There are a lot of high-maintenance, “Negative Nellie’s” on Cruise Critic (and in particular, the Celebrity board), especially where food comes in. No one has ever starved on a cruise, and food is very subjective. Most have ships have specialty restaurants that you can book (for an upcharge) and have a more upscale dining experience, if that’s your thing. I can’t speak to what Celebrity was pre-Covid, but I just cruised on one of their Edge-class ships in January and loved everything about it. Food quality seemed on par with what you’d expect from a cruise ship. I had some outstanding meals, some good meals and nothing that I thought was terrible. I love the burgers, but many on Cruise Critic hate them. The pizza was the best I’ve had on a cruise ship. The one slightly negative was that I thought kids would be bored on Celebrity, when compared to Royal Carribean and NCL (but I’m cruising without kids at this point in my life, so I don’t care about that!)
Things to consider about older ships - their rates tend to be less than the newest and the biggest ships. Also, if you’re considering a port heavy itinerary (Greece/Med cruises are often port-heavy), I wouldn’t pay a premium to be on the newest & biggest ships, since you’re going to be spending a lot of time exploring ports.
That’s a good point. In 2012 we had a fabulous Western Med cruise on Norwegian, starting/ending in Barcelona It was a way to have “one bedroom” for tours of Pompei and Rome and Florence (with long bus trips, pricey shore excursions) and Cannes and Marseilles. However we did not have all that much time to enjoy the ship amenities. But we liked the vibe, so a few years later we did a Caribbean cruise.
I’m going on a Royal Caribbean cruise in April. It is the coast of California, so it seems silly to pay for shore excursions in Monterey and San Francisco when everyone speaks English and we could always get an Uber back to wherever we need to be.
All the reviews on CC seem to be that my ship is old and the food is subpar. I’m not sure how bad a salad or avocado toast can be (or what the expectation is to make it so subpar).
I just want to float around for 6 days, not go to the grocery store, not deal with life. My expectations are very low so I expect them to be met. I hope everything is very inconvenient so that I have to walk 500 step to get a treat or see a show. I want to get all my steps in.
My big splurge may be to rent an ebike in Monterey and pedal out to Pebble Beach on the 17 mile ride.
I’ve been on about 25 cruises over the course of the last 18 years or so. My overall take is that the food on cruises is mostly banquet quality, which it pretty much has to be when you consider the number of meals they are serving and the size of modern day ships. There are hits and misses but you need to go into it with realistic expectations. Also I think there’s this carryover mentality from the pre-2000 era where cruising was much more truly all inclusive and also much more expensive compared to a typical vacation – and on much smaller ships. I still see news stories about some cruise mishap or another, describing the cruise as the person’s “trip of a lifetime.” But modern day mass market cruising can be a decent bargain compared to a land based trip. At the end of the day you need to go into it with realistic expectations. And I think many of the complaints you read on Cruise Critic are from people with unrealistic expectations.
Best meals I ever had on a ship was Celebrity Mercury, Alaska itinerary - they had a “secret” dining room, cost $2 p/p - all the items served were fresh caught/raised/grown in Alaska - the staff that wanted to promote to server in the main dining rooms were our servers, so they bent over backwards to ensure the best service - they only had seating for 20, and there were several evenings (over 10 nights) where it was just we 2. I fell in love with the beef stew, Alaskan raised beef, freshest veggies ever and by far the best service with an incredible window table. We only found out about it because my friend is chatty and engaged a worker about the food on night 1.
OP here with an update. We ended up choosing Celebrity - the cost was more reasonable for all four of us and we decided it would offer more offer entertainment for the kids, as well as allowing us more freedom in choosing what to explore in the ports. Really looking forward to it!