balcony – Page 7 – Wanderlist Vacations

Ship Inspection Saturday – Carnival Fantasy

One of the things that we do as travel agents is the occasional cruise ship inspection. As mentioned in my post back in October after we toured the NCL Getaway, this is generally a 3 hour tour of the ship, hosted by a rep or two from the cruise line, and it’s intended to give us an idea of what our clients can expect should we book them on the ship. This is my second ship tour, and my wife’s fourth, as she did two more while down in Ft Lauderdale for Cruise3sixty a couple of weeks ago. For this one, we were getting a look at the Carnival Fantasy, the only ship from any line currently based out of Charleston, SC. She’s an older ship, having launched in early 1990, but the last refurbishment has her in pretty good shape. The decor is pretty standard for other older ships we’ve been on, too. Overall, we were pleasantly surprised at how well the Fantasy has been kept up. Let’s take a closer look…

We drove down from Charlotte early this morning, getting to the port around 10am. Check in for the tour wasn’t scheduled to begin until 11am after all the guests from the previous sailing debarked, so we walked around trying to figure out where to meet. Fortunately, the port area isn’t all that big and we found the spot pretty quickly, and hung out until the Carnival reps arrived. Things didn’t exactly kick off on time, as there was a lot going on. They ended up with surprise Coast Guard and USDA inspections happening after the ship got back in to port this morning. No biggie, things happen, and we were just a small blip on the list of things the crew had to deal with before they left port this evening. I think we may have been delayed 30-45 minutes boarding as a result. Here’s a couple quick shots of the port, including the front of the terminal. When you arrive and park, a shuttle brings you to this entrance and drops you off here, at which point you’ll go through security and check in for your cruise!

Another tip: As you board the ship, you’ll notice a bunch of crew wearing red sweatshirts that say “Just Ask”. If you need to know anything, like where you can grab some food or where you’re room is, they are there to answer those questions. No need to get in line for guest services!

Once we were on, we hustled to check out a couple of rooms. Since we were late, we really were moving fast, and my pictures show it. With more than two dozen people in the group and a schedule to keep, there really wasn’t time to stop and ensure the pictures were clear. The first set here is from a standard oceanview room:

Not bad, a little small compared to more current ships, but I’d be more than happy to sail in it. Next up is the only shot I got of an interior down the hall:

And finally, we have a Grand Suite, the largest room category on board. Note that being an older ship, the only categories that actually have balconies are the Junior and Grand Suites

Due to our time constraints, those were all the rooms we got to see. After finishing there, we were guided around a few other areas as we headed in the direction of the dining room for our lunch. Here are some shots of different areas we saw along the way, including: the show lounge, casino, a couple of bars, the kid’s club, and the Forum Aft Lounge, where they were setting up to host a wedding reception:

There were a couple of weddings going on today before sailing, from what we saw. We entered the port at the same place they did, and the wedding parties were shuttled in to security the same way we were. While I’m familiar with how on-board weddings at sea (or in a foreign port) work, this was my first exposure to weddings that take place in port prior to the ship’s departure. Not everyone in the wedding party was going on the cruise, so after getting everyone on the ship, they hold the wedding, followed by the reception, and then those who are not sailing are escorted off. Pretty good way to get a shipboard wedding on a budget.

Let’s get back to the tour. After a quick visit to the kid’s club, it was time to eat. They took us to the Jubilee dining room at the aft of the Atlantic deck (8), one of the two main dining rooms on board. We all sat at one of the five tables set up for us, and were served by the staff as if we were cruisers, eating some of the same things served at sea. The menu was pretty well set too, with the only choice we got to make being fish or beef for the main course:

and here are the courses, in order (I had the beef):

The spaghetti carbonara was spectacular, as was the warm chocolate melting cake, which is one of our all-time favorite desserts (we usually eat it more than once when we’re on Carnival :)). The braised short ribs were good quality meat, and perfectly cooked, but I’m just not a fan of what ends up being stringy meat (like pot roast type meat). Jen had the beef too, and enjoyed it, but said both the spaghetti and short ribs were better on her tour of the Splendor a couple of weeks ago (they serve the same food on all ship tours).

