We made an attempt to sail with friends in early 2024, which did not come to fruition due to a childcare scheduling conflict. While they ended up sailing Norwegian Epic in February, Kayla and I opted to stick with our originally planned booking on Celebrity Ascent the month afterward. Along with the previous ship, Beyond, Ascent had some layout improvements over Edge and Apex that I was excited to investigate – such as an extended Sunset Bar, more navigable Martini Bar and infinity pool.

Since we were sailing without kids, there were a few opportunities to treat ourselves to a shore excursion, a Chef’s Table experience, premium drinks, and specialty dining at Eden. I also splurged on a behind-the-scenes ship tour where I was able to indulge my curiosity and catch a glimpse of the “future” bridge.

Like all cruise lines, Celebrity has its quirks and rough spots, but this sailing was a good counterpoint to our less-than-ideal early 2023 experience on Bliss for what an adults trip could be. The service, food, onboard experience, and drinks were solid with only a few exceptions. We were happy with our choice to sail Ascent and would certainly pick it again in future under similar conditions.

Travel in

Our early-morning flight to FLL on Air Canada had no weather delays, and we arrived to slightly overcast skies. Ascent sails out of Port Everglades so we didn’t need to make a further southbound trip to PortMiami. Terminal 25, used for the newer Celebrity ships, is about a 12 minute drive from the airport, or maybe 15-20 minutes from an airport-area hotel.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get a room for our pre-cruise day at the north Hampton Inn we’d liked in 2022, and many of the hotels in the area at 90+ days out had nightly rates of over $400 CAD when including taxes and other miscellaneous fees. We stayed at La Quinta Inn and Suites Ft. Lauderdale Airport for $366 CAD, which included a hotel shuttle and breakfast. We were still able to walk to the nearby plaza for lunch and dinner, despite it being across a small canal.

La Quinta was absolutely slammed that day, immediately evidenced by the 1 hour, 6 minute wait for the airport shuttle to arrive (after calling the property as instructed.) We had sufficient time to chat with other Canadians in pickup area E and discovered that this was the week of March Break in Quebec and New Brunswick, one week before the Ontario schools. I was in the process of looking up Uber and Lyft pricing when the shuttle did actually show up.

The hotel representative was very clear that no early checkin was available, so we dropped off our larger luggage in a conference room and walked over to Miller Ale House in the plaza for lunch and drinks. After that, we returned to the hotel and napped/read by the outdoor pool until the permitted 3pm checkin time. A note for future cruises out of Florida: always a good idea to have shorts and a bathing suit in your backpack for easy access.

The hotel also featured a very slow elevator and beat-up furniture in the rooms, but the bed was comfortable and shower temperature/pressure were also adequate. After relaxing for the remainder of the afternoon and into the evening, we walked back over to the Oakwood Plaza and had a late dinner at Sal’s Italian Ristorante. I would recommend Sal’s, and it also met Kayla’s desire for a non-chain restaurant.

Breakfast on the Saturday was served 7-10am, and the lobby area was very busy around 9am with many food and drink selections in the process of being restocked. We went back to the room afterwards, repacked our suitcases, then requested an UberX to the port.

Embarkation

The drive to terminal 25 from La Quinta took 17 minutes, and with our arrival at 11:37am we breezed through check-in and security, stepping onboard at 11:49. Another nice Celebrity benefit is that cabins are open for luggage drop-off, so we got rid of our suitcases and collected our ship cards. On Day 1, unless you’ve gotten a Concierge class or suite cabin, the buffet is your complimentary lunch option, so we headed there next for some food.

Cabin

Our cabin was 7195, a balcony Edge Stateroom which featured the Infinite Veranda – no real changes except the colour scheme from our cabin 7267 on Edge two years prior. While not being an interconnecting cabin, throughout the cruise we could hear doors closing in the hallway, muffled TV sounds from upstairs and adjacent neighbours. We thankfully did not experience any snapping, creaking, or grinding noises from the ship itself.

The Infinite Veranda worked well for our needs on this sailing. One afternoon we napped with it open, and enjoyed the sea air while resting (despite a significant increase in humidity – the cabin and bathroom mirrors were completely fogged up when we awoke.) There is still a small amount of light that comes in even with the shade down and partitions closed, so it’s not a completely pitch-black experience like in an inside cabin, but we still both slept well.

