I Took a Last Minute Cruise on An Old Ship - Worth It?

I'm currently on board a very cheap last minute cruise that I booked on one of the oldest and smallest cruise ships around I booked this Cruise just 2 weeks before the sailing when I saw it advertised for a price of $57 a night in reality it did end up costing a little bit more than that but after months of being cold in England I saw this Cruise was sailing from Greece and I decided to give it a go I knew that there was no guarantee of good weather at this time of year I didn't know how I'd like cruising on such a small and Old Ship and I had no idea the real reason why this Cruise was so cheap I wouldn't find that out until I got on board I also didn't know at this point that we would leave some guests behind in one of the ports but there's nothing I could have done about that anyway we flew out from London to board the ship and after a quick taxi ride to the port it was time to Embark our luggage was taken from the car to be delivered to our cabins later and after what could have only been about 5 minutes in the terminal we were ready to board the ship it was the easiest embarcation ever helped by the fact that we'd already checked in online and I even watched the safety videos on the plane just to save time the ship that we were boarding was the celebrity Infinity she was built in 2001 and is just under half the size of the biggest cruise ship in the world I assumed that the small size meant that there would be less entertainment options maybe less food but I was sure that she had had some refit since 2001 I didn't imagine that they would still have the original 2001 TVs on board although that would be kind of cool this is an image of one of the original TVs from the ship that I found in one of the very old reviews it is so cute we walked into the middle of the ship and we were greeted with this big staircase and this Atrium area that split over multiple decks it was in here that I saw the most amazing thing that you can ever see on any cruise ship and that was multiple jars of cruise ship cookies I knew from this moment that I would be spending a lot of time in here our day had started around 3:00 a.m. and it was about 3:00 p.m. at this point so we decided to find some food luckily for us that only meant walking up a few flights of stairs to the buffet it's not uncommon on the big cruise ships for them to have 17 or 18 18 or 19 or 20 decks but the lovely little celebrity Infinity only has 12 walking into the buffet I found something genius and it is a map of all of the different food stations I of course still wanted to do the lap of everything before deciding but this did show me just how big the buffet was if I had to describe the food in the buffet by one word it would be fresh there was lots of fresh bread and vegetables and fruits and each day they would have a different theme in here most days I would end up eating at least one or two or sometimes even three of my meals here they actually had so much fruit that they carved some of it into animals I decided to call this one melony because it's made of melon but if you can think of something better let me know in the comments the buffet went around both sides of the ships with lots and lots of seats and there was a really nice seating area outside too where we would sometimes have our breakfast another important part of the buffet for me was just how many included drink options there were I decided not to buy a drinks package for this Cruise so I knew that I would be making the most out of the juices and the tea and everything here here I would usually water down the juice to make squash and squash has got to be your britishism of the week because I'm asked about it more than anything else I'm always drinking squash on my live streams and it has nothing to do with the vegetable squash squash is just diluted fruit juice and most houses in the UK would have at least a couple of flavors my personal favorite is vimto and I always bring a couple of the small bottles with me when I go on any cruise I was hoping not to spend too much extra at all on this Cruise because it was meant to be a budget last minute cheap kind of break the buffet had lots of big windows that made us very excited to get outside and even a couple of what you could call windows I guess on the floor so you could see the ground it was a little bit scary but pretty cool the sky was blue and that is what I had hoped for for so long it was just so good not to be cold we headed out to the main pool deck to explore and found two big pools that looked very tempting there were lots and lots of sun louers and every single Sun lounger had a towel on it and there were even some blankets that we could use if it got chil celebrity definitely are a cruise line on the more premium end of the scale and for me it's the little things like the blankets that show that towards the back of the ship we found a basketball court and an area called the rooftop Terrace looking at these outside areas I don't think you would ever know that this ship was built 23 years ago and yes 2001 is 23 years ago it doesn't really seem possible but that makes the ship as old as the first Harry Potter film and also Monsters Inc so it was a good year for films after dropping off our bags in our cabin it was time to sail away from Athens I booked a balcony cabin and my brother brother booked a solo Ocean View cabin I'll break down the cost of everything later in the video but for now we were pretty impressed with the rooms given the age they of course did look like they were made in 2001 with all of this orangey wood which really does date the ship to the time period but nothing was broken nothing was damaged pretty much everything actually inside the cabin has been replaced multiple times since the ship launched I've been on much much much younger ships that were in way worse condition than this there are some cabins where the decor has been updated but for the most part this is what the cabins look like there was a band playing by the pool as we sailed away and it was around now that I realized just how quiet this ship seemed on some Cruise Lines there