The Thrifty Cruisers Edge Panama Canal Feb 13-23 so not live:)

[cgolf1]

About us, I am sadly now pushing 50 and wife is still mid 40s. This is our 3 Celebrity cruise and 2nd on the Edge. This was our 18th cruise overall. Onboard we go to relax and don’t do lot of the more social activities. It was the same pre Covid, we just love a nice cruise. The Panama Canal is a bucket list for us. We are lock junkies and take one or like five day or weekend trips to the various locks and dams along the Mississippi River. 

 

 

[cgolf1]

All of the opinions and comments on here will be our honest opinions. I will fall on both sides of the debate line as you will see. I will answer questions about my opinions but I want to keep this as a review and not a debate thread. This review will be a bit slow as I started in the airport while waiting for the flight home. I have over 2000 pictures to sort to get ready for the review including all the daily sheets. I expect to have some started  tonight, but the wife needs the computer to do real world things like bills. 

[Silkroad]

Looking forward to your review and photos! We’ve not yet sailed the canal, but it’s on our short list. 

[cgolf1]

So I debated either working this into the review or putting it out front. Since the wife is doing the survey I will talk about the food quality and options available to us.

 

The Good:

Almost all dishes we had were cooked well and were seasoned well. Seasoning of course is a personal assessment, but I will say that the seasoning level on Celebrity is much heavier than when we cruised Disney and even Royal. IMO Celebrity takes a chance on the seasoning level knowing that some won't like it due to that. 

 

Cafe Al Bacio had more gluten free desert options, 3, than we have ever seen before on Celebrity. All of the cakes were very tasty.

 

Oceaniew Cafe breakfast was fine and they had Salmon for me so no issues their. We mostly did oceanview, but my wife would grab a muffin from the spa cafe as well, which were very good including the gluten free one I tried.

 

Oceanview cafe lunch they had the minute steak on all sea days and the food all tasted good and was well seasoned. The minute steaks were amazing especially with the tip I will share later.

 

Main Dining room Suppers. Other than the gluten free pre order struggle that is an E class thing, will detail this with some tips later, all of the dishes except one or two were very tasty and well seasoned. 

 

[cgolf1]

The not so good

Ocean view cafe Lunch:

While the food that we ate was always very tasty I found it difficult to find new options every day especially being gluten free. I ended up eating pretty much the same base thing every day with one or two different items added in. I will detail this in the daily section of the report. My wife who isn't gluten free also thought that it was pretty similar each day with the exception of the one pod that had the theme meal. They also really didn't need two salad pods either.

 

The biggest disappointment for me was the Indian food selections. It was a variation on a theme of a simple cut meat and sauce every day. No bone in lamb like we had on the Constellation. I unfortunately didn't eat a lot of Indian food this cruise. To the point of the Constellation, I felt that buffet had more food options for us even though there were under 600 people onboard. 

 

Mast Grill Lunch:

Not a surprise my wife said the burger wasn't good. I did try the hot dog and I thought it was a good hot dog, but the family was split because my wife didn't like it. To me it tasted like the really bad for you but super tasty cheaper hot dogs made out of parts we don't want to know about. She generally prefers the slightly better hot dogs, believe the beef dogs.

 

Oceanview cafe supper:

We walked up there at night twice with one being a port night and it was going to be a no go for me as the gluten free options were super limited on what was already a super limited buffet. No need to pile on more here.

 

Main dining room supper

The only truly bad dish was the grilled chicken my wife had from the everyday menu she had the one night she couldn't find something from the rotating options that she wanted to try. She did comment that the Cyprus specific pasta was very one note. The one note was good, but she didn't eat the full dish because it just needed something else added to round out the flavor.

 

The big issue I had was I felt that I could have used some more options each night. I felt like I settled a few nights which isn't normal for me on a cruise. Of course no prime rib for those that really want it.

Also on a couple of nights the rotating menu didn't have any items that were gluten free, they had to be special orders to be gluten free. The lobster tail ordered as a secondary entree was what I expected. If there are people that really like it, well ok, it is still not a must have for me. I equate it to grocery store sushi rolls, decent but not a delicacy. 

 

Even though the not so good seems lengthy, it doesn't mean we hated it, like I said we were overall happy with the food we ate.

[britestar]

Thanks for posting. Looking forward to your photos.

[Essiesmom]

I hope you don’t mind my inserting a couple of Pancanal webcam captures..

[Essiesmom]

Going back out…

 

 

[cgolf1]

28 minutes ago, Essiesmom said:

I hope you don’t mind my inserting a couple of Pancanal webcam captures..

 

That is awesome and we were at the front edge of the Sunset bar on that side and stayed in our spot from 5:45 AM to 4 PM. It was a warm day.

[cgolf1]

For the flight down we stayed at a home 2 suites. It was a very nice room next to the runway. Surprisingly it wasn’t loud at all. I didn’t sleep much due to excitement and the heating system being strategically located to blow air at my face all night.

 

Edited February 26, 2023 by cgolf1

[cgolf1]

Flight was good with the normal bumps along the way and we stayed in a different home 2 suites in Ft Lauderdale 161 SW 19th Court, Dania Beach, FL. No pictures for that room. It was an easy walk, probably 15 minutes each way with crossing the roads being the biggest pain, to the big lots to get beverages for the room and we ordered in Domino’s pizza and watched the super bowl. It was close to where we have stayed previously so we were super happy to find this hotel.

 

For a fee the hotel offered a shuttle service to the port and their latest shuttle got us to the port around 10:15, which was the time the shuttle was supposed to leave the hotel. While we did have to wait till a little after 11 to get onboard, Celebrity and Royal have the embarkation process setup to be super easy. 

