Review: Mercury to Alaska, 6/29/07-7/6/07

This is long and fairly Celebrity-focused but we thought some here might be interested, so we're crossposting here as well as on X board and submitting to the review section:

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US: Late-40s couple, 11-y-o son. 8th Celebrity cruise, 3rd time on Mercury, 3rd time to Alaska (Infinity 8/03, Mercury 8/05, then this cruise – Mercury 6/29/07).

BASICS OF OUR CRUISE: Forward inside cabin on Panorama deck (our favorite deck since we only use the stairs onboard – one up to kids program, three up to buffet, two down to dinner, etc.). Booked during an X one-day sale just seven weeks ahead of time. Since we live in Seattle, we drove up to Vancouver the day of the cruise and drove home the same day we got back.

EMBARKATION: Smooth. Almost no wait at the border at 10:15 am on Friday morning; in Vancouver, we left our car with Cruisepark next to the Canada Place dock ($100 US for the week, and quite a deal -- they transfer checked luggage directly to Celebrity, so once you’re on their shuttle bus for the short ride over, you only have to worry about your carry-ons). Upon arrival for embarkation, just a short wait for US customs check, then zero wait for a Celebrity check-in agent; we were onboard by noon and enjoying buffet lunch less than half an hour later. That was followed immediately by the first thing on our must-do list: go find the maitre d’ outside Manhattan Restaurant to doublecheck our table assigment. Good thing we did, because as seems to happen every other cruise, we were not assigned the type of table we’d requested; we prefer one by ourselves, but they had us at a table for 8 – luckily with this early double-check, they made the change immediately, and we had a lovely table of our own for the whole cruise.

WEATHER: Cloudy on departure day, including a thunderstorm downpour around mid-afternoon (rain stopped by sailaway; spectacular rainbow off the stern that evening). Some rain the next morning, too. Clouds much of the rest of the time; the only full-on sunshine we had was on Hubbard Glacier day and the last sea day, but we managed to avoid major rain in the ports (aside from some showers on Skagway afternoon and on the way in to Ketchikan). Temperatures never got very cold, not even on glacier day (I never had to put my extra-heavy jacket on); mid-50s much of the time.

SEAS: Mostly smooth, except for some bumpiness the first morning at sea, and the night after Hubbard Glacier. But our time in the Gulf of Alaska approaching Hubbard was calm -- nothing like the stormy, ship-shaking day in that same area during our 8/05 Mercury trip!

CREW: Captain Kostas Patsoulas and Cruise Director Donnell Davis both apparently had joined the ship recently. (DD couldn’t pronounce the captain’s name anywhere near correctly – a different mispronunciation each time!) The captain was more visible than many with whom we’d sailed before, including an appearance during the CD’s traditional speech on Baked Alaska (second formal) night. But of course, the rubber really meets the road (or perhaps, the rudder really meets the sea) when it comes to the crew members with whom you deal more personally. Hubby and I are die-hard trivia players and had the most fun at the games hosted by lively activities staffer Tanika from Jamaica, although by cruise’s end we also appreciated the dry, low-key humor of John from Italy. Activities manager Mark proved to be a pleasant bingo host (though this cruise again bore out the reasoning behind our philosophy to not bother playing till the second-to-last day – the snowball jackpot almost never gets given away until the very final game, when no numbers limit is set, and that’s exactly what happened this cruise too). Also noteworthy, the kids’ program, led by Natalie MacDonald, seemed to run fairly smoothly – about 250 kids aboard, with a relatively low percentage participating in the program (many seemed to be with huge family groups instead). Our son spent a lot of time with a small cohort in his “Ensigns” age group and their counselors, particularly Micah, whose affability we appreciated. We noticed some changes since our last cruise; among them, the “Ensigns” (10-12) were taken to all the production shows.

