Live From The Decks Of The Summit B2B 4/19 & 4/26/14

Hello Once Again! Heading back to the Summit for pre-repo & repo cruise. Excited to be sailing again. Hawaii and the Century Nov/Dec 2013 seems so far away and the miserable winter this year makes the prospect of heading to sunshine and pristine beaches even more appealing.

My Rhode Island friends have been here since April 9th and we've been busy shopping, eating out and, of course, enjoying Boat Drinks!

Later today we leave for Jacksonville and the Plaza Hotel for one night. If you need to overnight in Jax and need parking this place can't be beat! CLEAN, no frills minimalist is how I would describe the accommodations, A room with 2 queens and 14 nights of parking comes in at under $60 when you sign up for their VIP program. Two hints: don't plan on making the free breakfast your major meal (apples, boxes of cereals and danish are about it) and NEVER get the one queen bedroom unless you are VERY skinny and/or have only one bag. It is pretty small.

We fly out on SW 4/18 with a layover in FLL and then on to SJU, arriving around 1PM. Our accomodations there are at the Radisson Ambassador. A Club Level One Bedroom Suite, Senior Rate was $203 ($250 with taxes). Good things include free drink tickets, a free Club Level breakfast (not bad) and a Club Level afternoon managers reception with Honor Bar. We were too beat to go to the reception last year but I'm figuring it means free munchies only. The casino in the hotel was nice as was the location right across the street from a Burger King for a fast lunch upon arrival leaving us plenty of time for a nap.

Of course, these things all require that I be packed in time to be in Jax before we fly out. Those of you who know me may remember that my personal best (?) was the time I started packing at 6AM for a noon flight.

But I did make it!

I have to call out a couple of friends here. It makes everyone, except me, crazy when I pack so late so two friends (are you out there Judy and Teri?) decided they would get me organized and packed two days prior to leaving. Teri had to work a lot and really didn't have time to help but Judy wanted out so bad she moved to another state April 1st! Now that's really not wanting to help me pack! Love you guys anyway!:D

Numerous 'small' things have had me wondering if I will make it this time. For example, I ordered several pair of Capri's which I was really planning on being a starting point to packing. Finally tried them on and they are all a size too big. Normally that would be a good thing but now I am frantically trying to shrink them. You know, hot water wash, high heat dry. With my luck they will shrink up and not in so I'll end up with some funky shorts!

Well, it's 1AM. I was planning to make a midnight Wal-Mart run to get last minute stuff but got started writing this and now I'm tired. Have to get up to check in on our flight at 6AM so I think I will take a 4 hour nap

and start this madness after that is done.

Pray for my Capri's! If they don't work out I'll be shopping at any clothing store that opens at 7AM. Wouldn't you think someone who loves to cruise as much as I do would finally get the packing thing. Maybe someone will stage an intervention!

Hope you'll follow along.

Bye For Now!

Hello Once Again! Heading back to the Summit for pre-repo & repo cruise. Excited to be sailing again. Hawaii and the Century Nov/Dec 2013 seems so far away and the miserable winter this year makes the prospect of heading to sunshine and pristine beaches even more appealing.

 

My Rhode Island friends have been here since April 9th and we've been busy shopping, eating out and, of course, enjoying Boat Drinks!

 

Later today we leave for Jacksonville and the Plaza Hotel for one night. If you need to overnight in Jax and need parking this place can't be beat! CLEAN, no frills minimalist is how I would describe the accommodations, A room with 2 queens and 14 nights of parking comes in at under $60 when you sign up for their VIP program. Two hints: don't plan on making the free breakfast your major meal (apples, boxes of cereals and danish are about it) and NEVER get the one queen bedroom unless you are VERY skinny and/or have only one bag. It is pretty small.

 

We fly out on SW 4/18 with a layover in FLL and then on to SJU, arriving around 1PM. Our accomodations there are at the Radisson Ambassador. A Club Level One Bedroom Suite, Senior Rate was $203 ($250 with taxes). Good things include free drink tickets, a free Club Level breakfast (not bad) and a Club Level afternoon managers reception with Honor Bar. We were too beat to go to the reception last year but I'm figuring it means free munchies only. The casino in the hotel was nice as was the location right across the street from a Burger King for a fast lunch upon arrival leaving us plenty of time for a nap.

 

Of course, these things all require that I be packed in time to be in Jax before we fly out. Those of you who know me may remember that my personal best (?) was the time I started packing at 6AM for a noon flight.

But I did make it!

