Food & Beverage Update from the President

[MarkWiltonM]

On 11/2/2023 at 10:49 AM, RTShaker said:

Methinks this is a little outdated  CelebrityCenturymenus(October1998)-1.pdf

Interesting. There are only four entrees at dinner on these old and historic menus, plus two "chilled entrees" meaning dinner-size salads. Maybe it was a case of quality over quantity, but who knows? I've heard the food was very good when Michel Roux was in charge of cuisine, but things so often seem better in retrospect. 

[hcat]

trust us old timers..it was MUCH better as was the gen approach to dining!

[RichYak]

41 minutes ago, MarkWiltonM said:

Interesting. There are only four entrees at dinner on these old and historic menus, plus two "chilled entrees" meaning dinner-size salads.

Those are the lunch menus. Sounds like you didn't scroll down far enough to read the dinner menus.

[calicakes]

We booked a 4 night on Valient lady for September. We booked because of the food.

[mahdnc]

42 minutes ago, MarkWiltonM said:

I've heard the food was very good when Michel Roux was in charge of cuisine, but things so often seem better in retrospect. 

 

Yes it was!  We were lucky enough to go on 5 Celebrity cruises before Celebrity's relationship with Michel Roux came to an end.  He oversaw the implementation of the original specialty restaurants on all 4 Millennium class ships.

[PTC DAWG]

41 minutes ago, hcat said:

trust us old timers..it was MUCH better as was the gen approach to dining!

I never liked the old school set time shared table dining myself…the food, that’s subjective at best.  We all usually things were better years ago. 

[PTC DAWG]

16 minutes ago, calicakes said:

We booked a 4 night on Valient lady for September. We booked because of the food.

I don’t book VV because of no drink package offered. That and short cruises.

[paulh84]

Because of all the hype around perceived food quality I’m pretty sure they could swap standard beef for prime beef and people would still complain or think it’s “bad”. Unless there are a bunch of USDA and AMS experts onboard (expertise not from your recent Google search) there’s not much to say that is widely understandable in terms of actual food grading and classification. 

[Happy Cruiser 6143]

1 hour ago, calicakes said:

We booked a 4 night on Valient lady for September. We booked because of the food.

 

I'm not going to book a ship with substandard cabins just for the food.  I can get excellent food by going to local restaurants.  No need to book a cruise for that.

[calicakes]

3 minutes ago, Happy Cruiser 6143 said:

 

I'm not going to book a ship with substandard cabins just for the food.  I can get excellent food by going to local restaurants.  No need to book a cruise for that.

The cabin looked fine for 4 days. We booked a sea terrace.

[calicakes]

1 hour ago, PTC DAWG said:

I don’t book VV because of no drink package offered. That and short cruises.

Ok. You do you. We don't drink. With that being said, they gave us $300 towards a drink package. But we can use it for other things.

[bigbenboys]

On 11/1/2023 at 3:50 PM, miched said:

 

As I said why be a snob and only mingle with those that are Elite or above?  If It wasn’t about the drink and they had a dedicated lounge for elite and above from 5 to 7 without the free HH  drinks how many would attend?  🤗

 

Happy cruising 🌊🚢🇺🇸🌅

We sail mostly in suites and have the PDP. We still went to the Elite events until 6:30. 

[doghog]

1 hour ago, PTC DAWG said:

I don’t book VV because of no drink package offered. That and short cruises.

We've checked out VV but not interested. We book our cruises for intinaries and VV intinaries suck. Maybe they'll improve(?) them. 

[PTC DAWG]

34 minutes ago, calicakes said:

Ok. You do you. We don't drink. With that being said, they gave us $300 towards a drink package. But we can use it for other things.

I’m sure you’ll enjoy it…at least I hope so..I do see where they are doing some 7 day cruises with “loot” to use on board..I never say never. 

[Itsnevertoolate]

On 11/1/2023 at 4:35 PM, billc23 said:

That is one of the trust issues that has not effected me but disturbed my sense of fairness and honesty.

