HAL Regular Thinking About Celebrity

[benchmarklearning]

We are HAL regulars but want to try Celebrity and found a great itinerary on the Silouhette. Thanks in advance for giving us any information at all:

 

How does Celebrity MDR food compare to HAL?

What are the best specialty restaurants and cost?

We are considering an Aqua Suite - worth it? Does it provide access to what HAL calls the "thermal suite?"

 

Will probably have lots more questions but I sure appreciate your help in making the decision.

 

:)

[Valley Girl of VA]

I just sailed Celebrity and, like you, am a HAL regular. I found the food, on my cruise, to be similar to HAL with the exception being the steaks in the MDR. They were tough, chewy, lot of muscle in them. Even our waiter thought they were bad and recommended against them a couple of night.

 

We thought that the best restaurant was Silk Harvest which is also the least expensive. On our cruise, the Equinox, it had a beautiful location and we could watch the sun set as we left Ephesus.

 

Aqua Suite guests eat in the specialty diningroom known as Bleu. A couple of concerns from members of my group that were in Bleu - if you like sun, you will be in the shade because of the overhang; several heard noises from the pool deck above as deck chairs were being moved to clean and/or setup; Persian Gardens were nice but we were on a very port intensive cruise that they were not used much. You can also buy passes to the Persian Gardens.

 

I love the Trivia games on HAL and on Celebrity they are very poorly attended and we had someone different each day from the activities staff. We also like the Explorations Cafe/Library/computer area on HAL so much better. Yes, we do read on cruises and the library on the Equinox was not very good. Their computers were in a room like you would find in a school although you can use your device in your room. We also like the culinary Arts Kitchen and taking cooking lessons during sea days. I liked the younger crowd on Celebrity - average age was about 58. I liked the port specialist on HAL - not the excursion person but the person that can tell you things about the port and nearby areas. In Feb. ours told us where we could find a cheap grocery store in port and that the wines there were a bargain (and they were) OR not to wear jewelry in certain ports, etc. More practical advice. On Celebrity, it is your port excursion person who pushed their excursions or the stores that everyone avoids.

 

HAL has three elevator banks, Celebrity has two. Beginning on the first day on Celebrity you could serve yourself from the buffet; HAL you couldn't do it for 2-3 days. On Celebrity, the buffet is much better and laid out so there is more room for us to get around.

 

If you have any more questions, you can email me at schwalmie at aol dot com

 

Jane

[m steve]

No smoking on balcony

Strict 2 bottle limit per cabin for wine carry ons

Really checking bags for liquor

Maybe those are things you like but we don't.

[DrKoob]

We are the opposite of you folks. We are Elite cruisers on X but HAL is our alternative line. We have been on 13 X cruises, 3 HAL and 1 Azamara. Liked them all but still enjoy X more so you might.

 

Our experience (did a whole in-depth comparison here: (http://web.mac.com/jimbellomo/Oosterdam_to_Mexico/Onboard_the_Oosterdam.html) is this:

 

Cabins are better on HAL. Bigger, more storage.

 

We have always found that the food on both is good. Both have their specialities. We were not impressed with the alternative restaurant on any HAL ship but love the ones on X.

 

The biggest differences to us are service and the smoking policy. The smoking policy is better.

 

When I say smoking policy is better, you have to realize that we are EMPHATIC ANTI-SMOKERS. I get immediate massive headaches whenever I get the least whiff of second hand smoke which puts me flat on my back for the rest of the day so we love X's smoking policy (only two places on the entire ship you can smoke).

 

And we think that the service on X is by far better. I recently read that HAL's staff contracts for six months at a time while X does much less. Maybe this makes for a happier crew. We are really friendly to the staff but when we have been on HAL ships we hardly ever get to know any crew member but if we spend a week on X we are good friends with many crew members on the day we disembark.