Thrifty Couple Celebrity Edge Review Jan 27th to Feb 3

[cgolf]

During the day we caught a little of two of the live music acts, The Reckless Charms and Michael Redden.


Initial impresdions were that both were very good. Overall there was a lot of live music around the ship, it seems like a lot more than we have seen on other ships, which is really awesome.

 

[cgolf]

The walking/jogging path was really a great feature, being spread across two levels. We went inside and found the shop area. We also found that Cafe Al Bacio had gluten free snacks. We walked through the casino to see what they had, I have only played slots 3 times in my life, so the casino isn’t a big draw for me.

 

[cgolf]

We checked out Eden and found it looked like a really nice space with lots of areas to relax during the day. We found the outdoor seating area just outside of Eden and noticed that they have speakers out there so you can here the live music from Eden out there. Of course the mirrored hall with the statue things and spooky music is really cool.


We were a bit bummed by the lack of seating and views on deck 5 with how the lifeboats are stored. We are used to having a promenade deck where you can sit and relax and listen to the ocean while being protected from the rain and sun.

 

[cgolf]

Sail Out!


We started leaving about 15 minutes early and I was on the phone down on deck 5. I very quickly found out how out of shape I was as I ran up the steps to deck 14 to meet my wife out on the Magic Carpet.


Sail out out on the Magic Carpet was really awesome. It was a really unique experience and made me forget that we didn’t have access to a forward facing view.

 

[cgolf]

Last post for tonight. Tomorrow and beyond will get more interesting because I will start sharing our hits and misses.


Our first meal meal was in Tuscan and the food and service was very good. The food was definitely better than what we have had in the MDRs on Disney and RCCL.


We did get a reminder that cruise ships should use sliding doors on both sets of doors that lead out to deck. It was windy, we didn’t know at the time, and my wife was first out and as I was just walking through the inner double door going out the outer door opened. The wind grabbed the inner door and slammed it shut super hard knocking the plastic off that covered the mechanism that latches the door. Thankfully nobody was walking behind me or it would not have been good and it is a miracle the glass didn’t break. Have seen this before on Disney with their big wooden doors.


After dinner we went and saw Billy Garan a comedian in the main theater. He was funny and it was a good show to get the trip started.


That night we learned the sounds the ship makes as it is sailing, as each ship is unique. The noise we heard was an intermittent light knocking sound. This may be the noise if have read that others have complained about. By the second night it no longer bothered me.

 

[Frozen2014]

Really enjoying your review so far. We've only sailed Royal but can see us trying Celebrity one day.

 

[cgolf]

Day 2 Breakfast

We ended up eating breakfast in the Oceanview cafe everyday and I did want to share what I noticed for those that are gluten free. There was gluten free bread available every day, but unlike lunch it seemed to be behind the counter but wasn’t a big deal. I noticed that the breakfast sausage and all cold cuts and items made with these were marked that you should ask about the allergens. My guess is they are, but they are worried about cross contamination, this will show up on a later day too at a different venue.


I don’t know if you could get gluten free waffles or donuts, as I never asked. I generally don’t eat these for breakfast. For me I ended up doing smoked salmon, cream cheese, onions, and capers with bacon and maybe some eggs. This is pretty much my breakfast on all 15 cruises I have been on. You could say I am a creature of habit lol. I did branch out and try an omelet station twice and the feta and spinach omelet was delicious. I still got my salmon though, just less of it


The Oceanview cafe did have a selection of juices that were pretty good, especially the more tropical flavored one, and a nice selection of teas. As the week went on, I found out I could survive without tea or coffee and just 3-4 sodas a day, I need to translate this to my daily life where I have a big coffee and a caffeinated tea in the morning along with a 1/2 liter of soda a day.

 

[mevelandry]

Very cool so far. I’m not certain if I like the ultra-modern look just yet (would probably need to cruise on the Edge to know for sure) but I applaud their seeming efforts to go “all-in” with it.

I’m not a GF eater but I’m always appreciative of efforts made to inform people about what’s in what food wrt allergies and diets.

Now, if there was only a cilantro-free designation...

I need this in my life.

 

[cgolf]

Day 2 AM

We first went up to check the temperature of the pools and we decided not to swim, because like most ships the pools are cool to cold in the morning. It was very windy, and the magic carpet was closed. The wind continued throughout the day. We decided to do the general trivia session in the morning and got a respectable 9 out of 16, but someone got 16 out of 16 and won. This trivia session was done on paper. Other than that we kind of just wandered the ship checking everything out.


We ate lunch again in the Oceanview and wanted to mention the ice cream area. They offer ice cream and I believe one flavor of sorbet for no charge and gelato for a cost. Us being thrifty went with the free option and didn’t inquire about the price of the gelato.


The sorbet flavor was the same flavor that was offered in the MDRs the previous night. Our favorite was the day they had coconut sorbet and ice cream, they were both excellent.

