Psendo-Live from Anthem: 14th - 23rd Sep (New England / Canadian Maritimes)

Hi gang! We have left Bayonne on the Anthem, and are on our way to fun & excitement in New England and the Maritimes! OK, maybe just fun – we’re sometime pretty boring. But since I have to stay connected to the Interwebs to keep up with Hurricane Harvey insurance paperwork, I thought I’d use the opportunity to do a pseudo-live update as we’re going along!

Background

This is our second cruise – our first was on the Celebrity Summit (you can read all of the gory details at http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2249096). We consist of my older mentally disabled brother Mark and myself (soon to be known by ship’s crew and passengers as "Mark's younger brother"). We have a group of 8 total – one primary aunt, one emergency backup aunt, and four more contingency aunts and uncles. If you’re on the Anthem with us, trust me - we’re not hard to find.

Check-In

The check-in process went very smoothly – as a professional geek, I was impressed with how they were using their tablets (iPads?). The one thing that would have helped here was curbside wheelchair service; two of the aunts needed wheelchairs, but had to walk all the way from curbside dropoff #2 to the building entrance, then walk through the handicap security line to a seating area. This was very difficult for them, and nobody in an official capacity that I spoke to could offer an alternative.

Embarkation

After about a 15 minute wait in the seating area, two crew members arrived with chairs and took us on our way. Two years ago, the best way to describe the walkway to the Summit was walking the gauntlet – lots of helpful crew members trying to sell you things as you went along. This time, nobody – until we got on the ship, anyway. The crew members took us right back to 270, where we found a couple of empty couches and went off for a kummel weck (sp?) sandwich. People, whatever you’ve heard about this sandwich doesn’t do it justice! They called our cabins at ~1pm, but we hung around in 270 for an extra hour or so. It is amazing how much more relaxing it was there after the teaming hoards stampeded out!

(more to come)

(sigh) Yes, it should be Pseudo-, not Psendo-. At least, I hope it's not Psendo...

Cabins

We have two connecting D1 / D2 cabins on deck 13 (I’ll provide the cabin numbers after the cruise). The rest of the party is separated from us by about 40 rooms. Interestingly, when we got to our cabin our luggage was waiting... but theirs didn’t arrive until much later (even though we had all checked in at the same time). Some other takeaways:

• The closets were great – plenty of room for someone travelling as a single, and I think the family members who paired up didn’t have any space issues.
  
• Plenty of room under the bed for my duffel bag and carry-on bag.
  
• A minuscule safe. Just wide / deep enough for an iPad, but no chance of getting a laptop in there.
  

Cabin Staff

This was interesting – in the hour plus I was in the cabin unpacking, no sign of our cabin steward! Granted, I only had one cruise to compare to… but on the Summit, the steward and his assistant were at the door within 15 minutes of us bringing the luggage in. Today, I didn’t see our steward until about 4:45. His name is Malik, and he seems like a nice guy – I did a preemptive tip (and explained about my brother), and he was understanding and offered to help us in any way that he could. I am guessing he was extremely overworked this afternoon - I don't know if that's from a larger number of cabins that our stewards had on Summit, or the fact that he didn't have an assistant working with him like our steward did on Summit.

(more to come tomorrow)

Thanks for doing this. I'll be following along. I board exactly 4 weeks from today!

Following along, on our next cruise we may be traveling with someone that has mobility issues.

Looking forward to following along. We are on in two weeks!

Following! Thanks

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Following! We get on when you finish! Have a great cruise- I think it's a lovely itinerary!

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This is an itinerary which appeals to me so I'll be cruising along with you. Thank you [emoji4]

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Following! I will be on the Bermuda sailing right after you :D

Do you know if iFly is working? Someone from an earlier Anthem cruise said it was down on their sailing.

I will also be on the Bermuda sailing on the 23rd! Excited. how is the AC? I heard the past cruise was a bit warm...

I'm also on the Bermuda sailing on the 23rd with my DH, then I will stay on for the 9 night Canada/New England cruise following that, while my husband goes on a separate vacation. Anxiously waiting to hear about your cruise - I did this same one the last two years. I'm hoping that Jose doesn't interfere with your enjoyment on the way back!

