Live Edge Review - July 3-10, 2021

[elf426]

3 hours ago, 3red7s said:

LOL...you are funny & i am enjoying the review.  We sail for our 2nd time on the Edge, departing 8/14.  Question:  what are the pros/cons to checking in on the app vs just on line? 

Pros: you can take your photo and one of your passport after checking in on the app. Although they retook both at the terminal, so who knows of that saves any time. As someone else said above, a digital copy of your Express Pass is probably the biggest pro.

[ipeeinthepool]

10 hours ago, elf426 said:

The person checking us in just handed it to us, so we adjusted it to be loose enough to be able take off. I saw others being put in by the staff and adjusted tightly. Call me a rebel, but a damp ribbon on my wrist all week is gross and I want to be able to not wear it. 

 

Wear that wristband with pride.  It will always look good 

[elf426]

Dormant. Volcano. Muffin.

 

It all started at dinner, specifically at dessert. Never one to turn down a chocolate lava cake, you can imagine how crushed I was when this Little Debbie MiniMuffin lookalike shows up and nary a lava flow burst from its crust. The “lava” was just resting inside and gave the impression of undercooked cake. Don’t worry, I still crushed it.

 

As an aside, dinner tonight left something to be desired in general. Yesterday we went to Cosmopolitan and the pacing was great. Our time between courses was evenly split, the servers were attentive without being overbearing. Tonight we tried Cypress and it took an hour to get from seated to entrée, but only 30 minutes to get through entrée and dessert. I’m not a fast eater, but something just felt off. The assistant waiter didn’t show up after dropping bread until he took our dessert order, but the sommelier popped up like the butler in Mr Deeds like five times. Sir, I’m good. My night wasn’t ruined, just pointing it out. It was apparent that the training wheels are still on – the hostess is having to provide seating charts to the staff escorting you to your table, as an example.

 

Regarding the bracelets, today at lunch in the buffet we were sitting near a group from the kids club (two adult staffers and three kids – all under 10, which I assume since they had to hold hands when they left and I doubt you’d make a 10 year old do that). Each of those kids had the same blue bracelet as me, so my overpriced college education tells me it can’t possibly determine who’s vaxxed or not. I for one am not here to argue about who is or isn’t. I don’t have access to passenger dossiers – is that a Zenith perk? Yes, there are children on board. No I don’t know how many – I’d probably get kicked off if I started creeping around counting them. Some adults are still wearing masks, it’s a choice I leave to them to make for themselves.

 

Thanks to whoever recommended the Aretha tribute singer, I stopped in after dinner mid-show and damn, she has some pipes.

 

The seas are picking up as we sail south and Elsa makes her presence felt. No Frozen jokes yet. However, I’m prone to motion sickness and am taking precautions. I usually wear the seabands, but knowing that we could be facing bad weather my husband ordered some of the patches before we left. Now, I’m going to need some help here. The pack I got says you can wear them behind your ear or at your navel. Navel?! What am I, a troll doll? I mean, my hair is trying to do its best impression in this humidity and wind…so has anyone else replaced their spring break 2003 dolphin belly ring with a seasick patch lately? *full disclosure I never had a dolphin

 

Calling it an early night since I have a date with the gym at 0800. For those wondering, the streaming on the bike was solid, however, the Bluetooth connection for the HR monitor from my watch and my wireless headphones was hit or miss (dropped HR twice). I assume it’s just due to so many signals floating around, but I’ll let someone more technically inclined confirm that.

[ItsADryHumor]

21 minutes ago, elf426 said:

Dormant. Volcano. Muffin.

 

It all started at dinner, specifically at dessert. Never one to turn down a chocolate lava cake, you can imagine how crushed I was when this Little Debbie MiniMuffin lookalike shows up and nary a lava flow burst from its crust. The “lava” was just resting inside and gave the impression of undercooked cake. Don’t worry, I still crushed it.

