mrpacker03

If you book the $809 rate, you don't get any of the i-2-3 GO promotion benefits. When I checked Celebrity's website this morning, I had to put in being a senior plus residency state. I don't know if that affected the rate or not.The rate is a 2C rate and the promo says any balcony.

I forgot the best part, I called my online travel agent and booked through her and got a $200 obc.

I saw this cruise on Celebrity's 1-2-3 Go sale for $1499 p.p. for a balcony. I went to their website and found the same cruise for $809 p.p. I called Celebrity and they confirmed both prices were accurate. Guess which one I chose? We're not big drinkers and we're Elite, so we get enough free drinks now.

We were on the Solstice for 26 days on a B2B. They only raffled off about 8-10 pieces each cruise. They must have made over 50 each cruise. The auction off their favorite 5-6 pieces for charity. The rest are displayed around the ship or sent back to the Corning offices. The last day at sea, they must have had 25-30 pieces set out for display.

Norwegian was bare bones to begin with. At the time Norwegian was the butt of jokes by comedians on the other lines. It was too plain for us then, and that appears to be the way HAL is going. A lot of little things have been cut in the name of cost cutting. The one big thing that was cut back, that we can't live with is the entertainment in the showroom. Guest entertainers were poor, the production shows were like poor high school productions, and having Kareoke, and Name That Tune as the main entertainment was the end of it. This was on the Ryndam last November.

[quote name='bellarosa']X better... no way, celebrity needs to test their drinking water/ lemonade, as there is a microbe or norovirus in their water.... as per my doctor this has been proven. Food on board ( unless you pay ALLOT for eating in blu) is very run of the mill whereas hal is gourment and made fresh for all guest!!

Hal it is!;)[/quote]
We've got 143 days sailing on Celebrity, sailing on the Mercury, Infinity, Millenium, Constellation, and the Solstice. We drank regular water all throughout the day and neither one of us gotten sick. I only remember the Noro virus only being mention once, and that was on the previous cruise, that's why it was brought up.
We USED to be a huge HAL fan. 7 of our first 9 cruises were on them. We did our LAST cruise on HAL this past November on the Ryndam. The service and the beds were the only thing on par with Celebrity. Due to cost cutbacks, it reminded us of Norwegian. We did our first Celebrity cruise about 9 years ago and our last one in May, of this year and can't recall anything that was not available versus 9 years ago.
Cruising is a personal preference thing and everybody's taste is different so overall there is no wrong choice, but to make a comment about the cleanliness of the water is low. I think I'd find a different doctor.