lallak1

That explanation hurts my brain!

I'm not sure I can answer your specific question, but we are doing similar next March. Flying in two days early, with plans to spend a day at KSC. We are flying into MLB rather than MCO, but decided to rent a car from Budget for the time. Pick up at airport and drop off at Port Canaveral Budget location, includes free shuttle from there to ship. It's estimated to cost us $174 US (plus gas), but the flexibility to have car to see a bit more of the area, go to dinner, etc and not stress about if we could get an Uber sealed the deal for us.

Thanks for this info. I’ve been banking on the fact that the airport is small. I was at MCO last week, and it was a mess! My brother was an air traffic controller (Indy center)…

Your info is helpful. We are cruising out of Port Canaveral in March 2025, and flights are actually $100 pp cheaper going into Melbourne than Orlando. We are coming in two days early, so having less options available isn’t a huge concern. Also, two day rental car through Budget I was able to book for under $200, with drop off at Port Canaveral shuttle location for Budget. I’m still a bit concerned about getting back to MLB for an 11:28 flight after cruise (same day as cruise ends), so would appreciate any suggestions…taxi/uber? Or book private car?

I'm curious on general availability of taxi's/Ubers/Lyfts when getting off ship at Port Canaveral to get to Melbourne airport? Or are we better off booking a private transfer? We have an 11:20 flight, so don't feel a huge time crunch...but want to make sure it's relatively easy to get transportation as we get off the ship.

Thanks for posting the Marmalade food pictures! We’ve only been there once, but the white bean soup made a lasting impression on me! I can’t wait to go back! I’m enjoying your ship review too!

Looking forward to your review!

That will be an awesome walk! Assuming you are staying in the Pierhead Lighthouse neighborhood, it’s a great neighborhood to explore.

Jim, I’ve just recently starting following your live posts, and have enjoyed them immensely. I live in Milwaukee, so if you are coming in early and need some recommendations, I’d be happy to help!

Which March cruise will you be on? We are booked on March 17 cruise and it is our first Edge class ship,so will be interested in these responses.

Nice! This is a great idea…we would do it!

We are booked on Ascent for next March, similar 7 night Caribbean sailing as yours....and we will likely not get off the ship either. It is our first E class as well and only our second retreat experience. We have booked two specialty dinners...one in Eden and one in Rooftop Grill. If Taj X is offered, we may do that, but otherwise we loved Luminae enough from our last time in retreat that we decided two is enough.

Our experience is the morning stretch classes are free. Other classes like Pilates, yoga, HIIT, etc. have a charge, I believe $20 per class. The generally have a class special available on embarkation day, for unlimited classes for “$x” amount. My recollection is on our last cruise on Equinox, it was $99/ per person (9 night cruise) and there were two classes offered per day on average. Equipment needed for classes was available on ship.

We did the Taj dinner in March….it was awesome! You taste the entire menu, and we found it all to be delicious….a great meal and value.

I love the French75 martini…..and we taught the Sunset Bar bartenders to make Blind Russians !

We were on Equinox in March. Our Chefs Table was on day 3…..but I believe they actually did two on our cruise, so it is hard to really know. I believe we found out the time on day 1. We had originally scheduled Le Petit Chef for Day 3. The retreat concierge did manage to get it rescheduled to the last night of tithe cruise for us.

On our Equinox cruise in March, they had a similar pre cruise offer, which we considered, but decided to wait until we’re onboard to see the actual schedule. The app (pre cruise) was showing hit classes 5 of the 9 days. When we boarded, we headed to the gym, and found that they had a different exercise class plan which offered HIIT classes only 3 times (one which was late afternoon) and then offered various yoga and spin classes throughout. The schedule did offer a 7 am stretch class each morning (no charge), and then some type of class most days at 8 am and 9 am. Classes are $10 per class. They did have a cruise pass for all classes for $100 (9 day cruise), which was discounted to $90 on boarding day, which we bought. We managed to squeeze in enough classes to just break even, but only two were HIIT. I think in hindsight, we would just pay as we go…..we did our own HIIT workouts some days when the studio didn’t have classes happening.

We sailed on the Equinox in March 2023….agree with recommendation to get plastic holder for lanyard, as all the lanyard wearers had them, which told me Celebrity was no longer punching holes in the sea passes. We were able to purchase Chefs Table on line prior to the cruise, and it was awesome. We had a delightful group of fellow passengers (9 of us total); and it was held in private dining room in Murano. We met in Craft Social to start for champagne and intro to head chef, who gave us a galley tour (during dinner service!-amazing to see it in action) on our way to dinner. I believe they held Chef’s Table twice on our cruise.

Loved ale Petite Chef….so fun and the food was great too!

I agree with this. This was our first time seeing in a suite so we loved Luminae, but we also did the Chefs Table ( which is held in Murano's private dining space and includes a galley tour DURING service!), Le Petit Chef and we did the pop up Indian dinner (Taj Mahal, which is held one evening in Sushi on Five). All were fantastic!

Found picture of World Class bartender from our cruise

Janelle and Laura were the concierges. Not recalling the World Bar bartender.

We are just off the Equinox on Monday. Our first time in Retreat. We did get an email prior to cruising asking if we had any special requests…..it didn’t make it to the ship! However, the concierge’s in the retreat lounge were fantastic! So don’t hesitate to ask them for any assistance once on board. We loved the retreat deck….it was very underutilized, so never had issues getting a chair.

Thanks for letting us join your adventure! We are on our last night on the Equinox, and really appreciated you letting us know about Ernesto and the Sunset Bar crew. We told Ernesto you sent us! He appreciated that! And we taught them a new drink (Blind Russian), so win, win, win!

Thanks for the recommendation...we just booked there for one night post cruise!