Celebrity cruises - Behind the scenes

Hmmmm, it's not often you'll hear me criticising Celebrity Cruises. I think they're a great cruise line with some of the most amazing ships at sea, (click here to see my review of the Celebrity Eclipse).
The one thing that does bug me about them however is the amount of things you're charged for whilst your onboard and the cost of those things in general.
If you're not careful you can walk away from your cruise with a huge bill on your onboard account and I don't think Celebritys latest brain wave is going to help this situation much.

Kosher food that will taste good?

Anyone that's been reading my blog for a while will know that Halal and Kosher food has always been a bit of a bug bear with me. It annoys me that so many cruise lines offer Kosher meals but not Halal and even when they do offer Kosher meals they're pre-packed microwave meals. Not really the standard I'd expect on a cruise ship!

Looking to improve on this situation, (somewhat, there still isn't a Halal option), Celebrity are set to launch a range of 'premium Kosher meals'.

Celebritys Concierge Pillow Menu

A customer called me up today looking to book a concierge class cabin aboard a Celebrity ship; he knew he got a lot of extra benefits with it, but wasn't sure exactly what the benefits were.
Quickly summarising for him I ran through the list of extras he could expect:

• Priority Check in
• Complimentary welcome sparkling wine
• Nightly deliveries of hors d'oeuvres
• A second hand held dryer, (useful if there's more than one woman in the cabin).
• Egyptian cotton bath towels
• Complimentary shoe shine service
• Express luggage delivery
• Celebrity tote bag
• Golf umbrella and high quality binoculars in your room
• An extended room service breakfast menu and my favourite
• A pillow menu.

I'd seen this benefit several times but was never sure exactly what you got with it. How many pillows can you really have on a menu? How many different kinds of pillow are there?
Well, after doing a bit of research on the internet you're about to find out........

i-Art work

Celebrity Cruises are introducing self-guided art tours on the i-Pad. An addition to the 'Celebrity Life' series of entertainment and enrichment activities that I’ve blogged on before, the i-Pads on each Solstice class ship house deck plans with select artworks flagged on every level.