will be hundreds or thousands of people on the pool at sailway time but this was much more relaxing I'd heard from my friends the YouTubers JJ Cru who were on the cruise before mine that their Cruise was only 65% full so I wondered if it might be the same for this cruise I love cruises that aren't full and they remind me of the ones that I took just after the pandemic when we started sailing again but the difference is there's no other restrictions now so it's ideal we decided to spend our evening in a massive Lounge that we found at the top of the ship called the constellation Lounge here they would have trivia and game shows pretty much every day as well as late night parties given my 3:00 a.m. start I knew that I wouldn't make it to the late night party but I do always enjoy having a go at trivia we bought our first drinks on board and it came to $9.60 for two cans of Coke Zero including the gratuiti I could could have bought a drinks package so that I could have had unlimited drinks on board the cruise but the cheapest non-alcoholic package was coming out at $35 per person per day so I'd have to drink at least eight sodas every single day just to break even and I don't think that's good for anybody I could do it but I don't think that I should if I like coffee it might have been worth it but I do have simple tastes and you can't beat a can of Coke unless of course it is a can of Pepsi so I decided to just pay as I went when we woke up the next day in Thessaloniki it was raining and pretty chilly we decided to go for a walk but I was starting to wonder if this is what our whole Cruise would be like did I really come all this way just to bring the regular English rain that I'd get at home anyway I hope that my sunglasses wouldn't just be used to keep the rain out of my face that would not be good luckily for us we had 2 Days in the port so we were able to come back the next day and try again the second time it was so much better and the weather forast seem to suggest that it would be getting warmer as our cruise went on we explored a tower and we came across some ruins as you often do just randomly in grease as much as I love ruins I was a lot more excited about seeing the Greek cats but at this point I hadn't seen many in Thessaloniki I am 99.9% sure that we left a couple of guests behind which actually isn't that rare we were back on board by the All Aboard time of course but they kept making announcements asking if these two people were on board they do scan your cruise card every time you get on and off a cruise but they are just checking that those people hadn't gone on board there wasn't a system problem or something because they would wouldn't want to wait for people who were on board the entire time our ship waited an extra hour which is very generous but then we had to sail away the ship can't wait forever it's got places to be and I'm sure that the people that were working in the port they probably wanted to go home we did see people running once we had left and I can't tell if these are the missing people but if I had to guess I would say probably so up until this point I hadn't really seen a lot of the ship so I decided to go exploring starting inside the ship it was interesting to see the different styles of decor and in particular the carpets this one is one of my favorites and I call this the cinnamon roll deck for obvious reasons we found a big Casino where I lost $10 later in the cruise this is one area where looking at the original 2000's carpet does hurt my eyes a little even if it is nice and it's nostalgic in these pictures I'm glad they decided to change those speaking of shopping we found a big shopping area and walking through that took us out to the main theater I'm a massive fan of theater shows so I knew that I'd have to come back here later but looking at the design of the room I was very impressed I love theaters that have tables like this so that you can get in and out without disturbing other people and I liked how the seats were more like bench seating rather than individual seats they were very comfy and they were always good for plus-size guests I did watch a movie in here later too and it was comfortable for that period of time the ceiling was also very very impressive and there was strange art on the way in if I thought the art here was weird I had no idea what I was in for as the cruise went on every single day we would find something weirder and weirder and weirder normally in my videos I try and describe what I'm showing to you but I honestly have no idea this one looks like a person who's being suffocated by a net and this looks like something yellow with antlers I have no idea but it was always interesting and certainly memorable in the buffet there was this weird chocolate statue that someone clearly liked a lot because it was on both sides of the buffet someone looked at this and they thought that is so good I'm going to order two of those when we went back to our cabin we found a piece of paper that said that we'd been assigned late dining I thought that was odd as my app said that I had the flexible dining where I didn't have to eat at a fixed time I'm definitely not a late dining kind of person but I've never had trouble changing it on a cruise before I decided to just ignore the problem and it actually went away I'm not sure that that is fantastic cruci device but that is honestly what I did the app said that I had flexible dining so I just went with that and I ignored the piece of paper I was able to book dinner in the main dining room on my phone when ever I wanted to so I decided to book us a table for 5:30 which is the perfect dinner time and I did that on multiple days of the cruise the main dining room on board celebrity Infinity was very impressive it's split over two levels and there are windows on three sides there's also this big pink glowing light in the middle which felt like an eyeball watching us it felt like we were on a game show more modern cruise ships have moved away from this one big main dining room idea and normally you'll find multiple smaller more intimate restaurants when I sailed on celebrity Edge Infinity's much much