Susan

Hello, all! Sorry I’ve been absent for a few days... but I was pretty busy “hearding the cats” with my party. So, here’s the latest update.

Dinner – Day 1

As I said earlier, we ate our embarkation lunch at 270. For dinner, nobody was motivated to go down to the dining room... so we headed for the Windjammer. We were all pleasantly surprised at the selection and the quality of the food! From my standpoint, I was also happy because this happened to be the famed “Stuff In A Cup Night”.

Hey, cheap thrills are everything for me. So, fully sated we all went to bed, and woke up to...

Breakfast – Day 2

Back to the Windjammer. The thrill was gone from the previous night. The selection was very good, but it was a madhouse – seething hordes, ready to pounce on the next table. This experience was enhanced by very loud PA announcements every 10 minutes reminding us that “IF YOU HAVE FINISHED EATING, PLEASE GET THE HELL OUT” (OK, so I paraphrased here). I was fortunate to get a large handicapped table near the entrance – which is a little annoying to me, because since then I have not seen anyone handicapped sit at it since. As crazy as it was, I have to give a shout-out to our waiter Albert. He saw that I had a challenging situation on my hands, and promised me that he would look out for the folks if I wasn’t there.

Lunch – Day 2

My brother and I decided that we would do a little exploring while the rest of the gang recovered from the travelling. Mark was fascinated by the thought of going to Johnny Rockets in the middle of the ocean… so that’s where we went. It was OK. The novelty (and how much by brother enjoyed it) made up fot the fact that it was a more or less standard hot dog and hamburger.

Inactivity

This was a cruise day, so I headed to the Vitality Spa for a much needed massage to get my back aligned and balanced. I got Rose as a massage therapist – and she was truly OUTstanding! I walked out feeling much better and with an appointment for next Friday.

Day 2 Miscellaneous

I came back to our first towel animal of the trip. It’s amazing what they can do with towel sculptures!

No, wait, I’m just kidding. The towel animal is much cheaper than Lyndi the Wonderdog, who was annoyed that she couldn’t accompany us on the cruise. So, here's what I really ended up with:

(more to come soon)

I'm also on the Bermuda sailing on the 23rd with my DH, then I will stay on for the 9 night Canada/New England cruise following that, while my husband goes on a separate vacation. Anxiously waiting to hear about your cruise - I did this same one the last two years. I'm hoping that Jose doesn't interfere with your enjoyment on the way back!

 

Susan

I don't even wanna THINK about how you pack for that! :D

The last models I saw for Jose still showed it taking that hard right, but the outer effects of it should really be kicking up around the time we're cruising to Halifax. For now, just a little bit of increased swells... but absolutely nothing bad.

--bruce T.

how is the AC? I heard the past cruise was a bit warm...

I think it's all relative. I've heard a few folks complaining about stuffiness on this cruise, but I've also heard more than a few (including my crew) complain about being cold in the dining rooms. This is probably a classic case of "Your mileage may vary." :D

--bruce T.

Following!Do you know if iFly is working?

I honestly don't know. My crew is definitely not an iFly crew. I'll see if I can find out tomorrow.

--bruce T.

Following along, on our next cruise we may be traveling with someone that has mobility issues.

This ship definitely presents some challenges. Another problem for them is that when they need to sit down after walking a long distance on decks 4 or 5, the chairs and benches are sometimes very low to the ground. Plus, bug ships require big gangplanks and wharfs - it took 'em almost 30 minutes to go from their cabin to the end of the pier in Portland.

On the flip side, I've seen many people using scooters on the ship with no apparent issues.

--bruce T.

Day 3 - Boston

Welcome to Boston!

Well, I think it's Boston. It could be Cleveland. Or Uranus. It's hard to tell. In any case, we braved Windjammer for breakfast again, waited until about 9am for the worst of the fog to burn off, then headed off the ship.