 

[cgolf1]

So this is a special post for me and probably many others too. I started on this board back when the Edge was being built and was so excited for that cruise. I was one of original Edgeis I guess and I think the comments then were as bad if not worse than with the recent dining changes. VTCruising was super supportive over that time and kept me positive about our first Celebrity cruise on the Edge. I never met her in person but she was such  a positive and genuine person and she is missed by all that knew her. I gave Mr Edge a pat on the nose and thought of VT.

 

[cgolf1]

Day 1 Daily Sheets

 

[cgolf1]

Our room. We again stayed in an inside room that was in the same hallway as a sky suite. We had previously done this style of inside room and it was one of our favorites. Our stateroom host Esa was incredible and a genuinely nice person. The only quirk was after he cleaned the room he left the toilet seat up, we have never seen that before. I have attached pictures of the stateroom. If anything it has too much storage. 

 

Also I didn't bring a bottle of Crown, the bag makes a nice camera case for my point and shoot camera.

 

[Silkroad]

Is this one of the inside cabins that are adjacent to the Magic Carpet Sky Suites? Looks very nice indeed!

[cgolf1]

1 minute ago, Silkroad said:

Is this one of the inside cabins that are adjacent to the Magic Carpet Sky Suites? Looks very nice indeed!

I think that they would be. While not a lot of floor space the layout is very functional. I never looked to see if they are on both sides of the ship. We did put in a minimum move up bid for an infinite veranda, and even asked when we boarded, but this was the room we truly wanted. The veranda was a thought in case we wanted a space away from people on what was basically a full cruise. We will talk about that a bit later in the review. 

[Pldear]

Would you mind sharing what room number this room was?

[cgolf1]

28 minutes ago, Pldear said:

Would you mind sharing what room number this room was?

It was 7196. Nice location and worked well to get around the ship. 

[cgolf1]

Day 1 we essentially seemed lost on a ship we have been on before lol. The Edge flows a little different from a conventional ship, but we did finally figure out our way around. 

 

Our first drinks of the cruise were a French Caribbean. 

 

For Lunch my highlight was mashed potatoes and gravy, yes you read that right lol, being gluten free this is not something I get often and it is a comfort food for me. Know if someone could make a GF KFC biscuit my life would be complete:) They did have the minute steak so of course I grabbed that.

 

For supper we ate in Normandie. My wife had the Baked Brie Cheese appetizer and lemon pepper roasted chicken main. I had the Escargot app and pan seared duck breast. Both of our meals were good. I do believe though in the future I won't do duck breast again. This was my second time trying it and it is only decent to me, and I wish I had had the roasted trout instead. That said I always give a dish a second try, because the first go can be a shock to the system reaction to something you may ultimately love.

 

[Shiba_Lover]

Looking forward to this.  Panama Canal is also on my list of cruises to do!  Thanks for sharing this experience!

[cgolf1]

Day 1 activities. As some know I am a huge music fan, so I kept my ear open for some good live music, The 1st Edge cruise we were on set a very high bar and I knew Michael Redden wasn't going to be onboard this time. Day 1 showed decent singers but no must see. We were also lucky enough to see the band Kronos that people would skip theatre shows to see them play on RCCL, us included.

 

The typical low key walk around the ship day for us. We did watch the true or false game show and than saw comedian Ralph Harris. This guy was just hilarious and put on a great show, we really enjoyed it. Highly recommend watching his show if he is on a sailing you are on.

 

Other then that we swam a bit and just enjoyed being on a ship again, thankfully this time without missing a full year of cruising:)

[cgolf1]

Some ship pictures from day 1.

 

[cgolf1]

Day 2

 

Will start with the daily sheets  I really won't talk about the breakfast because we pretty much ate the same thing every day. I had my salmon and bacon, which is what I have eaten as a cruise breakfast from day 1.Apparently food variety only matters for me at lunch and supper.

 

[cgolf1]

Day 2 Activities

 

Well on day 1 I heard Giuseppe talk about a Vow Renewal in the grand plaza for today. I had been thinking about this for a while but didn't know how to bring it up to my wife. Well when I mentioned it to her, I must have mumbled, because she looked at me confused because she thought I had said Bowel Removal! Once she understood what I was really saying I signed us up.

 

When we got to the Grand Plaza it was packed, and the final toll was over 100 couples and was the most in the fleet. Apparently all ships were doing this at the same time. Before this started, Giuseppe was down by the Captain looking out at the crowd with the biggest smile a person could have. I am guessing he was as amazed as we were at the turnout for this. It was very well done and a few days later we got a document commemorating the occasion. This made for a very special valentines day.

 

We finally got to see a beyond the podium. The talk was about Lions, Tigers, and Cheetahs, and the big cats. It was an excellent presentation.

 

The show tonight was Kaleidascope and the team had a high bar to live up to for us Madison and the original performers on the Edge were beyond amazing. The lead female Madison especially to the point Marcus Terrell gave her props during his performances. She did a live set in the club too.

 

Well back to this cruise. The energy of the show and the song choices were amazing, but Joe the lead male was a standout the rest of the group fell short of the last crew we saw. Still a great show but when some notes come across as shouted instead of sung and the harmonies aren't balanced it is noticeable especially to the bar I had set by the first cruise. Overall though good show and I readjusted my bar for the rest of the shows during the trip.

 

We did of course get some pool time in too. I will say though the pools tended to be on the cool side this trip. That and the Connie spoiled us with the T Pool.

[cgolf1]

Day 2 Supper. 

 

I had the grilled octopus and the Greek style slow braised lamb shanks. Both were excellent and the lamb was fall of the bone tender. My wife had the Hot melted cheese Saganaki and the Grilled Cobia. Both were good.