For our most exciting summer vacation, we decided to take a 12 night cruise from Amsterdam (Netherlands). The ship goes to Akureyri (Iceland), Isafjordur (Iceland), Reykjavik (Iceland), Belfast (Northern Ireland), and Waterford (Ireland). This is our first time sailing on an Edge class ship and it was quite amazing!
The Ship: Celebrity Apex
Celebrity Apex is one of their newer ships from the Edge Class. Edge class ships are the biggest ships from Celebrity, and they have more innovative features since they are the newest. Celebrity Apex is absolutely beautiful with artwork all over the ship. I also really like the jogging track on this ship – it is long, has some incline and decline, and it goes through a little garden area through the Rooftop Garden Grill (one of the specialty restaurants).
Cabin: Aqua Class 10260
This is our first time in the Aqua Class and we enjoyed it. The biggest benefit of having Aqua class is the complimentary restaurant, Blu. We’ve had Blu restaurant once before when we stayed in the Retreat on Celebrity Reflection late last year (retreat guests can eat in Blu if the space allows). So we knew we were going to like Blu – the service is a little better than main dining (especially the service from the sommelier) and the menu is a little healthier. However, this Blu restaurant has a much smaller menu than most of the other ships I’ve seen. We usually look at the menu (from our phone app) before dinner and decide which restaurant to go to by comparison shopping each day.
The other major benefit of having Aqua class is the free unlimited use of Persian Garden. We used Persian Garden about every other day throughout our trip, but we wouldn’t use it that much if we didn’t have free access to it. Basically it has some different temperature rooms and heated tile loungers. There’s also spacious locker rooms with spacious showers (including boutique toiletries). I actually took my showers in the locker room a couple of times because it was so much more spacious than the shower in our room.
We also received free afternoon canapes everyday. We received those in the retreat last year as well and the quality was higher then. These canapes were pretty much inedible for the most part, but it was fun to see what stuff they would bring each day – satisfies my curiosity I guess. I’ve heard you can request for shrimp cocktails or a fruit plate or something but I was honestly never hungry in the afternoon so why bother.
Our room is an infinite veranda room, which means the veranda area is basically a large window that can be converted into part of the room or part of a fake balcony. This is our first time staying in an Infinite Veranda and we don’t really have anything bad to say about it. It’s got its pros and cons compare to a normal balcony so we are fine with either. This is especially true since everything is controlled by the app (opening the window or turning on the lights for example) so it was very easy to convert the space for optimal functionality.
There’s really nothing bad to say about our room. It’s located towards the back of the ship so it was pretty quiet. We don’t really mind walking, but there sure was a lot of walking. The room was spacious enough for the two of us and I liked the décor. The bathroom is a little tight, but nothing too bad. We initially purchased a Balcony Guarantee room and we were assigned a balcony room with some obstruction. Then we did a move up offer of $290/person for Aqua and we were glad it was accepted. I think paying less than $600 for this upgrade is worth it for a 12-night cruise.
Dining
What I love the most about Celebrity Cruises is the fact I can eat Escargot everyday. And I did. The dining options on the edge class are quite different than the rest of the Celebrity ships. There isn’t one big main dining restaurant – instead, there are FOUR smaller main dining restaurants, each with its own ethnic flair. The four restaurants are Cosmopolitan (American), Normandie (French), Cyprus (Greek), and Tuscan (Italian). All four restaurants are included in the cruise fare and even though they assign you a particular restaurant, you can go to any restaurant you like, any day you wish. The main part of the menu are the same for each restaurant, but each restaurant would also have a few courses that’s special to its own ethnic cuisine. Although I’ve been told you can order those cuisines in any restaurant you wish – they just aren’t advertised. We really enjoyed all of the restaurants and it’s nice to have a change of décor from time to time so we enjoyed the 4 MDR concept.
Since we were staying in Aqua class, we also were able to dine at Blu everyday. Blu is open for breakfast and dinner. The menu for Blu is smaller on this ship than the other ships we’ve been on, but it was still very nice and we ate at Blu almost everyday for breakfast because we enjoy having seat down service. Blu is a small restaurant so you will get to know your servers quite well.