 

As an aside, dinner tonight left something to be desired in general. Yesterday we went to Cosmopolitan and the pacing was great. Our time between courses was evenly split, the servers were attentive without being overbearing. Tonight we tried Cypress and it took an hour to get from seated to entrée, but only 30 minutes to get through entrée and dessert. I’m not a fast eater, but something just felt off. The assistant waiter didn’t show up after dropping bread until he took our dessert order, but the sommelier popped up like the butler in Mr Deeds like five times. Sir, I’m good. My night wasn’t ruined, just pointing it out. It was apparent that the training wheels are still on – the hostess is having to provide seating charts to the staff escorting you to your table, as an example.

 

Regarding the bracelets, today at lunch in the buffet we were sitting near a group from the kids club (two adult staffers and three kids – all under 10, which I assume since they had to hold hands when they left and I doubt you’d make a 10 year old do that). Each of those kids had the same blue bracelet as me, so my overpriced college education tells me it can’t possibly determine who’s vaxxed or not. I for one am not here to argue about who is or isn’t. I don’t have access to passenger dossiers – is that a Zenith perk? Yes, there are children on board. No I don’t know how many – I’d probably get kicked off if I started creeping around counting them. Some adults are still wearing masks, it’s a choice I leave to them to make for themselves.

 

Thanks to whoever recommended the Aretha tribute singer, I stopped in after dinner mid-show and damn, she has some pipes.

 

The seas are picking up as we sail south and Elsa makes her presence felt. No Frozen jokes yet. However, I’m prone to motion sickness and am taking precautions. I usually wear the seabands, but knowing that we could be facing bad weather my husband ordered some of the patches before we left. Now, I’m going to need some help here. The pack I got says you can wear them behind your ear or at your navel. Navel?! What am I, a troll doll? I mean, my hair is trying to do its best impression in this humidity and wind…so has anyone else replaced their spring break 2003 dolphin belly ring with a seasick patch lately? *full disclosure I never had a dolphin

 

Calling it an early night since I have a date with the gym at 0800. For those wondering, the streaming on the bike was solid, however, the Bluetooth connection for the HR monitor from my watch and my wireless headphones was hit or miss (dropped HR twice). I assume it’s just due to so many signals floating around, but I’ll let someone more technically inclined confirm that.

You can take Dramamine at night to help, too. I get motion sickness pretty badly and take it at night a week before a cruise and then during the cruise. Way better than my head in a toilet, and the sleep is 💯.

[CruiseAF]

7 minutes ago, stinkyenglishteacher said:

You can take Dramamine at night to help, too. I get motion sickness pretty badly and take it at night a week before a cruise and then during the cruise. Way better than my head in a toilet, and the sleep is 💯.

 

I have to recommend the ship-eez patch. (made for cruises) Like most people I tried all the products on the market. Most don’t interact positively with alcohol like the prescribed “scolpomine” patch and some like motion-eez  gave me the worst side effects. The $200 relief band is by far the most completely worthless of them all and I even tried that. Some say ginger pills work, which they do help by eliminating nausea but the headaches and dizziness still remain. I skeptically tried this patch and not only does it not interfere with alcohol but it protected me during the whole time of a seven day cruise in pretty moderate seas. 

 

 

[ItsADryHumor]

2 minutes ago, CruiseAF said:

 

 

Where do you get this magical patch? I’m in. 

[TreeCity]

@elf426  way back to your first post you mentioned your scuba was cancelled on St Thomas. Did they give you a reason? They just cancelled ours at Cozumel for August. Wondering if they are cancelling all SCUBA for some reason? Anyone know?

[cluso]

10 hours ago, elf426 said:

So we have to tell strangers precisely how man I knew all of the songs they were doing but I’d venture to guess the typical Celebrity client wouldn’t recognize a Weeknd song if it smacked them in the face. 