MANHATTAN RESTAURANT FOOD AND SERVICE: We can only speak to dinnertime, since we go to the buffet for breakfast and lunch. But what dinners they were! Our waiter/assistant waiter team, Kerim from Turkey and Richard from the Philippines, are now at the top of our all-time favorites list (vaulting over Hector/Mohammed and Dixon/Iwayan from our first two Century trips in ’02 and ’03). Kerim was not just smiling, polite, professional, and elegant each night, but he also added some nice touches (like extra dessert – somehow he read our minds as to which dessert we ALMOST ordered, and brought it along with the ones we DID order). He had to balance us with a massive family group (at least 10) at the next table and yet never neglected us. Not only was the service excellent, but the food impressed us more than our Panama Canal trip on Galaxy last year and our previous Alaska journey on Mercury. The menus do feature some updates (including the list of “always available” items now printed on the lefthand page) and we tried some dishes we hadn’t had before, including a spicy farfalle pasta dish with crab. The vegetables and salads didn’t seem to have changed, but the soups tasted more savory – our choices (including roasted tomato garlic, mushroom bisque, French onion, cream of asparagus) were all memorable, and our husband reported even the chilled fruit soup seemed to have a little more kick to it. Our favorite appetizer was the “San Francisco crab cake” – one perfect little cake. And on the dessert front, no disappointments either – we even got “After Eight” ice cream (basically mint chocolate chip) two nights, and it was the best we’ve had since our Century trips – we also tried some of the chocolate offerings, all light, not too sweet, perfect with after-dinner coffee.

PALM SPRINGS GRILL FOOD AND SERVICE: Someone else recently observed that the buffet waiters are back to more aggressively offering tray-carrying help. And that’s what we experienced. After our first few cruises, we noticed only the obviously physically (or chronologically) challenged were getting those offers; this cruise, it was pretty much all of us. The waiters also circulated much more often with coffeepots for breakfast-time refills. As for the food – breakfast was almost unchanged from previous cruises, with the standouts being the custom items such as made-to-order omelets and waffles; lunch didn’t impress us much on the main line so we focused on the outdoor grill (including Italian sausages!) and the pizza/pasta area by the enclosed aft pool, which sported some new features – salad bar (with nice shredded veggies) offered during the entire noon-1 am operating schedule for that area, plus a sort of garlic-toast type pizza option. At the pasta station, the sauté pan is now out of sight, so if you don’t know to ask for that option, you might think you can only get the premade sauces. (We enjoy having pasta custom-sauteed with olive oil and garlic.) One more note – the sushi zone opened at 5 pm nightly instead of the previous 6 pm (still closes at 10).

NEW “FOOD DEMO”: Instead of the everpopular filet mignon demo in one of the public rooms, Pavilion was set up on the first sea day for a “market-style” food demo – stations all around the stage and dance floor areas that you could wander between, stopping to watch a master carver make a penguin out of an eggplant, pausing to see the pastry chefs work with spun sugar, holding your breath to see a poultry-preparing expert use extremely sharp knives to contort a chicken into never-before-seen shapes – this was seriously cool. (The filet mignon did eventually surface during a big farewell event in the theater on the last sea day; that conflicted with our bridge tour.)

BARS: Hubby is a diehard Martini Bar fan and absolutely raved about Ruel, who served him a perfect martini at 5 pm every night and also charmed our son, who goes along to the Martini Bar since that’s when the kids’ program shuts down (unless you stay for kid-food dinner, which he considers quite inferior to the wonderful stuff in the Manhattan). We were told business was particularly slow this cruise (????) -- we suspect not enough people know the Martini Bar exists. Otherwise, we made a few trips to the Navigator, always with prompt service, but were a bit disappointed in Cova Café service – for at least three of our visits, no one came to our table to take an order; we finally had to walk over to the counter to get someone’s attention. (Though we kept going back because the espresso is so superb, and at $2.50 for a latte, one of the few things that is cheaper on the ship than back home!) Different story for the Cova entertainment – one night several orchestra members played as a jazz quartet, and they were splendid, as was the string quartet. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, so let’s move on to …

