Celebrity Summit Trip Report - 3/7/15 - With Pictures

 

 

Thanks for your write up. Are the Plats du Jour and entreé’s new to the menu? I don’t recall them on my last cruise (last fall on the Silhouette). I just remember the crepes and paninis.

This menu was launched on Summit about a year ago (start of the NY season 2014 which is late April/early May). Supposedly it was going to launch late last year across the fleet, but apparently (and a but disappointingly) hasn't yet. There have been some additions to other ships, like Asian soups on Millennium, but otherwise, "We're still waiting" for the new Bistro on 5 menu to roll out fleet wide.

Keep up the great review. We sail in just over a week and your review has my mouth watering :)

Happy sailing,

Jenna

Oh goody, goody, I love a meaty review! :) Congratulations to you and TA and please tell her that she takes great pictures.

Congratulations on your engagement! We love the Summit. We just completed our 4th cruise on her a few weeks ago. It's nice to relive our cruise through your great report.

Thank you for all the beautiful pictures and congratulations on your engagement. You made us feel as if we were there with you.

Thank you:D

Trip Report: Flights

 

Finally we get to the actual experience of the trip. Let's start with the unpleasant quagmire that was getting there.

 

All our previous cruises were from ports we could drive to. This was our first time flying and while that meant some inconveniences, like limiting the number and size of our bags (no tuxedo for me this trip), my main concern was missed flights. When we booked a March '15 cruise back in January '14 we decided we'd fly in two days before the cruise to explore San Juan and so we'd have a bit of wiggle room if there were any delays. But it's not like there was going to be some freak blizzard canceling flights in March, right?

 

 

Oh.

 

As I reported in our Roll Call, we got a call on Wednesday that our flight had been canceled and that pretty much every flight in the DC area was canceled. We considered a lot of options: driving to Richmond and trying to catch a flight there, taking Amtrak to Miami and grabbing a puddle jumper to San Juan. The problem was even the connecting flights were booked, and all the outgoing flights were being canceled. Things were not looking good for us.

 

I finally found a flight from Philadelphia at 9:30 AM on Thursday, direct to San Juan, on United/American Airlines (they'd merged apparently). We decided this was our best bet on the basis that A) Philadelphia is much better equipped to deal with snow than any of the DC airports and B) Philadelphia is a hub for United so even if the flight is canceled we had a better chance at getting on another flight that would make the cruise. We left DC about 8:00 PM Wednesday and arrived in Philly about Midnight. It was a very unpleasant drive given the wet snow and frozen rain we got to enjoy on that drive. The one upside is my family's from Philly so we were able to crash with my Dad rather than paying for a hotel, and he was able to give us a ride to the airport in the morning.

 

Thursday morning we woke up early and checked the flight. It was still listed as on time. We got to the airport 2 1/2 hours early. Still listed as on time. We get to the gate and settle in to wait. Everything's good.

 

 

Half an hour before take off we board the plane. Oh wow, it looks like this is really going to happen, we beat the weather!

 

 

They de-ice the plane. We taxi to the end of the runway. We did it! The engines power up, they start going full speed and-

 

- the entire cabin fills with smoke.

 

I'm reading my book. TA taps me and points at the smoke, asking, "Is that supposed to be doing that."

 

"Probably not I reply."

 

The engines shut off. The pilot gets on the intercom and says something to the effect of, "We are aware of the smoke in the cabin and the cockpit. Please standby." Great, the smoke's in the cockpit too.

 

In a few seconds the air scrubbers kick in and suck up all the smoke. We taxi back to the gate, they de-board the plane, and everyone stands around in terminal while a mechanic checks everything out. When it's announced that the plane will not be flying no one is surprised or inclined to argue. When it's announced that customer service agents are standing by to help people re-book it's what we expect except for the announcement that there only a handful of seats available before Saturday and most of us will have to wait until then.

 

The cruise leaves Saturday.

