It was the second night of the seven-day sailing onboard Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Edge from Port Everglades, Fla., when I wandered into The Club to check out the Silent Disco night.
I was taken aback — everyone was partying like it was 2019.
The Edge was the first large cruise ship to depart from a U.S. port in more than 15 months when it set sail to much fanfare on June 26 with 99% of onboard guests vaccinated against COVID-19.
Almost everyone spent the week mask-free. There was no mandatory social distancing, so seats around the bars were full, especially when Richard Fain, CEO of Royal Caribbean Group (Celebrity’s parent company), started mixing martinis. Theatergoers could sit wherever they wanted, and tables were as close as always in restaurants. On sea days, the pool deck was bustling, and guests played water volleyball.
And at the Silent Disco, the floor was packed as guests belted out a cacophony of lyrics to the three different stations they could tune into. It was no surprise when a passenger told me she “felt free again.”
It was no surprise when a passenger told me she ‘felt free again.’
Celebrity can operate in this almost pre-pandemic way because it pledges to maintain at least a 95% passenger vaccination rate on sailings from the U.S., as per guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Only 22 of the roughly 1,200 guests were unvaccinated because they were children under the age of 12. As Fain said onboard, this a much easier target to achieve with Celebrity than with other lines, such as Royal Caribbean International, because Celebrity doesn’t carry many children.
There were COVID-19-era differences, of course. The ship was only 40% full, a number that will slowly increase. The crew were all wearing masks, which the CDC does not mandate; Celebrity said this will change soon. The buffet is still not self-serve, something that I enjoyed but that others surmised might cause a bottleneck as the ship ramps up capacity.
The biggest difference is in the off-ship experience where, as Fain said, “We are dealing with a hodgepodge of regulations and rules that would confuse the Dalai Lama."
We are dealing with a hodgepodge of regulations and rules that would confuse the Dalai Lama.
Port policies are set via a combination of the destination and the cruise line. On Edge, there was some confusion around being able to wander freely onshore or having to take curated bubble tours.
For example, there were differing policies in Cozumel and Costa Maya in Mexico, which are about 200 miles apart in the state of Quintana Roo. We were able to disembark independently in Costa Maya in the private port area, and take a curated tour or a taxi to a pre-approved destination. In Cozumel, passengers were only allowed to disembark on curated tours and couldn't go into the immediate port area. But the Adventure of the Seas, from Celebrity sister line Royal Caribbean International, was docked right across from Edge on the Cozumel pier, and those passengers were allowed to get off and wander freely in port. The difference, I was told, was that the Adventure of the Seas had departed from Nassau in the Bahamas.
I settled for the alfresco deck of the Oceanview buffet, with its view of Cozumel, to feel as if I was having lunch in Mexico. And while I did try to get onshore to have lunch in Costa Maya, the port had just opened the day before, and the restaurants had no food. The small number of guests that came to the port had some drinks at the bar, enjoyed a goldfish pedicure or wandered the souvenir stalls. A few families took part in the dolphin encounter tours right in port.
While it was a small number overall that took curated tours, about a quarter of the guests, those I spoke to raved about the experience and having ruins, beaches or tequila tasting venues all to themselves. The guides and drivers were all vaccinated, they said, and they felt very safe and contained given that there was no exposure to anyone outside the group of Celebrity passengers.
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