ENTERTAINMENT: First, the subpar. What is up with the movie selection? It was in reruns by mid-cruise. Can’t they spring for a few bucks to license at least what’s new at the video stores or on NetFlix? “Firewall,” “Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Failure to Launch,” “King Kong,” and “Mrs. Henderson Presents” were offered, along with a one-time “family” screening of “Over the Hedge.” In the Celebrity Theater, we only caught one show, “A Taste of Broadway,” which was OK as such things go. We would have liked to have seen aerialists Jean-Claude and Gaby, who impressed the daylights out of us on Mercury two years ago, but the scenery we happened to be sailing through at showtime was just too spectacular to give up. The other production shows were “And the Winner Is …” and “Dance Around the World,” and there were two guest entertainers, singer/impressionist Paul Tanner and comedian Dennis Blair (we heard part of his act while checking e-mail from the terminals outside the theater, and he had a few good riffs, including one about those touring versions of old-school rock bands and who’s REALLY in them now). Last but not least, the party band was Headlines, whose singer is very good; lounge duo was Ultra Litez (at last, we were spared the previously inescapable Black & White Duo, but these two were cut from a similar cloth); excellent classical music from the Vivaldi String Quartet; there also was a soloist, Attillo, whom we never got a chance to see/hear. One more shoutout --- DJ Erwin had some great disco classics going in the mid-evening in Navigator, not just during dance time later. Sure beat the endless rounds of Debby Boone we remember from last time.

PORTS: Each of our three Alaska cruises has gone to the same three ports (Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan). We are not into the pricey excursions and this time our onshore exploration was more low-key than ever. In Juneau, we again took Juneau Tours’ shuttle (no reservation needed) to Mendenhall Glacier; $12 roundtrip per person. Great narration by the driver. Best wildlife sighting at Mendenhall: A porcupine in a tree. Otherwise, we spent some time at Seaport’s Internet café ($6/hour or $10 for two hours, which you can split between two cards if there are two of you who want to go online, sure beats the ship’s prices which even with “packages” don’t get any lower than 38 cents/minute), and also visited the Juneau Public Library, where you can go online for half an hour for free. In Skagway, we walked around the always-charming town’s little streets and also checked out the new Seaport location there (next to Radio Shack on 5th Street); in Ketchikan, where we had rented cars for self-guided sightseeing both previous trips, this time we walked to Creek Street and the Totem Heritage Center with its adjacent hatchery and eagle aviary, and topped it off with, yes, Seaport again (in the Salmon Landing dockside shopping center). For us, this cruise was more about the time at sea. Incredible whale-watching on several days, especially the morning before our Juneau arrival – humpbacks galore (close enough to be heard as well as seen), and the snowcapped mountains all along the way, especially after leaving Juneau and Ketchikan (still light till 11 pm this time of year, further facilitating scenery-watching) and after leaving Hubbard Glacier … oh my. Oh, we didn’t mention the glacier yet, did we? Too much ice in the bay to get close, though much disgruntlement was stirred up by the sight of Serenade of the Seas, preceding us into Yakutat Bay, going much further. We got close-up looks during our 2003 and 2005 cruises so took this in stride, but also decided to celebrate the fact this was a heart-stoppingly sunny day, with most of the dramatic mountain peaks around and behind Hubbard putting on quite a show.

ENRICHMENT SPEAKERS: No true naturalist, which was a disappointment; instead, two “special interest lecturers,” both science specialists, including Dr. Ken Johnson, a geologist who narrated reasonably well at Hubbard and presented a talk on volcanoes later that day, and John Fishwick, a chemist with a side interest in astronomy (his final lecture was “Are We Alone?”).

HOLIDAYS ON BOARD: This cruise happened to coincide with both Canada Day and the Fourth of July. Late-night nightclub parties were offered for both. U.S. flags were hung around the ship (including, oddly, the Manhattan) on the 4th; but I would have given that up happily if, oh, say, we could have stayed in port in Ketchikan that day a few hours later and watched their fireworks. (As it was, we left half an hour early because one engine wasn’t quite working.) I know, I know, next time just stay home on the 4th, we will, we will.

MERCURY’S NEW STUFF: Really couldn’t tell the difference in the shopping area, but then again, we are not shoppers/browsers in the slightest. In the cabin, the new bedding was nice but not jawdropping; more than the mattress, we appreciated the finer-quality sheets and pillows. Elsewhere around the ship, we took note of a few other touches, such as new chairs in the Cova and what looked like a replaced ceiling over the thalassotherapy pool in the spa (though the pool itself still seems to be temperature-challenged, barely warm during our one visit). The new surfacing in most areas of the pool deck is in nice shape, but one deck up, while the walking/jogging “track” appears to have been resurfaced, the deck coating on both sides of it is badly worn in spots.

