AbbyCruiser45

Same! I literally have to point at a calendar and say out loud “cruise day, one day before, two days before”. Makes me feel like a big dummy!

I'm excited to follow along! I'm thinking about taking a similar cruise next year, so hearing about the ports will be great. From the TikToks Capt. Kate has been posting, the ports look stunning. You said that eMed sends the positive results to Celebrity, does this mean it was a test at port?

I’m sailing this same itinerary but on July 30th! Even though I’m only 28, I get cranky with rowdy kids too. Hopefully, my sailing will have less kids since it is during the start of the school year for kids in the south.

I'm echoing everyone else, but I am actually in my late twenties! I love Celebrity and definitely do not feel out of place. My partner is 30 and also enjoys Celebrity. We are much like you, where we do not love partying and go to bed (relatively) early. I really love the higher end feel of Celebrity. Previously, we sailed NCL because that was a highly recommended cruise line for our age group. We did not like it that much. I had a decent time, but it was not the best. The food and cocktails on Celebrity are tough to beat at their price point. It is definitely a luxurious, relaxed feel instead of constant party. With that being said, you can find high energy activities too 🙂

Yes and despite many people in the thread claiming there is no way that cruise lines would do this, it certainly seems to be the direction the industry is going. I’m glad to see it.

I saw it on a P&O FB group posted by an admin. It apparently is a limited trial from June 25 to July 23. I'm not sure if they will post it to the website since it only impacts 5 sailings.

Who is telling you that it violates Jones Act? I'd be partial to believe Celebrity, I'm sure they do B2Bs all the time in Alaska.

Those are very different! Do you have time before or after the cruise? San Diego is a great tourist city and San Juan is also wonderful if you want to tack on time for your trip. San Juan has beach options as well. If the itinerary is more of a toss up, as others have mentioned, the Millie is great with its recent full renovation.

Unless you are implying that the captain was lying, we know there were zero cases on our sailing July 2021 (Capt. Kate provided daily updates) and we know there were over 3% spread on a recent Apex. So there is some understanding of cases on board. If this is the case, then why is CLIA (Cruise Line International Association, of which Celebrity is a member) advocating for pre-arrival testing to be reevaluated?

The fault is that it is an extra hurdle that is seemingly not slowing the number of cases on board. I sailed last July with no pre-arrival testing and we had zero cases on board for a 7 day sailing. Compared to now, when there is pre-arrival testing and many ships are having 1-3% of the passengers infected. Case counts were higher in July 2021 than they are now. So then, what is the point of a covid mitigation measure that does not work well?

Really insensitive and a mind boggling comparison. You can be against measures that are largely not changing the number of cases on board (comparing this summer to last, when there wasn’t testing) and 100% for preventative healthcare. I should know as my mom was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer this year after a regular colonoscopy. Yet, both she and I see the fault in pre-arrival testing.

But we have to ask ourselves, what is the goal for Covid mitigation? Is it to eradicate Covid or to make sure our hospitals/medical facilities are not overwhelmed? The answer the world has come to is the latter because as it stands now, Covid will not disappear. The US dropping requirements came down to the fact that our hospitals were not overwhelmed, not the number of cases per area. This is still how they determine if a county in the US is high risk, based on the capacity of the hospital, not raw number of cases. If this is how other areas are viewing Covid, the cruise lines should not be the exception. The medical facilities on board are not overwhelmed, a doctor on the Apex reported that the symptoms they see are all mild.

Hi all- my parents are on Apex now and got a surprise letter that as B2B cruisers, they needed to report for a Covid test tomorrow (last day before the first leg ends). We were surprised because we thought testing was discontinued. When she called the desk, the crew member said that they had been doing B2B testing since March. Can anyone on the leg before this current one confirm if you had B2B testing? Thank you!