long Eclipse review w/pics (Eastern Caribbean 12/4-12/11)

[redridinghood]

Entertainment/activities:

This is a mixed bag. In some ways what people say about X is true, entertainment isn’t their strength, but in other ways we were pleasantly surprised. Keep in mind that a. we aren’t big party people, so we weren’t bothered by a lack of late night entertainment, and b. we’re 33 and 39.

 

Activities-We didn’t make it to as many activities as we intended to, but I did go to some scrapbooking sessions. It’s not real scrapbooking in the traditional sense (no special scissors or standard page sizes…), but they give you a free, nice kit with materials to make one project. The kits/materials say “Celebrity Eclipse” and come in shades of blue. You could easily use the materials at home for a real scrapbook. On the last day they gave two kits. We also went to “Name That Tune,” which was fun. The location changed during the week. There were two sessions about TV show themes, but the first time the young people all lost because the shows were from classic tv. The next time they took our comments to heart and did a contemporary version (we won easily and got lots of loot-tee shirts, pillows, playing cards, pens, medals). We also did the galley tour on Thursday (2nd sea day). This was ok, but be prepared to wait around in the upper MDR waiting for your group to be called. Unfortunately I could not understand a single word our chef/guide said because of his accent. I think if we’d had a different chef, we’d have liked this more, but it was still cool to see the menus laid out and I enjoyed seeing the fruit carver (he does ice sculpture too) and the sugar sculpture making.

 

Celebrity theater shows-

Opening night show (7pm since we had late dining, also at 9pm): is a preview show of sorts. You get to see some of the dancers and the instrumental groups you’ll see onboard all week, but not everything. They don’t preview Eclipse the Show at all, just mention it. It’s hosted by CD, Paul Baya. The theater wasn’t nearly full.

 

EDGE (Tuesday night/St Martin at 7 and 9pm): We are split on this one. He found it too cheesy, but I thought it was fun. It was a musical revue with four main singers (2 guys who were great, 2 gals who weren’t) and many dancers set to digital light show. They billed it on the first night as contemporary pop/rock-based, but they covered Sting, Journey, The Beatles… cool, but not exactly current. We found the effects and dancers to be very good, especially the guy and gal ballet dancer pair (I think they were Russian?) and two numbers had people on trapeze. If you like the show Glee (like me), you’ll like this one. If you find Glee annoying, you'll find the same here. It was obvious here that X is trying really hard to impress their younger cruisers, but again the theater wasn’t full and the average age in there was quite advanced (and they seemed unimpressed).

 

Eclipse the Show (Thursday, 2nd day at sea, 8:30 and 10:45): We arrived 30 min early, which was earlier than we needed to be there, but we sat in first row of upper balcony, which was good. It was a good show. There was a real, pro quality set and (lucky for us in some cases!) the singers lip synched. There was tight rope walking as well as aerialists and contortionists. This was far better than any of the other shows – it lasted an hour. Due to the rain that night the ship was really moving, but they had very few boo boos, which was impressive. My only regret was going to Qsine before hand. All that food and I was barely awake for the 10:45 show!

 

 

Celebrity Chefs Cooking Show (Friday, last sea day, 10:30am): This is a cute, iron chef-like contest between two ship chefs, each paired with an audience member. It’s more entertaining than informative, but still cool and very well attended.

 

 

Other: The Hot Glass Show up on the top deck is as good as they say; we went twice for afternoon shows on sea days. It was standing room only, but they make a new piece every 20 minutes or so, so if you arrive and can’t get a seat, wait around and then swoop in and, like we did, you’ll be able to get seats when the next piece was started (BTW, they gave out no raffle tix while we were there). One person narrated, while 2 made a piece. I’ve seen this done on land many times, but these folks are real entertainers. This was much more interesting than I’d expected. Very cool.

 

Masque and Motown- Both were good and surprising. Masque (Monday/San Juan night at 10:30) was a goofy, fun little show with dancers in Marie Antoinette garb set to songs from Rocky Horror and pop music in the grand foyer. We could see well from the aft stairwells and it was neat to move around deck 5 seeing it from different angles.

 

 

There was supposed to be a Motown party on the pool deck (Wednesday/St Kitts, 10:30), but due to high winds all the outside decks were closed so it got moved into the foyer on 3 like the Masque show. I didn’t like it quite as much as Masque, but there were again dancers and singers from Eclipse the show. One thing we loved was that some dancers set up shop in the elevators dancing as they rode up and down and occasionally catching unsuspecting cruisers in there. Some danced along and others looked mortified. Very funny.

 

 

Live music: Ok, I must admit, we HATED the ubiquitous pool and grand foyer band, D’revelation. Every time I heard their female vocalist start I’d think of Simon Cowell on American Idol and how his biggest cut down is to tell someone they sound like a cruise ship singer. This was bad wedding music level: the Macarena? Love Shack? Sometimes in the evenings the CD would start singing with the band and he was good, but after two songs or so he’d leave and she’d come to the mic, which was our cue to run. I’d take a Caribbean band or a jazz band by the pool over this any day. They were hard to escape. The one musical act we did like, though it’s not our normal cup of tea, was an all-female string quartet from the Ukraine who we first saw in the opening night revue (they played “Back in the USSR!”) and then found around here and there, including at the brunch (I think they were called Del Canto Strings).

 

Overall, X isn’t the greatest for entertainment if you’re looking for something honestly current, let alone cutting edge or unique, but especially when it didn’t involve singing, it was better than we expected. We can’t speak to the comedians, as we simply weren’t interested so we didn’t go.

 

Up next: ports

wow! I feel the need to comment...

I certainly appreciate that everyone's tastes will be different, but you just cannot say that the girl singers were bad on this ship, both the singers in the production show and the female vocalist in D'Revelation are excellent singers. They may not be your style but you cannot argue their ability. I am a theatre agent in the UK providing singers to West End shows, so I do know a decent voice from a bad one.

 

My husband and I love to be entertained on cruises and we were prepared to be disappointed on Eclipse after reading many people moan about the lack of entertainment. We can't quite figure out what the moans are about as we were kept very entertained. All of the music acts on boards are of a very high standard, we particularly loved the Jazz group and Johnny Mantra and thought D'Revelation had an enormous catalogue of songs in order to not constantly repeat themselves.

We didn't particularly enjoy the vocal impressionists we had on our back2back but we just went and found something else fun to do!

[I&J Cruisers]

Great review and pictures. Thanks for taking the time. I'm glad you finally complained and turned your experience around. If you liked the Aqua Spa Cafe you'd love Blu, which is the assigned dining venue for aqua class passengers. Blu is a small venue with flex dining, which means you show up whenever and they'll seat you. The service there is reminiscent of the service we used to get in the MDR 15 or 20 years ago, light years away from current levels of service. I think you're hookled. Happy Cruising!

Irene

[Kirsten T]

DCGuys, well-written and thoughtful review. Enjoyed your posts and pictures! Thanks for sharing. :)

Cheers,

Kirsten

[DarthGrady]

Great review and pics! Thanks for sharing. We are looking at doing Eclipse next year, so this was very helpful.

 

I totally agree about wanting to go aboard other ships in port. It would be great if they would do tours, I would even pay if it were reasonable. I thought they used to do something like that long ago. Maybe all the new security measures don't allow for it anymore.