I missed this one…what was the SS and butler issue y’all are talking about?  What happened?

[mahdnc]

7 minutes ago, Itsnevertoolate said:

I missed this one…what was the SS and butler issue y’all are talking about?  What happened?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by mahdnc

[Itsnevertoolate]

6 minutes ago, mahdnc said:

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, wow…I had not seen that!  We did a sky suite last summer for our Mediterranean cruise and LOVED our butler. He checked on us daily and spoiled us rotten. We’ve booked a sky suite again on the Ascent for next October - this is disappointing.

[dreamer321]

3 hours ago, doghog said:

We've checked out VV but not interested. We book our cruises for intinaries and VV intinaries suck. Maybe they'll improve(?) them. 

They have some interesting itineraries in the Mediterranean but their Caribbean itineraries are boring, poor choice of ports. I was thinking of doing a transatlantic cruise but they rearranged their fleet itineraries recently and reduced the number of Transatlantic crossings.

[Cap_D]

On the subject of trust - not that this is the thread for the butler cutbacks, but since it was mentioned just above, we are reserved for a SS on Beyond in March.  We recieved an email today with Retreat branding that promotes a butler and team that is hyperlinked to the following:  https://www.celebritycruises.com/blog/cruise-butler.  Many mentions of the team, but plenty of mentions of things that someone would supposedly still be doing when asked (although there are many reports that such requests can't be fulfilled adequately).  It's that we got the email and then directed to a page of promises (already revised in August) that is one of those examples of can they be trusted? 

 

[doghog]

1 hour ago, dreamer321 said:

They have some interesting itineraries in the Mediterranean but their Caribbean itineraries are boring, poor choice of ports. I was thinking of doing a transatlantic cruise but they rearranged their fleet itineraries recently and reduced the number of Transatlantic crossings.

Agree about the Caribbean itineraries.  I should have been more specific.

[MisterBill99]

8 hours ago, PTC DAWG said:

I don’t book VV because of no drink package offered. That and short cruises.

 

We got $600 of "bar tab" when we booked a 7-night cruise. Got another $100 and $10 a day of "coffee money" when we status-matched from Celebrity (plus 10% off our cruise). I got $600 "sailor loot" aka OBC for using a MNVV (My Next Virgin Voyage) certificate that a TA that specializes in VV sold to me, and it also got me $300 off the cruise in addition to counting as a $300 deposit. Only got $100 sailor loot from the TA, but I now have $700 in each bucket for the cruise. If you are the sort of person who gets $100 per day worth of value from the drink package, then maybe it won't work for you. It is going to be more than enough drink money for us.

Edited November 6, 2023 by MisterBill99

[MisterBill99]

47 minutes ago, doghog said:

Agree about the Caribbean itineraries.  I should have been more specific.

 

There are some interesting 7-night cruises out of San Juan. The Miami cruises aren't exciting. 

[Sailingsoph26]

After reading this thread, I decided to see if menus have been added to our Constellation cruise next spring. They have been, although I’m not familiar enough with the menus to know if they’re updated or not. What I did find fairly amusing is that they have not been spellchecked and there were several typos. Not a big deal by any means and I’m sure these are works in progress, but it’s not that common to see so many mistakes in official comms and the editor in me was screaming! 😆

 

[D. B.]

On 11/2/2023 at 10:50 AM, kwokpot said:

Apex in July in a regular IV cabin and had pillow chocolates every night.

I was just on Reflection for a 14 day TA and my stateroom steward told me the pillow chocolates were back to Every Night.

 Now I was in a Concierge veranda stateroom so I do not know if that was only for certain staterooms on some ships or fleet wide.

[doghog]

1 minute ago, D. B. said:

I was just on Reflection for a 14 day TA and my stateroom steward told me the pillow chocolates were back to Every Night.

 Now I was in a Concierge veranda stateroom so I do not know if that was only for certain staterooms on some ships or fleet wide.

Nope. We were on the Eclipse 8 October on a Pacific Coastal cruise in a regular  balcony. Evening pillow chocolates every evening plus two each on both chic evening.