much younger sister there were four main dining rooms on board but then again the cruise that I took on Celebrity Edge was Triple the price of this one so it's not really fair to compare them if we've gone from having one dining room in the year 2000 to four dining rooms in the year 2024 are we going to have four times as many in another 20 years are we going to have 16 main dining rooms on every single cruise ship I don't know I'll try them I'll try them all most dinners took around an hour and a half which was great the bread baskets they were brilliant as was all of the food that we had we'd even order off the menu sometimes like when I just really wanted a bowl of chips and that was no problem at all our cruise was 11 nights long and I definitely noticed that the starters were usually the same most nights if you are somebody who wants to eat snails every single day you were in luck this is the absolute perfect cruise for you personally I can't think of anything much worse than eating a snail but I did enjoy things like the Greek salads there was usually just one vegetarian main option but the allergens were clear marked which was good you could see the menu on the app ahead of time and outside the restaurant which I love I always like to know in advance our servers were fantastic and we really couldn't have asked for anything better from our dinner at this point we were still on casual night so I was a bit curious about what formal night would be like and if there would be any other themes I did pack a couple of dresses just in case because we started our dinner at 5:30 that meant that we were done in time to go to the 700 p.m. show in the theater every night there were two shows in here and we saw all kinds of things we had magicians comedians a ukulele band solo singers and my favorite type which are the theater cast performances where they sing and dance a couple of the shows had very impressive acrobatic performances and the only disappointment for me was that I went to see a Phil Collins tribute act and he did not sing a single song from Tarzan and the Tarzan soundtrack is incredible if there was a show that was entirely Tarzan songs I would go if there was a Taran themed Cruise I'd probably go it always felt pretty quiet at the early shows but when we went to the later shows they were definitely a bit busier in no world could this ship be described as full and I'd find out later that we were around 75% capacity we had a mix on board of people from the US the UK Canada Australia Mexico Spain Greece all over the world after the show we decided to go for a swim in the inside solarian pool this space was so bright and light with huge windows and lots of seats there's a little cafe in here too and the pool is actually a FASSA theapy pool I definitely can't spell that I can barely say it it was basically like a hot Bubbly Bath but you share it with other people and I'm not sure that I'm ever going to be somebody who loves that idea but I'm glad that I gave it a go there were a couple of kids in the pool when I went in but I think in total I saw less than 10 children on this Cruise the entire time we were sailing out of school holidays and celebrity definitely are mostly an adult cruise line so that's kind of what I expected celebrity are actually owned by Royal Caribbean and Royal Caribbean ships are the family versions of these you won't find big slides or surf simulators on a celebrity cruise but you'll find all of those things and way more on a Royal Caribbean ship the next ports on our itinery were cusy in Greece and limo in Cyprus the most popular thing to do in cusy is to visit Ephesus but as I'd already done that before I decided to stay closer to the port we did our own thing in limo 2 and celebrity put on shuttle buses free of charge to bring us into the city this is one of the big differences between budget cruise lines and more premium Cruise Lines if this was a budget Cruise Line they definitely would have been charging $10 or $15 for the shuttle bus when we visited these ports celebrity told us that we needed to bring our passports out with us it really depends on where you're visiting but if you're like me and you're wearing a summer dress it is unlikely that you have pockets so you're probably going to need a bag I almost always have my moui backpack on my back it is strong it's comfortable and it has a bright lining with loads of pockets so that you can keep important things like Captain Hudson safe you'll see my mouille bags in every single video I've made on this channel since about 2017 so I asked them if they would sponsor this video and I'm very happy to say that they said yes that means that I can bring you a discount on everything you've seen over the last few years from my packing cubes to my toiletry bags my side bags and the foldout bag that goes over my suitcase handle which is great for walking around airports or for walking across icy streets as I did on my last Cruise thanks to mouille for sponsoring this video use code Emma crues for 15% off everything all that wandering around made us hungry so when we got back to the ship we decided to check out the poolside Grill most cruise lines have something like this included in the cruise fair and the food was really really good there are of course restaurants on board that cost extra called specialty restaurants but I didn't go to any of those during this Cruise my aim was to keep this Cruise as cheap as possible one of my favorite things about this ship was the cafe and I can't comment on the coffee because I've never had a cup of coffee in my life but I can comment on the cookies and trust me I've eaten a lot of cruise ship cookies the cookies were here all day every day along with cakes and there were usually three types I'd often skip dessert in the main dining room or the buffet and just get a cookie here instead because they were pretty impossible to beat they were soft and gooey and I even wore my cruise cookie t-shirt in honor of them sometimes I take them back to my cabin in the evening for a bedtime snack celebrity did put little bedtime chocolates on our pillow each night which was very nice but my brother