The Jazz Cruise 2017 - Celebrity Summit

Just got back from The Jazz Cruise 2017 (Jan 28 - Feb 4) and curious about others' experience. It had previously been on Eurodam (and I believe Norwegian over a decade ago). This was only my 5th time taking the cruise while many of those I meet each year have gone 10+ times!

 

Once again, the music was PHENOMENAL. Because of the convenience of being on a cruise ship, I consider it the best jazz festival each year (including Monterey, North Sea, Montreux, and others).

 

The hosting company ECP changed this year from Eurodam to Celebrity Summit. The reason being the Summit has better concert venues (seating, sound, etc). I totally agree and was really impressed with both the Rendezvous lounge and Revelations.

 

On the negative side, I have to say the Summit was quite a step down from the Eurodam. For example the food. I had just taken the high quality of the Eurodam food for granted and didn't think twice. But the Summit food was definitely lower quality. The main buffet serves mostly out of giant pots (almost like a battlefield mess kitchen). Another example is the pool side grill. Both ships have a similar setup. The Eurodam had gourmet burgers, dogs, and fries. The Summit poolside foods were much much lower quality.

 

I'm not sure how the staff is contracted but the Summit had many Eastern Europeans while on most other cruises I have seen mostly Indonesians or Filipinos (gourmet chefs, stewards etc). I found the Summit crew to be much less friendly and the service lower quality. The phone in my room had a short and over half the TV channels said "no signal" for the majority of the trip. I reported this stuff, but nothing was ever done.

 

All in all the music was outstanding, but I am considering not going again because I was so disappointed in the Summit. Would love to hear others' opinions. Thanks

Once again, the music was PHENOMENAL. Because of the convenience of being on a cruise ship, I consider it the best jazz festival each year (including Monterey, North Sea, Montreux, and others).

 

The hosting company ECP changed this year from Eurodam to Celebrity Summit. The reason being the Summit has better concert venues (seating, sound, etc). I totally agree and was really impressed with both the Rendezvous lounge and Revelations.

 

On the negative side, I have to say the Summit was quite a step down from the Eurodam.

I have mentioned our experience elsewhere on CC, but I wasn't going to say anything about it here until I saw your post. In summary, I fully agree - and I think our view is shared by many if not most people on the cruise. (For context, I've done two ECP cruises, 11 other jazz cruises and 38 cruises in total - and many people I know quite well from jazz cruises over the years have done rather more of them than I have.)

 

ECP is genuinely on the horns of a dilemma because of the venue difficulties on the HAL ships. And Michael Lazaroff did say to more than one group that a new hotel director (ex-HAL, if I've understood correctly) has very recently arrived on Summit and knows that there is much work to be done. But there's only so much a hotel director can do if bigger decisions are made in head office.

 

ECP cruises are not cheap and I expect that some people will be wondering whether they are still sufficiently good value. I would certainly think quite hard in future before committing $4,000 per person x 2 for a one-week cruise of this standard.

IYes the music was phenomenalno question about that. But the trip ismade up of two parts, music plus the experience on the ship, which in this casewas just BAD. From the lack of qualityin the food, the prices being charge on board, dated / dirty stateroom, andpoor service we have cancelled our 2018 reservation. Sad to say this was our 9th JazzCruise and will be the last unless the cruise line is changed. Talked with Michael about this and he refusedto listen, stating how much better the venues where, which to be honest theyare. But it a expensive trip and the valuehas been diminished.

:mad:

Talked with Michael about this and he refused to listen, stating how much better the venues where, which to be honest they are. But it a expensive trip and the value has been diminished.

This was very much the theme of Michael's newsletter last weekend. It was very telling that what would normally be a self-congratulatory piece of marketing puff ended up going into so much blow-by-blow detail about all the good things and acknowledging (rarely for ECP) that there were some significant bad things.

 

I'm also not sure how he can repeatedly say "most guests", as there wasn't (AFAIK) any organised or systemic survey of what passengers thought.

 

However, I suspect that change will only come if ECP sees a substantial drop in the number of bookings for 2018. I imagine that we will probably notice this if we get bombarded with late deeply discounted offers.

 

CELEBRITY SUMMIT UPDATES

 

Each of our jazz cruise programs for 2017 was on Celebrity Summit. Let?s take a moment to discuss the impact of our change in ships.

 

Venue Improvements

Our principal goal for changing ships was to remedy a serious problem on the Eurodam, which was the lack of adequate venues to present our music. All too often, scores of guests were unable to attend shows due to the limited amount of venue space on that ship.

 

The situation was more dire than that. For several reasons, Holland America Line was unable to confirm the same allowable capacities for venues that we had been assuming for years. So, not only were our current capacities inadequate, but they may have been reduced further.

 

A comparison of Celebrity Summit?s venue to that of Holland America?s Eurodam highlights the issue.

 

 

As previously stated, the new venues offered more desirable benefits and the result was the most comfortable and most accessible venues that we have ever had.

 

Assessing the New Ship

Over 6,000 guests sailed on our jazz cruises recently and each person has his or her own take on the amenities, services, accommodations and hospitality of Celebrity Summit. Here is a summary of the good and the bad that most guests believed to be the case.

