You're about to discover some important watch outs if you're considering, or about
going on a celebrity cruise. I'm Gary Bembridge, and this is another of my tips
for travellers.Celebrity is part of the Royal Caribbean group. Celebrity is their
premium cruise line. It has big ships and it competes with cruise lines such as
Princess, Holland America, Cunard and in the UK P&O Cruises. Celebrity has a
classic cruising fleet and also very small expedition fleet, mostly focused on
Galapagos. In this video I'm really focusing on the traditional classic
cruise ships. At the time of recording this, they had 10 ships, and within that
classic fleet they already have plans that that will grow to 13 ships by
2022. They have three different classes of ship: they have the Millennium Class,
the Solstice class and the Edge class. The four Millennium class ships, which
came to service between 2000 and 2002, Millennium, Infinity, Summit and
Constellation hold around 2,100 guests. There are five Solstice Class
ships and they came to service between about 2009 and 2012. They hold around
2008 guests and include the Equinox, which I'm on, Solstice, Eclipse, Silhouette and
Reflection. Edge is the most recent class of ships, and they came into service in E
2018 with the first being Celebrity Edge, followed by Celebrity Apex in 2019.
There are plans to build two more Edge class ships. The Edge class bought in a
new look and feel and design of some areas of the ship and the cabins.
Those are being rolled out across the existing Millennium class and Solstice
Class ships, and that process will be completed by 2023. So, very important if
you are booking Celebrity Cruise and you want to go with the new look and feel,
make sure if your ship has already been retrofitted. As they have quite a
big fleet, they cover pretty much all of the world. You can cruise to around
300 different destinations every single year. They cruise, of course, the
Caribbean, they also cover the Mediterranean, Far East and Australia.
They go to Alaska, New England, Canada, South
America, the South Pacific and the Middle East.
What do Celebrity do better, the same or worse than other cruise lines in the
premium category? I think there are four things that they do better. First of all
the ships. Although
structurally very similar to the other premium cruise lines, I think there
is a look, a feel and design element that does set them aside. Whilst
the other premium ships tend to be more traditional and more classic,
Celebrity on the other hand is very modern. It's contemporary and they
are very much designed led. Even the existing ships, the Millennium and the
Solstice class, have a style and look to them which i think is very
attractive. I do really do like the flow of the ships and design of the ships inside.
Of course with the introduction of the Edge class, they're
pushing some of those boundaries of design even more. The hull has a
different look and feel to it. They've done some changes to the design
and layout of the cabins. They've got rid of the concept of a separate
balcony and they've made the cabins effectively 20% bigger and
created what they call Infinite Verandahs. These are spaces
within the cabin and you have a sliding glass window which opens up to
effectively create a balcony. They have the Magic Carpet down the side, which
operates both partly as extending some of the restaurants but is most important
used as a way of improving the whole tendering experience. It creates a
nice big platform to be able to tender with much bigger tenders to get people
off the ship much quicker. The second thing they do is create a
more vibrant, more dynamic and more youthful take on the
whole premium category. The other premium brands tend to be relatively
sedate, are much more stuffy and a lot more formal. Celebrity
have a lively and more energetic take on premium cruising.
You'll find, for example, there's more late night events, and they are ,
more popular and much busier, they have a more relaxed dress code, they're
more driven by technology. For example the Wi-Fi is good and you can actually
even stream on it. They have partnerships with Apple and they run training classes.
They have an App, which is pretty sophisticated and getting more sophisticated
all the time. On Edge it's upped another degree and the App
controls the functions within your cabin. It's definitely a more
youthful, more vibrant and much more dynamic take on premium cruising in my
view. The third thing that they do better is the whole food and dining experience.
I'm not saying that the food and dining on the other premium lines isn't
great, but I do think Celebrity ups the ante.