 

[starvenger]

I need this in my life.

Aside: I’m in no way equating my distaste for cilantro (I used to gag on anything that had a strong cilantro flavour) to a legit issue like celiac.

But if we were to eliminate cilantro/coriander from the face of the earth I would not complain.

 

[cgolf]

Day 2 PM

We explored the ship some more and looked in the shops to confirm that we weren’t going to be buying much in the shops. We did end up buying the Edge hat for 25$, which was at the high end of what I will pay for a hat. Unfortunately, the other Edge specific items were very expensive. While the bamboo tees are probably really comfortable, I would never pay that much for any shirt. Celebrity really should have some lower priced items like magnets, coasters, cotton tees, etc to compliment the high test offerings.


At 3 we did the Table Maze in the club. This was essentially an escape room on a table and the goal is to be the first solve the puzzle to get a key to open the prize chest. We paired with a group of 3 others and while we weren’t the first to solve it, we did solve it with 6 minutes left. This was a very fun activity and hope in the future they have a couple different versions so that this could take place a couple of times a cruise. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the club. The laser maze and archery looked like fun.


One thing that I am noticing as I am writing this is we really didn’t do a lot of activities, but we always felt really busy exploring different parts of the ship. I really don’t think we ever got bored.

 

[cgolf]

Day 2 Supper

Before we went to supper I went to the next nights dining room, we rotated dining rooms every night, and preordered the next days meal at about 5:30. This was done at the entrance where you check in to get your table. If you were going to stay in the same dining room every night, you would just preorder after your meal was finished like you would on RCCL or Disney.


We ate in Normandie and our dinner service was very slow. My wife noticed that the head waiter was struggling to get her teams to do their jobs and keep the services flowing properly. An example was we were given our desert menus and after waiting 20 minutes the head server came over and took our order and then delivered our deserts. I didn’t preorder my gluten free order that night, but I chose gluten free items off the menu, so that shouldn’t have been the cause of the slow service.

 

[cgolf]

Day 2 Show (Pictures)

After supper we changed and wandered around a bit and then went to the show around 8:50, mistake on our part. When we got there we tried to get a seat in the balcony so that if the show was no good we could easily slip out. When we walked in we found that once you were all the way in the seats were reserved for suite guests. So we sat on the stools behind the seats only to learn the whole balcony was reserved!


Big picture we aren’t mad that they reserve spots for the suite guests. What bothered us was it wasn’t clear to anyone but the suite guests that this was a thing. After we added it to our comment card we learned that the balcony was reserved for suite guests for the 3 Celebrity theater productions, but not the other 4 shows. I think it would be helpful to list this in the daily planner and/or announce it at the first nights show, because the theater ended up being standing room only pretty much for every late show. We felt like they needed to make the early showtime earlier so that more people could make the early time, because the 2 times our dinner service was quick enough the first show wasn’t as crowded.


Luckily we got a good seat for Kaleidoscope. I do want to a bit about my music preferences because I know our opinion of the show differs from many. I grew up listening to the oldies when with my dad, but my personal tastes were very wide. I listened to a lot of punk, hair bands, R&B, some country, and classic rock. My take on music is that I like great singers and great guitar. My ipod ranges from Roy Orbison and CCR all the way up to some of the latest pop songs.


The reason for the background is because Kaleidoscope flat out blew us away. The 4 main singers are incredibly talented and I apologize to those next to us because I was singing along. This was not only the best stage show I have seen at sea, it is second to seeing Joseph on Broadway in the 90s. The singing was on point, the dancing was great and the song selection was incredible. I really wish I would have video taped some of the songs or gotten to see both the 7 and 9 pm show. I don’t really have the proper words to explain how much we liked the show. I was definitely bummed though that the crowd didn’t seem to be into it or appreciate how talented the singers were.


Unfortunately while this show was a grand slam for us, I think it missed with a majority of the people at the show. I know that Celebrity was hoping to draw a younger crowd on the Edge, but that has not happened yet. At one of our meals, one of our retired table mates at the two top next to us asked my wife how it felt to be one of the younger couples onboard. She didn’t think about it too much till she looked and the crowd in the theater and realized that our table mates were right. I don’t fault Celebrity for the show choice, because you can’t just change a show when you realize that their target demographic is not sailing the ship yet like they expected.

 

[cgolf]

To wrap up day 2 I forgot to mention we played the free 5 buck slots play in the casino and my 4th time ever playing slots lasted about 3 minutes. Still not for me lol.

We did catch Billy Garan’s late night show and again it was pretty good. So 2 days down and besides a slow dinner service and some cool pools everything is going great so far.

