mschatz

Thank you all for your insight and advice. We are leaning towards biting the bullet and sticking with the overpriced Celebrity Baltic cruise (with the ability to cancel), but really like some of the aspects of what Princess has to offer. I think we will want to see what "normal" will look like on a line we haven't traveled with before.

Matt

I must admit that I have been very lucky during the pandemic and my heart goes out to all that have experienced loss,

So, I am not complaining that I cancelled the three cruises I had scheduled between last August and this coming  August.

In order to feel some sense of normal, I would very much like to book the Scandinavian/Baltic cruise I cancelled for 2021. 

We are normally Celebrity cruisers but the current pricing is somewhat ridiculous right now. We tend to book Aqua Class on Celebrity because we love the coziness of Blu, the smaller dedicated dining room.

There is an Enchanted Princess itinerary that works for me. Can I hear opinions about whether you think a Princess Mini-Suite for about $100 less per day compared to Celebrity (the comparable cruise is scheduled for the Apex which is not super appealing to us). We are in our early 50s and really don't have a great sense on what Princess cruisers are like.

Thanks,

Matt

3 hours ago, maddycat said:

Since you prefer Celebrity to Royal, have you looked into a fall Canada/New England cruise on the Summit?

We did look. It is a 12 day vs. 9, leaves out of Boston and is twice as much money, but we did love the Summit when we were on it last year. It is such a warm and cozy ship.

3 hours ago, fred30 said:

We did this cruise starting the last day of August in 2013 on the Explorer when we were in our early fifties.  I figured since you have teenagers you may be getting close to this age.  We were pretty much the youngest people on the ship.   Mostly all the other passengers were well into their retirement.

Dining and show times are moved up.  I think the 1st seating was 5 or 5:30.  The disadvantage to this is the ship was pretty much deserted at 9pm.   Not much entertainment after that.  They were shutting down the pools and hot tubs also.    The staff just kept telling us they were being cleaned.  We did complain to guest services twice and they finally left one open longer.  Turned out there was another couple that also were complaining about this to them.

 

 

 

That is an interesting perspective that I hadn’t thought about. You are right in about our age and while we not the late night party crowd by any stretch, it is something for us to think about. Thanks.

Looking for opinions

While we are not "seasoned" cruisers, we have found Celebrity to generally be our favorite in terms of the ships (we are looking forward to our sailing on the Eclipse in a couple of months), the food, level of service, entertainment, etc.

My family went on the Anthem for a Christmas week cruise in 2017 with our teenagers and even though the ship was packed, we thought RC did a decent job of managing it all. Food is certainly a step down from Celebrity (although specialty restaurants were better than OK), and service was excellent considering the number of people on board. We however did not love the boat itself finding it somewhat charmless and found the Royal Esplanade area to be downright tacky.

My wife and I are considering a Canada/New England cruise on the Adventure with just the two of us and are wondering what people think. We can drive to the port so that makes life so much easier and we are looking at a time where many kids will be back at school, so I would expect a different kind of crowd on the ship. And pricing is excellent right now.

Looking for opinions about the Adventure given our experience on the Anthem.

Thanks!

Good call. Access to Blu is definitely worth a fair amount of money to my wife and I.

This is interesting.

If it isn’t too much of a hassle and you don’t have a drink package, the $25 fee is very worth it. Looking quickly at the Cabernets in the list posted, the Decoy is a $15-20 bottle for $58 and the Freemark Abbey is around $35 for $97. 

You can get so many excellent Cabernets in the $40 range that is nothing like drinking a $15-20 bottle and paying $60 for it.

On the other hand compared to the overall cost of vacation....

19 hours ago, Tatka said:

 

Do you by any chance remember if there were several types of Eggs Benedict on Summit for breakfast in buffet? In 2015 there were up to 7-8. We missed them later on Silhouette in 2016/17. Silhouette did have amazing blood sausages.

19 hours ago, Tatka said:

 

Do you by any chance remember if there were several types of Eggs Benedict on Summit for breakfast in buffet? In 2015 there were up to 7-8. We missed them later on Silhouette in 2016/17. Silhouette did have amazing blood sausages.

I can’t say that I remember. I have never been on a cruise and been hungry. That I know!

First of all, we loved the Summit in general. 

We went Aqua Class and loved Blu. Staff was friendly. Cozy but bright. Food better than good but not gourmet (it is still a cruise ship after all). Special requests were easily accommodated.

We also had a wonderful meal at Tuscan Grill. Service was great and overall we loved it.

The buffet was just OK. Compared to the larger Celebrity Silhouette that we have been on, it was just a little more tired and less modern. That being said this certainly didn't detract from the cruise overall. 

While we haven't been on a lot of cruise lines (Royal Caribbean, Holland America, and Celebrity) but for us, Celebrity is our favorite for a number of reasons, including food.