Summit - Cocktail Hour or Vouchers?

[yogimax]

We will be on Summit in two weeks and I have been readng about the drink vouchers for elites.

 

I'm hoping Summit still has the nightly cocktail hour since this is where we are most likely to make new cruising friends.

 

Does anyone have recent experience on Summit?

 

Thanks!

[gdpups]

On my November cruise on Summit we were given the vouchers, but they did still have the elite cocktail event in Michael's Club. When we attended the elite event we were required to give them a voucher to receive a drink., so it wasn't unlimited. Note that there were not a huge amount of Elites on our cruise, so I suppose that could make a difference if and where it was held.

[phoenix_dream]

It really can vary completely from cruise to cruise no matter which ship. I don't think there is any way that a passenger can predict how many Captains Club Elite or higher will be on any particular cruise. We do know that on TA's there tend to be more of these types of passengers, and perhaps also on the longer (14 day) cruises as well, but beyond that there is really no way I know of to predict. We found that even with the vouchers, people tend to flood the various bars at the given timeframes so you still have a decent chance of being able to socialize, although it is a bit more difficult than in the closed off event. The bars got so crowded on our last cruise that you sometimes pretty much had to share tables, and you often saw the same people coming to the same bars on multiple nights - this made it easier to start up a conversation than it normally would be in a bar.

[yogimax]

So is voucher program something that is used only when there are a lot of elites onboard?

[vplsh]

We were on Summit 12/21-28 and had an elite, elite+, zenith cocktail hour in Michael's from 5-7PM daily (except first night and senior officer's party night). We had a conversation with a wonderful gentleman (almost a zenith cruiser) who said that the vouchers had been discontinued and the lounge was back on. Not sure if that's true of all ships, but it was true on Summit.

[shell15]

We were on the Summit for the 12/7 sailing and rec'd the vouchers, however they still had the cocktail hour in Michael's Club. You just bring the vouchers to the cocktail hour and use them there, or you can take them elsewhere to redeem (I think you just weren't allowed to use them at the Martini Bar and one other place, it's slipping my mind right now...). Had a good time at the cocktail hour but there didn't seem to be very many people there.