We didn’t try much specialty dining because between Blu and the four main dining restaurants, there’s usually enough options to go around, AND I’ve noticed there really aren’t that many specialty restaurants that served lobster on this ship. For example, when we dined at Le Petite Chef on the Celebrity Reflection, lobster was part of the menu. Not the case here. I’ve heard a lot of great things about the Eden restaurant but the price was steep and it was booked up by the time we were thinking about it. The only specialty dining we did try was Le Grand Bistro for lunch on our last full day. The service and the food was very nice here and lunch is quite affordable so I was glad we did this.
I always have high expectations when it comes to food on Celebrity, and the Celebrity Apex did not disappoint me. I would say that I preferred the specialty dining options on our last Celebrity cruise (Celebrity Reflection) more but this was balanced out by having 4 MDRs. If I’m booking retreat class with specialty dining restaurants included, then I would look at the Celebrity Reflection again. Otherwise, Celebrity Apex dining is sufficient.
Entertainment
There are nightly entertainment that we really enjoyed. The theater would typically have two shows every night, so it was easy to catch one. Besides the main theater, there’s also the The Club, which had some theater shows, live music, and game shows, as well as Eden which occasionally had shows as well. There were definitely lots of options every night. If you want to catch anything at The Club or Eden, you would need to be there at least 30 minutes in advance, because there aren’t many seats in those two venues. We watched many shows in the theater and we loved the variety – acrobatics, stand-up comedy, magic, musical, etc. My favorite shows are typically magic, followed by acrobats, followed by stand-up, but on this ship, I was really blown away by the musicals. I would say the least impressive show was perhaps the magic show, but I think that’s mostly because the magician was very new at performing. I’m sure he’ll get better with time.
Activities
There are activities all day. Most of the time we don’t participate in many activities on a cruise, but since this was our longest cruise, Teddy decided to sign up for a few mini-golf games and ping pong. The activity director was really funny and we really enjoyed his humor and enthusiasm.
Bars
Like most Celebrity ships, I feel like there’s a bar at every corner. The busiest bar seems to be the Martini Bar in the main atrium. They put on a show every night at 8pm and if you grab yourself a seat front and center, the show is worth the time (it’s only 2 minutes anyway). They will also serve you the martini they make during the show, even if you don’t have a beverage package. But if you did, then that drink may not be what you want because it’s nothing spectacular and rather sweet. The bar with the most unique drinks is probably Eden, but some of the drinks there go over even the Premium Beverage Package’s budget. We spent most of our time at the Sunset Bar because it is at the end of the ship with an unobstructed view and never crowded, but the service was not the warmest here. The bar on the Magic Carpet is unique to Edge class ships and since the magic carpet juts out on top of water, it was worth a visit. One thing I noticed about Apex is that not many bars have blenders, which means it’s difficult to find drinks like Pina Colada.
Embarkation/Disembarkation
We embarked and disembarked at the Cruise Port in Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a very popular city, and the cruise port operates for ocean voyages as well as river cruises. It’s not far from the airport – if we didn’t have luggage, it would be an easy walk. The port is also at a train station. So no matter if you are coming by train, plane, or boat, this is convenient. Unfortunately the airport was a disaster but they hope this will get better. The actual embarkation and disembarkation was pretty smooth. We were told to sit in a waiting area inside the building (nicely air conditioned) and they would move a whole block of people to go stand in line when it’s time. This is MUCH better than everyone standing in line at once, outside, for hours at a time like it’s typically the case in Florida (which usually comes with some bonus rain showers as well).
Staff/Service
I’ve never really had any issues with Celebrity staff or service. It always seems top notch. We also really enjoyed our cruise director, Shawna. She’s rather new with this ship but not new with Celebrity. She’s fun and bubbly and very present – I like that about her. She also speaks English without any accent (she’s Canadian) which is great. Our captain was Captain Dimitrios, who was very funny and loved to talk. I looked forward to listening to his announcement every morning.
Conclusion
We highly enjoyed our cruise on Celebrity Apex – our 4th cruise with Celebrity. The ship is beautiful and we really enjoyed the food, the activities, the entertainment, as well as the ports of call. Celebrity is not a cheap cruise line but they do make up for it with its higher quality everything. On our next blog, I will explore each port of call we visited!