AbbyCruiser45

Happy to hear that the ship felt like a good crowd at 90% capacity! I’m sailing Equinox next week and I think it is close to sold out, so I was a little worried.

Very promising since this is the first line to announce with US ports. Given that most ports require vaccination, that is not a surprise (which I am fine with).

P&O (Carnival owned and a CLIA member) dropped proof of testing today. NCL is a CLIA member as well and they dropped testing for European ports a few weeks ago. My thought is that the US based lines are coming up with new protocol, or else they would have put out a simple press release yesterday saying they acknowledge the CDC change but that policies would continue as normal.

For P&O cruises (Carnival owned) effective July 24th, guests are no longer required to present a negative covid test in the terminal at check-in. There is no exception for US based sailings. All guests are still asked to take a covid test within 2 days, but it does not have to be proctored and can be a rapid test. All they need to do in port is assert that they have taken a test and it is negative, no proof needed. It's interesting to see this approach because it is still covering the cruise line but puts all responsibility onto the passenger.

It seems Celebrity doesn't care too much either. On the Apex, my dad tested positive with the B2B mandatory test. They tested at 7:30 AM and went about their day until 6 PM when they finally went to the front desk to ask where the results were (my mom's had arrived via email earlier in the day, but not for my dad). Only then did they pull the results to see that he was positive and had him start isolating. So he was walking around the ship, unmasked for close to 12 hours without Celebrity doing anything.

Agree. I don't see the vaccination requirement going anywhere. Speaking to Caribbean destinations only, most countries require a vaccine but not a test (https://www.travelweekly.com/Caribbean-Travel/Caribbean-readies-for-a-wave-of-reopenings).

That's a great question and I'm interested in the answer also. My parents have a similar situation coming up in August. their plan so far is to go on the second cruise, and just isolate in the destination for 5 days and then use the rest of the time to be a tourist until the second cruise.

Agree. I would see posts on Twitter with a screen shot showing 95% of ships in the orange zone with the user claiming mass outbreaks at sea. They did not realize/care that orange was 0.3% of all crew and passengers meaning it could be as little as 6 people out of 2,000 testing positive. Some outbreak! A shame because transparency would be nice, but the way they classified the "zone" did not make sense.

I suspect we’ll hear something tomorrow. This announcement has taken social media by storm with tons of speculation. Celebrity will have to address it, either with new protocol or merely acknowledging it and say they are working on policy behind the scenes.

For me it’s because other lines, including a major US line NCL, have ended testing in all destinations exactly for US and Canada. So that makes it seem like the thing holding them back was the CDC.

That’s why I think testing for crew has to have ended with this. I cannot see Celebrity risking even worse staffing shortages by lifting the mask mandate for crew and not the testing mandate. I feel like staffing is Celebrity’s primary concern right now.

That is my hope as well. I thought it was strange that Celebrity did not announce an end to testing for non-US and Canada based ports when NCL did considering they shared a health/safety team between the lines. It would make sense that they would want to wait until they could announce a fleet wide drop of the requirement.

https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/cruise/index.html "As of July 18, 2022, CDC’s COVID-19 Program for Cruise Ships is no longer in effect and this page will no longer be updated. New guidance for cruise ships to mitigate and manage COVID-19 transmission will be available in the coming days. " Announced today. It's unclear what this means moving forward, but I take this as a big sign for things to change. I read on the other social media site that effective yesterday the Summit crew were not required to wear masks. I had a hard time believing Celebrity would do that if they still needed to do weekly Covid tests for the entire crew. It is likely due to this announcement. It'll be interesting to see what Celebrity will do regrading this change.

I am living for having my Tia Cappuccino in less than two weeks!

It makes me feel like a dummy, but it helps to take a physical calendar and point to the days and count backwards. I say out loud “embarkation day, 1 day before, 2 days before”. We leave on a Saturday and we’ll be taking our test ASAP Thursday morning. Really hoping for 6 negative tests!

Also consider the itinerary. I haven't sailed Princess, but I chose them for Alaska 2023 over Celebrity because Princess is allowed to sail into Glacier Bay but Celebrity cannot. This was a deal breaker for me! Since you said Apex, this shouldn't be an issue for you, but is generally good to know for people considering the two lines for Alaska.

I found the messaging to be fairly unreliable. Everyone in my group has iPhones, so we just texted (iMessaged) as normal. If you have a mix of phone brands, consider using another messaging app like Facebook or WhatsApp.

I haven't seen anyone say this reaction is overblown in this thread, but for anyone thinking it, here is an article and picture of what smoking in unregulated areas can do on a ship: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna11975460 I'm very surprised with Celebrity's reaction. The first cruise I sailed was with Disney. We smelled cigarette smoke while on the balcony the first two days, so we called the desk to report it. When we returned to the room, there was wine and chocolates with a letter of apology (even though it was not the cruise line's fault). We did not smell cigarettes from there again.

Great, thank you everyone! One of my favorite things my last sailing was having a speciality coffee instead of drip every morning. The tradition continues!

Hi all- I’ve only sailed E class where there is the Al Bacio II in the Ocean View Cafe. I’ll be sailing Equinox this summer and I know there is not an Al Bacio at the buffet, but do they have any custom coffee like a lattes? I feel like I remember reading that the bar does coffee in the morning, but I can’t find confirmation. Just planning my morning fix ahead of time! Thanks I’m advance.

Thank you, everyone! We’ll tackle this on Tuesday.

Hi all- we have the Celebrity Credit card and redeemed our credit card intro points a few months ago for OBC. The OBC hasn’t shown up on our Celebrity account yet. I mentioned it as an aside while on the phone with Celebrity about something else and asked if I need to talk to Celebrity about it or to the credit card. Celebrity said the credit card. We called the credit card today, and they said to call Celebrity. So we are officially in a loop! Before we push further, I wanted to post here to see if anyone has experience with redeeming the credit card points with the Celebrity card and who to contact. Thank you in advance!

How is it handled if they’re doing it? The night before your last full day you’ll get a letter asking you to register an account for a test. They’ll give you a time to go to a location on the ship (this was when the last day was a sea day, I imagine if it was a port day they’d be flexible with the time). You go take the test the next morning and then you get your results within the next two hours or so.

You can self test. My parents just did this, but their self-test ended up failing. They were easily able to get in person testing that same day (still two days before their sailing). I'm not sure where they went. I googled the name in the email (ASAPtesten) and cannot find an actual website for them.

If you don't want to worry about it, you can make reservations in advance. When I sailed Edge (same dining rooms as Apex) we made reservations in different rooms each night since we were a group of 5. We never had to wait when we had a reservation. We did end up canceling Cosmopolitan so we could have Tuscan again. We were not able to make a reservation and only needed to wait 10-15 minutes. They give you a buzzer, so we just went down to the casino. It was no big deal.