BEAUTIFUL SILHOUETTE - East Caribbean - Photo Video Trip Report 3/1/15

[Gaynors]

Just wanted to join in and thank you ahead of time for putting together a review of the Silhouette. We love to cruise but have never been on a "S" class ship. Now we are booked to go on the Silhouette this November. We are also going eastern so I'm looking forward very much to your review!

 

Thanks!!!

 

We also had to mow our "lawn" (that means weeds) this past weekend... no white stuff down here...:)

[luvtocruise74]

I can't wait for more pictures.

[Rocking rev]

Hi SMSACE6,

 

The advantage your parents will have over us is pre-clearing US customs in Ottawa as opposed to Miami. A word of advice to your parents... travel very light in the carry-on department. Be sure they are not carrying / lugging heavy over the shoulder bags. Why? My sister "the big packer" had way to much carry-on and she wore herself out with the walking we had to do upon arrival in the Miami airport.

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

 

You must mean that 2 mile hike just to get to customs. That was so much fun....NOT.

[dinosaurdem]

Hi Payd,

 

Yes! We took the Canadian North Charter out of Moncton. I will soon add my comments on this. We were lucky enough to fly the logo'd plane back to Moncton and the flight crew was from Edmonton. (The ex-city of champions) So now you figured out I lived in Calgary for 12 years with that comment right?

 

You asked for it so you shall receive some snow filled picture we took yesterday and today.

 

This first picture is of the little snow bank in front of our garage.

 

 

Next picture of Donna standing in our driveway just before we made our attempt at driving to work in Charlottetown this morning. Of course our road was blocked / impassable and headed north for about a 25KM detour instead of 4 Kms.

 

 

Donna works at UPEI and they had delayed until 1:00PM and later cancelled for the day. Donna took this picture with her iPhone when she got back from town, Road had opened up for the return trip. (more like a tunnel than a road)

 

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

Looks like da' UP.

[FRMPEI]

Celebrity Canadian Charter Chosen

 

Last year while i was working on the my Equinox Trip Report Donna was busy on the Celebrity website checking out a cruise for 2015. We were sure we wanted to take our boys again with us. Donna was honed in on a Equinox 10 day Concierge cabin for around $1600 per person. We had it all planned out and Nolan even checked out there was a NHL Florida Panther Game the night before were were to leave. But we waited to long and the price jumped well over $2000 per person and that did not include airfares. Spring had sprung and the summer rolled around and we were not really thinking of cruises until this appeared in our local new paper:

 

 

I started the below thread on July 19/14 regarding this ad in our local paper:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2073739

 

The boys past two cruises were both west Caribbean and basically the same ports of calls. So that is why the 10 Day Equinox was attractive with its non West Caribbean ports. The Celebrity Canadian charters out of the Maritimes offered two choices 1) Halifax, Nova Scotia leaving on Saturdays aboard the Celebrity Reflection and 2) Moncton, New Brunswick leaving on Sundays aboard Celebrity Silhouette. We had already narrowed down the first week of March as Nolan's ideal non game missing timeframe. Personally my first choice was Reflection because Donna and I had done a B2B on Silhouette March 2013. But for the first week in March Reflection was doing a West Caribbean and Silhouette was doing East. Silhouette won out because of firstly it was East and it included St. Maarten and Maho beach. Travel wise from PEI Halifax is about a 3.5 hour drive while Moncton is just over a 2 hour drive. Here is the bonus Nolan checks the Charlottetown Islanders' schedule and we were playing the Moncton Wildcats the night before the cruise.

 

We phoned our travel agent, Carla, and told her to book rooms 1093 and 1095 for us. This would mark the earliest we had ever purchased a cruise. Normally we don't shop until September for the following March. But this newspaper ad moved up our decision to July. The Plan was for just the four of us to travel. Since Donna and I had just become Elite we figured we would book each one of us in the two cabins so our cabin mates (our sons) would also benefit from our new found Elite Status perks. Well that idea fell threw because I mentioned to my sister , "did you see the ad in the Guardian?". I told her that we already booked and she figure she would too. My sister, Michele, and Louis had only cruise once with Carnival about 25 years ago BK (before kid). I went online found that room 1091 was still available so she contacted our travel agent and was booked also. So there goes the Elite Breakfast and cocktail hour because my sister had no Captain club status other than Preview. We were not going to attend those things without them. No big deal.

