New to Celebrity

[travelplus]

I am new to Celebrity but not to Royal Caribbean. I have purposely waited to take a Celebrity Cruise until my Father and I reached Emerald on Royal Caribbean as we are Celebrity Select and can avail of the options.

 

We have sailed on Princess, Cunard and Royal. I am assuming Celebrity is on par with Princess. How is the food on Celebrity vs Royal? We take most dinners in the Dining Room and love traditional dining.

 

The rooms seem more luxurious on Celebrity than on Royal. In the Fitness Center do we have access to a Sauna/Steamroom in the locker room?.

 

I entered my Father and I into a contest sponsored by a Travel Agency to tour the Celebrity Infinity in San Francisco which includes free parking, tour of the ship and a 4 course lunch. It sounds like there is a high chance we will get on the tour. I know I'll be a kid in the candy store as I love cruise ships even if its for the day. Just being able to be on board a ship is the dog'syelp(:.

 

I am going to research the forum here as I was looking at a back to back cruise around the Med and then the Trans Atlantic back to Fort Lauderdale.

 

I love the fact the Celebrity has a non-smoking Casino and most of the ship is smoke free.

 

Thanks for your reply.

[debshomespun]

Food can be very subjective, but we were just on the Celebrity Infinity this past February. We then boarded RC Serenade, and here is my opinion of the food. Celebrity MDR has a better menu and the quality of the food was better than on Royal. Celebrity seems to be a more refined cruise experience than Royal. We have taken 2 Princess cruises, and I feel Celebrity would beet them hands down.

 

I agree the rooms do seem more luxurious on Celebrity than Royal. Not sure about the sauna.

 

Good Luck with your research. There is lots of information here on CC!

[SPacificbound]

We cruise on both and there are some things we like better on RC, and some we like better on X.

 

Food is subjective, plus I'm vegetarian so my opinions on food wouldn't mean much. :)

 

We like entertainment better on Royal, the somewhat quieter atmosphere on X.

 

This year we spend our time on Royal, next year on X. It's all good. :)

[Bruin Steve]

...I am assuming Celebrity is on par with Princess...

 

NOT a valid assumption...

 

Of course, everyone has their own standards, criteria and expectations...so some may differ...

 

But I've cruised well over 40 times on 8 different cruise lines...

I am "Platinum" on Princess and "Elite Plus" on Celebrity...If Celebrity only always offered the routes we want every time, we'd never cruise on Princess...IMHO, Celebrity is a MAJOR step above Princess...

 

Celebrity ships are far more spacious--more space per passenger. This manifests itself in a number of ways--fewer queues and waits, better service...

 

We've found the showrooms on Princess ships to be far too small--typically 900 seats on a ship sailing with over 3,000 guests...and the lounges where they have comedy or magic shows (like Explorer's Lounge" are way smaller than that--so, to get a seat for a show, one has to show up way in advance of curtain time. On Celebrity, we've never had that problem...For example, on the Silhouette (that we were just on four weeks ago), the main showroom seats almost 1,400...but the ship only carries 2,850 passengers...So, considering they always have two show times and some people don't attend at all, there are always more than enough seats...and you can usually show up right at curtain time and still find very good seats.

 

The main dining rooms on Princess are disjointed--usually three or four separate rooms--with low ceilings, whereas Celebrity has two level dining rooms which give a very open and spacious feeling.

 

Dining room seating on Princess is poorly managed...One cruise, we had traditional assigned seating and found that the dining room was half empty every night...none of our assigned table mates EVER showed up to dinner. Where were they? Well, since then, we've signed up for Anytime Dining on Princess and found out: People with assigned traditional assignments routinely show up at Anytime--and are seated! What results is an overcrowding of those dining rooms resulting in long waits--and being given beepers and being told to expect to be seated maybe in a half an hour! We always take that open seating option on Celebrity and have NEVER had to wait for a table--even though we routinely show up at about 7:00 pm most nights...Celebrity actually enforces the assignments you have been given...

 

Cabins on Celebrity are better designed--for the most part--and feel more spacious...even the inside cabins. Both lines claim to have cabins with the same approximate square footage, but, do to the layout of Princess ships (the closet area hallway to the bathroom taking up a lot of space), even the balcony cabins have only a bed and a single chair. You have to book a mini-suite to get an actually sitting room area. On Celebrity ALL of the cabins have a sitting room area with a sofa and coffee table. OTOH, Celebrity's S-Class ships don't quite have as ample closet and drawer space...You may have to use the cabinets over the bed...Of course, that is something I'm willing to put up with for the extra room and sofa...

 

There are lots of other subtle differences, but that's a start...

[Cruise Raider]

Bruin Steve -- Well said!! We are elite on both Princess and Celebrity with most of our cruises being on Princess but mainly because of the itineraries.

Celebrity wins hands down on being our favorite cruise line with Royal and Princess in a tie for second place.

 

You mentioned some key points on where Celebrity pulls into the lead -- namely the larger feel to the cabins that have a couch instead of a chair. The inside cabins on Princess don't even have that chair. The balcony flooring on Princess is just hideous and the public rooms on Celebrity are much more elegant.

I do like MUTS (Movies under the Stars) on Princess, however. But I also love the lawn club on Celebrity's S-class ships.

I completely agree about the show rooms being way too small on Princess. I cannot even count the number of shows we'd have liked to see but skunked out as we didn't get there to save our seats an hour early.

I've also experienced the long waits for the anytime dining on Princess and on Celebrity, we've never waited more than 5 minutes to be seated.

 

I understand Princess is swapping out all their mattresses for some very comfortable and luxurious ones. This will be a great and much needed improvement!!

[sound_guy0918]

MDR - We found Celebrity's MDR experience to be far superior to RC. I would even say that the MDR on Carnival was better quality than RC.

 

Buffet - We thought RC's buffet was as good as any buffet we have ever been to on any ship or even compared to any dirt resort.

 

Casual Grill - the hot dog / burgers on X were excellent, far better than the casual offerings on RC.

 

Specialty - we did not do the specialty dining on RC, and we are disappointed that the Normandie has been made over, but our experience at the Normandie was so amazing that we will absolutely try the Tuscan when we said on the Summit again in December.