REVIEW: Back from Infinity 8/27/10 to Alaska, after 3 cruiseless years

Here are some random notes, primarily from this perspective: Our family of three (longtime married couple + now-teen son) sailed Celebrity eight times in five years between 2002 and 2007 - then no cruises at all for three years + two months - till Infinity to Alaska, 8/27/10-9/3/10, roundtrip from Seattle.

Our previous cruises: Three others to Alaska (Infinity in August 2003 from Vancouver, Mercury in August 2005 from Seattle, Mercury in June 2007 from Vancouver); three to the Caribbean (Century pre-stretch in September 2002 and March 2003, Millennium in December 2004, all out of Fort Lauderdale), one to Panama Canal (Galaxy out of Galveston in April 2006), one along the Pacific Coast (Mercury out of San Francisco in April 2004).

We live in Seattle, and started a business since our last cruise, so "time we could afford to spend away) dictated our choice more than necessarily the desire to cruise Alaska again. Nonetheless, it was beautiful - sunny for sailaway (and for Friday's return, and the sailaway another group enjoyed later that day), sunshine at least part of the day for the rest of the cruise except for the stormy sea day on the way back.

No shore excursions and few onboard activities for us, so if you're looking for that kind of info, skip on.

Here are our observations, heavily focused on what's different:

-Stateroom: Sky Deck, port aft inside cabin. Booked less than a month before the cruise, and I see why that was one of the last available - it's right next to a service entrance for galley, room service, et al. We don't mind some noise, since our home is on a busy street, but if you're looking for a relaxing experience in your cabin, don't book that area. Our cabin could have held five, apparently, with two pulldowns and a pullout available. The sheets and comforter are high-quality and comfortable, even in the pulldown. The cabin was in good condition - the bathroom was devoid of mold, mildew, any other signs of disrepair.

-Dining room: "Select" dining didn't exist when last we sailed. Unfortunately we booked this cruise too late to get early dining OR select and had to dine late (8:30 pm) for the first time ever. I was OK with that but my husband and teen, not so much. They also paid more attention than me to some service flaws on the first night - we were sitting at our table for 10 minutes before our waiter finally greeted us; we had to ask about the bread basket; etc. The food itself hadn't changed much, except that the menu now combines "soup and salad" (you can still order one of each if you want) and has all the "available any night" items on their own page. Prime rib was only offered one night. The lobster on formal night #2 was more like an oversized shrimp, and the lemon doesn't come in a little mesh bag any more. On the brighter side, we tried MDR breakfast and lunch once each and came to the conclusion that if we ever do this again, we're doing that more often.

-Buffet: Interesting changes up there. At lunch, instead of a daily "today we're featuring Italian/Asian/whatever" theme, the specialty foods were offered daily in their own "corners" along the buffet line, so if you wanted to have Asian daily, no problem. (The vegetable curry was one of our top three picks for best food on board - the others were the key lime pie served at MDR lunch the day before the cruise ended and the fried chicken wings at the poolside grill.) At breakfast, there were "English breakfast" and "Asian breakfast" stations daily as well as the regular stuff. (Why the "Asian breakfast" didn't offer just plain steamed rice, I don't know - would've been nice.) The routine dinnertime choices were expanded as well - always a carving station, always the pasta station, plus other options such as sushi. (Much better than previous voyages where we sampled it.)

-Other food notes: No midnight Grand Buffet - there was a "brunch" in the MDR one day before voyage's end that sounded like it was meant to be a substitute of sorts, didn't get to check it out. There was a "dessert buffet" one night in Constellation - we walked through but way too crowded to stop and sample. Cova remained a source of tasty little surprises that many never notice - pastries at breakfast, cookies continuously, "tapas" at dinner time (curried chicken salad, marinated olives, antipasto small plates). And this is the tiniest of little whines but ... the nightly chocolate in the room has changed. It's now a flat square, in odd flavors like raspberry and something valerian.

-Beverages. Spouse was pleased as always with Martini Bar service and product. Otherwise - it's a different world. Many many more occasions for them to try to sell you something - smoothies on the deck behind the buffet, for example. No more basic "drinks of the day" deals - there was a special daily cocktail listed in the bulletin, but nothing I'd ever heard of (OK, maybe I'm just old). The former "drinks of the day" were classics like tequila sunrises or singapore slings - this time around, both the specials and the regular menus in the bars were odd-sounding newfangled (am I *really* that old?) concoctions. In the end, I didn't try any mixed drinks; ordered wine by the glass a few times in the MDR at dinner - one of my favorites, the affordable northern California white zinfandel by Beringer, was $5.50/glass. Buffet upstairs offered "mini-carafes" of several wines for about $10. In the free-beverage realm, my favorite touch was the royal blue water glasses, compared to the cloudy old "clear" ones; the punch machines have changed a bit, which brought some complaint from the grumpy teenager who had a fondness for the fluorescent red fruit punch of yore.

