MR_T

So hopefully this post will be a waste of time but we are currently confined to our suite/cabin as we woke up with a couple of symbols so we’ve had a pcr test and are waiting for the results 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻 They said a couple of hours (about 30 mins ago) so let’s see and hopefully by the time people wake up and login to cruise critic there will be another post from us with good news… we will be devastated should we find out we are COVID positive and have to say goodbye to the suite life so early on our first cruise but hopefully it’s just a summer cold and we can continue 🤞🏻
 

We are both triple vaccinated and pretty much avoid crowds at all times anyway so I really don’t see how we could have go it on a cruise withs9 much space around us, we wore our masks in the ports we got off at when around other people so don’t see what else we could do other then stay in the cabin 24/7. 
 

We both have similar symptoms, sore throat & some congestion… the nurse came to take the test and our vitals which all seems ok so fingers crossed it’s good news 😊🤞🏻

Day 7 - Fine Cut dinner 

sorry i I missed this one I guess as I posted the special lunch buffet pics my mind thought I was done 😂

pretty much like all the food we've had on the ship it was another great night, first impressions of the restaurant was it was nicely set up and looked very nice, however due to it being somewhat open to the atrium on deck 3/4/5 area it was quite noisy at times, especially when the martini show was going on with all the flashing lights at the same time so I wouldn’t recommend it for a quiet romantic dinner... just my opinion obviously 😊 

The food was really good and we enjoyed everything we had, Julie’s steak was a little over cooked but still tasty, she ordered  medium/rare but it was the same as mine medium, we’ve found this to be a common problem on any ship we’ve been on as it just seems celebrity are afraid of serving anything close to rare as the steaks we’ve had are generally cooked a bit more than this cooking point. Maybe we need to ask for bleu and see what happens 🤔, but as I said it was tasty 😋  

pics to follow! 

9 hours ago, maggie.1008 said:

Good for you. Enjoy the suite life. I will be on the Apex a month from now. We have sunset veranda and plenty OBC so not sure to bid up to a suite ?

I guess it’s such a personal choice of cost vs worth, from first impressions I’d say if it’s within your budget then go for it… the retreat pool deck area looks amazing and we are heading up there right now so I’ll post later our thoughts… 😊

4 hours ago, Silkroad said:

Thank you very much for continuing your live review. Lovely photos BTW. I hope you and your DW thoroughly enjoy your suite experience. Your first Luminae meals looked delicious! If you happen to wander past the Eden restaurant, would you take a look at the dinner menu? The app has an amazing number of courses listed on it, and some of us wonder if the app is correct. If you don’t have time, no worries. You may wander into the Retreat and never wish to leave😉 Cheers.

Funny enough we are booked in Eden tonight for dinner but not sure yes as we might change for another night… I’ll definitely get the menu info for you at so,e point 👍🏻

Dinner night 1 - Luminae 

first impressions was what a beautiful restaurant, the colours were great and it looks very nice, we ate around 8pm and it was pretty busy considering the reduced capacity, I’ll try and find out how many pax they consider the max for these reduced sailings. 

So... what can I say today finally took a turn in the right direction... I’ll explain! 

I didnt mention it before just in case I jinxed it... but on embarkation I asked about upgrading to a suite as I’ve heard of people doing that and thought if we are going to try it this would be a great time due to the low occupancy, but unfortunately they said due to limits they were not offering the opportunity to upgrade to the retreat as they had  reached their max number already from existing bookings... bummer! “However Mr Hodgson as you are B2B there would be availability on the next cruise (this one) let me tell you this is where the rollercoaster began 😱😂 

I was advised to come back on the 3rd (today) to sort it out... easy right 🤔wrong! As it happened I went a few times during last weeks cruise to ask if I could get it sorted sooner as I didn’t want to miss out, but I was always told it can’t be done until the beginning of the cruise once they have their final numbers... makes sense I guess, and I was told don’t worry there will be availability 👍🏼 

As the week went on the bookings have gone from 500 to 800 so I was getting worried so I went to speak to them again (same Lady every time) so she new me quite well by this time 😜 anyway, last night she told me that unfortunately a group had upgraded and there was no availability left but the retreat manager said he would put me on the wait list and I would be the first one on it 🤞🏻 

Moving onto today and I lost count of all the times I went to guest relations and was told give me an hour, give me 2 hours etc etc... finally on my last visit around 5pm I was told they had a suite for us and my first thought was I bet it’s either under the restaurant or right at the front but no a lovely S1 mid ship 🥳😊 

So at the end of the day we are delighted as this is our first time in a suite and as we originally booked an inside, did the minimum bid to move up to a balcony (infinite) and then the cost to upgrade on the ship resulted in getting a suite for what we consider a very good price, considering also we don’t plan on leaving the ship much so we will enjoy it as much as we can! 