 

Here is copy of the Moncton (YQM) Celebrity Canadian Charter I picked this up at a local Travel agent. I edited out their name.

 

 

Price $2350.00 CDN per person. Here is what it included:

C2 Concierge Cabin

Return Air from Moncton, NB to Miami, FL

Classic Alcohol Beverage package

Prepaid Gratuities

Transfer From Miami Airport to Port Everglades

Transfer From Port Everglades to Miami Airport

Other:

No $25 per bag per trip fee (Thank you Air Canada)

No $20 per seat per trip fee advance seat selection (Thank you again Air Canada)

No $$$ charged for in flight meals, drinks, or headphones.

 

Now what our American friends don't quite understand about this deal is that the price of the flight is included. At first look to them they think it is not really a good deal. But we Canadian do not have a SouthWest type of Airlines in Canada and we can easliy pay in excess of $800-1000 per person for flights. (thanks again Air Canada). We just can't fly for $200 like our neighbours to the south.

 

So this is were Kevin out smarted himself and actually made a mistake in choosing his rooms. Take note of this because I may never admit I screwed up again. With your captains club you get one free upgrade within your class so we booked a C2 cabin at the C3 price. Personally I have no problem with C3 cabins and actually I think I prefer their location over the C2. Call me crazy. The whole idea of booking cabins beside each other is that it allows you to open up the balcony divider between you. But the location of our deck 10 C2 cabins have that diagonal support pole coming down in between each pair of balconies. The C3 cabins on Deck 10 aft do not have this problem because that diagonal support pole is one deck up on Deck 11. But with sister Michele joining us and three cabins there would be diagonal pole. If only I had studied more closely the deck plan I would discover that 1095 and 1093 were indeed the balconies with the diagonal pole coming down it was actually rooms 1093 and 1091 with joining balconies. Donna and I ended up with 1093 with the bed near the sliding balcony which is opposite to what we prefer. No big Deal.

 

If you look between the humps on the scan below you can see the diagonal support poles.

 

 

Attached below is scan of Deck 10 with the location of our rooms.

 

 

 

Here is a picture of the Diagonal pole between our cabin 1093 and the boys 1095. Adam posing for sail-a-way.

 

 

So that is story of how we ended up with the Celebrity Canadian Charter. A big thank you to Celebrity for thinking of us Eastern Canadians, please bring it back for 2016.

 

Next up - Let get to YQM.

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

[Bimmer09]

Hi Norris,

 

Thanks for checking out my Photo Trip report over here on the Celebrity board. I will be sure to pop over to the Princess board and check out your Photo/Video Reviews in your signature. That is the main reason why I do not turns of signature I because I like to see one's travel history.

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

 

Kevin I leave the signatures turned on for the same reason and if there's a photo/video review to be read I'll follow the link.

 

I surf many of the boards but am focusing on Celebrity recently since we have booked a cruise on the Silhouette next January (Sky Suite 7309 aft) and am really looking forward to the Celebrity experience. All our cruises so far have been with Princess and we are happy campers there.

 

I'll be doing a review after the cruise in January and then doing a comparison review on the Princess board-the links will be added to my signature when the time comes.

 

Meantime I am looking forward to seeing your story unfold!

 

Best wishes,

 

Norris

[FRMPEI]

Oh my ....

 

Kevin and Donna - awful snow photos, but a beautiful property you have.

 

I heard you are on track for another 40cm in the next day or two. ...