 

Everyone hightails it to the customer service desk. We're about tenth in line and get a flight that should, theoretically, get us in by 1:00 PM on Saturday, but then again the first two flights were supposed to get us in on Thursday, so this still doesn't feel like enough leeway if anything else should go wrong. We take the Saturday flight but also insist on being put on standby for the only remaining flight today, at 5:55 PM flight to San Juan. So do most other people.

 

It's a 164 seat plane with 73 people on standby. Good luck.

 

Now I could go on about waiting in the airport, how we were afraid to even get a drink because we wanted to be clearheaded in case we had to deal with more disruptions. And don't think the bar didn't look like the best place to be in that entire airport.

 

 

I could talk about calling our travel insurance company and trying to figure out what resources we had at our disposal if we had to cancel or make alternate travel arrangements. I could talk about people frantically checking their phones to see how many people had checked in and where they were in the standby queue. I could talk about when the plane arrived and all of the standby passengers waiting by the gate, counting every single ticketed passenger getting on the plane and wondering how many spaces would be left.

 

In short, I could talk about how it was a rather stressful day.

 

I will, however, simply say that because 11 connecting flights were also canceled, everyone on standby got on that flight (if just barely). The missed connections meant there was space for everyone at the airport and many of the standby people never made it.

 

Getting on that plane was an enormous relief. Once we were airborn the flight attendants even gave out free drinks to everyone due to the late departure. I've never found a beer so comforting.

 

We landed in San Juan a bit after midnight local time. Our bags arrived without any incident - shocking since our two carry-ons had been gate-checked and our checked baggage had been on a canceled flight then had to be sent to us on a standby flight, but it all worked out. We got a taxi from the airport to the Tres Palmas Inn ($26 for the two of us and our bags, plus tip), checked in, and gratefully went to bed.

 

Two canceled flights. Driving through snow. A plane on fire. A six hour wait on standby, but we'd made it.

 

We were here.

 

We were on vacation.

Very few flights that we've made to San Juan have gone off without a hitch. We missed the ship one cruise and had to catch up at the first port of call.

Love you review. I hope our flights go without too much disruption.

Great review!!

This is "TA" from Cruise_Dancer's report. I just wanted to jump in and thank everyone for the kind comments about his review. In case anyone is wondering, I used a Canon S90 for most of the photos (best point and shoot I've ever owned), and a Fuji XP for the underwater pictures that CD will be getting to soon.

Great pictures and glad to hear your finally made it on the ship and you could pull off the proposal there! We will be on the Summit, same itinerary, next Feb and looking forward to it!

Absolutely loving your review!

Oh, and feel free to post more of your food porn...err... I mean food pics ;)

I know I saw a picture of one of the MDR menus - did you by chance take pictures of others?

While we won't be on your itinerary, we'll be on the Summit to Bermuda in about 7 weeks. It's our first Celebrity cruise!

Thanks again for taking the time to write such a great review!

This is "TA" from Cruise_Dancer's report. I just wanted to jump in and thank everyone for the kind comments about his review. In case anyone is wondering, I used a Canon S90 for most of the photos (best point and shoot I've ever owned), and a Fuji XP for the underwater pictures that CD will be getting to soon.

TA-thanks for the clarification. S90 takes really good photos!

You have a good eye too.

Norris, Canon person

Absolutely loving your review!

 

Oh, and feel free to post more of your food porn...err... I mean food pics ;)

 

I know I saw a picture of one of the MDR menus - did you by chance take pictures of others?

Ask and ye shall receive. I didn't post them since there's a bunch of other blogs that have them but here you go:

Every day menu.

Day 1

Day 2

Sea day MDR lunch

Day 3

(rest to come)

Day 4

Day 5

Day 5 dessert

Day 6

Day 6 dessert

Day 7

(just a few more)

Day 7 dessert

Breakfast.

Now, on with the rest of the review!

Antigua

When we last left our intrepid heroes, they'd enjoyed an active day sightseeing in St. Lucia, but what would Antigua hold for them?

We were on Antigua (actually, all the remaining ports: Antigua, St. Martin, and St. Thomas) on our last cruise and while we'd enjoyed our time in Antigua it hadn't really captivated us. Last time we were here we'd been invited to hire a van and guide by some of our students and enjoyed a roughly two hour tour around the island. It was nice but we didn't see the need to do so again, and weren't really captivated by the beach break. We decided instead to make it mostly a ship day, and just go off and do a little downtown exploring on our own.

