RAD
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 15, 1999
- Messages
- 1,792
First let me start by saying I love Disney Cruise Line. I think their staff is tremendous and the ships are beautiful. But as a couple that have grown kids and we're retired it was time to look into doing something else. We've done a Carnival cruise before, never again, and a Royal Caribbean which was nice but didn't come close to DCL in our opinion. So I asked Tracey Heinrichs, our Dreams travel agent, for alternatives and she highly recommended Celebrity cruises.
We already had 7 night book on the Fantasy for a 1/15/22 cruise in a cat 4A cabin, which was $5,406.26 for the two adults. Looking at Celebrity they also had a 7 night leaving on 1/15/22 on their newest ship, the Apex making two of the same stops that the Fantasy was going to. I was looking over all their stateroom option, which they have a lot of, I decided on a Sky Suite for $5,841.30 which is their entry level suite into their Retreat class. To see what that gets you take a look at https://www.celebritycruises.com/things-to-do-onboard/staterooms/suite-class, they do a better job then I could in describing. So yes I was going to pay more then Disney but I get their version of a concierge class room (which Disney wanted $9,676.26 for a 3A) which also include streaming WiFi (yes you could actually stream Netflix), tips, premium drink package (which includes free soda from anywhere) and a $600 on board credit. If you want to see what the Sky Suite looks like check this video tour from another travel agent (don't use them, use Dreams)
. So I cancelled the DCL cruise and had Tracey book Celebrity.
Once you are booked on Celebrity you can use their web site to book your excursions, there isn't the hard opening dates like DCL has and your days depend on which level of Castaway Cay club you belong to, which was nice. A down side though it they want you to pay for any book excursions when you reserve them. We didn't book many and our $600 on board credit covered just about all of them and the spa appointments that the wife made.
A couple weeks before the cruise I got an e-mail from Celebrity informing me of their Move Up program. Basically they show you all the rooms you can bid to upgrade to from your current category. They provide a minimum and maximun recommend bid amount, you can select none, one or more staterooms to bid on and sometime before you depart they will let you know if you won any of the upgrades. You must provide a credit card number when you bid and if the bid is accepted your card is charged the upgrade amount right away, and you can't cancel an accepted bid once it's accepted. Since this cruise was to celebrity our 40th wedding anniversary I put in a bid to upgrade to the next level up suite, the Celebrity suite. The going rate for this suite was $10,569.38, I submitted a bid of $2,210 to upgrade bring my fare up to $$8.051.30, which is still cheaper them the 3A concierge stateroom on the Fantasy. I won that bid and was provided our new suite number the next day. If you want to see a video tour of this suite look at
.
On departure day we arrive at the cruise terminal in Port Everglades and find the line that's used by The Retreat guests. Once your Covid vaccination cards were checked along with our negative Covid test results we were escorted to an elevator which took us to The Retreat lounge in the terminal. We were told to just take a seat and a staff member would be over to finish our check in. Since we had already did the check in using their app they just handed out a update on Covid policies and told us we would be boarding shortly. There is a small bar along with some finger foods to eat while waiting.
Shortly after 11AM we were told we could board the ship, we could enter our stateroom and drop off any carry on bags we wanted before proceeding to lunch. We found our room, the key cards were located there along with a sign on the door they were still preparing the room, so we dropped our bags off in the room and had lunch.
I don't want to do day by day of the cruise but an overview of our experiece. Food was equal to if not better then DCL. On the Apex, and I believe also the Edge, the 'main dining room' is decided into four smaller one, all four will have some of the same meal options every night while each will have some specialty items based on the local they represent. The Tuscan will have some Italian based items, Cyrus Greek, Normandie French and Cosmopolitan American. Of course there are also a few extra cost premium restaurants, once of which has an animated show which John and Kevin did a review of and really loved,
, for a video from their experience.
Entertaimnent on the ship was hit or miss. For our sailing they have three main stage shows that were supposed to be preformed, Rockumentry, The Tree of Life (which was cancelled due to technical issues) and Crystalize. Their theater makes use of a giant LED video wall behind the stage, so there's not a lot of physical scenery in their shows like Disney has, it a different experience when what your might be expecting. Here's a couple links to short videos from the two shows so you can see what they were like https://flic.kr/p/2mZde7b .