Payd

 

That is Donna's family homestead built at the turn of the 1900's we renovated and built the garage when we moved back. Yes! it is storming today don't think we will get 40 cms maybe 15-20 cms. I left work early today at 2:15PM so we would not get stuck in town. We will live about 10 Kms out of town and our road in spots is basically one lane tunnels. Our poor plow operators have been over worked this season. They don't get the snow cleared before they are hammered by another snow. Last Sunday/Monday was a weather bomb that makes two for this year. I heard a statistic on the weather channel last night if Charlottetown get 20cms today they will have received more snow than Whistler, BC which is a Ski resort. Standing at 477 plus cms.

 

This one is for you... Picture of our mailbox the day we left for our cruise. Figuring when we got home the snow bank would have lessened. Wrong! Mailbox hit by snowplow and buried somewhere in a bigger bank of snow.

 

 

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

[nolman29]

You must mean that 2 mile hike just to get to customs. That was so much fun....NOT.

 

That was the best part! ;)

[Payd]

That is Donna's family homestead built at the turn of the 1900's we renovated and built the garage when we moved back. Yes! it is storming today don't think we will get 40 cms maybe 15-20 cms. I left work early today at 2:15PM so we would not get stuck in town. We will live about 10 Kms out of town and our road in spots is basically one lane tunnels. Our poor plow operators have been over worked this season. They don't get the snow cleared before they are hammered by another snow. Last Sunday/Monday was a weather bomb that makes two for this year. I heard a statistic on the weather channel last night if Charlottetown get 20cms today they will have received more snow than Whistler, BC which is a Ski resort. Standing at 477 plus cms.

 

This one is for you... Picture of our mailbox the day we left for our cruise. Figuring when we got home the snow bank would have lessened. Wrong! Mailbox hit by snowplow and buried somewhere in a bigger bank of snow.

 

 

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

 

I do feel for you...

 

We have been lucky in 2015 but were not spared in 2014. The night before our flight departure for our 9 day Constellation cruise we got about 40 cms. Worst of all the dreaded email from United Airlines that they were cancelling our flight. Many tense moments - they ended up deadheading a plane from Denver to rescue us. I figure 60 to 80 of us all going on cruises. We just made it...just!! That's why we travel a day in advance. We are doing a repeat of the 9 day in November 2015 and have decided to fly in two days prior. Don't want the same stress again!

 

Again, looking forward to your review.

 

Payd

[FRMPEI]

Just wanted to join in and thank you ahead of time for putting together a review of the Silhouette. We love to cruise but have never been on a "S" class ship. Now we are booked to go on the Silhouette this November. We are also going eastern so I'm looking forward very much to your review!

 

Thanks!!!

 

We also had to mow our "lawn" (that means weeds) this past weekend... no white stuff down here...:)

 

IMO the "S" class are almost perfect very modern not tacky (cough Conquest class) tastefully decorated and appointed. Beautiful art collections thru out the ships. But I am bias towards them. :D

 

Enough of the lawn mowing I am so jealous. My favourite past time in the summer is getting on my Kubota Tractor lawn mower and cut about 10 acres of my grass.

 

Here is proof that the snow does disappear.

 

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

[FRMPEI]

I can't wait for more pictures.

 

Thanks for your patience they are coming I promise. Just for you I have a shot of our favourite meeting spot on Deck 10.

 

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

[laurieal]

So happy I found your review! I'll be on the same cruise in less than a month, so I'm really looking forward to reading about your experience and seeing your pictures.

 

Thank you for sharing!

[FRMPEI]

You must mean that 2 mile hike just to get to customs. That was so much fun....NOT.

 

Now lets not get ahead in the story. :)

 

Welcome Welcome Scott!

 

It was indeed a pleasure to share this cruise with you my friend. You are a great guy and I do have a few stories I will be sharing on this Trip Report (especially Blue Box Frenzy) don't spoil it for the rest. I have the evidence in both photos and video.

 

It was great meeting you first at the Moncton Airport and the great chats we head during the week. Now be sure to read up on my Equinox Trip report to get you ready for 2017.

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

[FRMPEI]

So happy I found your review! I'll be on the same cruise in less than a month, so I'm really looking forward to reading about your experience and seeing your pictures.

 

Thank you for sharing!

 

I am glad you found my trip report too. Stay tuned and add your questions and comments.