 

Amenities

Most guests believed that the specialty restaurants, pool area, shops, spa and atrium area of the Celebrity Summit were superior to that of Holland America?s Eurodam.

 

Guest Rooms

Most guests believed that the suites on Celebrity Summit were superior to that of Holland America?s Eurodam. There was concern, even disappointment, in the size and status of Veranda, AquaClass and Concierge staterooms. The maintenance issues were addressed, but, going forward, we are taking steps to inspect cabins before the sailings to ensure that they meet our requirements. Obviously, the size of the cabins, cannot be changed, but, as we have said for years, no ship is perfect for us and we have elected to choose better venues, public spaces and other amenities over cabin size.

 

Cabin Amenities for AquaClass and Concierge Class

Clearly there was confusion as to the transferability of certain benefits conferred by Celebrity to those who selected AquaClass or Concierge Class as opposed to Veranda Class. For Celebrity?s marketing programs, they make various distinctions and confer amenities with an eye to creating extra value for those cabins and therefore higher pricing.

 

As a charter, not only are we are not bound by their amenity packages, but some of those benefits were contrary to some of our longstanding policies. To us, there is no difference between the AquaClass Staterooms and the Concierge Class Staterooms, so we priced them the same. They were priced higher than Veranda Staterooms because of their size and location.

 

Further, providing an amenity (exclusive use of a restaurant, for example) to one set of guests and not to all is anathema to our philosophy of producing a cruise. Lastly, who is to say which amenity packages Celebrity may elect to include/exclude from time to time? The definition of an AquaClass or Concierge Class Stateroom cannot be fluid. We need to present a program to our guests one year in advance and then abide by that. That is why we choose to create our own pricing and our own cabin designations.

 

The best way to look at this situation is to view our cruises as an Entertainment Cruise Productions program on a Celebrity ship and not as a Celebrity cruise offering our program.

 

Dining

In the aggregate, the specialty restaurants of Celebrity, given the diversity of the choices and the excellence in the service and presentation, are clearly superior to Holland America. Though tastes may vary, most of our guests raved about their experiences in Q?Sine, Luminae, Blu and Tuscan Grille.

 

There was less consensus about The Cosmopolitan Dining Room. Here it is simply a matter of taste, though, just as we had to do with Holland America every year, the system for being seated in the dining room and the level of service will be discussed at length.

 

The Ocean View Caf? on Celebrity was discussed the most, and though there were some wonderful qualities about that venue (grilled-to-order fish, chicken and steaks, ample stations for access to food), clearly there were some problems that will be addressed for the future. We agree with our guests who felt that the selections were repetitive and difficult to locate and that the level of service was lacking. As to this last point, great improvements were made during the course of our 4-week sailing period. This is little comfort to those sailing on the first cruise this year, but it does bode well for the future.

 

Excursions

Excursions have always been a tough issue with our charters. For the most part the excursions are not run by the cruise line but instead by vendors selected by the cruise lines. Too often excursions are poorly explained, difficult to assess and executed in a sloppy manner. Even allowing for the customary frailties, many of the excursions offered on our cruises were unacceptable, including the artist-hosted excursions that we produced. Great care will be taken to make sure that this does not happen for 2018.

 

Going Forward

To dispel some ?alternative facts,? we do not have a long-term contract with Celebrity, and our cost to charter a Celebrity ship is higher than that of Holland America. Celebrity and Holland America are in the same cruise ship category, and Celebrity consistently outranks Holland America in almost every category.

 

We are committed to making our cruise programs the very best in the world and we believe that Celebrity gives us the best opportunity to do so. There are simply no other ships in our size category that offer the venues that we have with Celebrity. It is not perfect at this time, nor will perfection be achieved in the eyes of each of the 10,000 guests who will sail with us in 2018 on Celebrity Summit. We are committed to taking each comment provided us and working hard to improve those areas where improvement is needed.

 

We prefer to address any shortcomings that Celebrity Summit may have than to take a blowtorch and mallet to other ships in an effort to make the venues larger and more appealing. Believe us when we say that we hear you and that Entertainment Cruise Productions is dedicated to providing the very best cruise experiences to our guests.

Thanks the the information

Wow I am very happy that someone shared their experience on a chartered cruise. I am going on the Reggae charter the end of March on the Summit and I wondered if the concerts will be held indoors or outdoors. and I also wondered about the lounges as every night is usually an after party and if it can really hold people. This is going to be the chartered first on Celebrity as it was previously held on Norwegian and because of the same food issue, it was moved to the Summit. I am hoping that we don't experience the same situation, but I truly appreciate your insight your recent experience.

This thread is a year old!

This thread is a year old!

 

I wish that CC would have the date under the title that the thread started.

 

Happy cruising 🌊🚢🇺🇸🌅

This thread is a year old!

I wish that CC would have the date under the title that the thread started.

So do I.

 

But in this case, the thread title might have been a bit of a giveaway.

 

In any event, this year's ECP jazz cruises are now in full swing, so we may get some first-hand reports soon about whether things have been any better this year.