Attracted by all the hype, my wife and I took advantage of a good deal on the Jan. 20-27 cruise of the Western Caribbean on the new Celebrity Edge. We had an Aqua class cabin on Deck 9.

In brief: Gorgeous ship, great food and service in Blu (Aqua class-only restaurant), very good theater entertainment (including a terrific violinist/singer from Iceland), very efficient embarkation and debarkation, excellent boarding of excursion shuttle to our sole excursion (Chichenitsa), terrific breakfast and lunch food at the buffet, very good overall service, and the room was excellent.

One major disappointment: Smartphone-based trivia. Listen, Celebrity management! We can all do multiple-choice trivia on our phones anywhere we want, including in our own homes. Typical shipboard trivia is -- and should be -- something different. Paper-based shipboard trivia is fun because: (1) Hosts can ask any kind of question. Open-ended questions are probably the most frequent kind of questions. (2) It's easy to form teams and a ton of fun to discuss/argue with team members about what answer to write down. (3) Getting away from your phone is one of the positive options of cruising. (4) Interacting with engaged trivia hosts is part of the process. Even the good-natured disagreements with the hosts are fun. (5) "Eliminating cheating" is not a good reason for going to smartphone-based multiple-choice trivia. It doesn't. And in the traditional paper-based format, cheaters are ultimately exposed ... or simply shunned. Read more