Ship

As advertised, Ascent is slightly longer than Edge and Apex, and that extra space was used wisely. While there were also some changes in the Retreat area that we didn’t experience, the critical improvements for us were:

• Expansion of the Sunset Bar at the aft of the ship, which made it a much more usable and accessible venue
• Expansion of the Martini Bar from a semi-circle shape to a more hexagonal shape with two longer sides, which also enhanced usability and provided much-needed additional seating
• Introduction of infinity pool on side of Deck 15
• New specialty dining venue, Le Voyage
• Addition of the World Class bar mid-ship

There’s a new collection of art featured around the ship, and it was neat to see the evolution and changes from the first iteration of this class of vessel, even though the layout is essentially the same.

With these changes, some of the complaints I’d had about Edge were entirely resolved. I especially enjoyed the Sunset Bar, and spent a few evenings out there trying to identify other ships or catch a rocket launch. The infinity pool is most assuredly not a hot tub, which was a surprise to a number of passengers, but it also wasn’t a bad thing.

On Day 3, I also did a paid behind-the-scenes ship tour, and came away impressed. Ascent and Icon of the Seas were the two ships, at the time, that had Royal Caribbean Group’s “future bridge” configuration. Celebrity’s tour does include a trip to the bridge! We probably spent 10 minutes there and heard from a number of the staff who operate the vessel. While we were asked not to take pictures, all of the controls are height-adjustable and there’s a lot more open space between equipment than in videos I’ve seen of Beyond. Many large screens are in place to show navigational, power, and safety information.

I was particularly impressed with the environmental focus of the tour. It was clear that the staff charged with this responsibility took their jobs very seriously and tried to build even more efficient processes, over and above corporate or general maritime requirements. Much can certainly be said about the environmental impact of cruise ships and cruising – and Ascent is still powered by conventional marine fuels, not LNG – but certainly there is insight and the right forward-looking attitude on the individual and team level.

Back in the public areas, one noticeable situation in many venues was the piped-in, heavily corporate-curated playlist that was louder than strictly necessary. Watermelon Sugar was played so often it was hard not to take note of it.

Food: main dining and buffet

The food experiences we’ve had on Celebrity, even just in the buffet or complimentary dining rooms, have been some of the better meals we’ve had either on land or at sea. We went into this cruise with high expectations for the defaults.

In mid-2023 through to early 2024, suspiciously timed with changes in corporate leadership, there were numerous reports on CruiseCritic and Reddit about cutbacks to the Celebrity experience. The most obvious one: gratuities were no longer included in “All Included” rates for bookings made after October 2023, which is worth a few hundred bucks to the bottom line and makes a complete mockery out of the naming. There were also suite-related changes, with a lot of hand-wringing about losing dedicated butlers for Sky suites. That one didn’t affect us directly, but I can appreciate how people would feel screwed over, when they had booked higher-priced cabins expecting a certain service level.

Then pictures started emerging of drastically reduced main dining menus, removing classic “available everyday” options and leaning heavily into mashed potatoes (perceived as an inexpensive vegetable/starch option.) Reaction in these Internet sub-communities was scathing. I was concerned that we’d be affected and potentially displeased with the food, while it was a small consolation that we were booked on the newest Edge-class ship. The E-series ships didn’t seem to have as many negative reports as older vessels in the fleet.

Luckily, this set of dining changes was (mostly) rolled back fleetwide by the end of 2023 – apparently at least some of these gripes did make it back to corporate – and so we were able to get standard options like shrimp cocktail every night. We also didn’t notice any downgrade in meat quality and felt there were a good number of options available at each seating.

I really enjoyed trying new options for my main courses on this cruise, branching out a bit from my usual meat and pasta selections. The nightly fish options were prepared well and tasty. The biggest letdown was the Tuscan restaurant’s exclusive offering of Strozzapreti Carbonara. It’s kind of an odd noodle form factor, and the sauce didn’t taste quite like I’d expect.

The lunch and dinner offerings at Oceanview Cafe on Ascent were comparable to our 2022 Edge sailing, remaining slightly more upscale than our NCL cruises and certainly exceeding the Carnival and MSC self-serve options. In a large win for Celebrity, their Greek salad bar options did include a full complement of olives (unlike Breakaway.)

Breakfast, aside from the couple of daily special/unique offerings, was much more comparable to other cruise lines and not really a stand-out offering. There were also late night pasta, pizza, sandwich, meat/cheese, and dessert options which I thoroughly appreciated.

On early press and promotional sailings of Ascent, the last day featured a lunch “seafood extravaganza” in the buffet including lobster tails, but by the time we sailed it was down to shrimp and crawfish only – we skipped it.