 

Don't you DINKS know how to spell--it's Weekend.  Ha, ha, just kidding.  But you will be surprised at our older and very interesting music library.  We are 68 and 74, and it includes artists from every era.  To include, for your reference, Gerry and the Pacemakers to Dua Lipa.  

Enjoy the cruise!

[CruiseAF]

18 minutes ago, stinkyenglishteacher said:

Where do you get this magical patch? I’m in. 

Just google ship-eez 

[Reel Love]

4 hours ago, MamaFej said:

Another 50+ fan of The Weeknd here. 
 

And another one here!  😊

Edited July 5, 2021 by Reel Love

[mk960072]

On 7/3/2021 at 10:01 PM, Unlvswezel said:

Thanks for the bit about Peleton. I ride echelon but have been looking to try, assume I need to bring my own spd shoes?

Me too, cant wait to try it!

 

[mk960072]

2 hours ago, graphicguy said:

Sounds like Celebrity is sticking to the less than 5% passengers unvaccinated…mostly kids, I’ll assume.  The Celebrity rep who called me yesterday inquiring about my vaccine status said as much when I asked her.  She was also emphatic that if I didn’t have my vaccination proof at checkin, I would have to follow all the unvaccinated protocols.

Per CDC rules 95% have to be vaccinated since Celebrity opted not to do test cruises, so then it does narrow down to the kids who are the unvaccinated ones for the most part.

 

[mk960072]

On 7/3/2021 at 9:39 PM, elf426 said:

Hi everyone, longtime lurker, occasional poster here. One can never have too many trip reviews, so I’m throwing my hat in the ring after several “gee, I should have done that” trips. I’m what you may call snarky, and generally don’t see many reviews with sass (perhaps for a reason).

 

Some background: My husband and I are 30-something DINKS from Central Florida and reasonably avid cruisers. Over the past several years, due to work schedules and such, my husband has reached D+ on RCI via several single-supplement JS and above cruises (no, I don’t “let” him cruise alone…if I had a dollar for every time I got asked that). We’ve also sailed together on Allure, Freedom and Navigator. As such, we status matched to Elite on Celebrity. We’ve previously sailed together on Reflection and he did a solo trip on Edge in its maiden season. I’m personally excited to see what all the hype around Edge is about.

 

On Friday we drove down to Ft. Lauderdale to escape the aerial bombarding our neighborhood faces every 4^th of July weekend. Sharing a community with vacation rentals really has a downside when no one gives a **** about the people that live there year-round. We checked into the Hyatt Centric Los Olas for the night, receiving an upgrade to a King Balcony due to his Globalist status (sensing a trend here?). Truth be told, we heard fireworks there, too, so there is no escaping it no matter how hard you try. The room was nice, our valet and breakfast were comped and I’d recommend it to anyone needing a pre-cruise hotel.

 

This morning we killed time at the Hard Rock Seminole, coming out ahead for once. Our drive to the port was about 20 minutes from the casino for our 1:00pm check in time. From dropping luggage with the porters to boarding the Edge, total time was less than 30 minutes. Seriously, we were walking down the stairs of the parking garage at exactly 1:00 and were on board at about 1:23. It’d have been faster but we picked the security lane behind a couple carrying on SEVEN bags (if you’re on here I curse you…if you’re not, I curse you) and then followed some, uh, less swift gals up the gangway. Oh – did no one in the lives from the first sailing mention the blue bracelets? We got them after presenting our vaccine cards at check-in with no explanation – are they meant to stay on all week? What happens if I take it off – will I be thrown overboard? What if it gets all soggy and gross after the third day, can I get a new one? They serve no tracking purpose.

 

Once onboard we went to our stateroom to drop our (one each) backpacks. We are sailing in an Infinite Veranda stateroom, 9^th deck forward. It’s a decent size and I like the color scheme. It’s modern without being too “cool”. I’m still trying to get used to the layout versus a traditional balcony and have mentally accepted that our room will just be unusually humid all week.