I’m going to take a second to give a huge shoutout to the wait staff today too, they did a great job, and were even sure to learn our names. After we ate, they even busted out some music and got some of us to get up and dance, just like a regular MDR experience.

After lunch was over, we headed up to check out the buffets and outside areas on the Lido deck. The buffet stations on the Fantasy are all pretty standard for Carnival, but note that this ship has not undergone any of the Fun Ship 2.0 upgrades, so no Guy’s Burger Joint or BlueIguana Cantina. It does have a Mongolian Wok though, which we always enjoy.

No, we didn’t sample any of the buffet food, pretty sure that would have been frowned upon, plus we were full from lunch.

On to the outside areas. Here’s the main area on the Lido deck:

At the back of the ship, they have Waterworks 2.0, added during its last refurbishment a few years ago

They’re definitely some nice slides for a ship this old, but the one downside here is location. Being right behind the stack, it was a bit noisier, especially as you walked out to this area (walkway shown in the first shot above). It is what is is, though. The other odd thing about the aft design is that one deck down is the Serenity adults-only area. I shot this looking down on it from the back of the ship where the waterslides are:

Between the noise from the stack and the kids on the waterslide one deck above, I can’t imagine this is very serene, but having never sailed the Fantasy, that’s pure speculation. If you’ve sailed this ship in her current configuration and can speak to the noise level in Serenity, feel free to comment, we’d love to hear how it really is!

Update: Based on a comment on our Facebook page, it sounds like the location of Serenity is a non-issue!

After we finished on Lido, we did a very quick walk through of the spa, which was a pretty standard setup for Carnival. There seemed to be plenty of gym space for those wanting to work out, too.

Once we finished our walk-through of the spa we were out of time, so we headed down to deck 3, gave our passes back, and sadly left the ship. All in all it was a good tour, and left us with a pretty solid impression of the Fantasy. As mentioned, Carnival has done a really good job with upkeep. Is it small? Yes. Are you limited in room types? Yes. It’s not the Dream or the Breeze, but it’s still a worthy option, especially if you’re looking to cruise out of an east coast port outside of Florida. It’s only three hours from us, so I personally would like to give the ship a shot in the near future if we can carve out some time.

One last thing before I leave you with more pictures of the tour: A big thank you to Joanie and Kirsten, our tour guides from Carnival. They took really good care of us today!

Our Favorite Port: Bermuda

Here we are at the end of my five part series, and we’re ending it with the trip that I started this blog with, Bermuda. We all agree this is our favorite to date, and it was a pretty easy choice. Since I’ve already talked about this port in-depth in my Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 posts back in June, I’ll do my best to bring new material to this entry.

When we were initially looking for a graduation cruise to take our daughter on, we were looking at Alaska. Jen and Bayley had never been there, and everyone who’s been on an Alaskan cruise seems to love them. After a bit of deceptive questioning to avoid letting Bayley in on the surprise, we came to realize that she’d prefer something tropical. My wife and I started the search over, quickly coming to the realization that we wanted to do something different from the normal Caribbean itineraries we’d been doing. We did consider cruises out of San Juan, since those go further south to ports we haven’t been, but most of those were out of our budget when adding airfare. That was when my wife brought up Bermuda. We’d talked about this in the past, but weren’t sure how we’d like a cruise where you basically park in one spot for three days. In researching it, she found it to be a favorite of a large percentage of those who posted reviews on Cruise Critic. Many people talked about how they’d been to Bermuda multiple times on cruises, which is something we really hadn’t seen with any other U.S. based itinerary. We were sold.

