Should interest in the menus in the main dining rooms peter out at some point during the voyage, there are specialty restaurants that can be booked for lunch or dinner at a supplemental charge, including Fine Cut Steakhouse (premium aged steaks the size of your arm), Le Grand Bistro (French bistro-style), Le Petit Chef (an immersive animation experience), Raw on 5 (sushi and raw bar), Rooftop Garden Grill (think backyard barbecue in the Rooftop Garden) and Eden Restaurant (themed cuisine with nice views from the glass atrium at the fantail). The Retreat also has its own eatery, called Luminae at the Retreat, where Celebrity is angling for a Michelin-star type experience (a spokesperson confirmed they’ve had preliminary conversations with Michelin on rating cruise lines or cruise ships) with signature dishes created by chef Daniel Boulud. INSIDER TIP Guests who love the seclusion of the Retreat Sundeck can book the Edge Villa suite category for direct access from the second floor of their townhouse-style accommodation. There’s also a large screen for the sports game of the moment to be piped in. Guests can gather here for cask cocktails and a selection of extraordinary beers from around the world, in addition to a specially-created menu of bar bites. One night we dined on sorrel seafood cakes with lemon sauce and a lovely beef wellington with an abundance of earthy morels hidden beneath the pastry crust.Ī new introduction on Apex is Craft Social, a new craft beer concept that takes the place of the old casino bar. The other main dining restaurants- Tuscan, Cosmopolitan, and Cyprus-have meals included in the cruise fare, and slightly differing atmospheres and specialty dishes each night, although menus remain overall the same among each (and the specialty dishes are often offered on the menus across all four eateries). Those pieces in turn came from the Normandie specialty restaurant on Celebrity Constellation (which has since been repurposed to another dining concept). In the Normandie Restaurant, one of four main restaurants, there are vintage crystal pieces from the French Liner Normandie, which crossed the Atlantic regularly between the wars. There are other homages to maritime history. Nearby, paneling seems to strip away to reveal the steel interior of the ship’s outer hull-complete with tire marks and builder’s scribble-almost to jar guests back to the reality that they’re on board a ship at sea. Near the entrance to Eden, guests might encounter Rubem Robierb’s Empower Flower, a fiberglass throne meant to represent female empowerment. Once restaurants are reserved, spa treatments are booked, or activities are selected, they all appear on a personalized schedule-it even sends reminders when a reservation is upcoming. Once onboard, guests can view bar and restaurant opening times and menus, and make table reservations for restaurants that require them. Once I got to Terminal 25 at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, agents there scanned my boarding pass about six times, and I was boarding the ship less than ten minutes after being dropped off at the curb. I scanned my passport, uploaded a copy of my vaccine card and negative COVID test results, took a selfie, and got a boarding pass, all via the app. The ships are also packed full of original art, giving them their own sort of artistic “personality,” so there’s plenty to unpack there, too.įirst, however, it’s important to talk about how well-wired the cruise experience is these days-virtually everything is done via the Celebrity app. The nice thing about introducing new ships in the same class is it gives cruise lines a chance to make tweaks to the original models. Edge made a splash when she sailed onto the market, but Apex is nearly identical, so what is there to discuss? The second ship in Celebrity’s Edge class has added refinements.Įlebrity Apex is the second in Celebrity’s Edge Class, and younger sister to Celebrity Edge, which debuted in 2018.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |