I did my first cruises in the mid-80s in the Mediterranean – around the Greek Islands and on to Istanbul. I did them courtesy of Marriott. They had an award which not only included hotel rooms but also airline tickets, a week’s car rental and a week’s cruise. They are not so generous anymore😊
Fast forward to this year. We just returned from a Barcelona, Spain to Fort Lauderdale cruise. It tied in nicely with a family wedding in Portugal the week prior. Not only does the cruise sector appear to have recovered from the body blow of COVID starting in 2020, this trip showed me how much the ships, the ports of call, the culinary choices, the customer demographic – literally everything has evolved. In the interim, we had done cruises around the Caribbean islands, to Central America, in Alaska. Even compared to those, the sector has leapfrogged.
To start with, this was what’s called a “repositioning” cruise. Cruise lines chop the world up into various high frequency zones - Caribbean, Mediterranean etc. At the end of the busy season in each they reposition ships across zones and those are sold as one way trips from one regional hub to another. They do it twice a year in each direction across the Atlantic, across the Pacific, north and south from Europe to Argentina, Vancouver to Australia etc.
We found one on Celebrity with 4 stops in Alicante in Spain, Gibraltar, Ponta Delgada in the Azores and Bermuda – all new ones for us other than Bermuda we had flown into when it hosted America’s Cup in 2017. Each has a well maintained cruise port. No tendering required in any of these stops though I would have enjoyed that as it involves using the ship's Magic Carpet feature. In each link, you can click through to my Instagram gallery of 10 photos each. Each in different ways brought out how the English, Spanish and Portuguese navies once dominated the oceans. In the Caribbean we have additionally seen the Dutch, French and other European influence.
The Celebrity Ascent is less than a year old. Check out the video below and 4 other Instagram galleries of 10 photos each which showing various aspects of the ship. We signed up for two Inside Access tours which took us through the massive pantry, the laundry room with industrial scale washers, dryers and ironing appliances, the bridge, the engine control room and commentary on the spectacular ship design and hundreds of pieces of art on every deck.
See more of our photos on the Ship as Museum in this Instagram gallery.
The ship has over 30 restaurants and bars. We had dinner at the Cyprus and a sitting of Le Petit Chef, which is as much digital entertainment as fine dining, but mostly patronized the Oceanview Café which had buffets throughout the day. I had a salad breakfast, lunch and dinner with smoked salmon, boiled egg or grilled chicken, followed by a huge bowl of fruit. I got my 10,000 steps each day on the multi-deck jogging trail but still gained some weight. I should have used the gym and the plunge and other pools more😊 Margaret never gains any and had a broader repertoire of food.
See more of our photos on the Ship as Food Haven Instagram gallery of 10 photos.
The ship rotates between 2 brothers as Master Captains - Dimitrios and Tasos Kafetzis. Our cruise had the younger brother, Tasos who is imminently approachable (I saw him out and about every day of the cruise), has a wonderful sense of humor and has his own TikTok channel. He did presentations in the theater on tight maneuvers he has made in many a port which require very skilled usage of the azipods and thrusters (he joked he has done donuts with the ship which is rated at 140,600 gross tons and can carry nearly 4,700 passengers and crew) and showed a time lapse of the ship’s construction, the stabilizers and other innovations on the ship. He also shared the weather forecast which showed rough seas on the way to Bermuda and provided daily updates via the ship intercom which made it easy to understand the diversion he made along the way.
See two more of our galleries of photos of the ship
Other ship angles
Even more ship photos
Celebrity is positioned as a “premium” cruise line for adults. Most on this two-week cruise were in their 50s, 60s and 70s. I was impressed how seasoned most of them are with 25 to 75 cruises under their belt. It gave the cruise a relaxed and spacious feel. On previous cruises, I have been turned off by crowds rushing for food and other scheduled activities. Also in talking to many of these travelers we got a feel for the explosion in cruise formats - river cruises, those aimed at families with kids, theme cruises like those around music, even round the world cruises lasting months.
The ship had Starlink connectivity and I had planned several Zoom and Teams calls and other work. That turned into a sore subject. Celebrity throttled the speeds to 4 mb down and 2 up. Seriously. For a king’s ransom we paid for a laptop and two mobile phones. And the WiFi support in the lounge was disingenuous – “Speedtest does not work at sea” “We don’t know why our parent, Royal Caribbean supports 2 to 3 our speeds on their ships.” “You are not at home and should not expect those speeds” “Most of our customers switch off during cruises”.
Whatever. I have sent my feedback on the poor WiFi to their corporate execs. I cannot wait for Satellite to Cell service to mature and become more affordable.
Overall, it was a fantastic experience and importantly, gave me a chance to reflect on how nicely the sector has matured and evolved over the last few decades, and nicely bounced back after the deep COVID slump.
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