 

I have to call out a couple of friends here. It makes everyone, except me, crazy when I pack so late so two friends (are you out there Judy and Teri?) decided they would get me organized and packed two days prior to leaving. Teri had to work a lot and really didn't have time to help but Judy wanted out so bad she moved to another state April 1st! Now that's really not wanting to help me pack! Love you guys anyway!:D

 

Numerous 'small' things have had me wondering if I will make it this time. For example, I ordered several pair of Capri's which I was really planning on being a starting point to packing. Finally tried them on and they are all a size too big. Normally that would be a good thing but now I am frantically trying to shrink them. You know, hot water wash, high heat dry. With my luck they will shrink up and not in so I'll end up with some funky shorts!

 

Well, it's 1AM. I was planning to make a midnight Wal-Mart run to get last minute stuff but got started writing this and now I'm tired. Have to get up to check in on our flight at 6AM so I think I will take a 4 hour nap

and start this madness after that is done.

 

Pray for my Capri's! If they don't work out I'll be shopping at any clothing store that opens at 7AM. Wouldn't you think someone who loves to cruise as much as I do would finally get the packing thing. Maybe someone will stage an intervention!

 

Hope you'll follow along.

 

Bye For Now!

 

Can't wait for your reviews..LOL. You don't seem if anything phases you.Hope we get to see a picture of those capris. We will be on the Summit in January for the first time and are looking forward to a smaller ship having been on the Solstice twice before. Have a great time..Triona

Can't wait to hear about your trip especially in light of all of the comments recently on the changes to Celebrity. We would appreciate a rundown of the current staff and any changes that are upcoming as we sail 6/8 to Bermuda. Also, if you have time, who the sommelier is in Cellar Masters. Last year we had Merrill and he was terrific, very personable and made lots of great recommendations even for wines to try at home.

Have a great trip.

Sounds like a great trip. Looking forward to following your adventures.

Can't wait to here about your trip and the Summit. We're on her to Bermuda June 1st.

Good Luck packing and safe travels

Looking forward to your review We are on her this summer to Bermuda

You are killing me here GF! 7.5 weeks of vacation coming and I have managed to take 1 day off in a year. Office cut to short hours and I get to be the lucky one and am exempt!

If you don't find the capris, check our favorite Walgreens in SJU and have an absolute blast. I will read these to the short chubby guy and maybe he will force me to take some of that vacation.

I see you haven't changed a bit. Hope you are straightened out by now. Don't forget, have a mimosa for me at breakfast and love to you, Cil and Roger. Will follow you. Love ya.:)

Can't wait for the rest of your review. BTW, hope everything works out with your capris, keep in mind that almost everything will be close tomorrow in San Juan due to Good Friday. If you need to buy new capris or clothing my best advice is to go to Macys saturday morning. They open at 9:00AM and there will be plenty of taxis on the main entrance (close to Cheesecake Factory). Wishing you safe travels and a great cruise. :)

It's the great capri caper!

Sent from my iPad using Forums

This is great. Love your live threads. Also we will be sailing Summit in 38 days so I am very interested in this particular one.

Good luck with the capris. Have a wonderful time.

You guys must be there by now. Have fun and enjoy. See you in a week.

Best to your chaperones, Rog and Cil.

Mark

Can't wait to read your review, even if it's just to make sure your capris survive lol!

Have a wonderful cruise, soak up plenty of sun, don't sleep through Elite (+/ Zenith) cocktail hours, and ENJOY!!! Looking forward to following your posts.

Who will forward your jokes/stories? :(

Wave as you sail past NC.

Well, we did make it to Jax! Left about the time I thought although in my scenario I got to go play Mah Jung from 12:30 to 3. That didn't happen.

But we did have a few other 'incidents'.

Being the great hostess I am :rolleyes:, I figured I would start the day off by fixing my guests a hearty breakfast. I made roast beef/corned beef hash) I use some of each with sauteed onions (should have added some green pepper but didn't). Spread it all out in a cast iron skillet and cooked until it was crispy then turned it over and did the same thing to the other side. Cut it into wedges and plopped two over easy eggs on top. I added some rye toast and figured I was serving them a wonderful breakfast.

This was their last breakfast of the visit and i wanted to leave them with good memories. All the other days I had put cinnamon rolls and apple fritters out and let them do their own. Neither of those things were homemade. The only thing I ever made them for breakfast was coffee. Oh wait, I did show Cil how to use my toaster oven so she could toast some cinnamon raisin bread. That's why the :rolleyes: is located next to the

great hostess remark. They were pretty much on their own at my house.

