Wondering what it is like on a cruise ship in 2021? We sailed on a 95% vaccinated cruise on Celebrity Edge in early July 2021. This is what our experience was like:
Super normal.
Sorry!
I want to write an article about how different it was and how all these things changed…but that’s just not true.
We had one additional step to our check-in process and that was showing our CDC vaccination card and agreeing that we did not know that we were sick. After that short set of questions, we were given a bracelet to wear for the week. The bracelet was a little annoying since Celebrity seemed to want you to wear it 24/7, but it really wasn’t the type of bracelet you wear to sleep or shower.
We did have to wear our masks in the cruise terminal. I had too much in my hands and was trying to find my mask to walk in the door and they stopped us until I had it on so they are enforcing that…but pretty much everybody took their mask off as soon as they stepped onto the ship.
NOT having to wear a mask anywhere on the ship was actually one of the things I found the strangest. I’m so used to every time I get up from the table at a restaurant I put it on, or anytime I walk indoors I put it on. It was actually kind of strange not to wear it. I generally didn’t feel unsafe without it – sometimes the elevators would get a little too crowded – but other than that I never wanted to wear it. I just accepted that everyone I was interacting with was also vaccinated and that we were fine.
There were a couple of celebrity masks and some hand sanitizer in our room – not that we needed it we had brought our own – which was a nice touch.
So after ripping our masks off as soon as we stepped on board, the next thing we noticed that was different was the buffet. We were completely surprised to find that at least on this particular sailing of the Celebrity Edge all food in the buffet was crew served, but none of the drinks were. I really appreciated that I could get my own drinks. I also really prefer the crew serving the food. Sure, sometimes they don’t do it right and they always put too much dressing on my salad, but I feel like it is so much safer. There was a hand washing station and hand sanitizer near the door to the buffet (that’s not new), but that doesn’t mean everybody used them, or that if they did they didn’t lick their fingers at some point while serving themselves.
Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion but I want the crew serving the food to stay.
This next one I think everyone will agree with me on: the muster drill was so much better!
From the time we got on the ship until the time we sailed away they made a few announcements reminding us to complete the muster drill, but we were able to complete it on our own time.
We had a couple of videos to watch. These could be viewed either on the Celebrity app or on the TV in your stateroom. We watched them on the app. It asked us who was watching them, we clicked that both of us were there and then it turned green.
After we watched the couple of short videos, we had to report to our muster station to be checked off. One crew member checked us off on a tablet and the other gave the two of us a super-short speech and then we were off. That was it. Nobody fainted. Nobody vomited. Nobody was mad because you had to leave your drink somewhere and couldn’t have it in your hand for the duration of the muster drill. The buffets didn’t close while it was going on so nobody was hangry. It was inside. And most importantly the whole process took less than 15 minutes.
It was the best thing ever.
Every difference I have covered here was on the first day. That is because there were no other significant differences. The deck chairs were separated more than normal, which means there were less of them, but our particular sailing wasn’t full so that didn’t matter for us.
Maybe there were some other differences, but we really didn’t notice anything. We ate at our little two-person table in the main dining rooms every night, but with anytime dining you usually do that anyway.
Once you have made it through the embarkation process and are on-board the ship, the only changes are minimal and are generally positive. This of course is going to be different from cruise line to cruise line and all these regulations are changing every day so some of this might have been different on literally the next sailing after ours, but that was what it was like for us – super normal.