After this sailing, I maintain that it’s certainly possible to sail on Edge-class ships and have enjoyable, delicious food throughout the cruise without needing to upgrade to the specialty options. You should, however, take that opinion with a raised eyebrow as we did eat at two upcharge venues on this trip.

Food: specialty dining

One of my indulgences this cruise was going to be a dinner at Eden, which consistently gets stellar reviews for both the food and experience. Availability was limited even before sailing, with several nights having no available timeslots. However, that’s also common to have the app and website open up only a small subset of tables for pre-booking, and more dining times are available once onboard if you’re quick.

Turns out, the night I’d made the reservation (Day 6/Grand Cayman) overlapped with the second “chic” night in the main dining room, and that menu usually features complimentary lobster. While I knew I couldn’t be as gluttonous as on previous sailings – additional lobster tails now came with an additional charge – that explained why a 6:30pm seating at Eden wasn’t too hard to get that night. I figured as one of our first tasks onboard, we’d go and change out the reservation to a different evening if available.

Just a few days before sailing, though, a CruiseCritic comment indicated that adjusting the date of a dining reservation was actually considered to be a cancellation and rebooking at the current shipboard price. That’s always going to be more expensive than the pre-cruise purchase – and the price had increased drastically since I’d reserved and paid a few months prior. Kayla wasn’t too bothered with the exact evening when we went, and I figured I’d be ordering the lobster casserole at Eden anyway, so we kept the reservation as-is.

Before we get to Eden, though: a few hours after we boarded, I was scrolling through the app and noted that the Chef’s Table experience at Le Voyage had availability on Day 3. We’d booked the Carnival version of Chef’s Table for a cruise that we unfortunately had to cancel, so wistful regret set in. I knew there was limited availability just based on the size of the venue, so we snapped up our seats, damn the cost ($169US/person, plus 20% gratuity; the final amount charged to our cabin was $405.60US.)

Chef’s Table is a whole-evening experience. We arrived at Le Voyage slightly prior to the start time at 5:30pm, and were immediately greeted and led to a table set for 4 in a side room. The table could have been configured for 6, but it ended up being us and only one other couple.

What followed through the evening was an 8-course menu (this includes an extra dessert course) that was one of the best meals I’ve had in my life, considering food, wine, service, and the overall experience. We did not take the extra-charge wine tasting addon, but stuck to drinks included in our beverage package, and there were more than enough options to complement our dishes. Eventually I’ll post the menu on the cruise docs site but I will note that four of the courses were seafood-oriented – this was a delight for us, but I can see how it may not be as appealing to some people.

I would, without hesitation, book Chef’s Table on Beyond/Ascent again. It was a highlight of our trip, and my only regret is that it set too high of a bar for Eden to live up to later in the cruise. We were also sent home with a whoppingly large hardcover Daniel Boulud cookbook that is a bit intimidating. And while Kayla and I don’t seek out forced social engagement on our vacations, the couple we were seated with were a good match for the dinner experience.

Eden also has an upcharge, multi-course tasting menu option with wine pairings, but we went with the default cover charge and stuck to the already-included wines from our beverage package. Booked prior and including gratuities, it was $128.83 CAD/person, and we were able to order two appetizers and one entree apiece – and we were also allowed an extra entree to share. It was still hard to choose, though!

Like I said before, having experiencing the even-more-premium Chef’s Table only a few days prior, we couldn’t help but compare and contrast the experiences and our opinion of Eden suffered from it.

Eden has an open kitchen and is open to the decks above – one level up, there’s a bar and occasional live music/performances. Noise from all these sources filtered into the dining area and didn’t make for the best ambiance or private conversation. Service was attentive, but not as friendly or personalized. There were several wait staff who were chattier with surrounding tables, and I felt a little ignored at points throughout the meal. And very unfortunately, Kayla located at least two fish bones in her ceviche appetizer. This sensation/texture immediately turned her stomach, and meant that the rest of the meal was hard to enjoy for both of us.

The high points were the entrees: the lobster casserole, beef wellington/filet mignon combination and red snapper were all delicious.

Eden, though, has landed in the one-and-done category for me. It was just not worth the extra money in light of the comparable main dining options that evening.

Drinks: She needs premium, dude! PREMIUM!

