Life onboard the Celebrity Ascent from Rome to Barcelona
It’s all about the experience you want! Having just been on a 12 day cruise with 12 people I would say the experience was like a college party for 12 days 🙂
Cruising is like getting a little taste of each location and port. If you want to truly experience the locations and coastal towns then cruising is not your best option. Cruising is more about your friends on the ship, the food on the ship and the entertainment on the ship.
– Elle, Chief Pollinator
Only in College you didn’t have unlimited food and drink, Las Vegas quality entertainment and the safety of being on a ship so you can do things alone if you wish and are not in danger. We got the Premium drink package and I think we broke even but not sure its worth $79/day plus 20% gratuity a day. The bonus was we never had to sign a check like our friends so it was less of a hassle. All in all we only paid about $6000 total for the cruise due to a promotion so we felt like splurging on the premium drink package. You have to get it for both people in the room so consider that before ordering as well.
The Celebrity Ascent (its newest ship delivered in 2023) is huge and has every amenity you can imagine. Plenty of space for everyone at the pool or in the theater. We booked a cabana for the 12 of us on each of the sea days because we were worried about not having a seat at the pool but that was not really an issue. Still it was a fun thing to do. The cabana suite cost $600 per day but split between 12 people was $50 each per day. A little splurge!
What worked for us
Even though I live part time in Naples which is known for older retirees and people eat at like 5pm, we ended up going to the 7:30 pm Theater shows every night and eating afterwards. More people seem to go to the 9:30pm show so there were always seats available at the early show. For some reason eating later didn’t bother me onboard. Most likely because we usually had nice lunches at tour island stops to try the local fish and dishes.