On the other nights they had a comedian (really bad) and a couple singers that were doing tributes to Tina Turner and Ed Sheeran, not bad but not great either. They also had some smaller acts on a few nights, one called Caravan in The Club, which is like a small night club which they use for multiple events doing the cruise and in The Eden they had either a solo performer or a smaller show, didn't make it to those but taking to others on the cruise said they were good.
Service wise we were blown away by the staff we interacted with. As a guest in The Retreat, your suite has a personal Retreat Host, they used to be called butlers. They are they to make sure all your needs are taken care of and are on call 24x7, you're given their business card with their 'cell' phone number to call them directly. We also met our stateroom attendant which also gave us his business card and his phone number. One night we were going back to the room from diner and our attendant was in the room next to our and we asked if he was done with our room, if he wasn't we needed to go away from awhile since due to Covid protocols the staff isn't allowed in the rooms at the same time as the guests to make contract tracing easier. We were told our Retreat host was in the room so give him a couple minutes. He came to the door to let us in and we found he had been decorating the room for our wedding anniversary. https://flic.kr/p/2mZ9opP https://flic.kr/p/2mZbgA2 https://flic.kr/p/2mZbgBu .
The decor of the ship in my opinion is much like a high end hotel. There's tons of art all over the ship and there are over 5,000 live plants, including a roof top garden which has a grill (extra cost) and seating for viewing their large LCD TV where they show movies and special sporting events. I hate to use this guys videos again but here's a link to a complete tour of the ship, https://youtu.be/T80KXmCgeJ4.
Lastly, what was it like sailing during Covid, strange is the best word to use. First the ship can handle a little over 3,000 passengers, we had 1,091 for our sailing on board. Normally I don't try to make an effort to listen to the daily captains announcement but on a Covid cruise you do so you can hear if there are any cases on board (by the end of the cruise we had 7 passengers and 20 crew that had tested positive). You didn't have to worry about finding a lounger up by the pools since they always had open ones. Didn't need to show up early for show to get a seat, plenty of open ones and reservations for any restaurant wasn't really necessary, a short wait got you in if there was any.
I created a PDF file of their version of the Navigator, called Celebrity Today. I tried to upload it on this site but it was too big, if you can to see if go to https://boards.cruisecritic.com/top...ers-from-apex-11522-sailing/#comment-62516223 where you can download it.
Will be do Celebrity again, in a heart beat, we have two cruises book, and Alaska and British Isle and hope to do many more. While we love DCL their prices are just too high compared to other cruise lines that can provide the same or better level of service in our opinion, sorry Disney.
And PLEASE book any cruise using a Dreams agent and not Harr travel.
We already had 7 night book on the Fantasy for a 1/15/22 cruise in a cat 4A cabin, which was $5,406.26 for the two adults. Looking at Celebrity they also had a 7 night leaving on 1/15/22 on their newest ship, the Apex making two of the same stops that the Fantasy was going to. I was looking over all their stateroom option, which they have a lot of, I decided on a Sky Suite for $5,841.30 which is their entry level suite into their Retreat class. To see what that gets you take a look at https://www.celebritycruises.com/things-to-do-onboard/staterooms/suite-class, they do a better job then I could in describing. So yes I was going to pay more then Disney but I get their version of a concierge class room (which Disney wanted $9,676.26 for a 3A) which also include streaming WiFi (yes you could actually stream Netflix), tips, premium drink package (which includes free soda from anywhere) and a $600 on board credit. If you want to see what the Sky Suite looks like check this video tour from another travel agent (don't use them, use Dreams)
Once you are booked on Celebrity you can use their web site to book your excursions, there isn't the hard opening dates like DCL has and your days depend on which level of Castaway Cay club you belong to, which was nice. A down side though it they want you to pay for any book excursions when you reserve them. We didn't book many and our $600 on board credit covered just about all of them and the spa appointments that the wife made.
A couple weeks before the cruise I got an e-mail from Celebrity informing me of their Move Up program. Basically they show you all the rooms you can bid to upgrade to from your current category. They provide a minimum and maximun recommend bid amount, you can select none, one or more staterooms to bid on and sometime before you depart they will let you know if you won any of the upgrades. You must provide a credit card number when you bid and if the bid is accepted your card is charged the upgrade amount right away, and you can't cancel an accepted bid once it's accepted. Since this cruise was to celebrity our 40th wedding anniversary I put in a bid to upgrade to the next level up suite, the Celebrity suite. The going rate for this suite was $10,569.38, I submitted a bid of $2,210 to upgrade bring my fare up to $$8.051.30, which is still cheaper them the 3A concierge stateroom on the Fantasy. I won that bid and was provided our new suite number the next day. If you want to see a video tour of this suite look at
On departure day we arrive at the cruise terminal in Port Everglades and find the line that's used by The Retreat guests. Once your Covid vaccination cards were checked along with our negative Covid test results we were escorted to an elevator which took us to The Retreat lounge in the terminal. We were told to just take a seat and a staff member would be over to finish our check in. Since we had already did the check in using their app they just handed out a update on Covid policies and told us we would be boarding shortly. There is a small bar along with some finger foods to eat while waiting.
