Detailed Photo Review of Celebrity Eclipse 14 Night Southern Caribbean Cruise 3/4/18

Dessert Menu

I was too full to order dessert, but DH ordered the cheese plate. If any of you have read my Paul Gauguin review, you know about my husband’s love affair with a cheese plate after dinner lol This wasn’t anything like what they did on Paul Gauguin with a rolling cart brought to our table, but that was probably a good thing for the sake of portion control! DH was very happy to receive real crackers instead of saltines (and this was proof that there are, in fact, other crackers on the ship besides saltines!!)

After dinner, we walked around the ship for a bit to work off some of the calories, then we made our way to the theater. Tonight’s show was called Rock City and featured the singers, dancers, and aerialists performing songs by The Who, Bon Jovi, Green Day, and many more. It was more like a rock concert than a show in that it did not have a plot, and of course, we really enjoyed it. This seemed like Celebrity’s effort to cater to a younger audience, which was okay with me since I like this kind of music, but I am not sure how the older crowd felt about it.

At 10pm, the activities crew was hosting an 80’s themed game up in the Sky Lounge. The description in the daily schedule was quite vague, but we wanted to check it out. They divided the room into 2 groups based on where you were sitting, and asked for a team leader from each side. We were sitting in the front row so they asked DH to be our leader, and Mike (traveling-2) volunteered for the other team. The game was name that tune with 80’s songs and you had to know the title and the artist. People from the audience were supposed to run up and tell the team leader the answer and he would then tell it to the host to get the points. As it turned out, DH and Mike are both quite knowledgeable in 80’s music and they knew almost every answer without any help. They recognized the songs after only a few notes, so the rest of us in the audience didn’t have time to run up and answer anyway! Notice the activities staff member standing in the middle? That’s Flory, and he had his hand held out for DH or Mike to tap him when they knew the answer. You can imagine how poor Flory got stuck in the middle as DH and Mike both rush over to him at the same time! The poor guy seemed scared to stand there after the first few songs haha

In the end, it was a pretty even match up but I think Mike’s team ended up winning. I just want to take a moment here to talk about Flory… This event was held on the third night of our cruise, and from this moment on, any time Flory saw us, he made sure to say hi. When DH first went up onto the dance floor, Flory asked where he lives. When DH said San Jose, CA, Flory immediately responded “Go Sharks!” He is a big hockey fan and apparently knows all the teams, and he was very excited that we live in the city of one of the teams he likes. If Flory spotted us from across the room, or the buffet, or the pool deck, or anywhere really, he would yell “Go Sharks!”, so it wasn’t just that he was saying hi to a familiar face. We knew he remembered exactly who we were, which was quite impressive considering how many guests are on the ship and that he interacts with a new set of guests every 2 weeks. He always had a smile on his face and so much energy in every event that he hosted, and we just thought he was wonderful at his job (and definitely made a point to mention that in our guest satisfaction survey after the cruise!).

Back to Wednesday night… The house band was scheduled to perform poolside at 10:15pm so we went over to check it out, thinking maybe there would be a party vibe on the pool deck. No such luck! It seemed totally dead and there was hardly anyone out there, so we just went back to the cabin and called it a night.

Step Tracker Daily Total: 12,164 steps; 4.96 miles; 13 flights of stairs

Loving the review Dana.

When we went to St. Maarten in 2016 it rained all day. Two of our friends had booked a catamaran cruise which was cancelled and we all ended up going on a bar crawl in Phillipsburg. We had a lovely meal at the Green Parrot (think that was the name). We walked to and from the ship and got soaked both ways. At least it was warm rain unlike in the UK.

The food looks great and your pictures are really good.

Loving the review Dana.

 

When we went to St. Maarten in 2016 it rained all day. Two of our friends had booked a catamaran cruise which was cancelled and we all ended up going on a bar crawl in Phillipsburg. We had a lovely meal at the Green Parrot (think that was the name). We walked to and from the ship and got soaked both ways. At least it was warm rain unlike in the UK.

 

 

The food looks great and your pictures are really good.

Oh no! That's the worst when it rains but that's great that you made the best of it :) It was so frustrating to deal with strong winds for our whole cruise, but I just kept telling myself, at least it's not raining! Thanks for reading along :)

Great review and photos! Thanks for sharing since I'm going to be on Eclipse next August.