This itinerary started with two days at sea. On the morning of day 3, I got up early to watch the sunrise as we arrived in port. If you cruise to Bermuda, I highly recommend being up early and getting out on deck or a balcony to watch the sun come up as you pass around the island. The arrival provided some of the best views of the trip in my opinion, and as you can see, the Norwegian Breakaway beat us in to port:

Getting back to the point of this post, this island is our favorite port of all time for a few reasons:

The people were all incredibly warm and friendly, and you never felt unsafe. Wherever we went, people were always smiling, and willing to help you out with information or directions.
The transportation system is second to none among ports we’ve stopped at. I talked about this in my previous posts, but when you first get off, there are transportation stands just off the ship where you can buy bus/ferry passes. If they can’t get you where you want to go, you probably don’t need to go there. We made use of the bus and ferry every day we were there. These are the same buses the rest of the island uses to get around, and the same ones kids take to and from school.
A friend of mine at work is from Bermuda, and always talks fondly about the island (except maybe the cost of living 🙂 ). I’d heard about a few of the different landmarks on the island, like Somerset Bridge, so we made time to stop and see a couple of things most visitors aren’t aware of on his recommendation.
There’s a ton of stuff to do. Even with 3 days in port, we still didn’t see everything we’d planned to. We definitely want to visit again and work on that list some more.

Number 2 above is a huge deal in my opinion. Going in, we had zero guided excursions planned, private or cruise sponsored, due to all we’d read about how good the transportation system was. When it was all said and done, we only took one guided tour, a last minute choice to take a jetski tour on our final morning there. As I mentioned in the Day 3 post in July, that tour was excellent and worth the extra money that was spent on it. Outside of that, everything else we did was on our own, utilizing the transportation system and our feet to get us where we wanted to go. It was nice to not be on a set schedule, not having to hurry to meet tour operators. We basically got off the ship whenever we want and headed out, and returned whenever we wanted.

This cruise also represented the first time we’d been parked in the same port for more than a few hours, which we all found pretty cool. On the first and second day in port, there was no stress about getting back to the ship before it left, since it wasn’t going anywhere. It was an awesome way to see Bermuda.

I think that about covers it. I highly recommend reading my three posts about our days on the island (linked in the first paragraph in this post) to get an idea of what we did. It’s been fun going over these five ports and reliving our time on these islands. My next posts will come some time next week and cover our upcoming trip to Daytona for the Rolex 24, a 24-hour sports car endurance race. In the meantime, here are a few more shots from Bermuda!

Another Trip to Florida, Part 2

The bulk of last week’s trip to Florida was spent in Ft Lauderdale. This wasn’t a pleasure trip, however, as mentioned in my last post, since we were down there for training on the business my wife is starting. After years of travelling, we finally decided to jump in to the industry and do something we’re both passionate about, so we bought a new CruiseOne franchise. I’m not leaving my job, so it’ll mostly be my wife running things with the business, but more on that in a later post :).

We spent the week staying at the Sheraton Suites Fort Lauderdale at Cypress Creek, along with the rest of the new franchisees. Prior to going down, my wife had looked up reviews, and was surprised to find so many negative ones for an SPG property. Now that we’ve spent a week there, I can see why.

Let’s start with the positive:

Decent breakfast buffet: Some reviews on this place knock the buffet, but I found it to be perfectly in line with other hotel breakfasts. The food was kept pretty warm each day, and while I’d have preferred a bigger change in choices each day, everything I had was fine as far as taste goes. The wait staff was very friendly as well.
Good sized room: We had a two room suite up on the 5th floor in a quiet corner of the hotel, and it served us just fine. The sofa in the living room was a pullout, making it easy for us to set up a bed for our daughter when she drove over to see us on Friday.

Not sure I really have anything else positive to say, so let’s move on to the not-so-positive:

