Ship: Celebrity Beyond
Length of Cruise: 11 nights/12 days
Cruise Sail Date: June 5, 2023
Date email offer received: March 23, 2023
Captain’s Club Tier [“PREVIEW” = first Celebrity Cruise]: Select
Booked through Celebrity Direct OR via TA: Direct
Current Cabin: Edge Stateroom w/ Infinite Veranda (E2, 7137)
Bid? Yes/No: Yes
If YES - Bidding Details:
Cabin Category: Sky Suite, AquaClass Sky Suite, Celebrity Suite, Royal Suite, Edge Villa
Bid Offer: S1: $2600, AS: $2600, CS: $3500, RS: $5000, EV: $5325
Notification Date: June 3, 2023, 8:30 AM PDT
Accepted / Rejected: Rejected
General Comments (offer details, etc.) I am eight days late to this post because of my fun shore excursions in Sicily, Santorini, Mykonos, and Istanbul, but despite the five weak-to-fair (orange-to-yellow) bids I had, they were all given the big thumbs-down, unfortunately. The most likely reason for all five (yes, five) bids to be rejected was because of zero availability. The Celebrity Beyond is the newest ship in the fleet, and pretty much no one wants to cancel their vacation on the newest ship in the fleet, so may as well have to be stuck with an IV. The Edge-Class IV staterooms are narrow that in order to sleep four, you need to pull out the drawer under the sofa for a second sofa bed. When the drawer is open, there are only around 6 inches between the second sofa bed and the work desk, so an upgrade would have been even better for a family of four. The upfront price even for the entry-level Sky Suite is unjustifiable for us, being worth 2.5x more than a standard Verandah. Pre-COVID, when the upgrade price from a balcony to an entry-level full suite was around 75-80% more, it was justifiable for us. Now, because of the return to cruising, people want to book suites because of the two-to-three-year hiatus of cruising, so they want to spend the money they did not use for those two-to-three years. Despite the ridiculous prices of suites right now, people are still booking them like hotcakes, which makes me even more mad. Hopefully, most people will soon find the ever-increasing suite prices to be not worth it, so the price bubble breaks, allowing us to get back to living the suite life. Even though you do not get the extra Captain's Club points, weak-to-fair MoveUp bids will be our way to earn suites for the time being at reasonable prices.