Excursion

The famed damily decided that they were going to meet us for lunch, so Mark and I could be a little more active today. We freelanced, and booked two tickets (in advance) on the Old Town Trolley Tour. I thought this was the most flexible for us - and I was right. We got off at the first stop and walked over to Paul Revere's home (meh), then walked from there to the Old North Church. We got there in time to take a guided tour up into the bell tower, and down into the crypts. Our guide was Will, and I can highly recommend both the tour and him! One word of warning: the steps into the bell tower are very steep and very tight, and the crypts have some low hanging obstacles (pipes). Watch your head!

Once we finished with the Old Church, we walked the Freedom trail to the USS Constitution. Here we got a pleasant surprise - while we had not expected Old Ironsides to be open for visitors due to just coming out of dry dock, they had just opened it a few weeks ago! From here we got back on the Trolley to head for lunch, only to face...

Traffic Hell Part 1

Look, I've been to Boston before. BREAKING NEWS: It has traffic. But in my opinion, nothing like the traffic that may or may not have resulted from:

Yep, HempFest. Not only was there a huge amount of traffic, I'm firmly convinved that a lot of the traffic was stoned to the bejeebus. But everyone seemed to be relaxed and having a good time.. except for our trolley, which took almost an hour to get across the commons.

Lunch

We went to The Atlantic Fish Company (http://atlanticfishco.com/) to meet the family, along with some old family friends who live in Boston. I was impressed! No food porn pictures for you to see, but I will recommend the lobster bisque and ceasar salad. Great service and great company, and the staff was more than patient with us as we talked for 2 and a half houser, and remenisced about family and friends no longer with us. But around 4pm, I wanted to get back on the trolley with Mark and do the rest of the tour - which led us to...

Traffic Hell Part 2

At this point, I firmly believe that the majority of the drivers in the area around the Common had a contact high. Traffic had completely dissolved into people making random turns, stopping at random intervals, and possibly engaging in contemplation of navels. The result was that it took an hour and a half to get back to the Trolley transfer point - as in 5:30 pm. At this point, I'm getting a little nervous - have we missed the last transfer trolley to the port? Can I find an Uber driver that isn't caught in traffic? Fortunately, the last Trolley of the day was about to pack it in - but then he heard from his dispatcher that we might be waiting for a ride. We made it back to the ship with a half hour to spare.

Dinner

We had purchased the 3 meal plan, so we decided to go to Chops Grille. The specialty restaurants seem to be a vector for Jihad on this board, so I want to be very clear here: yes, the food is what I would expect from a higher-end steak restaurant and yes, I've had better steak... but our service was OUTSTANDING. Our waiter Sunil did not wait for us to ask for something - he was there to provide what we wanted as a preemptive strike (and sometimes it was a little scary how accurate he was). I particularly appreciated the fact that he saw that the seniors were having some issues in lifting & passing the side dish plates... I was ready to start running laps around the table, but he jumped in before I could even begin to get up and walked around the table multiple times to serve everyone. We deeply appreciated him, and we tipped him very well at the end of the meal.

An interesting sidebar: a gentleman at the next table had an issue with his beverage plan, and was belligerent about it. It's one thing to be an *******, but you don't need to be a belligerent *******. I was hoping they would call Security on him, but the manager did an excellent job of defusing the situation. He left before we did, and the manager caught us on the way out to apologize for the disruption.

(more to follow)

Speaking of Bev Pkgs Did you happen to notice if there was a discount offer to Diamond level onboard ?

Thanks for sharing all this information and in a very funny way! Enjoy the rest of your cruise.

Have you attempted the Solarium Bistro for breakfast? The selection may be lesser than the WJ but it is way quieter. I prefer to have my breakfast there.

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OMG, you are a riot, should be a comedian! Love your review of our absolute favorite ship!

Marg

loving your review so far

Have you attempted the Solarium Bistro for breakfast? The selection may be lesser than the WJ but it is way quieter. I prefer to have my breakfast there.

 

 

 

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Solarium doesn't open early enough for us, but our alternative to the WJ was Cafe Two70. Great selection, and never crowded. Amazing space to enjoy a nice morning meal!

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Loving your report Bruce, you are a hoot!

Please keep us advised as to sea conditions, and any changes to your itinerary. Have there been any announcements yet about the possibilities?

There's a group of us scheduled to sail when you come in, and we're anxiously watching Jose' and Maria.

Thanks again for taking the time to post!!