The WiFi: Wow. Worst WiFi I’ve had in any hotel I’ve ever stayed in. There were three options when connecting, and not wanting to pay extra, I stuck with the free “up to 1.5Mbps” option. Can’t say it was ever close to that speed. During peak hours, connectivity came and went, and when you were connected, speed was super slow, to the point that sites were timing out loading, making it impossible to do any work. I got fed up and tethered through my cell phone most of the time. Didn’t matter which device we used (iPad, Windows or Mac laptops, cell phones), the WiFi performance was horrible unless you were on in the middle of the night. The front desk basically shrugged that one off when I asked one morning. I’ve stayed in larger SPG properties where the free WiFi worked just fine, so this was obviously a case of not having enough capacity to cover the hotel. The signal itself was strong, there just wasn’t any bandwidth, and I’m not going to pay for a higher tier just because they’re trying to force me in to it by limiting the free connectivity.
Front desk staff: I only interacted with them a couple of times, but wasn’t really impressed either time, as they really didn’t seem to be happy with their jobs. The main issue we had is that we’d stopped down early in the week to ask about the pet policy, as our daughter wanted to bring her cat with her to come see us. The girl we talked to was very friendly, said it was a $25/day cleaning fee, and even chatted with us about the cat for a couple of minutes (we made it clear it was a cat we were asking for). On Friday morning before we headed to training, we stopped at the front desk to leave a key and let them know a pet would be joining us later in the day, and the lady we talked to this time (not friendly) said cats were not allowed. That would have been good information to have a couple of days earlier when we specifically asked, but at least our daughter hadn’t left St Pete yet, so we had time to stop her from bringing the cat.
General hotel issues:
- One of the elevators near our room smelled like vomit all of Friday. The actual vomit was gone, but that smell hung around all day. Either close the elevator until the smell gone, or clean it right the first time.
- Pillows were way to soft, and the mattress was way too hard. Both are subjective, but neither lived up to my past SPG experiences.
- Weirdest balcony I’ve ever had in a hotel. I wish I’d taken a pic, but it was a shared balcony with two other rooms. Not all of them are set up like this, most are solo balconies, but with ours, we easily could have wakled over and peered in to rooms next to us, or vice-versa. Never had an issue with it, but still, not a setup we really liked. It also acted as a water collector, as any rain resulted in about an inch of standing water out there.
- AC really struggled to keep up. We had it set to 62 the whole week, and it never got close (seemed to stay around 71ish), and never shut off.

I think that’s about it. I’ve stayed in a few SPG properties over the past decade for work, with the last one being the Sheraton Manhattan, and this one certainly didn’t live up to my expectations based on those past stays. Certainly wasn’t any better than some of the lower tier hotels I used to stay in regularly for work (Country Inn and Suites, for example) either. The Holiday Inn I mentioned in my last post beat this Sheraton without question.

My next post will cover the places we ate during the week. With breakfast and lunch provided for us, we got to explore the area for dinner, and had some great food along the way. Following that, I’ll get more in to our new venture, starting with the tour we got to do of the Norwegian Getaway this past Saturday in Miami!

Cabin Selection – What’s the Big Deal?

One of the most stressful parts of booking a cruise for me is cabin selection. As my wife can attest to, I generally put more time in on this than I do cruise selection, and I tend to change my mind more than once along the way.

So what’s the big deal? Why not just select a category and go along with whatever default cabin the booking site selects? Well, for me, the last thing I want to do is end up spending all that money and have the family annoyed by the cabin we end up in. Our first few cruises were group ones with the staff of my wife’s office. Her boss was very generous with them, and if they made goal for the year, he’d take the staff on a vacation, which most of the time was a cruise. On those, I never had cabin selection, we basically went with whatever the travel agent he used gave us. We never really ended up with bad cabins, I’d say, but nothing memorable, either.

Prior to our Thanksgiving cruise on the Freedom in 2011, I’d never actually done any cabin selection research. When we booked that one, I felt somewhat overwhelmed. We knew that within our budget, we could only afford interior or certain ocean view classes. With the available ocean view cabins in our budget being the two lowest decks, I started researching interior options higher up the ship. After a long hunt, I settled on an interior on the Panorama deck, room 1053. It seemed like an interesting location, being one deck above Lido and in the forward section of the ship. This area also seemed like it would have less foot traffic with a smaller number of cabins in that section. Here’s a shot of the deck plan, with our cabin circled in red:

We absolutely loved that location. It had the added benefit of quick access to the “secret deck” on that floor that very few people ventured out to, so it was almost like having your own balcony at the front of the ship. One of the really nice things about this location was having easy access to the outside areas of the upper decks. No waiting for an elevator, walking down a long hall, etc. Just walk out the door, turn right, and head out to deck. It was also a very quiet location, I don’t recall ever hearing anyone running, or any voices, and never heard any noise from the Lido deck. That became our new favorite area for a cabin.