Since we could be a bit more leisurely, we decided to do breakfast in the main dining room today. I had the eggs Benedict and TA had the French toast, plus what were now our customary mimosas. In my opinion, the food in the MDR has a slight edge in quality over the food in the buffet, but is much more limited. Especially since there's a station in the Oceanview that makes eggs Benedict to order, we didn't see a need to come back. The one thing that was substantively better in the MDR was my mimosa, but overall we were surprised that we enjoyed the Oceanview that much more.

After breakfast I believe we did the morning wake up trivia, then deboarded to explore on our own.

Walking through what TA calls a, "very big parking lot," we easily reached downtown. From the ship we'd spied the town's cathedral and, given my past and that we missed seeing the cathedral in Castries, St. Lucia, we decided to give it a go. We had a pretty good idea where it was from our view on the ship, and whenever there was a break in the buildings we could spy it and re-orient ourselves, so no need for a guide or a taxi.

The trip was about 1/2 mile and quite easy despite a light misting of rain. We passed the usual colorful Caribbean houses, which I always love to see.

At last we reached the cathedral. This is a view from the back, and if you approach from the front you actually walk through the cemetery, but this gives a better view.

Inside the cathedral was undergoing massive renovation. We talked briefly to the construction workers, left a donation, and meandered our way back to the ship.

I read a bit when we got back while TA napped. We had lunch in the Oceanview, then I changed into my swim suit and enjoyed the hot tub in the solarium and read, while TA purchased a day pass for the Persian Gardens ($25).

She says that she enjoyed it but didn't find it was worth the money - the benches weren't quite comfortable enough to stay there for long periods of time.

As the day went on we changed for dinner and, enjoying our new dining time, were able to get in some dancing afterwards. I went to the evening show afterward when TA went to bed, then went to my usual spot at Cafe al Bacio and read until it was time for me to sleep.

TA-thanks for the clarification. S90 takes really good photos!

Norris, thanks! I'm looking at the G7x as my next acquisition, but the price! Still, for a five year old camera, I've gotten a lot of good mileage out of the s90.

It was so nice of you to post all the menus - I know it's very time consuming and it is VERY much appreciated.

We are LOVING your review!!!!

Thank you!

St. Martin

On our last trip, St. Martin had been our favorite island. A big reason is that we were doing that trip as a working vacation, which meant a very tight budget, and St. Martin was both beautiful and affordable, with a beach we could walk to right from the ship, and a number of bars very close by with great drink specials. I think that was the trip where I decided I needed to learn to make mojitos... But I digress.

Given our last trip we considered booking an excursion to see the butterfly gardens, but ultimately decided to play it cheap and just walk off the ship and see what we could see. Our initial plan was explore down, visit That Yoda Guy museum, come back for lunch, then if we felt like swimming change into our suits and go lounge on the beach.

A beautiful Caribbean port if I've ever seen one.

After breakfast in the Oceanview, we walked off the ship, walked through the tourist area, and had about a 20 minute walk to downtown. We got a little lost looking for That Yoda Guy, but ultimately found it.

For those who don't know, That Yoda Guy is a shop/museum owned and operated by Nick Maley. Nick designed props, makeup, and costumes for a number of classic science fiction films, most notably Star Wars.

Highlander was one of my favorite films in highschool. Watching it (or one of the sequels) was a nearly-weekly ritual for my group of friends. It gave me a lot of happiness growing up, not just from watching the film but by bonding with my friends as we watched it.

Here we see some of the original scripts from Star Wars. As you can see, a lot changed in the editing process.

And here we see Nick himself. TA and I decided awhile ago that we wanted to start building a collection of art to decorate our apartment. We weren't going for big, fancy, or expensive; we wanted pieces that had a story behind them. Nick draws maps of the Caribbean now, and for $45 you get a map and Nick will also draw your ship's route on the map. He did so for us, including drawing a little heart to mark the proposal. We couldn't ask for a better memory piece.