I packed and procrastinated most of the day but finally got everything

in some sort of carry thing (luggage) and persuaded my friend to come help me get my bags in the car. In the midst of all my packing I had apparently pulled something in my back. My sciatica was on fire all the way down to my foot and, of course, these terrible headaches I have with my eye problem were coming at me in droves.

So everything is in the car except for the note I have been writing all day about the little last minute things I needed to pick up at Wal-Mart. Get ready to leave and I've got everything except the list. Only good thing to come of that search was that I spied the cel phone charger I had unplugged from the wall and left on the kitchen counter. You lose something, you find something. That's sort of how the day went.

We were finally on our way except for picking up scripts from Sam's.

They have recently expanded the store by about 2/3's and the place is massive. And where did the fabulous minds of Wal-Mart put the pharmacy? On the very furthest wall from the entrance they could find. So there we stood, in line,four old (you fill in that one), all huffing and puffing, trying to hold onto anything for support. I was probably the youngest one there but none of us were in even reasonable shape. I'm thinking some suit at Wal-Mart whose worst health crisis/surgery so far in his life has been for hair plugs and ab implants thought it would be good marketing to make us old folks walk by the 40 pound bags of cat litter and the 48 packs of liter size water bottles thinking we would stop and fill up. The truth is that after the hike over to the pharmacy where we all took turns getting our own blood pressure done at the self serve machine just to sit down for three minutes we were only interested in carrying the large shopping bag of pills past the little lady who draws the line through the number of items you've purchased (without even counting) and retreat to our cars, open our bag of pills and taking something for the pain brought on by walking 3 miles on concrete to pick up said pills. Catch 22?

Finally we were on the Interstate and heading towards Jacksonville. It was only 5PM but it was so gray and rainy that it looked like it was night time already. Thankfully there was not much traffic and we made good time. It's only 135 miles so we were at a Cracker Barrel on the outskirts of town before 7. CB was packed as most are at meal time but it's a big one so we were seated right away. Lately, after the menu changes designed to make us eat heathier (think broccoli with no sauce instead of turnip greens and cornbread) and the shock of seeing a $14.99 meal listed on their menu I'm wondering what they've done to my Cracker Barrel. But once the food is served you see that the biscuits are still made with lots of shortening and the cornbread dressing has more calories per serving than you should have for the whole day. All is right with the world and we can still count on CB to bring us good, if not always healthy, food.

Now we are on to the airport area and our hotel. I can see to drive but I'm not always able to read the signs. That's from the hole in the retina thing. So naturally I make a wrong turn getting onto 295. Cil was good to read me the signs so we finally got here. Checked in right before 9. Cil was extremely tired and Roger wasn't far behind her so i checked everyone in and they headed for their room.

i headed for Wal-Mart. No list and a credit card. Dangerous. And I did my fellow shopaholics proud. $60 spent on things I will probably not be able to squeeze in my bags. And a pair of jeans. Which may or may not fit.

Which leads me to the subject of Capri's. The black ones worked out pretty good. Shrunk almost to where I needed them and only a little shorter than they were originally so I did the other pairs the same way. I didn't try them on but I recently had a nun give me a special prayer so I'm thinking they'll fit. Those nun prayers get routed right through to the big guy so I think I'm okay.

Once again it's late. Almost 2AM and the wake up call comes at 4:15 to catch our 6AM flight. We have a little bit of a wait in Fort Lauderdale but are in San Juan in time for lunch.

All in all Friday will not be a terrible flying day. We might even be able to sneak in a nap before the Manager's Reception.

BTW, I am so glad to hear from all of you but especially DonnaW. I send them emails but never hear a thing back. I was beginning to think the US Marshall's had taken them into witness protection and spirited them away to a new life. :) Hey Donna have you seen MSC's new 8/9 night sailings for $299 per person? :)

I'm beat so this is all for tonight.

Bye For Now!

Looking forward to reading more of your review...the Summit is one of my favorite ships.

Tuggers,

A favor please, if at all possible can you try and find out if they are going to be having the 54 Below Entertainment again this year on Summit sailings out of Cape Liberty. It does mention it on the Celebrity web-site under Entertainment, but we all know that sometimes the web-site is not 100%.

Thank you.

Anne Maria

We area taking our first cruise for our honeymoon on the Summit in June! Looking forward to reading your updates!

BTW, I am so glad to hear from all of you but especially DonnaW. I send them emails but never hear a thing back. I was beginning to think the US Marshall's had taken them into witness protection and spirited them away to a new life. :) Hey Donna have you seen MSC's new 8/9 night sailings for $299 per person? :)

I'm beat so this is all for tonight.

Bye For Now!