 

We had originally purchased the Indulge package as I spent way too much time at Café al Bacio on Reflection and my husband consumes Vitamin Water like he’s sponsored. When we learned about the Drinks and More package, which includes “free” casino money, we upgraded again. I’ll probably do the wine tasting alone and don’t particularly care about the minibar, but hey, they dangled the carrot and we bit. I’m happy to report that so far, Café al Bacio onboard Edge is just as good, however, specialty coffee in the MDR leaves something to be desired.

 

Re: dining, this is the first cruise that I can remember that we don’t have any plans for specialty dining. Onboard Royal we’ve enjoyed Chops and Izumi, and our sailing on Reflection we were in Aqua Class and dined in Blu. I’m sure I’m wrong, but I don’t recall Chops costing $50/pp like Fine Cut does. Seems a little pricy (says the couple that upgraded their drinks package twice….yeah, I know). I’m ok with exploring the MDR setup on board for the moment and plan to eat at each of the four while onboard. HOWEVER (and why should I even have to say this), if your small human is fussing at the table so much that we can hear them halfway across the dining room, can you please take them out of the restaurant? I’m sure I’ll get crucified as a non-parent saying this, but how someone dresses in the MDR doesn’t bother me an ounce, but a noisy child just rubs me the wrong way.

 

We also stopped by the spa/fitness center so I could reserve some time on the Peloton bikes they have onboard. If you’re not part of the cult...ahem…part of the…no, it’s a cult…there were five Peloton bikes in the gym when we toured (with cages). You do need to reserve time with the spa desk – our guide said the previous week they were booked solid! I optimistically packed four days of workout attire and signed up for as many days.

 

I hate to say that we have no plans of getting off the ship in port, but our scuba excursion in St. Thomas was cancelled a couple of weeks ago and we didn’t want to replace it. Having been to Nassau countless times, we’re taking the opportunity to enjoy the ship with limited capacity for the week.

 

Thanks for joining me so far, I’ll try to update everyone throughout the week.

Keep them coming, I sail 24 JUL and it won't come fast ENOUGH!  Love your writing style and the info.  Have a blast and I can live and count days down through you!

 

[Alabaster Cruiser]

Thank you elf426.  Truly enjoy your style.  We too are casino people.  I have asked Many times for someone to tell table minimums.  No answers.  We play 3 card and would love to know that.  I have also seen reduced table minimums during the day.  Does this happy to 3 card and what are they?  Wish you luck and enjoy your cruise....thanks.

[graphicguy]

40 minutes ago, mk960072 said:

Per CDC rules 95% have to be vaccinated since Celebrity opted not to do test cruises, so then it does narrow down to the kids who are the unvaccinated ones for the most part.

 

Correct. My point is it seems Celebrity seems to be sailing with more than 95% vaccinated passengers….closer to 98% vaccinated!

[coffeebean]

16 hours ago, KKB said:

Blue bracelets just started this cruise for vaxxed passengers

Why are bracelets necessary for vaxxed passengers on a ship that has at least 95% vaxxed passengers? I thought there are no different protocols for vaxxed/ unvaxxed passengers. Isn't that right? So......what is the need for vaxxed passengers to wear ID bracelets?

[graphicguy]

9 hours ago, coffeebean said:

Why are bracelets necessary for vaxxed passengers on a ship that has at least 95% vaxxed passengers? I thought there are no different protocols for vaxxed/ unvaxxed passengers. Isn't that right? So......what is the need for vaxxed passengers to wear ID bracelets?

This is what Celebrity sent to me for my 7/10 embarkation.  This is in addition to calling me last week inquiring about my vaccination status, and what to bring to embarkation if I want to show proof of vaccination.  So, my take away is that they're giving wrist bands to those who are vaccinated to allow them unfettered access to all ship's activities and and for no requirements for mask wearing protocols......

 

Guests over 16 years old (over 12 for any sailing on or after August 1st) who decline or are unable to show proof of vaccination at boarding will be treated as unvaccinated and subject to additional protocols, restrictions, and costs for COVID-19 testing.