When it came time to select a cabin for our Thanksgiving 2012 cruise on the Legend (also my 40th birthday), I went through another lengthy hunt. This time, our budget allowed for a balcony, which complicated things a bit. We’d never had a balcony, and after reading so many people say how they’d never go back to an interior/oceanview after having a balcony, we finally decided to try one. I’m pretty sure I took even longer finding the right one, as I now had drifting cigarette smoke to worry about. The last thing we wanted was to end up with smoke blowing back on us from any cabin ahead, as non of us can really stand cigarette smoke. After a long hunt, I decided on 4204, which had a group of lifeboats in front of it, meaning there were no balconies immediately ahead of us to worry about:

No complaints on that cabin either, and that lifeboat right ahead of it doesn’t detract from the view in any way, as shown in the Photosynth I did of the balcony while we were in port in Roatan. I will say that we never got the “once you go balcony, you’ll never go back” feeling from it thought. It was nice having it, and we got some great views, but just weren’t wowed to that level.

Moving on, when deciding on a cabin for our Thanksgiving 2013 sailing on the Breeze, we once again found ourselves a little budget constrained, limiting us to inside or oceanview. Somehow I managed to get us booked in to 11203, which is a forward room on the Spa deck, which also meant we got the Spa cabin ammenities:

As we discovered later, this is categorized as handicapped accessible, something not indicated on the site we used to book. We didn’t even realize it until a week or so before the cruise when I changed the bed layout to king on Carnival’s site. Regardless, the room was huge, with plenty of space to move around in, and the same went for the bathroom. The window was pretty good sized, and looked out the right front side of the ship. Additionally, this room also had very easy access to the “secret door”, basically giving us an almost private forward balcony. Just turn right out of the room, and walk out the door :).

Finally, the room selection on our most recent cruise on the Celebrity Summit. This one was a bit of a nightmare through our own doing. When we booked this cruise, I did so with the understanding it would just be the three of us, and our budget allowed for anything up to (and including) a Sky Suite, and having never stayed in a suite, we decided to give it a shot. Adding that in made it far more difficult, as the Sky Suites available were all on deck 6, which frankly didn’t appear to give really clean views of the ocean below due to the presence of lifeboats right below the cabins. After a long process of trying to hunt down pictures, asking advice on the Celebrity forum on CC (which I never did get a response to 🙂 ), and reading reviews, I finally settled on 6128, towards the aft:

Pretty sure that decision took me about a week to make, which all turned out to be a waste of time. About a month later, we (and by “we”, I mean my wife and daughter) decided it’d be fine to bring her boyfriend with us. His parents had agreed to pay for him to come along, and since they hardly ever see each other (they live in another state), we agreed. The problem at that point was that a Sky Suite only sleeps three. That left us with two options, look for something in a lower category that sleeps four, or he can book a single. We ended up choosing the latter, at least initially, as the Family Veranda rooms weren’t available when we called initially. That brought us another snag, you can’t book a single if you’re under 21, and he’s only 18. My wife called the travel agent, who conferenced in Celebrity, and we finally got things set. My wife would be listed in the single interior on deck 2, and the rest of us would be in the suite. When we got on board, we’d switch it up and just have him stay in the interior, which Celebrity said would be fine.

All set, right? Not quite.

About a month before the cruise, I noticed that the family veranda rooms (which sleep up to 5) had opened up. We decided we liked the idea of having us all together, especially since it was his first cruise, so my wife called our agent back. Again, I had to do more research before-hand to see which one of the available FV cabins we wanted, but we ended up moving all of us to 9156, an aft corner FV:

That room was awesome, and we’d finally found a balcony that gave us the “yea, it’ll be hard to go back” feeling. As I mentioned in my review of the ship, there are plenty of pictures of this room available here, and you’re more than welcome to check out my Photosynth of that balcony to get an idea of how big it is, and how wide of a field of view you get. I’d definitely jump on an aft-wrap room again if the budget allowed. The picture I have set as the featured one at the top of this post was shot off the balcony showing the sunrise as we approached Bermuda. We spent a ton of time, including multiple breakfasts and dinners, enjoying that aft view.

