Julie MacCoy

I'm married but have done a few solo cruises with girlfriends and we all stay in separate studios.

If you're cruising with girlfriends, you are not cruising solo, even if you all stay in separate cabins. Cruising with girlfriends is cruising with others. Cruising solo is cruising alone.

I was recently on the Celebrity Summit, and I decided to see if everyone out there knows that a tipped chair means "I'll be right back," because I had never heard of this before. Unwilling to try this out with food that I wanted to eat (and didn't want to risk losing), what I did was put a plate with a small amount of food on it across from me and then tip the chair across from me.

Every single time, either a waiter grabbed the plate and took it away (not even giving me a chance to say, "Hey, that person is coming right back"), or someone entering the buffet looking for a seat untipped the chair and asked me if that seat was taken. No one seemed to realize that the tipped chair meant "Don't touch this food, and don't sit in this chair, because I'll be right back."

Something more than a tipped chair or a table tent saying "I'll be right back" or "Reserved" or "Gone grazing again" is needed.

First world problems. You are on vacation, chill out.

This website is called cruisecritic, not cruisepraise or cruisepraisers, so I don't think that it should be surprising that some comments about a cruise or a cruiseline or cruise employees are critical.

Most, if not all, paying passengers of cruiseships sailing out of the USA are first world people, so that would mean that the problems they would encounter on a cruise would be first world problems. Are you saying that cruise passengers are wrong to note on a website called cruisecritic that there were problems on their cruise?

Ballistic about a pen or a lanyard from trivia, really?

I hardly think that telling Justin that I wanted a prize and listening to him say that he would give me one at 4:00 PM, only to find out that he lied to me, and then telling Mark what had happened, including that Justin had lied to me, constitutes being ballistic. As I posted above, I didn't even tell Guest Relations about this, since I didn't want to waste any more of my time standing on line to complain or solve a problem that wasn't at all my fault.

My mother and I traveled on the Summit last August and we frequently went to the trivia games. There were a couple people there, each and every time, that took the game so seriously that they really took the fun away for everyone. I'm a competitive person...but really, this is not something to get competitive or aggressive over.

I don't think that anyone at the trivia contests ruined the fun for everyone, because every single person either: (1) agreed with us about the real names of the four Golden Girls and the city in which The Mary Tyler Moore Show took place, or (2) said that they didn't know, or (3) said that they used to know, but had forgotten. Not one person took Justin's side and agreed with him that he got the names and the city correct. As for J.T., not one single person agreed with him and insisted that Ben Franklin was a president.

You mentioned that embarkation was a breeze. That is great to hear but can you be more specific. We were on the Quantum twice and the parking and embarkation changed as they better learned how to handle the # of passengers. Summit is smaller but we are still interested in if you drop off luggage and then park of if the luggage drop off is at the parking lot for those arriving in personal cars. Also, if you boarded right away or if they did not start boarding until a certain time.

We used a car service, so I don't knw how the dropping off luggage thing and parking thing were handled. We were dropped off near a porter, who took our suitcases, and we walked inside and got on line to check in. We didn't have to wait very long for our turn, and after we were processed, we got on the ship right away. And we easily found seats in the Oceanview Cafe. This was before noon.

I doubt that the OP will ever know

I have no idea what this means (since it was said in response to someone wondering what the prizes were), because I made it a point to say that Mark gave me a prize. It was a Celebrity photo album/scrapbook.

Sure, I know the prizes are chintzy, but I told Mark that they were important because they cannot be purchased in the ship's souvenir shop. They must be won. Even though they are trinkets, they are treasured.

I can always use another tote bag or pen or luggage tag. Maybe next time, especially since our group's next two cruises won't be with Celebrity, and I'm hoping that J.T. doesn't switch to another cruiseline.

If objecting to Justin stating an incorrect answer instead of the correct answer that is extremely easy to find is a sign of taking trivia too seriously, then maybe instead of being told to answer the questions, we should be told to guess what Justin thinks the answer is, because he's too lazy to Google or check with wikipedia. Then we'd all be on the same page.

