karl_nj

So even the "upgraded" wifi wasn't great?  I was on Edge in August, with the "included" level wifi, so I wasn't expecting much.  But if I paid to upgrade, i'd be pretty annoyed.

Thanks for sharing all of your amazing photos and reviewing the ship!  Great job!

On 8/27/2021 at 2:33 PM, twangster said:

It's true... bacon shortage on the buffet.

 

 

Bummer!  Happy to report there was no "bacon shortage" on Celebrity Edge last week.

Disembarkation was super smooth.  We did self disembarkation at 7:40; we arrived in Eden around 7:30 and the ship already had clearance for us to leave.  US Customs and Border Protection was using their wonderful face recognition system to clear us back into the country, so we were quickly out on the street and in a taxi on our way to FLL.  We were able to make our 11:20am flight with plenty of time to spare.  

Despite all the issues we had trying to get onboard the ship, we all had a wonderful time sailing on Celebrity Edge.  This was my second time sailing on Celebrity, and I certainly will look to sail on this line again in the future.

We stopped at Nassau, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten.  In order to leave the ship in Nassau or St. Maarten, you needed to book a ship excursion.  You could tour on your own in St. Thomas.  We stayed on the ship in Nassau as the ship arrived at 7am and left at noon, and none of the excursions sounded especially interesting.  At St. Thomas we took a taxi over to Magens Bay beach.  This was the first time I visited this beach and I really enjoyed our visit.  The last few times we visited St. Thomas, my son was much younger and we visited Coral World Ocean Park instead.  At St. Maarten we took a ship excursion to Orient Bay.  I can’t say I was impressed at all by the excursion, and now I know why I usually avoid booking excursions through the ship.

I’m not entirely sure why Celebrity decided that ship excursions were required in Nassau and St. Maarten for my sailing.  Perhaps it has something to do with the CDC Travel Advisory Level?  Is Royal Caribbean doing anything similar for their ships?

Our Infinite Veranda cabin was certainly a unique design.  Basically it’s an high floor oceanview cabin, with a floor to ceiling window.  The top half of the window can be opened electrically, via a switch on the wall.  In order to try to keep the rest of your room from getting too hot and humid, there are folding doors that you can close to try to seal off the rest of the room.  What is nice about the design is that if you don’t want to open the balcony window, you get this extra room in your cabin.  When it’s very hot out, you can enjoy the view while also enjoying the AC from your room.  This reminded me of my favorite cabin category on Disney Dream/Fantasy -- Deluxe Family Oceanview.  You get a giant porthole window where the balcony should be, and a nice comfy chair to chill in, but you are still inside your cabin.  But, with the Infinite Veranda, if you want to feel the ocean breeze and listen to the sound of the water, you can still open the window.

The main disadvantage is that there are no curtains, only a noisy electric operated shade.  So when your wife wakes up, you will wake up shortly after, once she fires up the Celebrity app on her phone and hits the button to open the shade.  You can also control all the lights in the room, and the AC temperature from the app.  There is also a touch pad on the wall next to the bathroom with similar controls.  Which was great for me, since I wasn’t staying in my “assigned room”.  If I tried using my phone to turn on the room lights, all I would have done is annoy my children…

The bed on Celebrity Edge was much more comfortable then the beds they have on Royal Caribbean these days.  It was also nice to have separate containers of Shampoo, Conditioner, and Body Wash available on the wall of the shower.  On Royal you just get one dispenser of a substance that claims to be both Shampoo and Conditioner.  Perhaps it’s also supposed to be body wash.  You still get a chocolate on your pillow at bedtime on Celebrity too, unlike on Royal Caribbean.  It’s also actually edible, unlike whatever Royal Carribean used to give out at bedtime.  Otherwise the room reminded me a lot of the rooms on Quantum Class ships.  The whole ship actually had some Quantum class vibes going on, from 270/Eden, to the 4 main dining rooms on two floors in the rear of the ship.