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

[Rocking rev]

Now lets not get ahead in the story. :)

 

Welcome Welcome Scott!

 

It was indeed a pleasure to share this cruise with you my friend. You are a great guy and I do have a few stories I will be sharing on this Trip Report (especially Blue Box Frenzy) don't spoil it for the rest. I have the evidence in both photos and video.

 

It was great meeting you first at the Moncton Airport and the great chats we head during the week. Now be sure to read up on my Equinox Trip report to get you ready for 2017.

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

 

It was awesome meeting you and the family as well, Kevin. It was an awesome trip and with another 30 cms I think 2 years can not pass fast enough. I have started the Equinox report but work has been crazy. I have 2 years to finish it.

[FRMPEI]

Oh! The Planning and Emergency Meetings

 

Countdown:

 

We all remember seeing our cruise count down clock at this point RIGHT? :

 

 

Then before you know it your count down clock looks like this:

 

 

So in between these date is when we hold what we call an "Emergency Meetings". Anytime the cruise participants gather it qualifies as an Emergency meeting. We discuss such things as: what to for excursions, or if we will even do an excursion, Should the men take suits or do we go smart casual, What specialty Dining will we being doing, MDR early,late, or select dining. Any thing cruise related we talk about it. Usually involves dinner (or "Supper" as we call it in the Maritimes) and bottles of white wine and Pepsi for me.

 

Premium Alcohol Package Upgrade:

 

So this cruise would be the first time that we had an Alcohol Beverage Package. In the past I would always purchase a Premium Non Alcohol Beverage package. Then Donna would just go pay as she goes on her wine and Smirnoff Ice. I was the only member of our party that does not drink Alcohol. I like the premium over the classic non Alcohol because of the choice to get the small bottles of Evian water. But this cruise I did notice that they did have non premium smaller bottles of water. I had read enough on cruise critic and knew how the different packages worked. Classic Alcohol drinks up to $8 limited selection... if you buy something in excess of $8 you pay the entire amount not just the difference. Premium Alcohol package drinks up to $13 and one greater than $13 you only paid the delta. Now here is my reasoning on purchasing the upgrade to premium alcohol package for everybody. You can either agree or disagree. The upgrade cost approx. $85/person CDN$. I would have spent more than $85 on a Premium Non Alcohol for myself. I look at the Classic Alcohol Package as free because we would have spent the $2300 on a cruise without a package. With the Premium there would be no fuss at bars and we could basically order whatever we wanted. Special Dining also kept the drinks within the premium package no extra charges for Alcohol were incurred this Trip. Yes! I even indulged in couple of sips.

 

 

For a christmas gift sister/aunt Michele upgraded the boys beverage package to premium. So Donna and I upgraded each others package to Premium as Christmas gift to each other.

 

Excursions:

 

Attached below is our itinerary for our seven day Voyage:

 

 

My sister and Louis basically let the seasoned traveller plan the excursion for everybody.

 

Day 3 San Juan - The plan was to do basically nothing. Maybe walk up to the historic fort. (Adam was a History Major at Halifax's Dalhousie University). Then drop in at CVS.

 

Day 4 St Kitts - This was a no brainer. A zip line is the closest thing you are going to get on a cruise to a roller coaster. For 2014's Equinox we did Sky Safari Zip Line. It was fun and my video proves that. The boys were 100% agreement on that. Nolan does not like taking sight seeing city tours he finds them boring. Michele and Louis could not handle the zip line and my video was further confirmation they did not want to zip. So they booked a Rum tasting tour.

 

Day 5 St Maarten - Easy! Taxi to Maho Beach and watch planes landing. Everybody in agreement with this one. But, with six ships in port this day we figured Taxis would be very busy. So Donna got searching the Cruise Critic St. Maarten board and found and booked Tony's Taxi. (much more on Tony later)

 

 

Day 6 Sea Day - During the first week of our B2B on our 2013 Silhouette we booked an Alcove. I know some like/love the idea but others hate the idea of once public space turned into evil revenue generating space. Well during 2013 Donna absolutely loved her Sea Day in her private Alcove Cabana. So for Christmas her fantastic husband, that's me, booked her an Alcove.

