Celebrity Beyond Cruise Ship

Celebrity Beyond was a very nice ship and she debuted last year.  The ship is beautiful and designed very well.  We have sailed with Celebrity a couple of times before so we knew what level of luxury to expect.  We had an inside cabin on deck 11

Sailing departure day is always exciting for us!!

Celebrity beyond is the first ship that we have sailed with a female captain.  Captain Kate is the first captain of any large cruise ship.  She did a great job and actually had a personality unlike many of the Captains that we have sailed with.

This cruiseship was great, there was not a lot to complain about but a few things stick in my brain.  This was our first experience with Starlink which is Elon Musk's baby and so far we are not impressed.  The internet was very slow and most of the time was not working well.  One whole morning we were without any Internet activity, this is unacceptable because we bought a Wifi package or it was part of our perks deal which is the same thing.  The food was acceptable but not great and somewhat disappointing and I will expand on this later on in this post.

Luigi the cruise director of Celebrity Beyond was by far my favourite of all time on any cruise I've ever been on.  Luigi for Celebrity Beyond was genuine, funny and interesting.  He was not a Diva at all like most Cruise Directors.

We got to listen to Luigi every night in the theatre.  He always announced what the headliner was for the evening.  We enjoyed listening to him.  On our first night of entertainment at the 7:30 pm showing was Mike Simmons the comedian. He was pretty funny and had a habit of roasting the people that came in late.

Arte was the first theatre production that we attended on the Beyond.  It was so amazing that I not only went to the 7:30 show but I convinced my husband to come with me for the 9:30 show too.  It was seriously that good.  There is so much happening on the stage that you almost have to see it three times to be able to take everything in.  There is a panoramic screen on the entire back and sides of the stage and it is constantly changing with bright pictures etc.   Your eyes are very much drawn to it.  But you don't want to watch it because you are watching the highly skilled singers, dancers, aerial gymnasts and acrobats that are performing on stage.  Everything was phenomenal the singing voices were amazing.  These were some of the best dancers I've ever seen as well.  Apparently, Celebrity Beyond has won an entertainment award and I can understand why.  This show alone is worth coming on board the Beyond.

The same night we went to Eden which is a two-story area at the back of the ship that is gloriously decorated to look like the Garden of Eden or someone's interpretation of Eden. 

Inside the multi leveled Eden located at the back of the ship.  There is entertainment every night in Eden.

This was the Eden bar.  A couple befriended me and bought me a drink from their expensive 17.00 drink menu.  I think they felt sorry for me because I only had the Basic drink package (first world problems).

 

There are huge windows at the back and we found ourselves sitting there before we went to supper and just watched the waves out the back of the boat as the sun set.  

Decadence was put on by the Eden Production Cast and was played at Eden that night and it was a combination of singing and acrobatics with unbelievable body strength techniques.  I don't even know what you would call it? The things they were doing with their bodies was highly entertaining and gasp worthy. 

There were other nights that the Eden Production Cast were playing but we did not make it to any others.  The shows were very late night for me and I am an 'early to bed early to rise' kind of Gal usually but that night we found ourselves going to The Club after Decadence.  We got there at about 11:40 pm and we popped in to get some water and then the music was pretty good so we danced for about 45 minutes.  I tend to dance like nobody's watching and I think that's the way you are supposed to do it.  This could be good or this could be bad?

Jesse Hamilton played in the theatre on the third night of the cruise and OMG this man had powerhouse vocals.  Not only was he good to look at he was amazing to listen to.  He is a born entertainer and had the whole crowd cheering to his gospel soul-type voice but he was amazing.  He played a variety of songs, from classics to new age rock and the crowd loved him.

On the 4th night was Elements. This was an interesting show and very creative and entertaining.  One blunder was opening and closing with a weaker lead female voice.  Other than that it was well done and worth attending.

Bubbles were sent out into the audience, which was quite beautiful.

The show was a feast for the senses.

On the 5th night was Our Lady Valentine rock band. We thought they would be females but they were two British men and two American men. They were awesome together. They played Bon Jovi and Queen mostly. We thouourly enjoyed them. They were funny and talented.

On the 6th night for entertainment was Stage Door which started out slow with some memorable but boring production songs.  Half way through the crescendo built and they ended up with very lively songs and it was a hit. Personally, though, I would have started off on the first night with this performance and ended with Arte which was by far the most fantastic show of the entire cruise.

On the last night of the cruise was a magician Matt Johnson.  He was more of an illusionist.  He did all sorts of spectacular things like hanging upside down with a straight jacket on and then dislocating his shoulder to take it off..  He was funny and worth seeing.

We had two days at sea and then sailed into St. Maarten port. We have stayed in St. Maarten before and there are many things to do on this island.

