djh

Years ago we had four in the penthouse, my husband and I, and my sister and her traveling buddy. It was no problem, one used the sofa bed with extra padding and the other was in the far corner of the living room where the connecting door is on a roll away bed. Neither had any complaints.

I think it depends on several factors, one of them being the category booked. We are in a suite and received a move up offer over 2 and a half months before our upcoming cruise. (Still heard nothing back on any of our bids.) I was also attempting to do a move up bid for our grandsons inside cabin but that was not eligible for bidding until a month before the cruise. Btw, I usually just check to see if the move up window is open and not wait for an email inviting me to move up.

Does anyone know if the testing onboard before departure is fleet wide? We are on the Apex at the end of June and would like to know if we can use their testing option or if I need to carry a bunch of testing kits.

Thank you! Good information to know!

We are bringing emed and some of those govt freebies as back up. Can you share the proctored no Emed sites that you have bookmarked? Thanks!

Yes, exactly one of my points that I was making to the guest relations manager.

We don’t consider ourselves high maintenance, and usually ask very little of our PRHs. We don’t expect them to be at our beck and call 24/7. If I want a cappuccino I’ll go get it myself. In fact, many times in the past they they have said that we don’t use them enough and ask if there isn’t something more that they can do. We generally use them to make reservations, take care of laundry and sometimes afternoon canapés. When we book the penthouse as we did for this trip, we usually host a sailway or two for a few friends and that’s about it. BTW, we have traveled on all suite ships but Celebrity seems to suit us better. Perhaps it’s because we are not extremely demanding, 😁.

There’s a vlogger Tony that has an extremely popular cruise news channel. He has also started a channel, Time to Lose, in which he talks about cruising and dieting. I believe he is on WW too. It might be worth checking out.

We had a wonderful cruise. I enjoyed most of the live music but some of it was a little too sleepy for my taste. We frequented the martini bar the most and we thought the service was excellent, even though it was at times very crowded. We were in a suite but chose to eat at Blu with our friends. It was always full, and after straightening out a misunderstanding about a reservation time, we never had to wait for our table and service was excellent. I will say that I was hearing quite a few complaints about wait times in the MDR. We ordered quite a few dishes off the MDR menu and the food was good, maybe not the best I’ve had but I know they are still dealing with supply issues. We did not go to the lido in the evening so I can’t speak about that. I think some of there issues had to do with having staffing in the right areas. They went from having 350 on the cruise before to 1600, and I think it took them a couple of days to adjust to that. Enjoy your cruise! The ship is beautiful and the staff is great!

Wow, you really do not know me at all and I must say that I am happy not to know you. I posted this more over concern in overworking staff in a time when there are obviously shortages. You are definitely entitled to your opinion but do not even try to explain to others what my motivation was because clearly you have no clue. I also doubt that Daniel would want to be described as a “beleaguered manager”. Have a blessed day.

Yes, one of the Ukrainian butlers had to take personal leave due to the conflict. 🙏

Perhaps I wasn’t making myself clear. I heard a couple of passengers complaining “I spent $10,000 for my suite and I’m not getting the service I deserve, etc.” That is not us. We are extremely flexible and go with the flow, made very few requests from the butler (personal retreat host)or suite attendant even though we were in a high level suite. I could see them struggling, forgetting things, generally overwhelmed and they are well trained not to show that.The problem I’m seeing is that they keep accepting move up bids to suites up until the day before, to give more passengers a taste of the suite life when they are obviously short of PRHs fleet wide. I’m not talking Covid issues, because that was not the case on our ship.

We just got off of the Summit and had a great time, but in our seven cruises since the restart, the service on this cruise was definitely the most inconsistent. Service was a bit uneven in areas but the biggest problem was with the suites. There were three butlers, yes three, to service the 50+ suites onboard. They normally have five, but we’re down two due to staffing shortages. Our butler was good but he had 18 suites, including several top level suites. There was absolutely no way he could provide the service that many suite guests expect. We met with Daniel, the guest relations director to voice our concerns. He took a lot of time visiting with us and was extremely responsive. They acknowledge they they have a severe staffing issue, especially with butlers on most the ships. When a butler goes down (or in this case has to depart on emergency compassionate leave) there is simply no other crew member to step into their role. My question to him was, is there any way to communicate to corporate that perhaps they shouldn’t fill the suites to capacity if they cannot provide the service expected in a suite? I know many are experiencing suites for the first time, thanks to move up bids and fccs, but are they going to continue to book them if they receive lackluster service? I understand that it’s a revenue thing, but in my opinion, someone should be looking a bit further down the road. It was important to us to voice our concerns because I did not want to just do the post cruise survey where my comments might be misconstrued and there was no way I wanted it to come back as something negative against our butler because he and the other two were absolutely trying their hardest. FYI, Daniel also told us that those guest satisfaction surveys for the top tier suites go directly to VPs at Celebrity, which was good to know.