We were on the same cruise, glad you had a great time. My cruise memories are slightly different, high sea swell and very windy with low sea temperatures. Sea days was a battle to get a sun lounger unless you got up at 7am to reserve your bed. Wish Celebrity would do something too curb the selfish people but no such luck, no money in it for them !

Best review EVER!!! We will be on the Eclipse on November 10, and can't wait!!! <3

what a great review.

Awesome that you got to see the Corning glass blowers; I only live a couple hours from Corning but I've never been to the glass museum or anything!!!

Great review and photos! Thanks for sharing since I'm going to be on Eclipse next August.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions about the ship :)

We were on the same cruise, glad you had a great time. My cruise memories are slightly different, high sea swell and very windy with low sea temperatures. Sea days was a battle to get a sun lounger unless you got up at 7am to reserve your bed. Wish Celebrity would do something too curb the selfish people but no such luck, no money in it for them !

Don't get me wrong, I was less than thrilled at the wind we experienced on this cruise. There is no question that it was more windy than normal and it definitely impacted our excursions and snorkeling. Did you see the pool in the Solarium on the first two sea days? It was like a wave pool with the water sloshing over the sides of the pool! And I totally agree that the chair hogs were out of control, but I think that happens on every cruise (unfortunately!). I wish the staff would do something about it, but like you said, they probably won't because it won't benefit the cruise line to piss those people off. Such is life, I guess!

Best review EVER!!! We will be on the Eclipse on November 10, and can't wait!!! <3

Aww thanks! Glad you're enjoying it :hearteyes:

what a great review.

 

Awesome that you got to see the Corning glass blowers; I only live a couple hours from Corning but I've never been to the glass museum or anything!!!

You should definitely make a trip down there if you get a chance! It sounds like they have an interesting museum that is worth checking out.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions about the ship :)

Out of curiosity, I booked an aft balcony cabin, which they call Sunset Veranda. Just how far is it from the closest elevator (mid-ship, I think)? Some say it wasn't bad, some act like it was a marathon each way. Thanks.

Out of curiosity, I booked an aft balcony cabin, which they call Sunset Veranda. Just how far is it from the closest elevator (mid-ship, I think)? Some say it wasn't bad, some act like it was a marathon each way. Thanks.

haha I guess that's just a matter of perspective! If you look at this photo of the deck plans of the Eclipse, your aft cabin is at the far left, and the nearest elevators are about a third of the way into the ship.

Personally, I like to be a little closer to the elevators than that, as it makes it hard to quickly run back to the cabin if you forgot something. In general, it's not that big a deal to walk back there considering the ship is big, but it's not THAT big lol And on the bright side, it is very quiet back there as there's no one else walking passed your cabin aside from the other people with aft balconies!

Day 8: Wednesday, March 8 ~ Antigua

(Eddy’s pronunciation: ant – IG – you – ah*)

*I haven’t really mentioned much about the Cruise Director Eddy. He was very funny and we really enjoyed him as our CD. One of his shticks is that he mispronounced the name of all of our ports. We didn’t really catch on to it at first, so neither of us remembers how he pronounced St. Maarten, but when we heard him say Antigua, we caught on. Part of what made it so funny was that he is from Wales and does have an accent, so between his normal accent and his mispronunciation of these island names, we couldn’t help but chuckle. I’ll include Eddy’s version of the island names for all the rest of our ports. Emphasis is on the capitalized syllable.

Antigua was one of the ports on this itinerary that I was most looking forward to (along with the 3 ABC islands, of course!) because it was the only new port for the first week of the cruise. Antigua is famous for having 365 beaches- one for every day of the year. I briefly considered using today as a beach day, but then decided against it because we were using St. Maarten and Barbados as beach days and I wanted something more adventurous for today. Antigua Adventures receives a 5 star rating on Trip Advisor, and also gets great reviews on Cruise Critic. We decided to book their Eco Tour, which would take us out on a boat for 6 hours, including stops for snorkeling, hiking, a visit to Hell’s Gate Island, and lunch on the beach. They offer a 10% discount if you pay a deposit online with a credit card, so I paid $23.50 per person online and was instructed to pay the remaining $80 per person in cash in US dollars on the day of our tour.

