Waching daily Feb 21 2019

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