-Music, annoyingly, everywhere. Whether show tunes or '80s disco, blaring, blaring, blaring everyplace. Honestly, we recall bars being primarily quiet between activities/dancing, among other spaces. Quiet was VERY hard to find on Infinity this time. As for the non-prerecorded music, what, no Black and White Duo? Have they retired? The a cappella singers were awesome; other acts we briefly encountered were talented too. Didn't hear much of the main band since Alaska is not a poolside-performance itinerary and we avoided Constellation aside from a few quiet whale-watching mornings and afternoons.

-Other entertainment: We watched the sampler show on the first night, seemed pretty standard, didn't go to the other shows. Late dinner kind of ruins the showgoing, with most shows scheduled before dinner - prime time for viewing the scenery outside the ship most nights, if you're a fan of that as I am.

-Naturalist: Brent Nixon is a little loopy with all that bouncing and waving but certainly memorable. (Does he REALLY have a resume' as a master climber, ace river runner, and all the other claims?) He presented talks on humpback whales, orca whales, seals/sea lions, and, I believe, bears. His commentary on Tracy Arm morning was most memorable - though a little over-laden with quotes and hushed reverence. (Better that than indifference, though.) Be sure to go to the first whale lecture if you take this itinerary and he's aboard - he'll give you prime whalewatching-time advice.

-Whale watching: (From the ship) Saw three humpbacks the night we left Ketchikan. Saw one whale the morning before Victoria, as we sailed off Vancouver Island. Also some porpoises earlier in the voyage. Constellation (forward observation lounge) is usually the place to be for this, though two of our sightings were from the open decks.

-"Celebrity Life" aside from the naturalist: The "foodie, guru" nomenclature is a little too precious. I guess "life" is better than the old "enrichment," though. None of the lectures/opportunities caught our imagination, so we have nothing to report aside from our thoughts on the terminology. We enjoyed playing trivia on previous cruises - didn't get around to it till the last day on this one, and noticed there were no prizes offered. Again, not that you need the tchotchkes, but to take home a pen or a keychain and say "hey! won this at trivia!" is just a nice little touch.

-Spa: Same thing. No services tried; lots of shilling in the bulletin for Botox, Restylane, and that ilk. Watched a promotional video while awaiting a movie one night in the Cinema and was horrified to see that Botox was being promoted for somebody in their early 30s.

-Cinema: We went to one movie, "District 9," which we'd never gotten around to seeing in the theater. Sat down with a dozen others for the 10:30 showing. 10:50 arrived and the movie hadn't started. We all started sending delegates out to complain to guest relations, which finally dispatched a couple of techs to fire up the machine.

-Smoking: As longtime nonsmokers (quit a quarter-century ago), we appreciate Celebrity's new policy, which seems to have dramatically cut down on the amount of smoke you have to walk through. Made it almost jarring to walk along the open port-side deck, with its stuffed ashtrays and smoke-break-takers, but I wouldn't begrudge them one place to go!

-Gratuities: Speaking of jarring ... had no idea they'd switched to the automatic-charge system, till we finally noticed it in the Daily Bulletin a few days into the cruise; we'd brought cash, but without the customary presentation of the envelopes, there was nothing to do with it. How is this working out for the employees? Not really much chance or incentive to give them extra, seemed to us. On the other hand, since we weren't going to the MDR on night 7 - when dinner conflicted with Victoria arrival, even though they moved up late seating to 7:30 that night - meant no worries about how to get our wait team their gratuity $.

-Bingo, sadly, changed from the old-fashioned bingo machine with balls, to an all-computerized setup, including these scary-looking computerized gizmos players could buy, requiring no more participation than just sitting there and waiting for your machine that you won (or not). Prices are higher too - $40 for one card on the final day. And the jackpot setup was odd - a $10,000 jackpot on the second-to-last day if you got the coverall in 46 numbers (virtually impossible), but since nobody won, it rolled over "to the next cruise"; the "must-go" snowball jackpot the final day was a little more than $1,000, a lot less than the one I was lucky enough to win on our previous cruise three years ago.

-Captain's Club: Wow, zero perks for our select membership level. No coupons, no special invitations to anything - there was a mention in the bulletin of a Captain's Club event one day, with snacks, but if there was a CC cocktail party as per the days of yore, we didn't get invited. Only invitations we got all cruise were for two "shopping events" (you'd think they could crossreference to note that we do not "shop" on board!) ...

-Ship's condition: Was a little worried after reading some Cruise Critic notes about disrepair aboard Infinity - but didn't encounter much of it. On our deck, all but one of the "down" buttons for the elevator were broken, and that was the most notable "disrepair" we ran into. The windows, furnishings, carpets, etc., all seemed in fine shape.

-Crew: Didn't meet anyone personally. Cruise director Damian sounded pleasant enough, standard cheery-cruise-director issue ... the one noticeable thing about Captain Margaridis: He wasted no time. Left almost every port a few minutes early, including sailaway from Seattle. Got to some of them early, too (Victoria arrival was more like 6:30 than 7). Keeping up with the bulletins, even without participating in most activities, we noticed they've added some mix-and-mingle events for those who like such things - a poolside barbecue with "crew members" on the way back, a chance to take a photo with the captain (photo hawking overall has ratcheted way up - more on that later), among other things.