If you purchase at least $39 worth of stuff from the shop then you're also allowed to go through the museum and see Nick's artifacts, such as in the pictures above. This was very cool, at least to two geeks like us.

After the museum we shopped around a bit. I picked up a bottle of guava berry rum for my sister and her husband. TA looked in a linen shop for gifts for people back home but didn't find anything she liked, so we headed back to the ship. Unfortunately the walking was getting to be a bit much so we passed on going back out after lunch. Instead, we did a nice lunch in the Oceanview, then let the thalasotherapy pool in the solarium work on our legs. I believe this is also when we discovered that there are saunas on either side of the solarium for men and women (one side for each). Wish we'd discovered that earlier.

Before dinner we stopped in at the photo gallery to see where the photos were from the proposal. We finally tracked them down and were told they were available as prints for $25 each or we could get a disc of ten pictures for $175. We agreed to the disc and were told it would be available tomorrow night. This story will continue, and not in a good way.

There was no dancing tonight, but after dinner there was one activity that we'd been waiting for the entire cruise: Dancing with the Stripes. As I said in the entertainment section, this was something we were both looking forward to. TA wanted to participate, I did not. Sadly she wasn't selected but she said after seeing the show that it was for the best - it wasn't exactly our style of dancing.

To participate, would-be-dancers put their names in a bucket and each participating crew member draws one out to find out who his or her partner is. I should point out that five of the six crew members appeared to have no dance experience either (one, Ashley who is a Captain's Club host, was actually quite good. She was also the only one with dance shoes). If you're thinking about participating, I would say: DO IT! Don't worry about not knowing what you're doing; knowledge is not an asset in this competition.

I could offer some small critiques but that's just missing the point. This was a fun time and everyone should go see it.

After Dancing with the Stripes there was a 70's disco party. We stayed and got in a few minutes of hustle, then retired for the night: TA to bed, me to (surprise!) Cafe al Bacio and my book.

I'm really enjoying your review. We are doing a B2B on the Summit in November.

Thanks for taking the time to post.

Maryann

St. Thomas

We'd initially planned an active excursion for St. Thomas of hiking, kayaking, and snorkeling, but we were feeling a bit lethargic so instead we opted for a catamaran with snorkling and a beach stay. We had breakfast in the Oceanview, then deboarded and found our tour.

The day started off beautifully, though the weather would be a bit... varied. We boarded a motorized catamaran and were soon racing across the bay to the snorkeling grounds. The swimming area is chosen since there are a number of fish and tortoises that swim there, so there were quite a few other boats going with us. We saw the "pirate" ship rocking violently side to side and felt we'd made the right choice with the catamaran.

Told you the weather would be varied.

I hadn't ever snorkeled before, but the instructions were quite clear and the equipment functional. It was easy to get the hang of it, and well worth it!

It was very cool being able to swim with all the different creatures, though of course you're warned not to try and touch any of them (we didn't, of course).

Most other people seemed to enjoy it too.

Unfortunately, as we got back in the boat and headed to the beach portion, the weather turned grey and rainy. I opted to stay on the catamaran and listened to my Harry Potter on my iPod. Most of the passengers swam in the rain and passed around a jug of rum punch (oh yes, drinks were included on this tour, and very good they were too).

Eventually the sun did come back out, but that was towards the end of our time.

We headed back to the Summit, had our usual lunch in the Oceanview and relaxed in the Solarium. We visited the future cruise office and booked something for next year to take advantage of the deals for booking onboard, though our intention is to reschedule it several times since it'll take us another two years or so to save up for the next trip. We had dinner in the Cosmopolitan Restaurant for the last time, and I must admit I was surprised that it was not a great meal. My steak Diane was surprisingly lack-luster and I didn't finish, and we both passed on dessert (though I'd later have a pastry at my favorite place).

That night the Band Mates were playing dance music in the Rendez-Vous so we got our shoes and danced a bit until it was time to pick up our pictures. This marks the one significant negative experience we had with Celebrity on this trip.

