Embarking on our Fourth Cruise

Date: February 12, 2019
Location: Leaving Auckland, New Zealand

It was just over a week since we got off the Celebrity Constellation in Shanghai, China and it was already time to board our next ship! This time it was the Celebrity Solstice for a 16-night New Zealand and Australian cruise. 

Our past 3 cruises during this trip were all in interior staterooms. For this cruise we treated ourselves to a concierge class stateroom. This means we had a balcony.

The room was also a little larger at 194 square feet vs 183 square feet for the inside staterooms.

We chose a concierge class stateroom over an inside, ocean view or balcony because a concierge room earns 5 Captain’s Club points per night. An inside or ocean view earns 2 points per night and a balcony (veranda) earns 3 points per night. The Aqua Class staterooms also earn 5 points per night but are usually more expensive than the Concierge Class staterooms. Captain’s Club is the Celebrity Cruises loyalty program that has six tiers: Preview, Classic, Select, Elite, Elite Plus and Zenith. 

Brian has been on many Celebrity cruises, so after earning 80 Captain’s Club points for this cruise, he will be an Elite Member for all future cruises. That includes our final cruise home from Tokyo to Vancouver!

The main added benefits from Select to Elite are a daily cocktail hour, daily coffee lounge, one complimentary dry clean item, one complimentary bag of laundry and 90 minutes of free internet. 300 points are needed to reach Elite status.

Internet on Cruise Ships

I was asked the other day why I don’t have time on the cruises to write the blog and it is because we don’t have internet. To purchase internet on a cruise it has been around $50 per day or $20 per hour. There are also packages where you can buy internet for the remaining days of the cruise, but that only gets the cost down to about $30 per day for one device. Celebrity does have a new internet package called Surf that will allow you to text, check emails and surf the web, but not watch videos or talk. The price seems much more reasonable as I’m currently seeing it at $130 for a 14-night cruise for one device.

Celebrity calls all of their internet packages “devices,” but you are actually purchasing a number of user IDs and passwords to gain access to the internet. You can use the same user ID and password on multiple devices just not at the same time.

Celebrity Solstice Class Ship

This was my first time on a Celebrity Solstice-class ship since my past Celebrity cruises have been on Millennium-class ships. The Celebrity Solstice has a gross tonnage of 122,000, where the Celebrity Constellation has a gross tonnage of 90,280. The Solstice has the capacity for 2,852 passengers, where the Constellation has a capacity of 2,038 passengers.

I noticed right away that the grand foyer was larger. That is a real tree in the middle.

The library is also more spacious and has more seating.

The Lawn Club is on deck 15, with a half-acre of grass.

This was our view as we sailed away from Auckland.

From the harbor it was very easy to pick out the Auckland Museum on top of the hill in the park.

Being in a Concierge Class stateroom one of the benefits is that an afternoon snack is delivered to the room each day.

On this cruise we also had a classic drink package that was included in the price we paid for the cruise. Most mornings I went to Cafe al Bacio for tea. If you were to purchase the tea it would cost $6, but it is covered by the drink package.

Is buying the drink package worth it?

On Celebrity, the classic drink package is $59 per person per night and covers drinks up to $9. Thus, you need to have over 7 drinks a day to make it worth buying the drink package.

The premium drink package is $69 per person per night and covers drinks up to $15. If you know you will be drinking martinis or nicer wine this package may make sense, but you still need to have over 5 drinks a day to make it worth buying. We did not purchase a drink package on our past 3 cruises.

The Celebrity Solstice is one of three Celebrity ships that have Hot Glass Class. The other Celebrity ships with Hot Glass are Equinox and Eclipse.

There are two people on the ship who do glass blowing demonstrations and offer classes where you can make your own glass piece.

This is a vase being made.

The glassblower starts by forming the bottom and then transfers the glass to another blowpipe to work on the top.

The other person is there to assist the glassblower with any tools they need and help the process to go smoother.

The blowpipe is now on the bottom.

After more work on the top it has become narrower.

Once the glassblower is happy with the shape the glass is taken off and put in the annealer so that it cools slowly.

A cup was then made.

It was a much quicker process and the glassblower could remove this piece without the help of an assistant.

After the demonstration there was a raffle. The ticket I was holding was chosen first and I received a glass ornament with a print of the ship on it.

When Brian and I started watching the glass blowing another passenger was handing out raffle tickets to the group she was with and had one left over that she gave me. The women’s ticket was not chosen during the raffle so I gave her the glass ornament.