Reading your reaction to the activities staff teaches me that there really are different strokes for different folks! We loved, loved, loved Justin. His rules at trivia (1. Have a good time, 2. I am always right, 3. I will give you hints, sometimes I will give away the answer, if you don't like it there are several exits, pick one, and 4. Have a good time) are just his "schtick" and probably shut down dickering that can become tiresome. We play pub trivia at home and it's not uncommon for the host to stipulate that the correct answer is whatever is written down on his sheet of paper.

I don't mind at all if the person in charge of trivia insists that he is always right, provided that he is always right. One of the two things that Justin eventually agreed that he was in the wrong about was the first names of the four Golden Girls. He could have looked the names up at wikipedia, but for some reason, he decided to rely on his memory instead, and his memory wasn't 100% accurate. The other thing that Justin eventually agreed that he was in the wrong about was the name of the city in which "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" took place. Again, he could have easily found out the correct answer at wikipedia, but he decided to rely on his faulty memory instead.

It's just so strange that two answers that were so easily arrived at (all he had to do was check wikipedia) were so very wrong.

Justin had a magical way of learning every guest's name after hearing it once, and called everyone by name when he saw them. It was obvious many of the guests adored him. I'm so sorry you didn't have a good experience with him because he was the very best thing about our cruise.

He certainly didn't learn my name, and those who disagreed with him about the names of the Golden Girls and the MTMS city didn't appear to adore him.

As a matter of fact, I omitted an encounter I had with him in my initial post, because it did not seem necessary to my story, but I will tell it here, just so that you can see why I don't adore Justin.

I had said that Mark ran the following day's 4:00 PM trivia, and that was true. What I did not say at the time was that on that morning, I ran into Justin (who did not remember my name), and I told him about J.T. refusing to give us prizes for winning trivia the previous day. He said that J.T. had been told to hand out prizes, and he said that he would speak to J.T. I said, "That won't do me any good. I want a prize." Justin then asked me if I would be at 4:00 PM trivia that day. I said yes. He said that he would be running it, and that he would talk to J.T., and he would take care of things, which I understood to mean that he would give me a prize.

So I was very surprised to see that Mark, not Justin, was running the 4:00 PM trivia. I mentioned it to Mark and found out that Justin had lied to me. I repeated the story about J.T. not giving out prizes and his refusal to acknowledge that Ben Franklin was never a president of the USA. As I said before, Mark gave me a prize.

JT, bless his heart, is just not cut out for the trivia hosting gig. He is a sweet young man but I think he's very new to the hospitality industry. He told us he wasn't given prizes to award on port days (and he'd been tasked with doing every single activity one port day while Mark and Justin had some time off). But I'll take JT over Brad ("DJ TX," recently on the Reflection) any day. We chatted with JT quite a bit because we were on the cruise when the weather in Bermuda was so bad we never left the ship on the second port day.

So we weren't the only group that he refused to give prizes to! I hope that Mark is aware of that. Sorry, but I don't agree that J.T. is sweet. What's so sweet about refusing to hand out prizes after he is specfically told to do so? It's not like handing out prizes to the winning team is so difficult. BTW I don't know Brad.

To be honest, I didn't care much for the character Mark plays when he is hosting (kind of a cross between a self-effacing British comedian and a cruel British game show host) and would have liked to see him drop it and interact genuinely--sounds like you got a little of that from him, and that's nice to know.

Yes, I got a little of that, but I also had to listen to him say that on a number of cruises, they don't give prizes to any of the winning trivia teams, because you're supposed to play trivia just for fun, not because you hope to win something.

Your issues with Select dining is the main reason we choose Traditional Dining. I'm glad Roxana took care of you, though. We enjoyed her while she was the Maitre'd in Blu on Reflection a couple years ago.

I didn't have any issues with Select dining. Someone at Celebrity decided to assign me to first sitting, but that wasn't Select dining's fault. And it wasn't Select dining's fault that Franko was so horrible. I had to wait only once to be seated when I didn't have a reservation. That is not an issue.

I agree, Ken Mills giving 15 minutes worth of announcements after the Captain's 10am cruise status was totally annoying. Maybe someone should put a sock in is mouth.

Ha ha ha!