I’ll continue the blog and obviously it’ll contain our thoughts on suite life for beginners 😂

We dined in fine cut last night and although we had a great meal and will most likely go again I wouldn’t recommend going there if you want a quiet romantic dinner, it’s actually our anniversary tomorrow and we’ve made a reservation for Eden so I will update how that was after… 😊

as previously mentioned it’s completely open to the noise of the martini bar (and others) and when the martini bar does the martini show event it’s very loud and lights flashing like crazy, along with that we noticed a load of people get up and go watch the show over the balcony on the end of the restaurant. This wasn’t really an issue for us as we were seated on the other side of the restaurant (by the window) but it would’ve been annoying if we were seated by the other edge… 

i hope whatever you do you have a great dinner 😊

Final count of this new cruise is around 800, I guess a lot of people booked in the last week... anyway if we were told 800 a week ago we’d still be over the moon... and just to confirm we are still excited to be onboard for another week 😊

Fwd Stairs Art 

Aft staircase Art! 

6 hours ago, Jim_Iain said:

Just found your Blog and just bing read though all 8 pages.    Happy you are posting as I need a fix before our next cruise

 

Your pictures bring back such fond memories.

Thanks Jim 😊 

ive been following yours too and wow what an experience you had with the cruises & upgrades, sounds amazing 😊

So maybe interesting info for future B2Bers, today as it’s the last full day of the cruise everyone on the ship had to take the end of cruise test this morning, when we got the info they had actually booked us in for the PCR test as that would be what ewe would need to fly home to Canada but as we are staying on for another week we just changed it when we went this morning to the antigen test. We also asked guest relations if we can get off in Athens and they confirmed we can and just use the transit pass that we got the other day to get back on the ship without testing again. 
 

The best part is as next week is only a 7 night there will not be another mid cruise test so just the end of cruise one. Apparently any cruises of 8+ need the mid cruise test but not cruises less than 8! 
 

Oh yeah… we just got our negative results so we are now good till Barcelona 🤞🏻

So today is the last day of this cruise and we are in Mykonos for the day, unfortunately but not unexpected it’s a very windy day and therefor a little cooler than the weather we’ve had the last week so it wasn’t really swimming weather… we’ll not this morning anyway when we went of the ship.
 

We took the water bus to the old town from the new cruise dock, which again was quite a windy boat ride, We just went for a walk around the old town & windmills then took a walk along the marina sea front to start our walk back to the ship. I guess if you walked straight back it would’ve taken us around 30-35 mins but we went off course a couple of times for some pictures. The walk back was ok but for the most part you are walking on the road as there’s no sidewalk, but the roads are good and we didn’t encounter any speeding drivers and felt very safe sharing the road with the cars etc. 
 

Again we are set up for a little snooze in the solarium before we look forward to what the night ahead brings, we are dining tonight in First Cut  so really looking forward to trying that out 😋

6 minutes ago, vickykay said:

Was the med buffet at lunch or dinner?  Looks delicious.

Lunch, it’s was really good and we really liked everything we had… which was a lot 😋😂

2 hours ago, Miaminice said:

To be honest… we did not post them either.

We are two of the oddballs who neither care for shows nor activities 😳

 

However, I still have the daily programs. So I just took pictures of the program of a sea day and a port day as an example.

 

If someone is still interested in browsing the review of our cruise and land trip, here is the link:

 

 

 

Thanks for posting 👍🏼 We are much the same as you and don’t really look to see what’s going on we just see what we stumble on as we travel around the ship 😊 

8 hours ago, Cruisernewbie44 said:

If I missed this, I apologize.   Do you have a daily schedule to see what are the activities on board?  I would love to see one.  I am sailing on Apex next June.

 

Hi, 

I haven’t posted them as a previous cruises did a great job of posting pics of stuff I didn’t want to just repeat them, his name is miaminice and should be on the first few pages on the celebrity forums... 

let Et me know if you don’t find them and I’ll post the ones I still have 👍🏼

Day 7 - Mediterranean Buffet 😋 

Latest update regarding the pax count for next weeks cruise is around 650… so it’s gone up a bit but it’ll still be a very quiet cruise if this ones anything to go by… 😊

Got back to the cabin tonight and we had the B2B info waiting for us. 
 

So we are allowed off in Athens if we want too, I don’t think we will but nice to be able to if we want too, if we do get off and do so before 9am we meet someone at the port to pick up our new cards and proceed back on the ship after 11am with the transit card we had received today. I guess to confirm we don’t need to be tested again. If we stay on the ship we pick our cards up at the meeting point on the ship at 9am. If changing cabins the room attendant will sort our stuff out.

All seems very straight forward so hopefully there won’t be any issues… 🤞🏻
 

Regarding being tested we will be tested on the last day of this cruise so that will cover us for the start of the new cruise, so no need to test on the embarkation day with everyone else joining the ship in Athens, and as it’s a 7 day cruise there’s no mid cruise test to we will only need to do the departure PCR test (Canada requirement) on the last day of our second cruise.