Celebrity Edge is a beautiful ship.  I really enjoyed the walking/running track onboard.  It has ramps and does a figure eight over two decks, which makes the walk more interesting compared to other ships.  The pool is huge.  Magic Carpet is a fun place for a drink, with great views.  Both the Sunset Bar and The Rooftop Garden could use some more shade, and seems to have a bit of a soot problem due to their location aft of the stack.  

I guess I'm just used to other ships and the sheer number of different bars they have onboard, because I think I was a little underwhelmed with the number of bar/lounges available on Edge.  There are basically only three indoor choices -- Eden, The Club, or the Martini Bar.  They were all quite big, and very nice, but in the back of my mind I guess I was expecting more venues to be available.  In any case, the ‘show’ in the Martini Bar was certainly something to see!

Due to the Celebrity “always included” pricing program, this was our first cruise with a drink package and an internet package.  I upgraded the drink package from the classic to the premium package before the cruise.  I wanted to have more variety in my wine by the glass selection at dinner, and I also wanted to be able to work my way through the martini bar menu without having to worry about extra charges.  It was certainly fun to have a drink package, and it was amazing to have such a low bill on my onboard account at the end of the cruise.  But I don’t think I'll be purchasing the drink package on my future Royal Caribbean cruises.  I certainly was able to drink enough alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages to get “value” from the drink package, but I normally wouldn’t drink that many cappuccinos on a cruise, I don’t really need bottled water (i’m fine with the tap water), and my bathroom scale probably would have been happier if I drank a few less alcoholic beverages during the cruise.  Same thing with the internet package, it was kinda nice to be able to check my email during the cruise, but I probably should have put my phone away more often.  I think I prefer to be a bit more unplugged during my cruise vacations.   

I was very impressed with the onboard activities on Celebrity Edge.  My wife enjoys doing Zumba at home a few times a week, and on Edge Zumba was run every morning at 9:30am, so she was thrilled.  Due to the low passenger counts, the class wasn’t super crowded, and they ran the class in The Club, which had a good amount of space and was in an out of the way area.  On Royal they don’t seem to run Zumba as often and they don’t have a great venue for the class.  On Anthem my wife has attended Zumba in 270, and there isn’t really good floor space for everyone.  On Symphony they ran the class in the middle of the Royal Promenade.

Celebrity also had a speaker onboard, part of their Beyond the Podium enrichment program.  On our sailing, Ted Blank spoke almost daily about various space and astronomy topics.  I was very impressed with his talks and attended them all.  He was just as good, if not better, then some speakers I've seen on Cunard.  The only advantage to Cunard’s onboard enrichment program is they usually have 3 different speakers, not just one.  So you are almost guaranteed to have at least one speaker giving presentations on a topic you are interested in.  I lucked out that my sailing had someone talking about space and astronomy.  If the onboard speaker was talking about, say, the history of broadway shows, I doubt I would have attended them all.  

The pre-pandemic “avant garde” show in Eden appears to be gone for good.  It was replaced with The Edge Acoustic Experience.  They brought a five member band onboard.  Most of the musicians seem to be able to play multiple instruments, and several of them also sing.  Starting at 5:30 in the evening, there is continuous music all night.  They switch in and out, in groups of one or two musicians who play a set.  During transitions, the incoming and outgoing musicians will join up together to play a song or two, making the transitions seamless.  I thought this was a great idea.  I always have terrible luck, and end up getting a drink in a lounge just as someone is finishing up their set, telling everyone that they are going on break and will be back in an hour.  No chance of that happening in Eden on Edge!   

Finally, we were welcomed onboard.  We stopped at our cabin to pick up our cruise cards and drop off our hand luggage, and headed up to the Oceanview Cafe Buffet for lunch.

My wife and I ended up trying some wonderful items from the Indian area, and my daughter enjoyed some pizza and fried rice.  All the adults celebrated finally getting onboard with some glasses of sparkling wine.

