BWIVince

Personally, I think that would be very challenging. The lease on modern machines is extremely expensive, and the operators require guarantees that Crystal would have to subsidize at a loss with the volume of business Crystal has historically experienced. The situation at Las Vegas Reid is pretty much as close to the opposite of a Crystal ship as I can imagine — for the few machines they have per square foot in the airport, they have 5+ million passengers a MONTH passing through there right now, most of whom are headed to a casino for one reason or another. Vince

I haven’t been in Serenity’s Seabreezes yet, but for me I’m Team Classic when it comes to Symphony’s. The loss of the jetted tub is measurable to me (I know others don’t care), and the decor in the Seabreezes being newer isn’t a plus to me.. For the most part I like the look of the classic rooms and the appointments better. I don’t find the Seabreezes to feel that much more cramped, but to the extent that they do I don’t mind the loss of the few feet for the shared entry — I actually really like that feature…. To me the way the bathroom and bigger closet (which seems mostly like more shoe racks??) compress the living space more, and more evenly, closes in the room more. The classic PH’s (now Aquamarine) cleverly used the angled bathroom to steal space from the room but still open it up a little visually, to the desk area where the room was deeper. The effect in the 2017 design is flatter and compressed. Just my preference… Vince

I think the complaint about the deck plans not reflecting the pricing schema when bookings open due to the plans still being in flux is perfectly valid and would frustrate me just as much if I were in your shoes, but I’m not sure how I understand this is a complaint about how Crystal treats legacy passengers? You don’t seem like you were discriminated against in any way, nor should you have received any kind of favor for your status based on that request. If you were expecting them to waive the location-based pricing just for you because you were a CS member, I don’t think that’s fair or reasonable. (Maybe if they had misquoted the fares, but they didn’t in this case — no error was made on the agent’s part.) Whether the difference in suites is worth the premium, OTOH, is a different subject than the header, but worthy of discussion. Vince

Those specific Cove chairs (and many more) were a running joke between my mother and I... (This is going to sound horrible, but to those of you who knew my mother and I offline and our humorous teasing relationship, know this was perfectly fitting for us.) I always joked it wasn't the chair's fault she was built funny! 😄 I'd be sitting there super comfortable, and her arms and legs were so out of proportion with the chairs, the furniture looked like it was from a different planet than her. 😆 I could only get away with that since she made me... So yes, those chairs definitely don't fit everyone. 🙂 Vince

For visuals specifically, yes, as we always are with any refit or new build. Vince

Were the Aquamarines specifically what you were interested in? Because there are also the four window staterooms on deck 7 as well (though I know you said available, so that might have ruled them out). Those have been there as long as I can remember, so there are probably old videos available online, but we won't have new videos of them post-refit until after the renovations are done just before relaunch. IMHO, this is probably where your agent might be priceless... IME, they'll be able to get a more solid answer working through the sales organization than any passenger-facing CS person would. Others may have a better lead though. Vince

+1 on ALL those points. I absolutely adore Alison Clixby and all of her work, but The Chair comes to immediate mind as well. I'm honestly surprised that Serenity's Avenue wasn't redesigned at some point, given the challenges with the bar. I know there's no easy fix for it, but plenty of harder, less needed changes have been made to Serenity over the years. To Keith's point about designers, and maybe a little in defense of them, no matter how many questions they ask and no matter how many use cases are provided, there are always incorrect assumptions, bad information, missed requirements, etc. in the design process. This is why things get so extensively modeled digitally these days, and why things like staterooms get mock ups that people have to actually use and provide feedback on before fabrication begins... And this is also why refits take 2-3 years (normally) from the beginning of the planning process to completion of the punch list. That said, even with the mockups and test rooms, some things get clearer after full scale deployment with a broader group of customers... Again: The Chair. Vince

It was dedicated March 21 or 22, 2008... I'm not home right now and don't have access to any of my stuff, but I was at the dedication and remember the date vaguely enough. It opened for shakedown service a few days before that, and entered full service right after that. Vince

Wow, that does look and sound wonderful! Please write back after you two visit next month, I’d love to hear more! (Not that I don’t appreciate Tom’s reviews as well — I do!) Vince

I agree…. I’m hesitant to speculate on what Crystal isn’t doing to the staterooms, but there is no easy way for then to change the shared entryways on the Seabreeze-generation Aquamarine suites. Their alternatives include moving the toilet into the shower, moving the toilet into the bedroom, or moving the door to replace one of the sinks and having you walk in through the bathroom… 🙂. None of which I can see them doing. The shared entries are a space saving device (among other benefits) that can’t be easily reversed. Vince