Shortly after 11AM we were told we could board the ship, we could enter our stateroom and drop off any carry on bags we wanted before proceeding to lunch. We found our room, the key cards were located there along with a sign on the door they were still preparing the room, so we dropped our bags off in the room and had lunch.
I don't want to do day by day of the cruise but an overview of our experiece. Food was equal to if not better then DCL. On the Apex, and I believe also the Edge, the 'main dining room' is decided into four smaller one, all four will have some of the same meal options every night while each will have some specialty items based on the local they represent. The Tuscan will have some Italian based items, Cyrus Greek, Normandie French and Cosmopolitan American. Of course there are also a few extra cost premium restaurants, once of which has an animated show which John and Kevin did a review of and really loved,
Entertaimnent on the ship was hit or miss. For our sailing they have three main stage shows that were supposed to be preformed, Rockumentry, The Tree of Life (which was cancelled due to technical issues) and Crystalize. Their theater makes use of a giant LED video wall behind the stage, so there's not a lot of physical scenery in their shows like Disney has, it a different experience when what your might be expecting. Here's a couple links to short videos from the two shows so you can see what they were like https://flic.kr/p/2mZde7b .
On the other nights they had a comedian (really bad) and a couple singers that were doing tributes to Tina Turner and Ed Sheeran, not bad but not great either. They also had some smaller acts on a few nights, one called Caravan in The Club, which is like a small night club which they use for multiple events doing the cruise and in The Eden they had either a solo performer or a smaller show, didn't make it to those but taking to others on the cruise said they were good.
Service wise we were blown away by the staff we interacted with. As a guest in The Retreat, your suite has a personal Retreat Host, they used to be called butlers. They are they to make sure all your needs are taken care of and are on call 24x7, you're given their business card with their 'cell' phone number to call them directly. We also met our stateroom attendant which also gave us his business card and his phone number. One night we were going back to the room from diner and our attendant was in the room next to our and we asked if he was done with our room, if he wasn't we needed to go away from awhile since due to Covid protocols the staff isn't allowed in the rooms at the same time as the guests to make contract tracing easier. We were told our Retreat host was in the room so give him a couple minutes. He came to the door to let us in and we found he had been decorating the room for our wedding anniversary. https://flic.kr/p/2mZ9opP https://flic.kr/p/2mZbgA2 https://flic.kr/p/2mZbgBu .
The decor of the ship in my opinion is much like a high end hotel. There's tons of art all over the ship and there are over 5,000 live plants, including a roof top garden which has a grill (extra cost) and seating for viewing their large LCD TV where they show movies and special sporting events. I hate to use this guys videos again but here's a link to a complete tour of the ship, https://youtu.be/T80KXmCgeJ4.
Lastly, what was it like sailing during Covid, strange is the best word to use. First the ship can handle a little over 3,000 passengers, we had 1,091 for our sailing on board. Normally I don't try to make an effort to listen to the daily captains announcement but on a Covid cruise you do so you can hear if there are any cases on board (by the end of the cruise we had 7 passengers and 20 crew that had tested positive). You didn't have to worry about finding a lounger up by the pools since they always had open ones. Didn't need to show up early for show to get a seat, plenty of open ones and reservations for any restaurant wasn't really necessary, a short wait got you in if there was any.
I created a PDF file of their version of the Navigator, called Celebrity Today. I tried to upload it on this site but it was too big, if you can to see if go to https://boards.cruisecritic.com/top...ers-from-apex-11522-sailing/#comment-62516223 where you can download it.
Will be do Celebrity again, in a heart beat, we have two cruises book, and Alaska and British Isle and hope to do many more. While we love DCL their prices are just too high compared to other cruise lines that can provide the same or better level of service in our opinion, sorry Disney.
And PLEASE book any cruise using a Dreams agent and not Harr travel.