Other than you didn't win a trinket during trivia, how was the "chow" in the main dining room on the ship?

As I said before, i loved all of the food in the MDR. I was very happy to see that they had a brunch. I strongly recommend the fried chicken and waffles.

Loved ALL the shows except iMagic.

I loved IMagic, but then, I love magic shows.

Thanks for your review. It's always good hearing different points of view. I hope you reported any crew member that was nasty or rude to Guest Relations so they could deal with, and correct the problem right then and there.

I reported them afterwards, in my cruise survey, as opposed to standing on line at Guest Relations. My reason for doing this is that I felt that I had already wasted enough time standing on line to see Franko, and then standing in another line to have Roxana help me, and I really hate spending my vacation time standing on line to complain about things that were not my fault. Besides, the guy who wouldn't give us ice had already refused to give us ice, and Guest Relations couldn't turn back the clock so that he would give us ice, so I didn't see the point of wasting additional vacation time standing on line just to hear someone who wasn't even there say "Sorry about that."

I like to think that when Franko tried to throw your TA under the bus only to be told "He's traveling with us", it caused him to double-take. It's always easy to blame someone who is thousands of miles away.

I didn't see any double-take. He didn't even flinch. However, I don't know what his reaction was when my TA complained to him.

Which port did you sail out of? I want to make sure, if I'm in that port, I give myself plenty of time for flights. Thanks.

Bayonne, NJ.

I was SO glad to learn that we didn't have to endure another Ken Mills cruise. He was the CD on Summit last fall. IMHO -- the man is in love with the sound of his own voice!]/quote]

 

Yeah, I know what you mean.

 

To the OP:

 

You have to give the dining service a break on the first night. Sometimes (many times actually ) things just get screwed up. He should never be rude, but sometimes I would think they just can't solve all reservation mixups on the spot, the first night. If you were not traveling with other passengers, at least it didn't inconvenience a group dinner. I would try to solve it the next day and not stew over it and wreck dinner.

 

I don't agree. I don't see the point of trying to solve it the next day, since my only Select reservation was for the first night, and I think it would be silly if I said on Monday, "My reservation for Sunday night dinner was screwed up." What if they said, "Why didn't you say something yesterday?"

As I said previously, this was our group's fourth sailing with Celebrity, and on none of the previous three cruises did Celebrity screw up our reservations.

 

And I don't even see that it was a true "mix-up." For whatever reason, some Celebrity employee (not necessarily Franko) decided to ignore my Celebrity Select dining confirmation and reservation for that night and decided to seat me at the early sitting. I don't see how ignoring my confirmation (and the fact that I had prepaid my gratuities) counts as being a "mix-up."

Embarkment was a breeze, and it wasn't long before we were eating lunch in the Oceanview Cafe.

I was thoroughly delighted with the food at the Oceanview Cafe, the MDR, and the pool grill. I don't recall eating anything that wasn't absolutely delicious. The service was great, too. We had Celebrity Select dining and had made dinner reservations ahead of time for the first night only. We showed up without reservations on all of the other nights, and there was only one time that we were not seated immediately.

My cabin was great, and the cabin stewards were great, too. My only request was that our ice bucket was filled daily, and that was done.

I loved all of the shows. I had seen Sirens, iHollywood, and Stars in their Eyes before, but no matter - I enjoyed them just as much this time. I had seen the comedian Phil Tag before, too, but again, he was just as entertaining this time.

I liked Peter the piano player. He was no Jordan Peterson, but that's not his fault.

As I always indicate that we'll be picked up by a car service at 10:30 AM when disembarking, we are generally put in the last group to disembark, which is understandable. So I was very surprised to find out that we were put into Group 16 out of 26 or 28 groups. We were told that we were scheduled to disembark at 8:40 AM. Since my traveling companion wasn't feeling well, we were able to obtain wheelchair assistance for her for disembarkation, which was much appreciated. We were told to report to the Martini Bar 15 minutes before our scheduled disembarkation, so we were there at 8:25 AM. Wheelchair disembarkation took an extremely long time. People were complaining about missing their flights and buses. By the time we got out of the terminal, it was 10:15 AM, 15 minutes before our car service was scheduled to pick us up, so we were fine.