We woke up to an overcast and cloudy sky as we sailed into Antigua this morning. The temperature felt much warmer and more humid than it had been so far this week, so we crossed our fingers that it wouldn’t rain during our tour! We put the room service breakfast tag on our door last night, and it was delivered promptly at 7am. As I had done yesterday, I requested smoked salmon for our bagels, but when I divided up all of our food, there was no plate with salmon. I just assumed they ran out or forgot or whatever, but it wasn’t a big deal. We took our breakfast out onto the balcony to watch as we sailed into port.

Good morning Antigua!

Just as I finished eating, I heard the phone ring inside the cabin. It was the room service manager calling to check up on us and make sure our breakfast was to our liking. I’m not sure if he does this for all the cabins or if it was because we spoke with him last night during dinner, but I thought it was a nice touch. I told him everything was great, but since he called, I asked if it was okay that we were writing in smoked salmon on the order form. I explained that we had ordered it yesterday and it was delivered, but it was not delivered today so I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to order it. He said that was no problem at all to order the smoked salmon, apologized that it was forgotten with today’s order, and offered to send it up to the cabin right away. I told him not to worry about it since we were already finished eating and needed to leave for our tour soon. He told me to make sure to write down any other special requests when I order room service for the rest of the cruise and he would make sure that we got it. I was quite impressed at the level of service and concern for our happiness. Well done, Celebrity!

We packed up our beach bags and headed off the ship at 8:15am to meet our tour group. We were instructed to meet at 8:45am at a boutique located just a 5 minute walk from the cruise ship, but I always like to give us a little extra time just in case we get lost and to make sure we are not late. These guys were playing the steel drums when we got down to the pier.

When we got to the base of the pier, I immediately saw our meeting spot for the tour. The instructions told us to walk across the wood bridge to the Exotic Antigua Boutique, so it was a relief to see a huge sign on their roof labeling the building so I could see it from right next to the cruise ship.

Now that I saw how close we were to the meeting spot, and since we were still a bit early, we walked past the bridge and continued straight towards the shops. I have never been to this port before and I was curious to check out the port area, but I almost immediately regretted my decision. It wasn’t a particularly pretty port area, and honestly it looked a bit rundown.

On top of that, the locals were extremely pushy. Every time we took a step down the street, another vendor approached us trying to get us to go into their store to buy something, or to book their tour or get in their taxi and they would take us to the beach. I answered “No thank you, I already have a tour booked” which is usually enough for the vendors to back off, but they still kept pestering us. I felt very uncomfortable and after just a few minutes, I told DH I had enough and we turned back to go wait at our meeting spot for the tour. That didn’t give me the best first impression of Antigua, but I was hopeful that things would improve once we started our tour.

At 8:40am, we spotted our tour boat, clearly labeled with “Antigua Adventures” painted on the side of the boat. There were already a few people on the boat who were staying at a hotel on the island, and the rest of us boarded after they tied up on the dock.

When I booked the tour, they said there was a maximum of 31 people on the tour, but the guides told us there would only be 22 people on our tour today with 3 guides, so there was lots of space to spread out. The boat had a big canopy over the back half of the boat for shade, and it had a lower level with space to store our bags to keep them dry, as well as a bathroom. Once everyone was settled, the guide came around to collect our money to pay for the tour, and we left the dock promptly at 9am.

We spent the first hour of the tour speeding around the island, making occasional stops so the guides could point out the landmarks along the shoreline. The guides also explained some of the history of Antigua.

This was an old navy fort (not to be confused with a banana republic fort hehe!). If you look closely about a quarter of the way in from the left side, you can see one of the canons still perched on the edge of the cliff.

Antigua has some very expensive, high end houses, so the guides pointed it out as we sped past them.

I think this was at one of the hotels

Our tour was called Eli’s Eco Tour, but the tour company Antigua Adventure also offers an Xtreme 360 tour which circumnavigates the entire island in a much faster speed boat. At some point, that boat sped passed us and everyone looked like they were having a great time. I did notice that the boat looked much more crowded than our boat, so I was happy to be on our slower boat with more space to spread out.

Our first longer stop was at Long Island, which I thought was funny because I was born and raised on Long Island in New York. This section of the island has beautiful turquoise water, soft white sand, and lots of very expensive houses. The guides spent a few minutes explaining about how sea turtles lay their eggs on this beach and the island requires the residents here to help facilitate that process and protect the eggs. Something I found really interesting is that the guide told us that the turtles always return to the beach where they were born to lay their eggs. If a turtle was born here, but then swims over to St. Lucia for a few years, it will swim all the way back to this beach to lay it’s eggs. Crazy!

