Live From Celebrity Apex: What's the Embarkation Experience Like Onboard?

Colleen McDaniel, Editor-in-Chief of Cruise Critic, is onboard Celebrity Apex, which is sailing its maiden voyage from Athens, Greece. Want to know what it's like to sail from Greece on Celebrity Cruises' newest ship? Tune in every day for a brand-new video, highlighting different aspects of the experience.

Check out our Day 2 vlog -- featuring Celebrity Apex's best pools and sun decks -- here.

Video Transcript:

Hi everybody! Colleen McDaniel here, Editor-in-Chief of Cruise Critic.

So today we are onboard Celebrity Apex. Now, this is the newest ship in the Celebrity fleet and we are sailing the very first voyage from Athens now.

The embarkation process that we did today was a little bit different because of the pandemic precautions that they're taking, so we had an assigned time for showing up to the port, and we made it at our assigned time. Once we walked in we had to do a health check-in first -- so that was the number one priority.

We had to show a QR code that we had downloaded already, and they gave us little bottles that had swabs attached with them and we went we got antigen tests. Now, it's not quite the deep PCR test that goes all the way to your brain -- it's a little bit simpler. So it's a nasal swab, then we sat and we waited for our results. When our negative results came in we were ready to board.

So the whole process probably took about 50 minutes from start to finish. We waited about 20 minutes for our negative results to come in, but we were onboard the ship in less than an hour.

We are going to be onboard all week, sharing our time on Celebrity Apex, so come back every day! Stick around see what this great ship has to offer.