Yep, I think the hierarchy goes CP, Junior CP, then Sapphire and Aquamarine…. All 9 versions of the above on both ships would include a walk-in closet according to the renderings. Not that a walk-in closet is in itself superior — many people remember Harmony’s “innovation” of walk-in closets in all its windowed staterooms on decks 7 and 5, and what an upgrade it was when they got rid of them for Symphony and Serenity’s standard staterooms. 😁 Vince

Ok, big picture post coming... From outside the industry, I think if you look at Crystal's relationship with Nobu you just take it as face value as another licensing deal -- which it is. But I think there's a significant role it's played in both luxury cruising and helping redefine Crystal as a brand in its middle-age that sometimes gets overlooked. For the first decade+ of Crystal's life, they (and EVERY other luxury line through their absence) struggled to make an Asian cuisine concept that people viewed as appropriately premium for luxury cruising. They tried making Japanese fancy, they tried focusing on what's normally expensive on Asian menus, they tried using primarily ingredients people perceived as luxurious, they tried going trendy with Asian fusion, they tried going authentic with popular southeast Asian flavors -- none of it resonated -- despite two venues and a handful of concepts between them. Then Crystal applied a formula that worked for them on other projects -- license a venue consulted with a chef that has premium cachet in that segment. That was a tried and true formula, but groundbreaking for an Asian venue on a cruise ship at the time -- and it was HIGHLY successful in turning Crystal's reputation (and of Asian food in general for US-based ships at the time) on that aspect. Looking around the industry, I don't think this is something that other lines have really solved for either. Other luxury or upper-premium lines have Asian venues or concepts that serve good food, just like Crystal did before Nobu. Other lines serve good sushi. Good sushi and good Asian dishes are a given in most of our lives, and most Americans can now get that within a reasonably short drive of our homes. I enjoy the variety of both on a cruise, but the "I had that last week before my cruise and will probably have it again next week after I get home" limits my excitement in those cases. What Nobu brought to the party was something fewer people had that same access to (whether because of location or price point), and a brand that was perceived as both premium and relatively unique - though many of his dishes are mimicked worldwide now... Which again speaks to his cachet. So whether or not some passengers thought Nobu was a culinary icon or not (or to their taste), it certainly represented Crystal pushing the cruise industry to turn a corner on what it meant to serve Asian cuisines to luxury passengers. Mimicking this success is what's at stake in this potential change. Just some food for thought. Vince

I mean yes, BUT, there will also be a point in time when the plans are finalized, everything will go into fabrication, and the installation work will begin. More info will become available at those various points, just like it does with EVERY refit. So I don't blame anyone holding off to book because they're not comfortable with the unknowns -- many people wouldn't be... And this is always the fun with a new launch, and relatively new territory for a company to launch on such a compressed timeline. But it's hardly the first time we've seen info and details change as the design process progresses on a travel industry project, let alone a cruise ship. Vince

That was exactly the lens I framed my message in the other other thread with, but these renderings don’t go that direction either (THANKFULLY)…. There are no open wire bins, exposed hanging rods, open shelves or cubbies in the renderings either, like every hotel room built in the last 2 years is loaded with. Otherwise I’d at least be able to be able to make sense of that, even though it would be its own disaster (see: Virgin Voyages). Vince

I raised the same concern in another thread — I’m with you on this, as I used most of those drawers on longer cruises! On Symphony, there were 8 regular drawers, a shallow desk drawer, the corner bar cabinet, the three shelves on the inboard side, the tall shelf on the outboard side, plus the safe and fridge. The new diagrams only show the 4 knobs on the outboard side of the desk and the shallow drawer on the new desk units, and the desk chair in the renderings obscure the drawer details. If there really are 4 drawers there, assuming the safe goes in the closet , what happens to the fridge? Also, the nightstands look taller and like they provide more storage than the current ones, but not not that much more. Something doesn’t add up here…. But this is always the fun of speculating from renderings, on a project with such a compressed timeline. Vince

I can’t speak for Serenity, but Symphony’s former PS and PH penthouses received new sofas, side chairs, cocktail tables, and the desk chairs were recovered before she reentered service in 2021. As Keith said we don’t know what the detailed plans are yet, but worst case even if they did nothing to the classic Aquamarines and Sapphires, the furnishings just had a few months of pretty light service since the last update, minus anything unspeakable happening during the layup. Vince

