I’m not an experienced reviewer so apologies in advance if this is a bit rambling!
We booked our 9 night cruise on Beyond in November last year. Having missed out on our Apex cruise 2 years ago we were excited to try a new ship and Beyond was practically straight out of the shipyard. Most of our previous cruises were on Solstice class ships and we are big fans especially of Silhouette and Reflection. We had booked a porthole view veranda stateroom on deck 6 but when we received the email about 3 weeks prior to embarkation asking for bids to upgrade we decided to go for Aquaclass and ended up with an infinite veranda stateroom on deck 9. This is not something we would normally do but since we hadn’t cruised for nearly 3 years we thought it would be a treat.
We had our RAT’s at Boots on the Friday morning, negative results within an hour and flew to Barcelona for overnight stay prior to sailing on the Saturday. Our check-in time at port was 12-12.30 however we arrived at port by 11.30 and stepped on the ship about 15 mins later. Vaccination status, test results, express passes were all checked on our phones, also passports were checked. Access to our stateroom was available right away as sea passes were waiting at the door. Videos for the muster drill are available on the Celebrity app and we watched these on the way to the port, all that was left was to report to our muster station before 4pm where you are given some additional info then you’re ticked off the list as having completed muster. Simples!
The ship interiors are visually stunning as I expected, I’ve been following the progress over the last few months and following Captain Kate McCue on social media for some time. She was Captain on Edge when operations were paused in March 2020 and ended up being on board for 311 days, her posts and videos were very interesting and provided a little bit of ‘cruise fix’ at that time. We were advised that they were sailing with a much reduced passenger capacity of 1100 but from June they will have
around 2000 or more on most cruises.
The layout is a bit different to Solstice class ships. The Martini bar now dominates the centre of the grand plaza and is much bigger. No Passport bar, Ensemble lounge or Cellar Masters. We liked all the bars, particularly my husband liked Craft Social for sports on a big screen, Eden has lots of lovely areas for relaxing. The only issue with bar service was on sailaway from Barcelona in the Sunset bar but husband nipped down to the Mast bar and got served right away.
We had purchased a speciality dining package so ate 4 nights speciality, 3 nights in Blu and 2 nights Oceanview. Highlights were Eden restaurant and Le Voyage restaurant, these meals were outstanding but all in all no complaints about the food offerings. Cafe al Bacio is one of my favourite spots, it has been moved down to deck 4, it’s larger and still has the great selection of teas, coffees and cakes.
Regarding the Infinite Veranda, this turned out to be a very small negative for me. Don’t think it bothered my husband that much. There is a blind on the window and as far as I could make out it is either up or down, no in between, I wake early and normally like to have a peek outside the curtains and maybe step onto the balcony. It irritated me that I couldn’t do that, to open the blind would flood the room with light, not fair to a still sleeping husband!
The space taken up by the veranda area did make the room look bigger but we didn’t really use that bit of space. I prefer a traditional balcony.
All in all, Beyond was a great experience and we thoroughly enjoyed our holiday.
We booked our 9 night cruise on Beyond in November last year. Having missed out on our Apex cruise 2 years ago we were excited to try a new ship and Beyond was practically straight out of the shipyard. Most of our previous cruises were on Solstice class ships and we are big fans especially of Silhouette and Reflection. We had booked a porthole view veranda stateroom on deck 6 but when we received the email about 3 weeks prior to embarkation asking for bids to upgrade we decided to go for Aquaclass and ended up with an infinite veranda stateroom on deck 9. This is not something we would normally do but since we hadn’t cruised for nearly 3 years we thought it would be a treat.
We had our RAT’s at Boots on the Friday morning, negative results within an hour and flew to Barcelona for overnight stay prior to sailing on the Saturday. Our check-in time at port was 12-12.30 however we arrived at port by 11.30 and stepped on the ship about 15 mins later. Vaccination status, test results, express passes were all checked on our phones, also passports were checked. Access to our stateroom was available right away as sea passes were waiting at the door. Videos for the muster drill are available on the Celebrity app and we watched these on the way to the port, all that was left was to report to our muster station before 4pm where you are given some additional info then you’re ticked off the list as having completed muster. Simples!
The ship interiors are visually stunning as I expected, I’ve been following the progress over the last few months and following Captain Kate McCue on social media for some time. She was Captain on Edge when operations were paused in March 2020 and ended up being on board for 311 days, her posts and videos were very interesting and provided a little bit of ‘cruise fix’ at that time. We were advised that they were sailing with a much reduced passenger capacity of 1100 but from June they will have
around 2000 or more on most cruises.
The layout is a bit different to Solstice class ships. The Martini bar now dominates the centre of the grand plaza and is much bigger. No Passport bar, Ensemble lounge or Cellar Masters. We liked all the bars, particularly my husband liked Craft Social for sports on a big screen, Eden has lots of lovely areas for relaxing. The only issue with bar service was on sailaway from Barcelona in the Sunset bar but husband nipped down to the Mast bar and got served right away.
We had purchased a speciality dining package so ate 4 nights speciality, 3 nights in Blu and 2 nights Oceanview. Highlights were Eden restaurant and Le Voyage restaurant, these meals were outstanding but all in all no complaints about the food offerings. Cafe al Bacio is one of my favourite spots, it has been moved down to deck 4, it’s larger and still has the great selection of teas, coffees and cakes.
Regarding the Infinite Veranda, this turned out to be a very small negative for me. Don’t think it bothered my husband that much. There is a blind on the window and as far as I could make out it is either up or down, no in between, I wake early and normally like to have a peek outside the curtains and maybe step onto the balcony. It irritated me that I couldn’t do that, to open the blind would flood the room with light, not fair to a still sleeping husband!
The space taken up by the veranda area did make the room look bigger but we didn’t really use that bit of space. I prefer a traditional balcony.
All in all, Beyond was a great experience and we thoroughly enjoyed our holiday.
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