Our ship Celebrity Beyond to the left.  This was the first good look that we had of her.

We have been here several times and it is quite a lovely island.  We got off of the ship and walked about 30 minutes to the overly crowded beach.  Things have changed a lot in St. Maarten.  It is extremely hard to find a piece of sand to lay down your beach towel.  Loungers cover every square inch of the beach and they are all for rent.  We squeezed our towels into a spot by the pier and I took a lovely swim in the turquoise ocean.

On our first port day we were very impressed with the Beyond because this ship actually has a very large port departure lounge called Destination Gateway. 

Stairwell down to Destination Gateway

No other ship that we have been on has had this exclusive spot on the ship to depart. All of the other ships squeeze you into a crumby little space.  The Beyond has a beautiful area to depart and to come back aboard and it is very welcoming and we'll thought out. The time to be aboard is big and bold on the screen on the pic to the right.  Well done Beyond!!

On deck 4 is one of the coffee shops that I frequented in the mornings and it is quite a busy place.  I have never witnessed a more efficient team of people that were so bright and attentive and extremely quick, standing ovation to them.  The coffee shop area of the boat is equipped with lots of seating and even swinging chairs.

 The Grand central area of the ship centers around a large martini bar and dance floor.  This area is quite beautiful and is 4 stories high with seating all around at every level to watch the action and live bands.  The only downfall of this area is that all the martinis are $15, which I cannot purchase with my basic drink plan which allows me to buy a drink up to  $10.00.  We can upgrade for 20 per day per person, but my husband does not drink and this seems like a blatant waste of money.

The ocean view cafe on deck 14 is very large and this is where you go for your buffet meals morning noon or night.  The salad bar had a lot of options for meat substitutes and it had a good array of leafy greens and not just awful romaine or iceberg lettuce.  It also had many options for salad dressings and also some inventive ones as well.  

On the day of departure, Oceanview Cafe had a whole section of Indian food, which I love.  They also had a whole section of gluten-free food or as I like to refer to it as cardboard. Personally, this was a waste of real estate in the buffet in my opinion. 

Just down from the Buffett is the ice cream/gelato stand.  I did not like the options of ice cream but I decided to try a couple of flavors to see if I even liked the quality.  I did not. I actually only ate the first scoop which was Cherry Brandy- not good. Then I tried to eat the chocolate but the texture and taste was all wrong and I ended up throwing it out.  I am not sure if Celebrity is making this ice cream from scratch or not but if they are they need to go back to the drawing board.

There are four complementary dining rooms on the Beyond. Each of the four dining rooms has an exclusive small menu of your entrees and starters and then all of the restaurants share the classics and then each of the four restaurants has a nightly change of three entrees and three starters.  If the exclusive classics were amazing then I would be happy but they were not amazing choices.  For example one of the meals I had was literally fish with barbecue sauce on it.  Personally I have never tasted anything so bad on a ship before.  

Some of the entrees and desserts were very convoluted and did not jive in my brain.  I took a picture of one as an example from the dessert menu to the left.  The title of the dessert would turn most people off not even to read what was in the dessert.

We have now eaten at the Normandy dining room, Cyprus and Tuscan dining room and we're four nights in and I can't say that I've had an amazing meal yet.  I mean all the meals are edible but they're just kind of 'meh'.  In the Tuscan Dining room, Darren was brought his garlic-free shrimp soup with a big piece of garlic toast on top.  He is allergic to garlic so he orders the night before. That was not cool!!!

At Cosmopolitan Diningroom they charged 17.00 dollars plus 17% gratuity for the 🦞 Lobster. What a covid money grab and tasteless to boot.

We have both been underwhelmed with the dining rooms so we are going to try the Dinner Buffett tomorrow night at Oceanview Cafe.

Finally in the Cosmopolitan dining room I had the risotto as an entree and that was by far the best entree and delicious and the best I have had in the six nights on the Beyond.  All the rest paled in comparison and didn't even register.  The meals all looked pretty but did not taste pretty.

The fitness area is a really nice place to work out although it is at the front of the ship so depending on what time you work out you might be in full sun or not so you might want to time your workout but it has a bevy of cardio equipment etc is a really nice place to work out.

The best walking/jogging track at sea in my mind is on Celebrity Beyond.  It has an incline and a decline and is not just a boring mindless oval.

Here is Darren taking a stroll uphill on the walking track.  The incline is actually quite steep and the picture does not do it justice.  Don't forget this is also in the hot Caribbean sun which makes an uphill climb that much harder.