CAPTAIN’S CLUB “PERKS”: We got our first bridge-tour invite, and that was enough to bowl us over. (Our takeaway tidbits included Mercury’s radio call sign, C6SQ6, and interesting postings on the bridge’s back wall, including religious symbols and lots of documentation about dumping at sea, including the stern admonition that no food wastewater can be dumped anywhere in Canadian waters, only in Alaskan waters.) Otherwise, there was a coupon book (we used three coupons – free bingo card, 15% extra minutes with an Internet package, and $20 for all the laundry you could stuff in a bag, though that seemed less special when the bulletin offered everyone onboard the same deal for $25 on Day 5). Plus, the CC cocktail party, and a “senior officers” cocktail party on the last sea day, oddly scheduled in late morning; and the backstage and galley tours were offered too. Nothing revolutionary here.

STOP THE INSANITY: Celebrity simply must rein back the endless hustling in the pool and buffet areas. It’s extremely annoying and seems so out-of-sync with the purportedly “premium” experience. On sailaway day, we were hit up about a dozen times for those umbrella drinks. Every other day, we were hit with repeated pitches for coffee mugs, with or without coffee drinks, spiked hot chocolate, whatever. The hustling of photos has stepped up a notch too. A photographer came to the dinner table every single night, and at every port, we had to dodge at least two “photo opportunities.”

ONE OTHER DISAPPOINTMENT: Though we departed from Vancouver, the route on the first sea day seemed different from the one we remembered on Infinity from Vancouver four years ago – that one took us through the narrow and spectacular Grenville Channel during the late morning hours; on this cruise, we were nowhere near land on that first sea day, so not as scenic.

COUPLE GLITCHES: Throughout the cruise, there appeared to be some sort of audio problem in the hallways, and the overhead speakers emitted a continuous low hum, instead of the elevator-ish music usually heard. (I think I prefer the hum, to tell you the truth.) And during a trivia game in Cova on a port morning, the canned music was 100 percent Christmas stuff for at least 20 minutes. Christmas in July!?

THIS IS JUST PLAIN SILLY: Why in the world can’t the Ketchikan schedule be amended so the ship isn’t tendering for a grand total of 45 minutes before moving to the dock? Get there earlier and tender for longer, or get there later. We waited an hour in the theater before making it into the last tender group around 2 pm, and watched the ship head for the dock right behind our little boat. This arrangement was not explained well at all in advance (only that the ship would dock later in the day).

DISEMBARKATION: Incredibly smooth. We were told to be in the cinema at 9:05 am; left our room at 8:40, went to Cova for one last latte, walked into the cinema at 9:04, our fave activities staffer Tanika appeared and kicked us all out, gangway-bound, at 9:06. (Our only hangup getting home was an hour-plus wait at the US border, but that’s to be expected on a Friday afternoon --- we visited Vancouver’s lovely aquarium and Granville Island before heading south.)

BOTTOM-LINE COMPARISON WITH OUR PREVIOUS ALASKA CRUISES: Best service and food ever. For scenery-watching, June/July trumps August, with more snow on the mountains and longer days. But it seems that later in the season you’ve probably got a better chance of getting closer to Hubbard, and there are a few other differences; for example, the Chinook salmon weren’t in the rivers and creeks yet during this cruise, while they were abundant on our August trips. It all depends on what you’re most interested in seeing; just be sure to spend lots of time on deck, or else you’ll miss scenery and wildlife far better than much of what you’ll see in port!

We sailed Mercury in May. I loved this ship for the two of us. It is the perfect size, and Navigator's Club was great for scenic viewing.

You did have a different captain and cd from our sailing. Also, we were lucky enough to have a naturalist by the name of Brent Nixon. Great information, and he presented in a unique way. Too bad Mercury didn't have a summer contract with him.:confused:

Ours was a last minute booking, and I certainly wouldn't mind finding this ship/itinerary on the bargain table again next year!

One last comment... I agree with the first day sailing. I expected much more scenic viewing. Sapphire Princess NB had fabulous viewing last year on our first day out from Vancouver, as did the Carnival Spirit SB the year before, on the day before arrival into Vancouver. If I had a major disappointment with this cruise, that would be it.... that first sea day...