Going back to the Celebrity cost optimization squeeze, another heavily reported dislike prior to our sailing was the pricing and availability of wine by the glass. The clearly terribly-named All Included rate offers the lower end Classic drink package (up to $10/drink in 2024.) On our previous Edge sailing, I was the only one in our party to upgrade to Premium (now $17/drink in 2024) and I didn’t think it was a huge advantage on that trip.

While I’ve had lots of words to say about drink package inclusions in the past, and am also certainly not a wine connoisseur, reports coming back in from late-2023 sailings showed a distinct pattern of nearly every wine option exceeding the $10 Classic inclusion and some popular “brand-name” wines in the $19-21 per glass range. The Duckhorn Decoy cabernet sauvignon (typical pricing $18US/$40CAD for a bottle on land) was $19US/glass onboard, which meant a $2.40 upcharge for people who had already upgraded their drinks package or were in suites.

I wasn’t hell-bent on Decoy (it’s a very decent, drinkable red wine) but certainly realized with the Classic package, our options across the board even outside of wine would run us a buck-twenty here, five bucks there, receipts showing up all over the place – and I just didn’t want to deal with that. When the Black Friday offers came up, I debated for several days before finally booking the Classic to Premium upgrade for $11.47CAD/person/day, 20% gratuity included. I am very glad I did this.

To start, many venues had their baseline options set at higher than $10. The central Martini Bar charged a minimum $15 for literally any martini on their menu including “traditional” vodka, vermouth and olive options. Red wine on the main dining room menu started at $17, so what you see in front of you all carries an upcharge for Classic package participants – unless you’re deliberately asking the waiter for the included choices. My statements from previous sailings stand about the Cheap Plan.

Purely in M. Haslinger & Fils champagne (shipboard, $17/glass) and San Pellegrino, we absolutely both used the Premium package to its full extent. I imagine I could still probably break even or better at the retail rate of $20US/person/day. I’d certainly try to look for a sale, but avoiding ad-hoc extra-charge nuisances might be worth it for you like it was for us.

Shorex

We did one, Celebrity-arranged shore excursion in Cozumel called “Mexologist” for the day – Margaritas and Traditional Bites after the disappointing cancellation of our initially-booked Interactive Chocolate Making Workshop and Tasting. The Mexology event was held at Dolphinaris – with both of us opposed to captive animal shows, we might not have booked it if it was clear who the organizer was.

It ended up being a fun event with lots of booze, decent food and and fairly priced at just under $200CAD for the both of us. I appreciated that we didn’t have to salsa dance, and the other tour participants were in good spirits.

Connectivity

The “Basic WiFi” plan included, and only available, in the All Inclusive package did not load content from the Slack free tier workspace that we use to keep up with our friends. Every other website or app I used loaded fairly slowly (we’re talking well under 1Mbps), but did succeed. I didn’t troubleshoot in-depth, nor have an enterprise workspace to compare it with, but the same environment loaded fine on mobile data in Mexico without any phone configuration changes. Beware that you may have to upgrade the WiFi package if Slack is your preferred or necessary communications tool of choice.

Going forward

It’s worthwhile to reflect somewhat on the Eden vs. Chef’s Table experiences, several months after the fact. When I look back at our cruising history, I realize I’m comparing the out-of-pocket specialty dining options on Ascent to the Norwegian upcharge venues, which were often included in the rate we booked or as a part of the loyalty program. On some early NCL sailings we’d paid a nominal upcharge for the seafood venue or chosen some deliberate extra cost items, and with both Carnival and MSC the specialty dining didn’t seem worth the cost over what was already included.

Looking at this another way, if I had to pay “rack rate” for NCL specialty dining – I think we’d skip it there too. Conversely, if Eden was bundled in or a smaller upcharge, it would have been a perfectly pleasant dinner with little to complain about.

For our next time on Celebrity – and I think there will be a next time – I’d like to try at least one of the other specialty restaurants to see if it really is an elevated offering, or whether I don’t necessarily need or appreciate that experience versus the MDR or buffet. The very distinct Chef’s Table is in a class of its own. If I have the chance to book it on Ascent or Beyond in future, it will be a must-do.

When we got off the ship, I was solidly convinced this would be an adult-focused sailing we could comfortably book on a yearly basis, if childcare and scheduling worked out. FLL is generally a cheaper airport to fly to from Toronto, and the travel arrangements and timing can often work out better than Miami. Later in 2024, though, we had the chance to sail on Princess and MSC with the whole family. Those experiences don’t necessarily change my position on Celebrity but did enlighten me with a broader perspective on the various cruise products available from US ports. Until next time…