I recently completed a seven night Alaska cruise out of Seattle on the Celebrity Edge with a group of eight family members. Below are my thoughts on sailing on Celebrity Edge.
Cost
The total cost for my cruise was $2,441 for one person in a single balcony stateroom. This included all taxes and port fees ($277), crew tips ($126), basic wifi ($168 if not part of a package) and the Classic drink package (which includes alcohol and if purchased separately is $102/day, though often there are promotions for 20% off). When I booked, I also received $125 onboard credit. I used part of that credit to upgrade my drink package to the Premium drink package when it was on sale for $58 for the week.
This is the most I have paid for a cruise to date. However the departure port is Seattle, where I live, so there was no added cost for transportation.
I also had an Amex Offer for $100 back when spending $500 on Celebrity, so that lowered my cost slightly.
The Good
Overall I was extremely impressed with Celebrity Edge.
- Ship – I have been on a number of cruises in the past 18 months on Virgin, Holland America, and Norwegian. The Celebrity Edge is my favorite of any ship I have sailed on. It is modern (built in 2019) and it shows that a ton of thought went into the design. I think it is an extremely beautiful ship from both the outside and the inside. There are a ton of thoughtful touches, fun art, and innovative updates. For example, there is an entire large section of deck 2 devoted to embarking and disembarking at ports. This “Destination Gateway” area has tons of room for security checks to make the process quick and easy on guests. It isn’t particularly kid friendly (no waterslides or rock climbing), but for me that is a positive as it makes the ship less attractive to families with children. My full review of the ship is available here.
- Food – My family of eight ate in one of the four main dining rooms every night. There were some standard options that were available every night. You could order the location exclusive dishes no matter the restaurant you were in. Though we ate in Cyprus, I was able to order from the Tuscan menu. I enjoyed the included lunch on sea days at Eden Café. I found the most of the desserts were mediocre, but that was the one exception to otherwise great dishes.
- Infinite Verandah – The design choice of the balcony is controversial. It is not a standard balcony, but instead the room is built out to the edge of the ship and part of the wall of window can be lowered so it feels like your entire room is part of the balcony. I love it. It was great to be in my room and have the fresh air of Alaska come in. I can see how it might not work as well in a hot climate. But for Alaska, I can’t imagine there is a better standard balcony stateroom.
The Bad
There wasn’t anything horrible about the cruise. But there were some things I thought could have been done better.
- Celebrity App – Like most cruise line apps, it is buggy. The onboard messaging didn’t always work. It was impossible to use the app to make dining room reservations. It sent me alerts multiple times and at odd times.
- Dinner Reservations – I was traveling with seven other family members and we had “Anytime Dining”. Unfortunately we didn’t realize that reservations were essentially required until we went to dinner the first night. Pretty much all of the 5:30 reservations were booked by then. We had to get early dining times due to young kids in our group. Instead we had to get on the waitlist upon arrival and hope we could get a table. Fortunately we almost always were able to be accommodated. Lesson learned — upon embarkation, you should immediately go to Customer Service and book a reservation for every night.
- Wifi – The basic paid internet is extremely slow. It blocks all streaming services and texting worked only some of the time. I assume they want people to pay to upgrade to the premium internet, but the package I received was pretty miserable.
- Elevators – The Edge is the biggest ship I’ve sailed on and has the least number of elevator banks. Instead of the standard three (forward, mid, aft), there are only two banks of elevator. This means long waits on full sailings. Once you are on the elevator, it seems to stop at every floor. One positive of the elevators is when one arrives, the entire outline of the elevator lights up green (for going up) or red (for going down) so it makes it easy to know which elevator to get on.
- Forward Views – Unless you are a guest in The Retreat (an up-charge area) or pay to use the spa, the only place you can see out the front of the ship is in the gym. For a cruise in Alaska, this is disappointing.
The Mix
These were the things that were more in the middle.
- Service – I would say that the service overall is a step down from Holland America. With that said, we had some amazing servers in the restaurants. But I also had some interactions with staff that were not up to expectation. For example, a couple of times staff would strongly remind us to give them a 10 rating on the customer service survey. Almost to the point nagging.
- Stateroom – I had a unique Single Stateroom with Infinite Verandah. These are the balcony rooms with the controversial Infinite Verandah but smaller than the standard room and only accommodates one guest. I love that the Edge class ships have solo stateroom option. I also love the Infinite Verandah. However, there are things that are big misses about the single rooms. There is not the same level of lighting as the standard rooms, so they feel dark. They also don’t have any drawers so there is no where to put your clothes except to hang them or tuck them in next to the fridge.
Overall I would not hesitate to book a cruise on a Celebrity Edge class ship in the future. I would like to try out The Retreat, the ship-within-a-ship concept, but would be happy with the Single Infinite Verandah again.
Have you sailed on a Celebrity Edge class ship? What did you think? Share in the comments below.