who was cruising solo one night he got four chocolates four for himself he hit the jackpot for most of this cruise I was just wearing regular t-shirts or dresses but there were a few dress codes on board every day there is a dress code for the main dining room and that means that you have to wear trousers with a collared shirt or something like a dress a polo shirt and a decent pair of jeans are okay but you can't wear shorts into the main dining room for dinner ever which is stricter than a lot of cruise lines I do find it really weird when cruise lines have rules that say no shorts and no t-shirts but I can wear a dress that is basically a giant t-shirt and shorter than shorts but I guess they have to draw dra the line somewhere at some point there wasn't a lot of difference between the casual kns and the former nights it was more just an invitation to dress a bit nicer if you wanted to if we didn't feel like getting changed at all we would just EA in the buffet there was also a white knight on board and I bought my trusty white dress I also remembered to bring a cardigan because it is almost impossible to eat dinner in a white dress without spilling something down the front it feels like white clothing is just a magnet to food I'm not sure what it is about it but it always happens information about things like the dress code could be found in the daily schedule which was delivered to our room each night and also in the cruise line app in the app we could check our onboard account we could see what the schedule was and we could even message other people for free some Cruise Lines do charge for that luxury so that was much appreciated again it's the small things like that that really make a difference the next two stops on our cruise were roads and creets where the crew had a safety drill they do these regular on cruises and it's always fun to me to see how every crew member has a job to do in an emergency it doesn't matter if you're the captain if you're a waiter if you work in a shop in an emergency you have a job to do and you have to practice it the chefs standing on the prominar deck still had their Chef's hats on which always reminds me of the film Ratatouille I actually did Download the film Ratatouille to watch at some point during this cruise I thought that we might have a lot of downtime and I was prepared to entertain myself but I did not have time to watch Ratatouille at all maybe that should be my new scale for how busy a Cru is did I have time to watch Ratatouille or did I not and the word Ratatouille that doesn't sound anything like a word anymore I was working on board the ship so I had purchased a Wi-Fi package it cost me £120 which is around $150 for the 12 nights and that's always painful for me to pay but it did work perfectly it wasn't as fast as my internet at home of course but I got everything that I needed to done including a live stream from the ship when I was in poort I would usually just use my phones 4 or 5G as I can roam in most of the places that we visited without any extra charge and I can actually share the internet from my phone to my laptop our next Port was napon and this port was a real surprise for me I'd never heard of it before but it was a great place to spend the day it was actually a tender port and that meant that we had to use the cruise ship's boats to get to land but we never had to wait for a tender I'm sure we would have had a bit of a wait if we rushed up as soon as the ship dropped her anchor but that is not my style the weather was glorious it was around 18 or 19° c which is 66 fit I understand that might not be warm for everybody but for me coming from England this was beautiful I could not have wished for more I'm a massive fan of cruising out of the peak season for this reason and also because it's normally much quieter in the ports I visited some Greek Islands in the summer on cruises with six other ships docked at the same time it really is bizarre to be around that many people at once and in places like Santorini I would definitely not recommend a peak season visit unless you're okay with crowds and also okay with being carried along with the crowds because you really can't fight it this was much much better I loved our itinery but I did find out later in the cruise that this was the reason that this was so cheap up until a couple of months before the sailing date this itinery was meant to go to Israel and Egypt celebrity decided to change it and I'm sure some people decided not to go ahead with the cruise after the change that meant that there were lots of spaces on board available and celebrity were filling them by selling it cheap last minute that combined with the time of the year and the fact that we were cruising on an older smaller ship meant that this Cruise was around a third of the cost of what it would have been sailing on a newer ship in summer you can see the full breakdown of the cost of this Cruise including my brother cruising solo at emac cruises.com slinin costs that also includes how much I spent on everything in short the total price I paid for this Cruise was 1,288 61 which is $1,623 that includes my flights from London the transfers and the gratuities the cruise was 12 nights long and that is based on two people sharing a balcony cabin when I cruise I'm really happy if I can stick to my 100 per person per night budget but that budget doesn't normally include flights and that's normally with a budget line not a premium line like celebrity so I was very very happy with this price I enjoyed my cruise on the 2001 celebrity Infinity as much as the 2023 celebrity Edge but the experiences were like chalk and cheese and that is a britishism for another video the celebrity Edge actually had one of the weirdest cabins that I've ever had it wasn't quite a balcony but it wasn't quite not a balcony to find out what that was like and whether that ship was worth paying three times as much as this one watch this video next I'll see you there

Channel: Emma Cruises

Views: 761,567

Keywords: cruise, cruise tips, emma cruises

Id: h02ew33tSbI

Length: 21min 15sec (1275 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2024