Guests visiting the Bahamas on any sailing departing from the US, do not need to apply for the health visa.  

Additional requirements for unvaccinated guests 16 +

• You will need to arrive for embarkation with a negative PCR test taken within 3 days in advance of arrival to the terminal.  
• You will be subject to a Covid-19 test at the pier.
• A mid cruise antigen test onboard will be required. 
• An antigen test will be required at the end of the cruise.  Please do not make early travel plans on the day of debarkation to allow time for the required testing process. 
• The per person cost for these tests is $178 and will be applied to your onboard folio. 
• Masks will be required at all times onboard except while eating or drinking. 
• Unvaccinated guests are required to book a Celebrity curated tour, and depending on local government requirements, unvaccinated guests may be further restricted from going ashore. 
• Unvaccinated guests will have designated seating areas* in all venues such as the dining rooms, casino, theatre, etc.
• Unvaccinated guests will not have access to gym or spa*.
  *Venue access is validated via Sea Pass card.

---

 

[TeeRick]

10 hours ago, mk960072 said:

Per CDC rules 95% have to be vaccinated since Celebrity opted not to do test cruises, so then it does narrow down to the kids who are the unvaccinated ones for the most part.

 

So can anybody on board comment on whether the kids under 16 are wearing masks?  

[Janet524]

14 hours ago, Happy Cruiser 6143 said:

Re the strange wristbands:  wouldn't it be simpler and cheaper to just put them on the unvaxed?  A lot fewer people to deal with.

 

Wait a minute...You're trying to apply logic???

[elf426]

12 hours ago, TreeCity said:

@elf426  way back to your first post you mentioned your scuba was cancelled on St Thomas. Did they give you a reason? They just cancelled ours at Cozumel for August. Wondering if they are cancelling all SCUBA for some reason? Anyone know?

If I had to guess it’s due to a lack of participants but don’t quote me on it.

[RoamingRetirees]

37 minutes ago, Janet524 said:

 

Wait a minute...You're trying to apply logic???

Logic says the unvaccinated would not leave them on. 

[gbphipps]

5 minutes ago, RoamingRetirees said:

Logic says the unvaccinated would not leave them on. 

Exactly.  They will remove their “scarlet letter.”

[Shlee2TheSea]

20 hours ago, TommyD3 said:

Can both people in the cabin watch the video on one cell phone and get credit or does each person have to watch on their phone? Thanks !!!

You can watch it together on the stateroom TV or phone. 

[elf426]

16 hours ago, Alabaster Cruiser said:

Thank you elf426.  Truly enjoy your style.  We too are casino people.  I have asked Many times for someone to tell table minimums.  No answers.  We play 3 card and would love to know that.  I have also seen reduced table minimums during the day.  Does this happy to 3 card and what are they?  Wish you luck and enjoy your cruise....thanks.

Hi, it’s a sea day and I just took a quick stroll through the casino. Three card was $10 minimum and several blackjack tables were $5. I honestly don’t know if that’s reduced from nighttime or not as I generally stick to video poker and slots. Hope this helps.

[miched]

On 7/4/2021 at 12:37 PM, KKB said:

HEY--this 50 something DEFINITELY knows her Weekend songs!😉

 

Regarding the DJ--disco was his jam? But I 100% agree with you; I've made the same comment before.

DJing 101--don't keep playing the same genre of tunes if no one is on the dance floor!

Honestly I'd say something to the Cruise Director. THAT will get things changed!

 

BTW--thx for this sassy trip report!

 We found going to the CD is usally a waste of time.   If you make a negative comment about the music or any other activity they will githe stock comment that they have no control over it because it is what the main office wants.

 

if you praise something they will say that it was their choice and they usually try accommodate what they feel the passengers want. 
 

Happy cruising 🌊🚢🇺🇸🌅