In this second post about the brand-new Celebrity Edge I’m going to review the food and the rooms. I have heard so many people come back from Celebrity cruises and they seem to always talk about the entertainment and the food. We covered entertainment in the first post, so here we go with dining and accommodations.
While the buffet and restaurants were as beautiful as the other areas of the ship, the food, like the entertainment for me was hit and miss. As a general rule of thumb, when I am really hungry I tend to not be too discerning. I was nearing the “hangry” stage on the first day as we went to the buffet to get our grub on for lunch. I was not impressed. The food was average. I’m not a food critic, so I’m not going to go into long descriptions of what was missing. In general, they could have benefited from a few more staples to cater to the US stomach. Seemed like they were going for fancy. There was a pizza station in the back but the pizza was pretty blah. This was pretty consistent each time we ate in there.
The main dining room was good but not great. The portions were a little small, which is ok, but I was not blown away. Service was good, and the right speed for us. You did not feel rushed but neither were you waiting forever for courses to come out. They were also pretty strict on the seating arrangements, but that was more due to space constraints. We had a group of 6-8 that wanted to sit together and they had to seat us separately. If you want to dine with family, I’d highly recommend picking a dining time and setting that up in advance.
The specialty dining, different story completely. This is what I had heard so much about and had been waiting to experience. We went to the Rooftop Bar and Grill. We did not have a reservation, but the hostess told us if we wanted to watch the movie, she was expecting a couple no-shows and we could have their table if they did not show up in 15 minutes. We took a seat and 5 minutes later she came over to seat us. We were able to continue to watch the movie, “Dirty Dancing” at our table under the stars. Very romantic setting. The food was incredible and the service was so outstanding, I actually went back to my cabin to get more money for a larger tip. By they way, tipping was not expected, I just wanted to do it because our server Rolondo was so outstanding. His recommendations were spot on. My only complaint is that we did not start with the dessert.
The rooms were beautiful and like many of the other areas, they are trying out some new concepts. Most notably is the Infinite Veranda suites. These have taken the place of the balconies. Basically, there is an area for the balcony with floor to ceiling windows. The top window comes all the way down and the whole room opens up to the fresh air. It makes the room seem much larger. That was pretty cool, but there are serious issues with the design.
One, big one is that in the morning there is not a way to segment off the balcony effectively. You also have to have the blinds up in order to open the window. If one person wants to sit out on the “balcony” and enjoy a coffee, you basically wake up the other person because the window is noisy, takes about 30 seconds to open and you bath the room in sunlight to open it. Our room was on the Starboard side and we got a lot of noise from the magic carpet. You also get light from the Magic Carpet making it necessary to close the window so you can close the blinds. They should have moved the blinds back away from the window. Some rooms are actually visible from the Magic Carpet so beware when changing. The other issue is one of managing the staff. We had the window open one evening and around 2:00am they decided to power wash the decks. It seriously sounded like they were in the room with us. Seemed like something they could have done at another time.
Ok, a big kudos to Celebrity for the next point. They have put thought into designing the ship for and catering to special needs people. With “Special Needs at Sea” they have staff trained to deal with autistic passengers. They have also done a good job designing the rooms for those in wheel chairs. Features like special designs in the closets that you can pull clothing bars down with a handle allow disabled passengers to hang their clothes up and still take advantage of the full closet space. The bathrooms have showers big enough to sit on a bench rather than a small stool.
There are of course some amazing suites on board. Putting some eye candy pictures in here. These are for the high rollers and are pretty incredible. Short of winning the lottery the walk through here are probably as close as I will ever get to staying in one of these, but hey, dare to dream right.
If you would like to see more pictures of our trip on Celebrity Edge feel free to visit our Celebrity Edge Facebook Album. Warning, there may be spoiler alerts for the next posts!