That's the good news about the cruise. Here's the bad news:

As I said, we had Celebrity Select dining and had prepaid our gratuities (do people with fixed dining prepay their gratuities?) and had made a reservation for dinner for the first night, so I was dismayed when we got into our cabin to see a card assigning us to a table for early sitting at dinner. I was annoyed that I had to spend my vacation time trying to straighten out a problem caused by Celebrity. I went down to the fourth deck and had to wait and wait and wait with many other people that Celebrity messed with to see Franko. When I finally got to see Franko, he insisted that my travel agent must have changed my dining arrangement, and he insisted that Celebrity was not at all at fault. I told him that my travel agent was traveling on this cruise, too, and that he wouldn't do such a thing. But Franko kept insisting that it was all my TA's fault. He agreed to switch me back to Celebrity Select dining, but when I asked for my 6:15 PM dinner reservation for that night to be reinstated, he told me that it was impossible. He was extremely rude and nasty. (Other people told me that they also Franko was really nasty.) He tried to take the card from me that showed that my friend and were assigning to early sitting, but I wouldn't let him. I said that it was proof that Celebrity had messed up.

So I had to spend more of my vacation time standing on line on the fifth deck to get my 6:15 PM dinner reservation reinstated. Roxana, the Celebrity Select dining hostess, was lovely.

During the cruise, I saw my TA and told him what Franko had said. I showed him the card and said that Franko had tried to take it from me. My TA said that Celebrity had screwed up all of his clients' dining arrangements. He said that his own arrangements had been screwed up, too, and Franko had told him that his TA had screwed him up. He said that he told Franko, "I am the travel agent." I don't think that my TA screwed everything up, because this was our group's fourth cruise on Celebrity, and the dining arrangements on the first three cruises were fine, just as members of the group had made them. My TA has already decided that the group's next two cruises will not be on Celebrity. Franko's treatment of us was not what we expected as an example of Modern Luxury.

While there were over 100 people traveling with my TA, we were not a typical group. None of us knew each other (except for knowing our traveling companiones.) We did not eat together as a group. We all made our individual dining arrangements. There was no group dinner at a surcharge restaurant. We did not take over the pool area or the theater. We all just did our own thing.

I couldn't stand Ken Mills, the Cruise Director. He was so in love with the sound of his voice. He kept making announcements over and over and over the PA about upcoming events. This was extremely annoying when the piano player was playing, and he had to stop, or we were playing trivia, and we had to stop, just so that we could listen to Ken talk and talk and talk. It was so unnecessary. If someone was interested in upcoming events, he could carry a copy of the ship's newsletter. If all someone wanted to do (other than eat) was sit at the bar or sit by the pool or read or play cards or whatever, he certainly did not need Ken interrupting him all the time to tell him about events he could not have cared less about.

Mark was the activities manager. I had no use for Justin (Mark's assistant) and J.T.(the DJ). At one game of trivia, Justin announced that he was always right, and if any of us disagreed with any of his answers to the questions, we were WRONG. Somehow, we managed to convince Justin that he was wrong about two of his answers that he insisted were correct. A quick Google would have told him ahead of time that his answers were incorrect, but I guess he thought that he was so smart that he didn't need to Google.

But J.T. really took the cake. He insisted that Ben Franklin had been a President of the United States. We tried to tell him that he wasn't, and I guess he believed us, but he got really angry at us. I was really surprised to find out that J.T. was an American. I mean, an American should know who had been a President, right? Or he could have Googled it. Anyway, the team that I was on won, but J.T. refused to give us prizes.

The next day, I told Mark that J.T. had refused to give us prizes. He told me that he had specifically told him to give out prizes for trivia. I said that either he didn't give us prizes because he was angry at us for telling him that Ben Franklin was not a President, or he had forgotten to bring the prizes with him and couldn't be bothered to go get them, or he decided to give the prizes to people that he liked, and the heck with the trivia winners. Mark gave me a prize, which was the right thing to do. I did not think that J.T. was a good example of Modern Luxury.