 

 

Day 7 Sea Day - Riedel comparative Wine Tasting. Donna did this back in 2013 and knew that Adam would enjoy this along with sister Michele. So her loving husband and his father, that's still me, booked the Riedel course for Donna and Adam. Actually Donna is sold on the Riedel glasses and wanted the coupon so she could order more glasses.

 

Speciality Dining:

 

It was last year's cruise that I figured out that maybe we should try Select Dining rather than traditional late Main Dining Room (MDR). We booked Aqua Class last year and sorry not a big fan of Blu. I know shock and horror that someone could not like Blu. But what I did like about Blu was the idea of coming and going when we wanted rather than at a fixed time. Aqua is generally a couple hundred dollars more than concierge. So last year Donna and I decided we would spend that money on Speciality rather than Aqua. So I knew was going to book the first night knowing that I could easily get the 20% discount. Then I looked a specialty packages of 3 and 5 nights. So I struck a deal with everyone if we bought Specialty package we could use two of the nights for formal and the men would not have to take suits. Louis quickly agreed on this. This time frame was between Christmas and New Year just about the same time the CDN$ was starting its dive against the USD$. So we booked a 5 dinner specialty package for all six of us. The cost was approx $150 CDN per person which averages to about $30 CDN per night or just $23 USD at an exchange rate of approx 30%. To me this was a Super Deal.

 

 

Our latest storm is howling pretty good out there right now I better click the submit button before I lose power.

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

[FRMPEI]

Sky Safari Zip Lining Video

 

In My above planning post I made reference to my Zip Lining Video of course we did not have chance to edit together one for this year yet. So her is link to last year's video.

 

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

[nolman29]

No preview for the blue box frenzy on last sea day?

[Rocking rev]

No preview for the blue box frenzy on last sea day?

 

Patience little grasshopper, patience....

[jimbri]

Loved the Zip Lining video. I think it's time for me to try it :).

[FRMPEI]

Loved the Zip Lining video. I think it's time for me to try it :).

 

Give it a Try. Ken in the video is 70+

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

[FRMPEI]

Moncton, NB Here We Come

 

Luggage Tags

 

You know when these show up in your mailbox your cruise is coming. Always such a nice sign to see them waiting for you. I usually set my self a reminder to go back to the Celebrity website and order the tags. I think it something like 45 days before cruising.

 

 

You also can't blame Celebrity slipping in these Future Cruise inserts?

 

 

I can't remember if I picked these next things up at our travel agent or she e-mailed them to us. Actually quite useful especially for the Flight information when completing your online registration. Attached is below is very useful YQM/Moncton Celebrity Canadian Charter FAQ:

 

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

[FRMPEI]

Cameras and Tech

 

I just love tech I can spend hours in an Apple Store, Future Shop, Best Buy. I am going ask you a very serious question. Is an Apple store the closet thing to Heaven? My newest love in the last year is Go Pro. I spend way to much money on this Go Pro obsession. There are just so many neat things you can buy for them. I don't have a Drone yet. I did say "YET".

 

One of my favourite things about cruising is taking photos and videos. I do not own a big Sexy DLSR with all the lenses. But, the new Sony a6000 is very high on my wish list. My main requirement for my cameras is that they must be compact and somewhat pocketable. This probably comes from my Theme Park / Roller Coaster past where I could pull out my compact while riding and get some on ride POV photos. Not possible with large DLSR's. When on excursion I just do not want to be lugging a large camera bag. My cameras must fit in my fanny pack. I know fanny pack went out of style in the 90's but, I take pride in sporting my fanny pack. Trust me when say I only wear it to carry my cameras and at other times I am fanny pack free. All of our travel partners had their own cameras and I have all their photo loaded into my Aperture Library.

 

Nolan

Nolan does have a "big sexy" Nikon D3000 with two lenses. Nolan was not going to take it with him because he did not want to lug it. His mom and I convinced him to take it. Nolan only used it around the ship and did not take it ashore. I lent Nolan my very fast 32G ScanDisk Extreme SD card. Nolan took around 900 pictures. Nolan also used his iPhone 5s.