I found the food in all the complimentary restaurants, so Main dining
room and the Ocean View Cafe to be fantastic. The other thing they do is they have a
really interesting take on specialty dining and it's a very integral part of the
experience. These differ a little bit based on
the class of ship you're on. Let's take a look at the Solstice class where
I was on Equinox. They had four key speciality dining restaurants. They
had Sushi on Five which, as its name suggests, is sushi. They have the Tuscan
Grill, which is an Italian steakhouse. They have Murano, which is the
French bistro and Silk Harvest which is an Asian fusion restaurant. As you move
around the different classes of ships you have different dining
experiences. So, for example, on the Edge class instead
of having one main large dining room they've made four of those: Cosmopolitan
which is the more traditional one, Normandie which is more French,
Cyprus which is more Mediterranean and Tuscan which is more Italian. When it
comes especially dining they have Fine Cut Steakhouse, Le Grand bistro which is
French, Le Petite chef and friends which has an
interactive 3-Ddtable with food from around the world. Raw on Five which is
more than just a sushi. They use the Magic Carpet when it's on Deck five to
extend Raw on Five and when they take it to the top they create Dinner on the
Edge. They have Eden, which is a fully interactive world which has dining and
the Rooftop Garden Grill. As you move around class of ships you'll
find different specilaity dining combinations. The other premium cruise
lines tend to have their set speciality restaurants which they
have across all of the ships. I did like the fact there is a bit more variety and
based on the ship you can have different dining experience. I thought the food
was excellent. The other thing that I think is outstanding is service and the
crew. Service, of course, across premium lines is pretty good, however I
thought that it was even better on Celebrity. You get a sense of a
very happy ship and very happy crew, and a lot of people had said
to me before I went on Celebrity that the crew and service is excellent, and that was
my experience. What so Celebrity do that's the same or perhaps a little bit
worse than the other premiere lines? There's a couple of things here. First of
all, although I did say that it has a slightly more modern
and a slightly more vibrant take on premium cruising, the reality is on
Celebrity it's still a traditional cruising experience as per the other
premium cruise lines. If you take a look at the daily program, you'll find
the way that the day runs is basically the same as the other premium cruise
lines. What Celebrity do though is they have what they call Celebrity Life and
all of the activities are structured under this Celebrity Life program, which
makes me think they're probably going to try and build in more innovation. There's
Taste which are culinary activities. There's Learn which are enrichment
activities. Then Play which are trivia and games and then Revive which are
wellness activities. The other thing which I thought was very similar to the
other premium cruise lines is entertainment, particularly the
production show and the guest artists. The shows follow very much the same
formula as the other premium cruise lines and are song-and-dance review type
shows. On the plus side the shows on Celebrity use modern songs, and they're all
within the last two or three years and so are more contemporary and
modern, again linking back to that take on a more modern spin on
traditional premium cruising. The shows were good but they were pretty
much the same in terms of style and approach to the other premium lines. When
it comes to excursions and destination briefings, I think again it was very
similar to the other Premium Cruise Lines and, in fact, even some of the
mass-market cruise lines. The excursions were your standard excursion fare, although you
had a wide range of excursions. The book had a lot of options and a lot of
choices, but the excursions were very similar and you'll find them on other
cruise lines. There wasn't a lot that was very different and unique. There's no
very specific partnerships or things that are unusual. In my view, who is
Celebrity most suited for? First of all you need to be looking for a premium
cruising experience and a fairly traditional cruising experience. If
you're looking for a slightly more contemporary, more
upbeat and youthful take on that, then Celebrity is definitely for you. If
you're looking for a more of a resort experience, where there's lots of
gimmicks and features on the ship, then Celebrity is not for you. If you're
looking to get dressed up in your tuxedo, whilst you could on Celebrity, you're not
going to find that across the ship. If you're looking for that much more formal
cruising experience, Celebrity is not for you.
Usually on Celebrity the average age is slightly younger than on the other
Premium cruise lines. You're more likely to find an average age of 50s and
certainly you're going to find at certain times of the year even coming down to
the 40s. Of course, if you go on longer cruises or
you go out of the key holiday periods the average age is probably
going to be more similar to some of the other lines. A lot of families do come on
Celebrity because they like the more modern take on traditional cruising.
There's a limited amount of family cabins and is, of course, Kids' clubs.
Very importantly it is English, and everything's done in English. So, you will
find most of the guests on board are American, Canadian, British and
of course wherever you cruise you're always going to find a lot of
Australians! If you're a solo traveller one of the challenges of coming on Celebrity
on most of the fleet is there are no solo cabins, so you do pay quite a large
premium for solo occupancy. For example, I was cruising solo on this
particular cruise and I paid a 50% premium for the cabin that I was in. On
Edge they have introduced some solo cabins, so the Edge class is
starting to cater much more for solos. So is solo traveller then ideally look more at the
Edge class where you are likely to find it slightly more cost-effective way of
cruising solo. One of things I found is people who like Celebrity really love
it, and are very loyal. If you want a more upbeat.
a more vibrant way of cruising within a premium
experience, and a big ship experience, then take a look at Celebrity. If you
enjoyed this video, I'd love it if you watched many more of my Tips For Travellers videos as
they're designed to help you make more of your very precious travel
time and money on land, sea and on rivers