Just got off the Apex September 2’nd after a 12 night “Best of Scandinavia” cruise. Overall, very enjoyable, other than coming done with COVID our 1’st day back, so it had been gestating several days. Before commenting on changes, I will mention like a few others have said, we are very low maintenance. This was our first SS. The previous 5 Celebrity cruises were in RS. The only thing we asked of our butler then was keep the mini fridge stocked with our preferences. Some of what I list will be a restatement of thing’s previously mentioned.
1) The cabin steward is now the Retreat host. The only thing we asked of him was to clear out the fridge, which he immediately did.
2) The head butler dropped by day 4 to introduce himself. We never saw him after that.
3) On the Apex the Retreat Team is composed of 4 former butlers. We only made one small request of a hair appointment for my wife. But, I feel confident they would have diligently worked to fulfill any reasonable request. Three of the four individually approached me proactively to see if I needed anything done. I did observe they were run pretty ragged by the 20% who makes 80% of the requests.
4) Luminae was a disappointment. The staff was fantastic, but it was obvious they were feeling the stress of more limited and repetitive menus, and the guests reactions to such. Several times I elected to “go classic” with shrimp cocktail, Caesar salad and now sirloin steak rather than New York strip. The beef cuts were all excellent. I had been worried about this.
All in all, the cutbacks are noticeable, but didn’t really result in us feeling the experience was devalued, to any great degree. I am however, closely watching what comes next. We have 4 cruises currently booked- 2 on Regent, 1 Oceania, and 1 Celebrity to Japan in late 2024. Even though it’s a non refundable deposit, I am definitely willing to cancel if this trend continues.
Be glad to answer any questions.