So really, cabin selection boils down to the following for me. I want a cabin that meets as many of the following criteria as possible:

Provides easy access to upper decks whenever possible. That 10-15 second walk to Lido on the Freedom, Breeze and Summit was awesome!
Has as little foot traffic as possible, so we’re not peppered with loud talking / running kids all night. This means selecting something in an area with few cabins, or even at the aft of the ship.
If we have a balcony, one that isn’t going to be impacted by smokers, whether they be from another balcony, or from an open deck below. Tip for those wanting to avoid smoke: Most lines only allow smoking on the open decks on one side of the ship. Find out what side that is, and choose the other one if your cabin is near an open deck.
Another balcony wish: Has a clean view of the ocean, with no lifeboats in front or below that might obstruct the view
If choosing an oceanview, ensure it isn’t so low that we might get to watch waves coming and going over the window (that’s the only thing that’s caused my wife’s motion sickness to pop up so far)
Won’t be subject to noise from anything above or below the cabin

That last one is a big one for me. Some of the most common complaints I hear about cabins center around ones situated above or below active areas of the ship. For example: below the gym, directly above or below the main theater or clubs, near the galley, or for higher cabins, below busy decks where you might encounter scraping chairs, noise from sports courts, etc. Our last two cabins, on the Breeze and Summit, violated that rule, but I did a ton of research online to prepare myself. For the Breeze, we were directly below the fitness center, and yes, if you were in the cabin during the day, there was the occasional noise from some of the equipment, but it was never an issue, and we never heard anything in the evenings. On the Summit, we were directly below the outdoor aft bar area. We did hear chairs being moved from time to time, but it was pretty quiet and was never an issue, even for someone like me who’s oversensitive to stuff like that. I’d stay in either one of those rooms again without question. On the Summit, there was one nice benefit of being there. In the evenings, they have live music, so you can sit out on the balcony and enjoy some relaxing tunes :).

So what do I do to find that perfect room?

Scour the Cruise Critic boards for the line we’re looking at. In several cases, I’ve found pics of a given room in one or more of those threads, or have been able to get members to send pics simply by asking about a room on the boards.
Also check cabin reviews on Cruise Critic
Run a search in Google or Bing, as someone may have written about the cabin in a blog
Search photo sharing sites like Flikr, Photobucket, etc for pictures of the cabin. I found a ton of pictures of our Summit cabin that way, including exterior shots showing where it was, what sort of view it provided, etc.
And finally, spend hours going through all that data to make an educated guess on what the best cabin will be within our budget.

I think that about covers it. I know I probably obsess over cabin selection more than I should, but I’m that way with anything I’m spending large sums of money on. If you have any suggestions to add, feel free to comment!

Cruising the Summit

I’ve been going back and forth on what to write here. What I don’t want to do is make this a duplicate of my Cruise Critic review of this sailing, as that seems like a waste of typing. I’m still waiting for that to be published, so if you’re interested in my traditional review of it, keep an eye on the list of my CC reviews, hopefully it’ll be published soon (update – it’s published as of 6/24). That also shows reviews of our previous three cruises in case anyone’s interested. That said, on to the Summit.

After the afore-mentioned fun in Annapolis, we headed up to New York to catch the Summit for a 7 night cruise to Bermuda. We headed up a day early, in part to get a few hours to hang out in NYC, and also because we believe in giving ourselves plenty of time just in case something happened. As anyone who’s cruised before knows, the ship won’t wait for you if you’re late boarding, and I had no interest in missing two sea days and meeting the ship in Bermuda. Good thing we did, as we suffered a punctured tire an hour north of Annapolis and had to stop in some small town along the way and get it replaced. Things happen, and this is a prime example of why we like to get to our departure city a day early whenever possible. After that 3 hour delay, we made our way to a friend’s apartment we were staying at in Long Island City and had a fun few hours in NYC Saturday evening.