Based on my previous cruise on Celebrity, I recalled that delicious scoop ice cream, made fresh onboard, was available daily in the buffet, so for dessert I enjoyed a scoop of cinnamon ice cream, one of many fun flavors I sampled during the cruise.  Celebrity also still offers a daily flavor rotation of ice cream in the main dining room, unlike Royal Caribbean.  

After lunch we decided to start exploring the ship.

We had started watching the e-muster videos earlier that morning, back in our hotel rooms at the Renaissance Fort Lauderdale (Cruise Port) hotel.  All we had left to do was to check in at our muster station.  So we meandered down to Muster Station E4, located at one of the main dining restaurants.  After having our seapass cards scanned, we were quickly done with muster and didn’t have any other major tasks waiting for completion -- our vacation had truly started.

Next we stopped by the teen club, The Basement, on Deck 2.  Normally my daughter would have been assigned to the Camp at Sea kids club.  The teen club on Celebrity is for 13-17 year olds.  However, on this sailing they were not expecting many children.  There were supposed to be a handful of teenagers, plus a 10 year old and my 12 year old daughter.  So they combined the kids program with the teen program and ran both in the teen club.  My kids were very happy about this, since they would be able to spend time together in the teen club.

The 10 year old never showed up on the ship, so my daughter ended up being the youngest person onboard.  This also meant that our cruise was 100% vaccinated, as no passengers were under age 12, and due to the new USVI requirement, all passengers 12+ must be vaccinated.  

My kids visited the teen club a few times, and only met one other teenager onboard.

We had asked for traditional dining, early seating, but it seems like due to the limited capacity of the ship they were just giving everyone anytime dining.  We really liked the waitstaff we had on the first night in the Normandy dining room, so we ended up asking to be seated there for the rest of the cruise.  We had a nice table for 6 right by the window.

Due to the low passenger count on the ship, there were no problems at all getting an elevator.

The Oceanview Cafe Buffet was similarly empty most of the time, compared to a normal capacity cruise.

My wife, two kids (16 and 12), and and my mom recently came back from a wonderful cruise on Celebrity Edge to the Eastern Caribbean.  We were in 3 Infinite Balcony cabins, 7277, 7279, and 7281.  7277 and 7279 had a connecting door.  Normally my mother would have been booked in the same cabin as my kids, but due to COVID-19 there was a max of 2 passengers per cabin.  However, the single supplement was greatly reduced to make up for this.

Embarkation was a bit of a mess -- my fully vaccinated 12 year old daughter somehow ended up on a (very short) list of passengers that indicated the need for a COVID-19 PCR test at the terminal.  We tried to explain to the employees at the terminal that she was fully vaccinated (while showing her CDC Vaccine card), but all of our questions were ignored.  She was on “the list” and the only explanation we could get was that it was “the Captain's” decision.

My wife and daughter were whisked away to go on a long walk to another building.  I was not permitted to go with them, as my son, mother, and I had already “passed through” the first checkpoint.  I was told I had to head up the escalators and keep moving along.  I decided to stop arguing, because I assumed that if I asked why, they would just tell me that separating families was also Captain McCue’s decision.

My wife did have the presence of mind to ask me to give her my daughter's vaccine card.  When she finally got to the testing area she once again asked why my daughter needed to be tested at the terminal and showed the card.  They told her that this was obviously some mistake, and then was sent back to the terminal for embarkation without any additional testing.

We then made it to the next checkpoint where, once again, everything went smoothly until they tried to check in my wife and daughter.  So after trying a few times, we were sent along to the check in counter for further processing.  The check in desk apparently had some sort of “override” capability, so they were able to get them checked in.  

Then it was time to board the ship!  Well, not so fast -- my daughter's boarding pass still didn’t work.  And, once again, my mother, son and I had passed through the last checkpoint, but my wife and daughter were on the other side.  In hindsight, I should have had them try to board first.

They went back to the check in desk, and the rest of us just waited and watched.

After more typing at the check in desk, a 3rd set of boarding passes were printed, but, alas, these didn’t work either.

Eventually additional officers from the ship, with an escalating number of stripes on their uniforms, showed up and managed to convince the computer to permit my daughter to get onboard.