There was one more person that I did not feel was a good example of Modern Luxury. When we tried to get ice from the ice machine by the pool, it was empty. So we asked a guy selling bottles of beer and water for some ice. He told us to get it from the machine. We told him that the machine was empty. He angrily said that it was not empty. He refused to give us ice, and he insisted that we get it from the machine. We tried the machine again. Still empty. We told him again that it was empty, and he told another employee to show us how to get ice from the machine, because we were too stupid to do it ourselves. The employee tried, and he also saw that the machine was empty. So he told the first guy, who finally gave us ice, but refused to apologize.

I have no idea why an employee who is wearing a nametag feels free to act really rude to people, when it's so easy to write down his name and report him. Just another example of Modern Luxury, I guess.

But except for Franko, Ken, Justin, J.T., and the nasty guy who didn't want to give us ice, the cruise was great. It could have been perfect if those five guys had treated us the way they would have wanted to be treated, but I guess you can't have everything.

Well actually I am a vegetarian too but I eat fish

You're not a vegetarian. You just like to say that you are. Why is it that we never hear people say "I am a vegetarian but I eat cows" or "I am a vegetarian but I eat pigs"? Is it because people who eat cows and pigs are more honest than people who don't eat cows and pigs, but do eat fish?

I'm not sure if these count as rumors or as someone being misinformed.

1) I've talked to passengers who were unaware that meals in the MDR were included. They always ate at the buffet. A couple of times, the conversations took place on the ship, so the passengers were able to eat in the MDR afterwards. One time, the conversation took place afterwards, so the passengers never ate in the MDR, because they thought they would be charged extra for it, and they did not want to pay.

2) A woman I know took an NCL cruise to Alaska, and she told me afterwards that only passengers in very expensive cabins were allowed to eat breakfast in the MDR, so she was forced to eat breakfast at the buffet everyday. I tried telling her that that didn't sound right, but she insisted that she was correct, and I hadn't been on the cruise with her so I couldn't tell her with certainty that she was wrong, and I didn't want to start a fight, so I agreed with her.

What I figured happened was that one morning, she attempted to go into Cagney's for breakfast, and someone working there told her that she couldn't, and she should go to the buffet.

But now she goes around telling people that if you aren't in a very expensive cabin on NCL, you can't eat breakfast in the MDR (which is totally not true).

3) My cousin told me that on her cruise, if you wanted coffee at dinner-time, you had to pay extra. That didn't sound right, but I've never been on that cruiseline, so I wasn't going to tell her that she was wrong. But since then, on another cruiseline, I noticed that on the dessert menu, it's written how much a cup of cappaccino, espresso, etc. will cost, and it's not specifically said that you can get a cup of plain old coffee at no extra charge, so maybe that's why she thought that coffee after dinner is not included.

4) I've gone on a number of cruises with a singles group that isn't around nowadays. The hosts and hostesses would always tell us to fill out the survey and rate everything with the highest grade. They said that, for example, if we didn't give the food the highest grade, it would count as a black mark against our waiter, and if he was given a certain number of black marks, he would be fired and sent home. They also said that not turning in our survey counted as giving him a black mark. I always told the hosts and hostesses that I liked the food, but if I hadn't, it wouldn't have had anything to do with the waiter. They still insisted that not liking the food would have penalized the waiter.

Eventually I wrote a letter to the cruiseline and asked if this was true. I was sent a letter saying that it was completely false. So the next time I went on a cruise, and the hostess started to tell us how to fill out the survey, I told her that we could write whatever we wanted, or even not fill out the survey, and it would not get the waiter fired. She said, "Oh, I'm so glad they changed the way they do things."

Been on numerous cruises with different lines and have yet to be on one where the ships time was not the local time.

I was on an NCL cruise to New England and Canada, and while we were in Canada, the ship's time was not the local time. On the New England and Canada cruises that I took on Royal and Celebrity, we had to change our watches to Canada local time and then change them back at the end of the cruise.

Thank you so much for your review and all of your beautiful photographs. I'm going on the Breakway next March, and I eagerly await reading your future posts.

I would appreciate it if you could tell me if McSheehan's charged you for your burger on embarkation day, or if their food is included. Do you know of any other restaurants besides the buffet that were open for lunch at embarkation?