Coincidences always make troubleshooting tricky. 😊 We’re all still learning about the nuances of the new pricing schema. Vince

Is it possible that your room premium just happens to equal the destination fee? 🤷🏻‍♂️ That seems a lot more likely than you being the only person that the website isn’t showing the fares inclusive of destination fees. Vince

Also, seeing the three generations of Symphony’s Sapphire Veranda Suites side by side kind of reminds me of the movie Multiplicity, where Michael Keaton gets a little quirkier with each generation of copy. Although the design of the 2023 version is a little closer to what I originally envisioned they were going to do in 2017, it really accentuates the size difference with the originals and the location of the toilet seems especially problematic. Vince

Crystal never got updated press photos for the new furniture and carpeting for Symphony’s Classic suites, so the photos are a little out of date, but they’re technically accurate enough to pick a room type at least. (Once the deck plans reflect the descriptions) Vince

On a different note, they seem to have made some progress on the suite differentiation, at least on Symphony. ”Redesigned 2023,” “Redesigned 2017,” “Redesigned 2013” (CP), and “Classic” all now show with appropriate photos and diagrams — now just to update the deck plans accordingly and we’ll be all set. Vince

I think you’re misunderstanding how the capacity control worked, and also comparing apples and oranges. I need to switch to Symphony for this example because I don’t actually have any experience booking single supplements on Serenity under the final single policy Crystal had their last 7 years or so…. But I assume Serenity has fewer single cabins (I haven’t looked at Serenity at all yet because I’ve had no interest), so feel free to adjust these numbers to Serenity’s — my point here is the mechanics of the calculations and not the ratios between the ships. Crystal’s former policy bucketed the supplement by room type, and then allocated it by category. So you had one rate for ocean view, one rate for veranda, etc., but then you had a specific number of rooms allocated between C, D, E, etc. So while you could book any specific available cabin on deck 7 (in your category), not all the rooms on deck 7 could be occupied by singles (without inventory intervention). I ran into the inventory limitation on two different cruises under the final policy, the most recent being my last cruise before the Covid shutdown in the fall of 2019, where I had to take a room in a higher category in order to get the single supplement. So I understand where people would want to say 4% of the inventory is being promoted to singles, so let’s compare that number…. But it doesn’t equate. Right now Crystal is designating over 25% of Symphony’s ocean view staterooms as single — that is FAR more than they ever allowed singles to book in any group of room types, IME, in the past, no matter how you broke out the categories. Now I don’t like the designation of specific rooms for singles and never have (I was protester number 1 on this every time it was floated here in years past), and I don’t like that for now everything else reportedly pays double, but I don’t want the former policy to be confused on how it worked either though — it had plenty of limitations, as generous as it was. Vince

Again I agree with all those points, I just have a couple of different takeaways given some industry perspective. As I mentioned above, 4% is actually a LOT of designated single inventory, especially when it’s taking up a much higher percent of one room type. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but in the US market, it generally goes down fast from there. Take it from us singles. I go back to an earlier point when it comes to “take it or leave it”…. No luxury line in the US market has started out without sales history and offered any great incentive for singles. Crystal’s ORIGINAL single supplement, without sales history, was 160% for all staterooms and 200% for all penthouses. Other lines initially did the same, or higher, without exceptions. All of the above have evolved single fares as they had data on how to leverage them, which requires sales history. I guarantee that with feedback and data, Crystal’s single offerings will evolve over the next couple of years. Absolutely, I say vote with your wallet, BUT this kind of thing is never “set it and forget it”, it’s more like a best-guess stop-gap until you have enough info to do something more precise. Vince

That may sound small, but perspective is important here. (A) Thats a higher percentage than most ships in the US market allocate. QM2, for example, has about 1.5%. (B). That’s a far higher percent of rooms of the type than old Crystal’s past allocation of the single supplements. Again, this doesn’t represent all of the single market — not everyone is going to want that room type, just like they didn’t in the past…. Just the staterooms being marketed exclusively to singles. Vince

Sooooooo…. I admit I’ve been pretty tied up with an on-site event for the past few weeks and haven’t had much time to study the deck plans, but are we to assume that the public space renovations on both ships will be limited to some furniture (and maybe carpet or soft goods) here and there, and that the only public spaces being “extensively renovated” will be the two with renderings supplied (Bistro and former Prego on both ships)? Vince