Cruise Radio is brought to you in part by Tripinsurance.com. Travel insurance done right by the people who know travel insurance. Get a quote today at Tripinsurance.com.

Here we go. Broadcasting from the Tripinsurance.com studios in Jacksonville, Florida. This is Cruise Radio.

Hey, what's up? My name is Doug Parker. Thank you so much for checking out this episode of Cruise Radio. On this episode, we're going to get 11-night review of Celebrity Reflection. Jason just returned from an Eastern Mediterranean cruise aboard, Celebrity Reflection, and we'll talk to him here in just a minute. Before we get to that, let's talk about our Cruise Radio Insider Facebook group. If you're not a member, come on and join us. Just search Cruise Radio

Insider on Facebook or check out the show notes at cruiseradio.net. Also, our Cruise Radio

news segment quite popular. If you go to our news articles on cruiseradio.com.

You'll find a news summary audio soundbite above the article. You can listen to the article if you don't want to read the article or if you're in a rush. So just check that out, Cruise Radio News as well. All right, on to this week's interview. Jason and his family just returned from an 11-night Eastern Mediterranean sailing aboard Celebrity Reflection. I love that ship. And he joins us on the line right now. Hey, Jason.

How are you, Doug? Thank you for having me on. Good, man. So, normally our listeners call from the United States.

Now, you're from the United States, but you're actually calling from outside the United States. Where are you?

No, I'm actually in Dubai. I am an American, but I live overseas and I work here in this area.

Nice. Wow. That is so cool. So let's jump right to the Celebrity Reflection Review then. So before we get to the ship itself, Jason, let's take a step back and talk to us about what made you want to sail Celebrity Reflection. Well, it's interesting. There's a lot of reasons actually we wanted to sail this. My wife and I, we've sailed five other cruise lines. And every line we try, she's always been saying, I want to try celebrity. I want to try celebrity. So that was, it's always been on our radar a little bit. And also a few years ago, we sailed the Western Med on the Norwegian Jade, which I highly recommend. That was a very good itinerary. So we needed to hit the east. So then we just started looking for cruises that went to the Eastern Med, and then we found that celebrity went there, and it's the newest ship that they have. So we're like, let's do that for sure. Plus, we just had a baby. He's a little over a year old now, and traveling with a baby. I was trying to find an itinerary that had a couple of

sea days and that wasn't port, port, port, port, port, port, because the last time we did the med, it was like a port every single day and we didn't want that. So the reflection went there. And it was another really good bonus too is that it actually has a stopover in Istanbul. So the fact we wanted to sail celebrity, wanted to go to the Eastern Med, we had a baby, and it went to Istanbul,

this cruise was perfect for us.

Nice. Now, getting we wanted to sail celebrity, we wanted to go to the Eastern Med, we had a baby, and it went to Istanbul. This cruise was perfect for us.

Nice. Now, getting over to the med from the states here, like for me, I go through Miami, then into Rome. It's probably about a nine-hour flight. What kind of flight is it from you going from Dubai to Rome? It's not really bad at all. From Dubai to Rome, if you do a straight flight, I think it's about six hours, but I'm cheap, so we did the cheap flight, which had us a layover. On the way over there, we were laying over in Paris, and then on the way back, we laid over in Amsterdam. But the whole entire trip, even with the layover, was 10 hours. So I guess we flew about the same time you would. Yeah,cha as the crow flies it's very close i got

you i got you so let's talk about uh you get to the cruise port of shiva shivakia i think that's how

you say it how was embarkation there for you it was it was amazingly smooth they definitely have this

as a well-oiled machine they they had some trouble taking pictures of our baby that didn't work out so well for our cruise card. But once we got through that, we blew in there. And they were very accommodating to us because we had a little one. They let us go through the premium line, even though we're not premium. This was our first celebrity crew. So I think tops, we couldn't have been on maybe 20 minutes and we were on the ship. I have to ask you because I am a huge fan of the solstice class ship. I was on Celebrity Reflection a couple of years ago. What were your first impressions, Jason? Pulling up to the ship, I mean, I've sailed on some big ships, so this didn't look huge, but it was grandiose. I just thought, I found it incredibly classy. Then as soon as you step on,

they hand you a glass of Prosecco. I love that the ship didn't look like a tacky Las Vegas hotel.

I love cruising, but I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that some of the, I feel that some of the

cruise ships look really over the top and the decor is just cheesy cheese. The reflection is not that at all. I'm sure that celebrity doesn't get a lot of first time cruisers, but if they, if the reflection got some first time cruisers, there would be people going on cruises constantly because the ship is just so cool. Like, there's several things about it that I, the little things that they do so well, like their background music, the music that's playing when you just walk around the ship, it feels like I'm in South Beach or something like that. And I also, I love the lighting. Like, they use lots of pinks and blues. The lighting scheme of the ship is very well done. It's just, it's super trendy. I loved it. Don't they have a, like a tree suspended there? Yeah, there's a tree suspended right in the middle of the atrium.

And then there's a, the tree grows up. And then at the bottom there, it is a metal reflection of it.

So it kind of signifies, there's the real tree and the fake tree and they reflect one another.

...