The new carnival stateroom design looks great.  There are still some elements that are similar to the staterooms on the older ships, but also much more contemporary.  And not orange.

Also great that they got rid of the shower curtain.

The rest of the ship looks pretty amazing too.  Very different design compared to the ships from the Joe Farcus era. 

Great photos!  Fun helicopter video!  This really set the stage for your trip report!  Looking forward to reading it.

It's been a while since i've sailed on Carnival.  I sailed on Carnival Glory and Carnival Miracle.  This was back when Royal didn't have the nursery or any kids program for kids age 2 or 3, but Carnival did.  My daughter is now 12, so it's been a while.

I'm a member of a ship enthusiast club here in NY, called the World Ship Society.  Before the pandemic, one of the activities the club would have were ship visits (with lunch) on turn around days, at the various ports here in NY/NJ.  So I have been able to stop in for the day and see some of their newer ships (and updates to their older ships).  But touring the ship for a few hours doesn't really give you the true feel of what the cruise line is currently like.

On 8/11/2021 at 9:08 AM, CruiseHabit Bill said:

I've heard folks say that - but so far, they've all only been on one of the two.  Going to put that to the test myself soon as well.  We'll be on Odyssey on Sept 5 🙂

Nice!  I thought about booking Odyssey, but by the time I made a final decision, the week I wanted was booked.  That is how I sort of ended up on Edge.  But now I'm really happy it turned out that way.

I think the Edge/Quantum comparisons really come down to Eden/Two70 and 4 little MDR's vs 1 large one.  I guess i'll see if I notice any other similarities once i'm onboard.

My wife and I love getting a light breakfast in Two70, so i'm really happy Edge has a similar venue.  Looking forward to checking that out.

10 hours ago, twangster said:

Cruise Summary

Since this was my first time sailing with MSC my approach for this cruise was to basically forget everything I knew about cruising.  It's too easy to fall into the trap of comparing everything to a cruise line you may have sailed last or more frequently.  

Walking onto a ship with a "I've never sailed before" mentality lets you relive that special first time you walked onto a cruise ship and it helps to remove any preconceived notions you may have about a different cruise line.

I thoroughly enjoyed this cruise and for the price it was outstanding value.  

 

I hope this helps you decide if Meraviglia is the right ship for you and I thank you for viewing.  

Wonderful review and photos, as usual.  Thanks for taking the time to share your trip with us!

I agree -- it's always fun to branch out and check out a new cruise line.

22 hours ago, twangster said:

 

Note the little lights above the door.  Instead of hanging something on your door when your want privacy or need the cabin serviced there are switches inside that control these small LEDs above the doors so that crew know if they can knock or enter.

I first saw this on Norwegian Breakaway; thought it was a great idea.  Surprised more cruise lines don't do something similar on their newer ships.

2 hours ago, twangster said:

At 9pm the cruise director promised us a Lighthouse Spectacular show featuring the lighthouse I climbed earlier.  The best place to see the show is from the Lighthouse Beach but I just as i was getting ready to head there a notification of drizzle starting at my location appeared on my phone so I decided to take in the show, this time, from my balcony.

Ocean Cay is close enough to Miami that NOAA weather radar covers Ocean Cay.

I decided to run up to the Sky Lounge on deck 16 to get a drink to enjoy the show with.

Some great sounding live music in the lounge.  The lounge is 21 and over and for fully vaccinated only. 

The pool deck as seen from the Sky Lounge (didn't have my good camera with me). 

Back in my cabin a DJ on the beach had music going with a little light show of their own getting the crowd ready for the Lighthouse Spectacular at 9pm.

Ocean Cay is beautiful at night. 

 Another cruise line I sail frequently leaves their private destination well before this time so it's takes some re-thinking about evening plans since MSC stays later at Ocean Cay. 

