we're most likely done with Celebrity after 25 years. We can't justify the cost/benefit ratio and so are looking elsewhere.

Oh, we try not to eat in the buffet so I can't really comment except that we both DO hate the way Princess sets it up, at least on the Royal class of ships. We found the food in MDR and Alfredo's and Sabatini's to be easily as good as Celebrity. We book Club Class, now called the Reserve so that may make a difference. We aren't fond of Crown Grill.

We've been on one Princess since the restart and found the food surprisingly good. Our next cruise is on Princess too..... after 35 or so on Celebrity

We thought Crystallize was excellent too. On Royal they have done full Broadway productions on at least the mega ships. They don't do as much in the acrobatic vein as I remember but as much as it is amazing I just don't enjoy them as much. Royal also has more music in smaller venues, and they have more smaller venues than Celebrity does. We've always enjoyed a piano bar and Royal has them, Celebrity stopped that many years ago. We have loved the Celebrity brand but now are looking elsewhere as the pricing has just gone crazy. Our next sailing will be on Princess in late 2024...if we stick with it.

We found Coastal Kitchen on both the Harmony & the Anthem to be very nice. Not quite Luminae quality at DINNER, but much better variety at CK for lunch. Entertainment far better on Royal, much more variety and some amazing theatre shows. Specialty dining good on both. We would do either if the itinerary and price was right.....something I expect NOT to be the case with Celebrity as pricing has become prohibitive for us.

Completely agree with you about the ambiance being better on S & M classes. E Class Luminae is much bigger. We were on Apex and apparently Beyond it is even bigger. It's beginning to look like another Main Dining Room. On the S class ships it is a much more intimate setting. Food is about the same on all of them, but we also agree with @jelayne that we are eating more dinners at specialty restaurants now than in Luminae. It's REALLY time for some new menus in Luminae. Service has ALWAYS been wonderful in all of them.

66 wide is called an "Olympic Queen" and is 6 inches less wide than a California king.

Thanks for the review of your trip. Most enjoyable to read and makes me feel even more confident that our switch from Celebrity to Princess for our next cruise will work out well.

Interesting. All the Princess sailings I've been on seemed to have younger crowds than both HAL and Celebrity. But I have no specific statistics, just personal experience.

I suspect HAL ships have a MUCH older normal clientele than Princess. At least that is our experience with both lines.

Princess is one of the very few that even have evenings called "Formal Night" at this point. Princess, in our opinion, is much the same type(class) of ship as HAL or Celebrity, slightly better than Royal, less than Oceania..etc.. Those lines have all either totally abandoned or scaled down those evenings And seem to be thriving just fine. We just finished a 14 night TA on Celebrity, which is supposedly a bit more up scale than Princess and most people dressed well every night, a few dressed formally on "Elegant Chic" nights but only a few. It did not impact us one way or the other. We don't care about what others are wearing and suspect that most people are the same. If you want to go formal then by all means go for it. Our next 2 cruises are on Princess, we will dress nicely but we won't be packing formal wear.