While we were listening to one guide, one of the other guides served us fruit juice or water, but no rum punch just yet- we had to wait for the end of the day after snorkeling before they would serve the good stuff!

We stayed at Long Island for about 20 minutes, then made the 15-minute journey over to the mangroves. When I went through the mangroves in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica, I spotted lots of interesting animals and birds. These mangroves weren’t quite as exciting and we didn’t spot any animals, but maybe they were just deeper inside and not visible from our boat?

Our next stop was at Pelican Island, where we saw tons of pelicans perched up on the hill. There were so many of them, and it was interesting that they all stay close by this one island.

Look closely and you can see lots of pelicans hiding in the bushes.

After leaving Pelican Island, we traveled less than 5 minutes to reach our next destination: Hell’s Gate Island. This was the first time we could get off the boat, and we had the option of snorkeling, swimming in the natural jacuzzi, or going on a hike though a cave and up to the top of the bridge to see the views. The guides explained that we only had about 40 minutes to spend here, so there was only time for us to do one activity. They warned us that the last option was the most adventurous option, so of course that is what we picked to do!

Approaching Hell’s Gate Island

Lots of coral and rocks just below us

That’s the bridge we were climbing up to

As we approached the island, the water was very choppy so I was a bit nervous about swimming over there from the boat. The guides had life vests and pool noodles that we could use to float, so that did make the swimming a little easier, but be careful! There are rocks in the water that come up close to the surface. I was getting tossed around a lot and it was hard to control my direction with the current, and I scrapped my knee on the top of one of the rocks. That scrape is still not fully healed today, over a month later, and I am fairly sure I will end up with a scar on my knee.

Yay! We made it!

The guides were wonderful about helping everyone swim over to the island from the boat. If anyone wasn’t a strong swimmer, the guides were there to help out.

As tough as that swim was, it was totally worth it! The island is really unique. There’s a small patch of soft sand forming a small beach with crystal clear bright blue water washing through the opening in the rocks. That’s the area they referred to as a natural jacuzzi, and I could see it being a lovely place to sit and relax if you don’t want to hike through the cave.

Looking back towards our boat, you can see that the rocks which form the island are very sharp. This natural land formation is made of porous limestone rock, and there were lots of sharp jagged edges sticking out. I would definitely recommend wearing water shoes to protect your feet if you are going to take the hike here. We have our own aquasocks, but the guides had little booties for us to borrow if needed.

This photo shows where we entered the cave… do you see the vines hanging down from the top of the bridge? There is a dark opening on the left side towards the bottom of the vines- that’s the cave we walked through.

The guides gave us very specific instructions for how to climb up the rocks, and they pointed out where to turn and how to maneuver safely through the narrow cave opening and up through the middle of the rocks to reach the top.

We did the Xtreme 360 tour and it was one of our favorite excursions. Loved the high speed boat and was glad to visit Nelson's Dockyard.

haha I guess that's just a matter of perspective! If you look at this photo of the deck plans of the Eclipse, your aft cabin is at the far left, and the nearest elevators are about a third of the way into the ship.

 

 

Personally, I like to be a little closer to the elevators than that, as it makes it hard to quickly run back to the cabin if you forgot something. In general, it's not that big a deal to walk back there considering the ship is big, but it's not THAT big lol And on the bright side, it is very quiet back there as there's no one else walking passed your cabin aside from the other people with aft balconies!

If I remember correctly it’s 350 steps to the elevators. We’ve been back there twice and booked again for our next cruise. The 2nd Time was easier than the first.

We did the Xtreme 360 tour and it was one of our favorite excursions. Loved the high speed boat and was glad to visit Nelson's Dockyard.

I've heard people really liked the 360 tour. If I'm ever back in Antigua, I'll have to look into it :)

It was really fun to climb up through the cave, but you need to be careful of your footing and be aware of what is around you. Some parts had a lower ceiling so you had to be careful not to bump your head, and some of the rocks were slippery. I did my best to snap lots of photos, but it wasn’t the greatest lighting conditions in there so I apologize that some of these came out blurry.