 

[cgolf]

TDay 3 Morning and Early afternoon

The morning and early afternoon were chill out and explore time. I know we listened to the rooftop singer for a while and hung out by the pools and just enjoyed our time on the ship. Again it is strange, but we definitely felt like we were really busy. We did look into booking another Celebrity cruise and learned that our Captains club status already got us a 1 category stateroom upgrade, from an 8 to a 7. This on some levels seems like more appreciation from Celebrity during our first cruise that we got from Disney for our first 5 cruises.


We went to the Galapagos island presentation and that is going to be a bucket list trip for us some day. The presenter had been on the trip and she used her own pictures in the presentation. She did a great job with the presentation, and you could tell how much she enjoyed the trip.


Also forgot to add that we went to the port shopping talk on day 2, and we sat up front and won the guava berry rum minis. Being thrifty cruisers you would think we would have used these to save on drinks, but nope we were good and didn’t do that.

 

[cgolf]

We had lunch at Oceanview again and I want to give credit to Celebrity for having a nice gluten free dessert selection. The best thing was that their deserts actually had a lot of flavor. The red velvet cake was amazing. Generally we have found that the cakes on the other lines gluten free or not generally didn’t have a lot of flavor, so this was a nice surprise.


I added a pic from the Magic Carpet at sea and the rope perspective because I just really like that picture. My wif got a pic of the Edge from shore and as we were walking back to the ship we saw police taking pictures of the Edge and selfies with the Edge in the background. The Edge seemed to draw some attention wherever we were.


We sailed into San Juan and docked around 3:30 We got off the ship and bought some stones at a rock shop and stayed away from the jewelry stores because they were crazy busy. We weren’t out too long before we headed back to the ship. Tonight we dined in Cyprus and encountered better service than the previous night, but the chef’s didn’t get my preorder slip. It didn’t seem to really slow them down that they got it late. The food as always was very good.

 

[cgolf]

After Dinner we went to the guest entertainer show, Marcus Terell. He did a show of mostly current pop music and included two of the celebrity theatre singers and the Celebrity band. He was a very good singer and his upper range was incredible. In his lower range he was human and the Celebrity singers really shined. Marcus seemed like a great guy. After one of the Celebrity singers nailed his solo bit you could see them goofing around on stage as the lights briefly went down. He was also at the other shows and really got into them and seemed super humble. This was another huge win for us in the show department, but we definitely saw many people get up and walk out during this show. So for us the Edge is delivering entertainment at a level we have not seen before on a ship.


After the show we were able to get up on deck and get some pictures from the Magic carpet as we sailed out. I hope they still show up well after I shrunk the photos to fit on the site, as they were all very low light.

 

[cgolf]

Day 4 AM

We got up at our normal 7 am and we went and grabbed breakfast. After breakfast we grabbed some pictures of the Tortola from the boat. The Norwegian Bliss was docked next to us, it wasn’t the prettiest ship that is for sure, but looks like it has a lot of crazy stuff to do. Our shore excursion wasn’t until 12:45 so we decided to get off the boat for a bit and check out the small shopping area. We ended up not buying anything and went back to the ship for a while.



We chilled out by the pool for a bit and then a little after 11 we went to the Mast Grill to eat. It turns out they don’t support gluten free due to the potential for contamination. I ended up eating some cheese and onions. On our way off the ship we stopped at Cafe al Bacio and I grabbed some gluten free snacks to get some more food in my belly.

 

[cgolf]

Our shore excursion was the Gorda Baths. We took a ferry boat ride from Tortola to Virgin Gorda and then took a vehicle ride to the baths. We still saw quite a bit of damage on the island, but I decided against taking pictures of it, it just didn’t seem right to me to take those pictures. Once we were dropped off we took an adventurous path, but I wouldn’t call it a treacherous path to the beach. There is some maneuvering over rocks and uneven ground. I could see that some people with mobility issues would have problems here. I didn’t see an area for someone with a walker or scooter to get down to the beach.


The first beach was very nice and there were some great spots to get pictures. After spending about 30 minutes there, we ventured into the cave. The path was challenging. It started with a ladder down approximately 10 feet and there were some narrow and low spots. There were also a couple of spots that a rope was needed. The cave was really cool, but shorter than we expected. We then spent 30 to 45 minutes on a second beach and got a ride back to the ferry and then back to Tortola and the ship. We got back about 15 minutes before all aborad.

 

[cgolf]

We went to supper in Cosmopolitan and had another great meal. After supper we changed and got ready for the show. Having learned from the first show we got there around 8:30 for the 9:00 show. Tonight’s show was Land of Khalida. The storyline is essentially that there were 4 groups that were ruled by 1 leader and they had drifted apart after that leader was gone and now after time they were looking for a new leader to bring them back together. This was a great show and a lot of fun to watch. We especially liked that they used water as a special effect, something we have never seen before on stage. We also saw a random guest get up on stage and dance for a couple of minutes before he was chased off lol. The crowd did react better to this show than the first main stage show.