I'm not used to having this option so I need to re-learn how to visit a private destination that includes late night.  For example Springer's Bar on Ocean Cay also has live music in the evenings after dark.  Next time I need to plan to get off the ship in the evenings.

being able to stay at the private island until after dark sounds really cool, it's great the MSC decided to change things up a bit.  that light show thing sounds pretty amazing too.

looks like they spent a lot of money on this island -- they wanted to make sure that Ocean Cay meets or exceeds comparisons with the other cruise line private islands.

it's certainly totally different then what NCL started with in the 80's with their private island --  where you basically tendered and did an amphibious landing onto a deserted beach!

7 hours ago, CruiseHabit Bill said:

 

 

Makes it feel all the more 'real', right!  So jealous that you'll be on Edge.  I never stop wanting to be on that ship.

yeah, really looking forward to checking out Edge.  Very excited about it, really enjoyed watching all of your social media coverage of the ship over the past few years!

Edge reminds me a little of RCL's Anthem, which is one of my favorite ships, so i think i'm going to like Edge a lot.

1 hour ago, twangster said:

 

 

It was a nice bottle of LaMarca Prosecco which is a label I sometimes buy myself.  Very nice.

Ah nice.  Always a good sign when your free wine is actually something drinkable.

The Cunard board on Cruise Critic always had a running joke about the quality of the sparkling wine that was in your cabin on boarding day.  And that wine was pretty good compared to the Chardonnay i kept on getting via an Amex promotion.  It was so oaky it tasted like you were drinking tree sap and not wine.

1 hour ago, twangster said:

High resolution super panorama.

 

Great photo!

It's wild how flat these private islands are.  I was biking around Castaway Cay once (DCL's island), and came across a wooden tower thing you could climb.  It wasn't anywhere near as tall as the lighthouse you climbed, but the view was pretty amazing even with the small elevation the structure provided.

1 hour ago, twangster said:

 

 

I had noticed a panoramic elevator on the deck plans so I picked cabin not far from it.  

Those are always fun on ships; especially ones like this one, that face out to the ocean.  Reminds me of the two they have on QM2.

MSC's private island looks great!  Can't wait to see more of your photos!

13 hours ago, twangster said:

Sail away time lapse:

 

Was going to make a comment about how unusual a 'dark' sailaway is, but i'm now realizing that for my upcoming Christmas week cruise on Anthem out of NJ, our sail away will likely be even darker!

The end is kinda neat, where the lights from the hull turn on and show the whitecaps from the wake that the bow is creating as you steam ahead.

52 minutes ago, Wilson said:

WoW! I wish Royal still did that. I can remember getting the spiral bound travel books in the mail. I know it boils down to cost, but it was a cool part of the entire cruise experience.

Yeah, it's been a while since i've gotten anything "physical" in the mail before a cruise, since recently i've mostly been sailing on Royal.  It did motivate me to start working on my packing list!

I think Disney still sends the spiral book in the mail; they did at least last time I sailed that line.  But with the prices they charge, I think they can afford it.

I remember ~15 years ago, Cunard would send a padded "leatherette" pouch in the mail, with a spiral bound book, luggage tags, and space to store your boarding pass, etc! 

On 4/23/2020 at 8:36 PM, JLMoran said:

Yes, thanks for making the time and effort to post all of this and give everyone a real understanding of what sailing Disney will be like.

If my kids were a lot younger, I might consider it. But they're 19 and 16 and we all have basically outgrown Disney (except my wife, who I think will always love to go to WDW no matter how old we get). Just no way I can justify it now, with how much more they cost and how limited their itineraries are.

You can always do a 3 nighter combined with a visit to WDW with just you and your wife!

(was just re-reading this thread -- it's less depressing now in 2021, then it was when it was posted last year, now that cruise lines are starting up again...)

27 minutes ago, twangster said:

 

Muster in the pandemic consists of going to your cabin to watch a video.  At the end of the video a code is displayed.  On this day it was 881.  Using the phone we were instructed to dial this code to record having watched the video.

Billy will have to tell us if he is *also* told to dial 881.  Perhaps rotating phone numbers is all a big lie! 🙂