We chose an inside cabin this time around with Celebrity Beyond and it's a nice size for an inside. It is very pretty with a chase lounge couch sort of thing to lie on.  There's plenty of storage but the organization of the storage is not very intelligent.  There is a desk and a chair which is beneficial when you are on a laptop learning Spanish every day.  The bad design decisions were in the bathroom.  It had a long counter but most of it was sink.  The sink was a ridiculous length which is very unnecessary and the extra real estate or counter space would have been appreciated with a smaller sink.  The sink tap is placed in an odd spot close to the inside corner and because the sink is shallow, it is very hard to wash your hands under the tap without getting water all over the counter. The shower is a good size though.

One big complaint about this inside cabin and every cabin I've ever been on  in every ship that I've ever sailed is there's always been a mini bar hidden in the storage area.  This is a complete waste of space that could have been used for a few extra drawers for clothes.  For the small percentage of people that purchase the mini-bar drinks, it seems to me that the bar fridge is completely unnecessary.  Not to mention most importantly of all the complete and utter waste of electricity. Can you imagine how many millions of cabins on all the ships on this planet are wasting electricity right now?

One thing that I found interesting about this ship is that you're not encouraged to clean up after yourselves.   I took a whole week to try and find a garbage can and they just simply don't exist on Celebrity Beyond.  The staff is expected to clean after up after the people so I just left my stuff lying around and it would get picked up which I don't really disagree with because garbage cans are ugly.

Our second port was St. Thomas.  We have stayed a week on this island back during our World Tour so we are very familiar with it.  Plus we have stopped here numerous times on Caribean cruises.  We did not bother getting off at this port because we are travelling with friends on another cruise and this is one of the ports so we will get off then.  Plus sometimes it is nice to stay on the boat and just chill.

Setting sail after a day in  the port of St Thomas.  You can see another ship in the distance that left just before we did.

There are two ports in St. Thomas and the Beyond sailed into the ugly one.

The last port of the cruise is Puerto Plata Dominican Republic which I was excited about because we have never been here before. 

We have sailed into Santa Domingo DR but never stayed overnight.  We got off the boat fairly early and did a fair amount of walking around.  It took roughly 35 minutes to walk to the old historic fort and it cost 2 USD to get into it.  The Fort and the old Commander quarters are worth visiting.  There are lots of pictures to take.

I loved this photo of the clouds hanging low over the mountains in the backdrop with the old fort in the forefront.

Here is an aerial photo of the Fort.  It looks somewhat insignificant but it was quite large and took a while to explore.  It has nothing though on the largest Fort in the Americas which is in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.

I found this wall in the Fort that completely fascinated me.  It was made with pieces of coral instead of bricks.  Each piece was different and you could identify the different types such as brain coral  etc.

The Commander of the Fort was privileged to live here in this good sized villa.  He had a choice piece of property and views to die for.  But without air conditioning the officers often wrote about the stifling heat and the bugs in the Caribean.  Don't forget the fact that their uniforms most likely were made of wool.  Needless to say most did not enjoy being stationed in the tropics.

Whoever he was he had killer views outside of his office/villa.

Once  we had finished with the Fort we then walked to the historic downtown area and saw Umbrella Street etc.  There is quite a bit of poverty in DR and it is evident walking around that it would be classified as a third world country.

Umbrella street from one end of the street.

Umbrella Street taken from the other end of the street.

It was incredibly hot that day and we headed back to the ship to enjoy some lunch and a drink or two.

Celebrity Beyond as mentioned is quite a pretty ship with many beautiful spots to sit and it has many pieces of art on the walls and spread throughout the ship.

There were tons of art pieces like this one in the pool area of an elephant balancing on a man's back.

There were a ton of gold colored pieces of art on board.  They were quite pretty to look at.

This was the most note-worthy and difficult to see.  There was a special hallway dedicated to these unusual art pieces on the way to Eden near the back of the ship.  The hallway was dark and it had these pieces of art to walk through and it was quite pretty to walk through.  You could avoid it and walk on the other side of the ship to get to Eden.

The Magic Carpet Ride is a bar/restaurant on board the Beyond.  We had a drink in the bar while we were still in port in Fort Lauderdale before the ship even sailed.  When in port this piece of real estate does not move but when sailing in does move up and down at a slow pace when it is not inclement weather.  It is a defining site to the Beyond and is painted bright orange and does stick out when you see the ship from afar.

See the Magic Carpet Ride Bar and Restaurant to the right.

Probably one of my favorite places on the ship was this architecturally beautiful walkway on the outside of the deck to get to the pool.  It was open air so often very windy but it had sitting areas all along it.  Darren's favorite hang out was at one end of it so we often found ourselves passing through.

Celebrity Beyond is a grand ship and gorgeous to look upon.  This cruise ship is worth sailing on but they do need to improve on their dining room choices and taste.  The bartenders need to learn how to make cocktails that are not sickeningly sweet as well.  Who knows maybe it is a ploy to get you to not drink so many drinks while on the package, it certainly worked for me.