With Sunday morning came our departure day, and we were all very much looking forward to it. There’s something about stepping on to a ship that causes everything I might be concerned with in real life to just disappear. The idea of being totally disconnected until we arrive back in port is cathartic in a way that’s difficult to put in to words. This time around even more so, primarily because a few short minutes before we actually stepped on the ship, I was certain it wasn’t going to happen. My daughter occasionally gets motion sickness from riding in cars (but cruise ships have no affect on her), and apparently the drive from Manhattan to Bayonne triggered it again. After our boarding group was called, we got in line to take the bus from the terminal to the ship, and as we were about to get on she suddenly felt very ill, and ran to get to the bathroom thinking she was going to throw up.

See where this is going?

The woman managing the line saw it, and asked if our daughter was sick. My wife instinctively said yes, and I immediately had visions of the ship leaving without us. They had no idea what was wrong, and had to assume it was Noro. We were then directed to some seats off to the side to wait for the ship’s nurse, and ultimately the ship’s doctor. After about 45 min, she was cleared by the doc (who’s very friendly, BTW), and we were allowed to board. Whew.

That first day and a half on the ship had us reconsidering our choice of line. The CC review covers each specific topic in more depth, but the sailing we chose (June 8th) was prior to the area schools getting out, which meant fewer families. We had an idea of that going in, and really had no choice, as my daughter’s working as a counselor at Woodward most of the summer, and had to be there the day we got back. Regardless, the average age on the ship was quite a bit higher than that of our last three cruises, all of which were over Thanksgiving break. That first 36 hours, the ship just felt dead. Activities were light, including only one trivia session on the first full sea day, and the overall energy level just wasn’t where we’re used to. On the second sea day, things picked up quite a bit (thankfully), with more trivia, and more activities overall. The activities staff really busted their butts from that point on to keep people entertained. By the time we got to Bermuda on Wednesday, our tune had changed for the most part. I do admit that when we docked in Kings Wharf, I looked over at the water slides and ropes course on the Breakaway with a tinge of jealousy, even with NCL being at the bottom of lines we’ll cruise again (more on that in a later post). For a sample of the things to do on board the Summit, here’s the list of what we did prior to arriving in Bermuda:

Attended trivia twice and got killed 🙂 (there were only three the first two sea days, if I recall)
Attended the flash mob practices
Won the Amazing X Race (only one other family showed up)
Took the galley tour, highly recommended
Went to the crepe demo in Bistro, and my wife even got to go up and make a crepe
Watched the cooking competition
My daughter and her boyfriend attended a couple of dance classes
Watched officers vs guests pool volleyball

That last one was awesome. I’ve never seen a group of officers so involved. The captain was everywhere, very approachable, and funny. Kudos to Celebrity here, that’s a guy you don’t want to lose. I’d bet he and his “GoPro moments with the captain” were solely responsible for a few dozen DVD sales, too.

As far as Bermuda goes, I’ll save our time on the island for a separate post. What I will say is that we see why so many people do this cruise more than once, and it’s at the top of our list of places to visit a second time. It’s a very beautiful island whose residents are warm and welcoming. I also loved being docked in one place for two and a half days. Not being stressed about making it back to the port by a certain time each day was nice, and having a place to go eat “free” meals between land activities allowed us to save some money. Oh, and the cold towels they hand you each time you get back on absolutely rock. Bermuda’s a bit humid, and walking around the island for a few hours will leave you hot. I think those cold towels were my wife’s favorite part of the cruise, and she let the guys handing them to us know that each time :).

Moving back to the ship itself, boarding on the afternoon we left Bermuda was uneventful, and we didn’t encounter a line. We headed up to shower, change, and head out to watch for “pier runners”, but never saw any. Everyone must have made it back on time, although someone did get off wearing pool gear holding a beach bag of stuff right before we left. Hope everything was okay.

