Celebrity Cruises
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Celebrity Luxury
Good food, great cabin and wait staff and they take Gouging the customer to the highest level. Having taken seven (7) cruises in 12 months with equivalent shipping lines Cunard and Holland America Line, I think Celebrity takes relieving guests of their money to new heights. Shore Excursions were up to five times the cost of Viator and Get Your Guide. These companies now offer a quality product and still make a profit. They also get you back to the ship on time. The old bogey of "we will leave without you", no longer holds the fear if it once did. Ship tours experience the same delays on land returning from same destinations. Beverages are exorbitant and people on packages have said it encourages them to drink more to get the value. Even at a discount, the drinks package we were offered would need us to drink 5 alcoholic beverages and a coffee to break even. Responsible Service of Alcohol, I think not! Health guidelines indicate Max 2-3 per day for both genders. Cirrhosis here we come! "Safety is our prime concern" really? No self serve laundry so unless you want to decorate your cabin with underwear, you have to pay $US3 plus gratuity for one pair of knickers to be washed and dried. The price of the knickers per unit is less than the laundry cost. I circumvented this impost by buying several pairs of cotton knickers to wear once and throw away. The real laundry gouging gem is the confiscation on boarding of a clothes steamer. There was a massive pile of confiscated steamers to which mine was added, probably more than 100 appliances. The ban on travel irons is certainly valid as they heat metal up to 475°F. Steamers boil water at 212°F so any metal will only heat to that temperature. The real kicker is that they allow hair straighteners to be used in the cabin. They too can heat up to 475°F. Though my scientific knowledge is limited, my math capability says hair straighteners are more likely to cause a fire than a clothes steamer. The cruise industry is recovering well from Covid19 as is the land-based tour industry. I love cruising but after this blatant gouging, I find myself exploring land-based options on my Starlink internet for which I pay each day, the equivalent of my monthly home internet.