Celebrity Millennium Japan Oct 2, 2019 cruise

First time traveling with Celebrity Cruises and first time traveling to Japan.

SHIP

The ship is newly remodeled and they did an excellent job. It's a smaller ship so I found it easy to navigate.

- 10th floor: spa and buffet

- 4th floor: casino, theater and main dining

EMBARKATION/DISEMBARKATION

Easiest embarkation process EVER! We had checked-in online and had our Celebrity express pass. After going through security we literally walked onto the boat and our card keys were on our cabin. We got on the boat around noon.

- Taxi from Yokohama station to Daikoku Pier was roughly $45

- We used the free shuttle on the disembarkation that took us from Diakoku Pier to a Sakuragicho station. I would recommend this route for both directions.

NARITA AIRPORT

- We got to/from the Narita Airport using Narita Express.

- We purchased the roundtrip for roughly $40 (requires foreign passport). Its very quick BUT there are some hiccups with this

- Because our return date change due to the typhoon, we had to wait in line at the JR office to change the dates. For some reason the Nagasaki office couldn't change the date but she stamped our tickets so we could take them to the Yokohama office to change the dates. This was stressful. Some agents speak english and some do not. I had to use google translate to communicate with the agent and she also had some device in which she spoke Japanese into and it output English on the screen. The queues were long

- You don't have to put your luggage on the front of the car, you can take them to your seats and squeeze them in with you. For some reason I thought I had to put the luggage up front and those were always full.

- On my return to Narita the train, the train was on was stopped due to a human-related accident. I had no idea what the agent was saying but the person next to me spoke English and helped me. I had to leave the train and exchange my ticket with the operator and catch the train across the platform...or I could have stayed on the train until service resumed which was estimated to be 30-40 minutes later.

CABIN

We stayed in cabin 2102 (ocean view) and were very happy with it.

- plenty of charging ports

- plenty of space for 3 people

- replaced the typical shower curtain with an actual glass door.

- I didn't hear much non-standard noise like banging or anything so I think this is a pretty good room if you require more quiet for sleeping.

- Cabin provided blow dryer, umbrella and reusable bag

- TIP: the only outlet in the bathroom is for a shaver, so you may need an extension cord if you use anything like a waterpik or some other things.

- TIP: the body soap is worthless, bring your own.

- Our cabin had no plumbing or A/C issues, but I did notice that cabins on the 2nd floor towards the back of the boat did smell like sewage in the hallway when I walked by.

DINING

I felt that the food was great on the ship. The buffet has many options, including gluten free. The french fries are excellent (available outside by the pool). There's also more healthy options by the solarium on 10th floor.

For dinner we mainly took to the main dining room. We had no problems with poor service or cold food. We enjoyed main dining very much, but also ate at the 6pm hour which is earlier.

We only did one specialty dining - crab platter during lunch at sea. It was $45 a person and you get 2 alaskan crab legs, 2 crab cakes, crab bisque and garlic bread. It was too much crab to eat all at once. I would pass on this again if I could.

ENTERTAINMENT

There's a nightly free slot tournament at 8, in which I won $50 free slot play. Also lost my own money on the slots but it was fair give & take and worth the entertainment.

The nightly shows are excellent. The singers are strong performers and always in tune. And the performances themselves are mature and not too gimmicky.

TYPHOON

We went during typhoon hagabis and our trip was rerouted to Nagaski and extended 2 days. It was chaotic on the boat with everyone trying to reschedule their flights/hotels and not knowing what was going to happen. Celebrity handled it well. They opened the satellite phones and reimbursed all calls. Also they setup a computer station with 8 laptops and gave free internet access for the remaining cruise to help everyone. I was very happy with how they handled the situation.

I fortunately booked with Celebrity using Flights by Celebrity. Going forward I will always use this option. I booked with them cause the price was $50 less expensive than booking directly with the airline. But during the typhoon, Flights by Celebrity automatically rescheduled by flight and provided free hotel, and hotel & airport transfer for the change. It was a true blessing and I would suggest you use them for this single reason alone. There were plenty of people who could not get in touch with their airlines or had issues rescheduling.

CELLULAR DATA

Originally I thought I wouldn't need cellular data if I had prepared enough. Looking back I'm glad I didn't go that route. I changed carriers in the US from cricket wireless to google FI. Google fi offers free cellular roaming in the standard package. I had service most days except for At Sea Days. And I used the service at every port, especially google Maps. My phone bill for the month was only $35.53 which also include 2 short international calls during the Typhoon. ($0.20 per minute) I highly recommend you have data.

TIP: I have a iphone SE and use google hangouts for texting family so that communication would be on the data plan and not international rates. I plan to switch to google pixel in the future to take advantage of all of the Google Fi features.

PHONE APPS

- Google translate

- Google Maps

- Google hangouts

- Zoho Notebooks: I used this for destination addresses to show taxi drivers

- I had downloaded but did not use: Maps.me, Google Duo, Japan Direct

PORTS/SHORE EXCURSION

- Best sushi was eaten at Tsukiji outer Market in Tokyo at Sushizanmai. Everything I read said the market opened early but I would suggest you not go till 8am when most things were open. We went at 6am and most stores were closed.

- Best dim sum was in Yokohama chinatown. The soup dumplings were the best.

- Favorite port was Osaka because I love street food and shopping. We took the subway to Dotonbori. Plenty of consignment shopping too if you are looking to purchase luxury items.

- In general we did most ports on our own and used the subway. We purchased IC Cards from Narita Airport.

- If you do any excursions I would recommend you book through Celebrity so that they can adjust your excursions as necessary

1. In Aomori we were scheduled to dock at 9am but didn't get in till 10:30 cause of high winds. It took hours to disembark cause we had just come from Busan and everyone on the boat had to be processed by immigration. We did not get off the boat till 2pm. I'm sure they handle this better for people who had excursions.

2. In some stations we got an extra hour which was nice

CABIN
We stayed in cabin 2102 (ocean view) and were very happy with it.
- plenty of charging ports
- plenty of space for 3 people
- replaced the typical shower curtain with an actual glass door.
- I didn't hear much non-standard noise like banging or anything so I think this is a pretty good room if you require more quiet for sleeping.
- Cabin provided blow dryer, umbrella and reusable bag
- TIP: the only outlet in the bathroom is for a shaver, so you may need an extension cord if you use anything like a waterpik or some other things.
- TIP: the body soap is worthless, bring your own.
- Our cabin had no plumbing or A/C issues, but I did notice that cabins on the 2nd floor towards the back of the boat did smell like sewage in the hallway when I walked by.
- MOVE UPGRADE: I attempted a move upgrade of $350 pp for Concierge suite and $150 pp for Family suite but was declined the day before the cruise