The final sea day featured plenty of activities, fortunately. List of things we did on the port days and the final sea day:

Watched the ‘Not so Newlywed Game’
Played in the “Family Feud” game, my team almost won the whole thing in spite of me
Went to the deck party, which was fairly dead in our opinion (second port day)
Played in ‘Mind the Gap’, which seriously needs to be pulled, way too corny.
Played the wheel of fortune-ish game hosted by the DJ
Attended round 3 of progressive trivia, got killed
Went to the captain’s talk on ship navigation. We both loved it, and highly recommend it, especially if Captain Dimitrios is there as he does an outstanding job
Watched the final officers vs guests pool volleyball game. Just as awesome as the first ones.

We did attend most of the evening shows, as well, but missed the production show on Wednesday, as we were in Hamilton. Overall the two production shows we saw were a let down, as they definitely seemed geared towards an older crowd. The singers and dancers aren’t the issue, they were great, but the actual shows and music just weren’t what we enjoy. The aerialists were great, as was the comedian.

So that pretty much leaves two things, the room and food. Hopefully you’re still reading 🙂

The room, 9156 (corner family FOV), was awesome. I’ll do a dedicated post on room selection later, but I think after this we’ll be looking for corner aft balconies from now on. The family FOVs on Summit feature huge balconies, and enough room for 5. If you want to see pictures of the exact room we stayed in, there are some really good ones in this thread. As the pictures show, the only downside in the room is that when the two sofa beds are made up, it’s hard to get to the balcony. That didn’t stop me from eating breakfast on the balcony most days. We absolutely loved it, and spent far more time out there than we did on the only other balcony we’ve had. The large field of view was awesome, and we even saw a few baby dolphins swimming by the ship on the first sea day! If you have any questions on the room, don’t hesitate to ask!

The last item on the agenda is the food. We went in with high expectations, as everyone we talked to said we’d be blown away considering our last three cruises were on Carnival. Honestly, we both felt like it was a bit of a let down. The MDR food lived up to the hype for the most part. We really liked it the nights we ate there. We did find a couple of nights where nothing on the menu really appealed to us, so we just grabbed food from elsewhere and ate on the balcony. Considering the view, no harm, no foul :). Oh, and huge tip: If you’re ordering room service during MDR dinner hours, you can order anything on the MDR menu (including appetizers and desserts) instead of ordering from the normal room service menu. Nice touch, Celebrity!

Moving on, the buffet is where the food fell flat, it just wasn’t that good. The breakfast items seemed the same every day, and while they did have different stuff at lunch each day, the overall quality just wasn’t there. We both agreed that the buffet on all three Carnival ships we’d sailed in the last three years was better overall, with one exception. The Summit is apparently a test ship for the new portioned servings in the buffet. We actually like that. You grab a metal bowl/tin/basket of what item you want and move on, no large communal bowl to scoop your food out of. The downside is that it’s hard to fit everything you might want on one tray, but that’s what seconds are for, right? We all liked that setup, but they need to work on ensuring the portioned food stays warm. Last three food items: The pizza stand was easily better than last year on the Breeze, and the pasta station was pretty good too. The pool grill was on the bad side both times I ate there due to the overcooked hotdogs and tasteless burgers. I’m a burger fanatic, and was only able to get through half of one due to lack of flavor. The argument that it’s hard to serve top-shelf burgers in a large-scale setup like this is lost on me, too, as other cruise lines pull it off just fine (Guy’s Burger Joint is a prime example).

I just realized I forgot the staff, so I’ll throw in a quick note. The staff was good overall, with the captain, officers, and entertainment staff being the highlights. The cruise director, Ken, was pretty good too. We’ve really grown to appreciate how a good cruise director can have a positive impact on a cruise, and Ken definitely helped to save our perception of this one. More on the staff is in the Cruise Critic review, so be sure to check it out once it’s posted.

I hope that covers everything as far as the ship goes. The Summit, while being nice and having an easy to navigate layout, is a bit small for our tastes, so I’d definitely like to try a Solstice class ship at some point if we cruise Celebrity again.

Also, please understand that none of the problems I expressed above ruined the cruise for us. Were the first couple of days slow? Sure, but we were still on a cruise, and still had a great time. A vacation is what you make it, not what you let someone else make it. We made ours great 🙂

Enjoy a few pictures from on-board!