When we went to pick up our disc with the pictures we were told there was a problem. Because the photographer had taken pictures of a proposal that qualified as a special occasion which cost more. We could purchase prints individually at $25 apiece, but if we wanted the digital files we had to purchase the disc and they were going to charge us $250 for it, $75 more than we'd been quoted and with no quantity discount.

I was angry about this. I was angry about being lied to and I was especially angry about being extorted. This didn't feel like the person we'd spoken with before had made a mistake, it felt like they realized they had us in a bind and were holding the pictures hostage. The package they wanted us to buy was half the price of our cruise fare; this was not something we could just do on a whim and it felt like we had no recourse. Eventually, TA decided to get the disc since, as you can see, she's really into pictures and wanted the quality of digital files rather than scans. I will say that the manager made a slight peace-offering by giving us the prints as well as the disc, but I was still angry. I included all this in my post-cruise survey to Celebrity but have yet to hear anything back.

I don't object to paying for special services. A friend of mine is a professional photographer and often talks about the stress of going out and taking pictures in the hope that someone will want to buy them later, all while using expensive equipment that, to quote her, "literally explodes from use." The photographers provide a valuable service and they deserve to be compensated. I'm incensed, however, that it feels like we were targeted. I'm incensed that we weren't given the correct price which we would have been able to budget for; I'd originally just wanted to purchase four prints each ($100), but when we knew early on that we were going to spend more on the disc I budgeted for that and cut out some other things. This extra kick in the pants came out of nowhere on the last day of the cruise when we had no budget left for it. It left me with a very sour taste in my mouth regarding Celebrity. We will sail them again but we will not be using their photography services again; I don't trust them.

Yes, then.

After getting our pictures we watched the comedian a bit, though I didn't find his second show was as good as the first.

Eventually, TA went to bed and I went back to Cafe al Bacio for my last tea and read.

Debarkation and Home

All good things must come to an end. We woke early on Saturday. Had our last breakfast in the Oceanview (no mimosas today), did a last run through of our cabin, then headed to our designated waiting area (Rendez-Vous Lounge).

Cafe al Bacio was open so we grabbed a final tea and pastry (I had the chocolate croissant, TA had the almond. Both were excellent). Our number was called surprisingly quickly and we had no difficulties finding our luggage in the terminal. The customs line moved slowly but we got through. Outside we'd hoped to find someone to split a cab with to the airport but they were moving us so quickly there was no chance.

We arrived at the airport at about 8:45 AM for our 2:30 PM flight, which meant quite a bit of waiting even before we could check in. We ended up waiting next to a group of people who were apparently crew from the Summit heading home. They didn't recognize and we didn't identify ourselves once we realized what they were talking about. I won't repeat the details here, but it was very unprofessional and they should have realized that it wasn't a safe venue to gripe about their job, not with all the passengers getting off the ship and many flying out of the same airport. We did report this on our post cruise survey.

Once we were able to check in we made it to our gate easily enough. The San Juan airport was not built for its current capacity, and as such it's quite cramped. We grabbed lunch from Dominos (overpriced, but so is all airport food everywhere). Our plane was about an hour late but compared to the troubles we had flying out that was hardly worth a complaint.

The flight itself was easy and we made it back to Philly without any trouble. We stayed over with my dad that night, then drove back to VA the next morning to unpack and consider what a wonderful trip we'd had!

Thanks for the kind words everyone, and thanks for sticking with me through the whole thing. That's about all we have for a trip report, but if you have any questions about the trip or the ship, we'll be happy to answer them.

Thank you for the great review. Too bad the photography vendor had to cast a dark shadow over the trip:( We are looking forward to our 25th anniversary onboard this June. I will boycott the photo shop in solidarity:D Not that I would buy any pics there regardless. I have always found them too expensive for what you get.

thank you very much for that great review!!!

That was a fantastic review! Thanks for taking the time and congratulations on your engagement :)

Thanks for the review and the photos. My wife and I are booked to Bermuda next year on Summit in honor of our 25th wedding anniversary. My wife and I wish you the same happiness we have experienced in our journey together! Happy Cruising! Linda and Bob