Well, now you are in for it, HE has your email address! Sorry, they only let me up for air occasionally but I do eventually end up reading them all. I will check that out, just hope all the short people around on Sunday don't remind him that they sail free on MSC.

After the night of pretty much non sleep I finally dozed off only to be awakened 40 minutes later to the sound of the phone giving me my 4:15 rise and shine call.

I always like to err on the side of caution in getting to the airport and it never really matters, shuttle is always on time. This day I was glad to have given us a few extra minutes. The 4:30AM shuttle was a few minutes late and there were 12 people and MUCH luggage to be loaded and delivered to the airport. Luckily he driver made up a little time on the 4:45 run so our 5AM shuttle was only a few minutes late and we made it in plenty of time. Of course, we all felt sick because the driver was seriously making up time. He was weaving in and out of traffic like a madman and the luggage drop off was pretty much a drive by!

I had been tagged with the TSA PRE-FLIGHT but unlike the last time this happened Cil and Roger were not. And flights the Friday before Easter were full so the security lines were long even at 5:30AM. I was able to buzz through but Cil and Roger took a little longer.

At our boarding gate there were only about 75 to board and it went very quickly. The SW in airport people at Jacksonville are usually quite nice and today was no exception. Everyone had the spirit with more than one SW worker wearing pink bunny ears!

Our flights were all very close if not right on schedule. We had a bit of a wait in FLL but we were all the way back by the windows and it was quiet. Cil and I read some magazines I had brought and Roger took a little snooze!

We arrived in SJU on time at 1:45. We were a sight, tired, sleepy and gimpy. My sciatica was so enflamed I could hardly stand putting my foot down. We made it from the airplane to a golf cart to another set of people helping, then to a porter who saw I was in pain and was able to find us a way around the 50 foot long waiting line to an area where there was no line and they only used vans. I have no idea if it cost us a few bucks more because I didn’t care! J

Our driver was another speedy type. Cil and I never noticed sitting in the back seat but Roger said it either exciting or terrifying but I can’t remember which! LOL!

We arrived at the hotel (Radisson Ambassador) at 2:30. They checked us in but wouldn’t let us in the room until 3 so we walked next door and had a late lunch at the Burger King.

When we went back to the hotel it was 3:45 and our room was

ready.

We stayed here last year. The set-up is good for us because there is a completely separate living room with doors so you can close it off from the bedroom. Allows us to share and still have our own space. Which is the only way I share. What can I say?

I never got an ‘A’ in plays well with others! Cost was $203, senior, with taxes it was $250.

The nightly ‘reception with honor bar’ which is held in the Penthouse was a disappointment. (They had this last year but we were so tired we never used it) It’s at 5:30 until, according to the sign near the door, 7:30. We went in at 6 and the ‘leavings’ consisted of crackers, a cheese tray with about a dozen pieces of cubed cheese, a sub sandwich cut into 3” pieces (on stale, hard bread) and a chaffing dish filled with what looked like uncooked ravioli’s filled with a red jam. By 6:30 people were being told ‘everything is out’ meaning we weren’t getting anything else!

Beer was $5 to $6 each (there were 5 kinds), wine was $6 per glass but they only had White Zin and about 2 fingers of Chardonnay. Everyone seemed to be drinking water.

After that we were determined to use our drink coupons. Last year we never got a chance to use them. We stopped at the bar beside the casino (closed for Good Friday) and Cil asked the bartender if we could use the tickets there and he said yes but it had to be a rum drink. Not very friendly. We sat at a table. And sat. He never even looked at us! Then we went upstairs to the Ambassador Grill Bar. What a differene! Nice bartender named Bryan Reyes told us about the drinks then showed us a printed menu all the while talking and telling us about himself and the area. I had a Pina Colada and Cil and Roger had a Blue Hawaii.

Too bad they don’t have more workers like Beyan Reyes. He’s a jewel of a bartender!

We went back to our room and crashed. All of us were tired and

getting grumpy.

There’s more to tell about our first night in SJU but it’s almost 11:30AM and we need to get the bellman for the luggage so we can BOARD!

I’ll finish this tonight.

Bye For Now.

Looking forward to reading more!

Really enjoying your post, can't wait for the next installment!:)

Hi Gail . So excited to see you posting. Looking forward to seeing what's instore for us next week. We can't wait to join you in the Bistro for lunch next Saturday :D . We really need this. Got to test the new kidney so I got the drink package too :rolleyes: . Safe seas and see you soon. Xoxoxo

Jeff and Kevin

Yay another Summit review ... can't wait to hear more!

Hurry and get on the ship :D

email me if you need us to bring you anything on for week 2.

Mark & Randi