Just a little background. We are 4 star HAL mariners in our mid 60s and grew up listening to rock and roll music from the mid 60s on. We have been on 9 HAL cruises over the past 4 years on 5 different ships.

However, in those years we have noticed HAL’s onboard entertainment has steadily dwindled to where there are only the evening shows, a variety of different types of trivia and on rare occasion on longer cruises maybe a professional lecture or 2, and I’m not talking about port talks. The cruise director’s staff has dwindled to just 1 assistant and game shows, other than a few BBC Earth ones scattered around, have all but disappeared. When we get the Navigator, or whatever they call it now, to pick out the following day’s activities, we have a hard time finding new things to do whereas a few years ago, there was plenty to pick from. In fact we were getting to the point where we were wondering if this was becoming the norm across all of the premium mass market cruise lines as HAL is supposedly one of the best.

We’ll, I’m here to tell you that’s not the case on the 25 day b2b Celebrity cruise we just completed. In fact it’s just the opposite. On sea days besides having over 50+ activities to chose from, there are between 2-3 lectures by different professional lecturers each day. There are different game shows most every night where passenger participation is encouraged. There are encore matinees performed by guest entertainers after their initial two performances the previous evening. Read more