 

 

Adam

Adam can't afford a big sexy DLSR and still has his University Sony DSC-W390 point and shot. Which still takes good shots and does a good panorama. Adam took just over 800 pictures. Hey Adam! Don't tell mom but if I get that new Sony a6000 you can have my Sony DSC-HX30. Ssssh!

 

 

Kevin

My camera lineup has not changed much from last year other than I added a second GoPo 3+ Black. My main go to camera for the last three cruise is my exceptional Sony DSC-HX30V. Boasting a 20x optical and very pocketable. I took almost 2500 photos with this Camera.

 

 

My second camera is Sony HDR-GW77 LCD flip out pistol grip Handycam. Made to be video camera but also takes photos. This camera is waterproof and drop resistant a very tough little camera and very pocketable. This was my main go to video camera but also took almost 300 photos with it. My two Sony camera use the same "G" style batteries. I took 4 extras with me.

 

 

The third camera is a Cisco Flip Camera which I used to take mostly time lapse videos. Has an on board 2 hour video limit which I then download to my iPad to clear up the memory. This was the last trip for Flip because it just would not power up at times. Still gives a great 60fps HD video.

 

 

The fourth and fifth cameras are my Go Pros. A 3 Black along with a 3+ Black just could not spend the extra money on 4 Black for my second Go Pro. I have no use , Yet!, for the 4K recording capabilities because I don't own anything that can play 4K. The Go Pro is firstly a sports wide view video camera. But give them the proper light they take a nice 12mp picture.

 

 

Next up how do I carry/organize all my gear.

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid

[luvtocruise74]

That zip line video was awesome!

[FRMPEI]

Camera and Tech continued

 

Memory

So if you were to lose your luggage I am thinking one of the first things you would think of is all the photos you took may be gone. I only pack my camera and tech in my carry-on never in my checked. The same goes for your memory cards. How do you handle them. I received some Future Shop gift cards for Christmas and treated my self to less than $35 a Pelican case for my memory cards. I am very happy with this case. Very small and compact. The two empty slot on the right are a 32G and 64G card I lent to my Cruise bud Ken for his Reflection cruise. The 64G MicroSD cards on the left are ScanDisk Extreme Plus which Go Pro Recommends which are much faster than a normal MiicroSD. Not on sale these can run up to $200 each. Boxing day sale (Canadian Thing) $45 each. I feel one can never have enough memory. Saves lugging a laptop to download cards to. Only my Sony HX30 Point & shot uses SD cards while all my other cameras use MicroSD. You might notice I label most things hard to break my Six Sigma training.

 

 

Carryon

So this is how I carry all my stuff. Last year I had a flashlight in there but it caused problems when TSA screened so left it out this year. All the essentials are there including iPad, Bose Headphones, Passports, Money, Flags(for sail-a-way), Cameras, Mounts, and Riseful. What is a Riseful?

 

 

Riseful

So what is Riseful? It is the supreme GoPro Roll up organizer handmade in California. Available at B&H Photo for about $90USD. Not cheap but well worth the money IMO.

 

 

I looked and looked for something to organize my GoPro Stuff and bought some cases and things that just didn't really work well. They were okay to organize but way to big to travel with until I found the Riseful online. The Riseful is made to hold 3 Go Pros along with some accessories that you will need. Attached below is a photo of my Riseful unfolded. Did I use everything? Almost. Did not use the LCD BacPac recommend to never spend your money on this accessory. Remote did not use it and I really don't like the Go Pro remote I prefer the iPhone GoPro app. App is so much easier to use than the remote.

 

Beautiful isn't it? Here are the details of the items i packed in my Riseful. Since I only have 2 GoPros I used the middle pouch for the Frame and floaty. Lots of extra batteries and battery bacpacs.

 

 

 

Almost done of this tech thing just wanted to share one more thing on my new favourite mount in the next post.

 

Regards,

Kevin Reid