-Internet: How could I almost forget this one? We needed to stay connected with our business back home, and while an aircard helped us do that from the ports (Verizon 3G was excellent everywhere - just be sure you convert to the "global" plan temporarily before leaving home, because if you get online in Canada without doing so, it's BIG roaming charge time!), we were forced to use the shipboard satellite internet more than we anticipated. The computers are in good condition BUT they have Internet Explorer browsers that are so old, everything we accessed, from Gmail to Facebook to Twitter, gave us stern little messages saying we really ought to upgrade the browser! and our home account's web-mail interface kept proxy-timing out. If you think you might use the shipboard internet a lot, bring your own laptop and get wireless access - we didn't use that for the first few days because we had trouble making it work, but once we did, it was much smoother than the ship computers, because we DO have newer browsers. Also, even if you don't bring your own computer, if you have a smart phone, you can get the wi-fi (same cost as the ship computers) access with that, and check your mail etc. As for the prices - it's 65 cents a minute with no minimum (that's a bit cheaper than the 70-plus-cent minutes we wrote about five years ago), as low as 42 cents a minute if you buy a $100 package. Buying that package on Day 1 entitled us to 20% bonus minutes, which were added to the account the next day. We went through two $100 packages plus some extra time - on the second-to-last day, we noticed a $20 package for 44 cents a minute, and that got us to Victoria, where we were able to use our aircard for the final checkins. Note that the shipboard internet was completely inaccessible on Tracy Arm morning - so we were out of contact for about five hours.

-Other means of contact: We read the hints about text messages - which, while shipboard cellular is extremely expensive for voice, are supposedly something like 50 cents each - so we used that as a backup means of communicating with the folks running our business back home, and found that text messages got through even when the iPhone screen said "No Service"! We'll be checking the billing soon to see if the 50-cent-a-message promise was really true ...

-Itinerary: Looking back at two previous reviews I'd written after Alaska cruises, I realize that the Ketchikan time on this itinerary is more generous than others, which is a good deal, as that's truly a charming stop. We just walked around - and watched the salmon migration, which is truly dramatic this time of year - they are lined up outside the main creek entrance like cars in rush-hour traffic - then go over past the historic cathouse museum and watch them try to leap the rapids ... mesmerizing. The long day in Skagway is great if you want to take excursions (the ship docked right by the heliport that fires off choppers almost hourly, and the White Pass train comes close too) - we just did laundry and strolled around (regardless of politics, don't miss the Sarah Palin store). And the Juneau afternoon is plenty of time for a bus to the Mendenhall Glacier (which we'd done multiple times before, so we walked over to look at the state capitol building) if nothing else. For us, the evening in Victoria was a highlight, as that is one of our favorite Northwest destinations, so beautiful any time of day or night - glad they are maximizing the "Jones Act stop" - on our previous cruise out of Seattle, it was a paperwork-only stop in Prince Rupert that satisfied the requirement. Last but not least, the one new feature for us this trip was Tracy Arm - all three of our previous Alaska cruises had gone to Hubbard Glacier, which is of course awesome, but Tracy Arm was breathtaking far beyond the South Sawyer Glacier itself. Turquoise water, emerald cliffs, waterfalls, ice floes; bundle up and spend the whole time out on deck to truly enjoy the views.

Overall thoughts: I'm of the "a bad day cruising is better than the best day working" mindset. Even with the changes, I had a great time. My travelmates were a little more disturbed, though I suspect it was not so much a case of "bad experience" as "didn't live up to the gauzy, happy memories of cruises gone by." So if you are thinking about sailing again after a few years away - I would just warn you not to expect the same experience you had last time - evaluate it for what it is, and whether it works for you. Hoping I can talk my travelmates into something else somewhere down the road - maybe seeing what the Solstice class is like, since we've never traveled that before and have no preconceived expectations!

-T

Thank you for the review.

Thank you for your review!

Thanks for taking the time to post your review.

Instead of individual invitations, you should have had a sheet of paper with all the Select events listed. It comes on the first day and if you throw it out or don't read it each day you would certainly miss them. The coupons are the same, a sheet instead of a book. The Captain's Club party is held in the daytime now and is actually a nicer event than the evening ones were. They have food demonstrations and sampling and usually some of the theater performers do a short show. There are a lot of the Senior Officers in attendance.

Thanks for the review.....:):):)

Bob

guess we missed that, then! I'm certainly all for saving paper. Wish they hadn't spent the paper for the two "shopping invitations." But definitely did not see that sheet ... and I'm pretty thorough about reading what comes to the cabin ... though hubby, who spent much more time in the cabin than me, was always first to see everything and might have overlooked it. Next time (I'm going again even if it's just me, dammit!) we'll be "Elite" level so will be sure to watch for whatever that brings ...