June 7 Summit cruise - the great and the bad

[Fish Lover]

My mother and I traveled on the Summit last August and we frequently went to the trivia games. There were a couple people there, each and every time, that took the game so seriously that they really took the fun away for everyone. I'm a competitive person...but really, this is not something to get competitive or aggressive over.

[DinaS]

I am one that takes trivia seriously. But I don't care if I get a prize or not, but right is right. If you get the right answer you shouldn't be penalized for it. Especially for something that is common knowledge.

 

I have a drawer full of prizes and generally bring some from home and give to other cruisers when on a cruise. I truly don't need any more ink pens, lanyards, purse holders, luggage tags(although those little metal Celebrity ones are pretty nice) or Celebrity playing cards. Those tote bags our team all won on progressive trivia are nice though.

 

 

We didn't have progressive trivia on our Bermuda cruise. I was a little disappointed since I enjoyed it on our other cruises (other cruise lines).

 

Tote bags are better than purse holders and crafting kits :D

 

I liked NCL because you accumulated points based on how many activities you participated in, and you were able to select prizes based on your total points. You got double or triple points when your team won an event.

 

It would be great if it was the same on Celebrity, so you could choose your own prizes.

 

Either way, it won't affect our cruise line choices for the future. We love trivia, but we love the whole cruise experience :)

[richsea]

Never mind.

[wallie5446]

Never mind.

 

Careful now Rich, your inching toward the line I am standing in. :D

[Lysingers]

O NO :eek:- Ken is still on. Didn't care for him last year and here he is again.........

 

I personally am very happy to see that Ken Mills is back on Summit, and hope he will still be there through the end of August when we next cruise. My entire group loved him on our 14-day Canada/New England cruise last fall. However, other folks who were apparently on the exact same cruise say they hated him. That just shows how everyone has very different tastes, likes and dislikes. You obviously can never please everybody all of the time!

Edited June 19, 2015 by Lysingers
Word choice

[emcee207]

Careful now Rich, your inching toward the line I am standing in. :D

 

 

LOL, EW and Rich, I"m really enjoying this one!!!:D

[bgrieve]

Ken Mills is my least favorite CD of all times. (20 cruises)

[CruisingChick]

Ken Mills is my least favorite CD of all times. (20 cruises)

 

Believe it or not I have had worse. We also have 20 cruises with Celebrity.

 

I can't remember his name right now but we had one CD who was really, really bad. I think it was back in 2008. He was terrible. Luckily I have not seen him on a ship since then. Not sure if he's still around.

 

Addendum: I found the CD's name it was Josh Riffe. He was terrible. This was on Constellation 2009.

Edited June 19, 2015 by CruisingChick

[JMG]

You mentioned that embarkation was a breeze. That is great to hear but can you be more specific. We were on the Quantum twice and the parking and embarkation changed as they better learned how to handle the # of passengers. Summit is smaller but we are still interested in if you drop off luggage and then park of if the luggage drop off is at the parking lot for those arriving in personal cars. Also, if you boarded right away or if they did not start boarding until a certain time.

 

Thanks.

[CruisingChick]

You mentioned that embarkation was a breeze. That is great to hear but can you be more specific. We were on the Quantum twice and the parking and embarkation changed as they better learned how to handle the # of passengers. Summit is smaller but we are still interested in if you drop off luggage and then park of if the luggage drop off is at the parking lot for those arriving in personal cars. Also, if you boarded right away or if they did not start boarding until a certain time.

 

Thanks.

 

We sailed on May 24th. We arrived at the pier around 10 AM. We dropped off our luggage and then proceeded to park. There was a shuttle provided from the parking lot back to the terminal to check in. We checked in right away but had to wait about 20-30 minutes before they started boarding.

[ozarkmama]

First world problems. You are on vacation, chill out.

 

Ballistic about a pen or a lanyard from trivia, really?

 

Amen

[junetraveler2014]

Thanks so much for taking the time to write a review. We are also not fans of Ken. When we found out he was on board we skipped certain venues to avoid him.:(

[Julie MacCoy]

First world problems. You are on vacation, chill out.

 

This website is called cruisecritic, not cruisepraise or cruisepraisers, so I don't think that it should be surprising that some comments about a cruise or a cruiseline or cruise employees are critical.

 

Most, if not all, paying passengers of cruiseships sailing out of the USA are first world people, so that would mean that the problems they would encounter on a cruise would be first world problems. Are you saying that cruise passengers are wrong to note on a website called cruisecritic that there were problems on their cruise?

 

Ballistic about a pen or a lanyard from trivia, really?

 

I hardly think that telling Justin that I wanted a prize and listening to him say that he would give me one at 4:00 PM, only to find out that he lied to me, and then telling Mark what had happened, including that Justin had lied to me, constitutes being ballistic. As I posted above, I didn't even tell Guest Relations about this, since I didn't want to waste any more of my time standing on line to complain or solve a problem that wasn't at all my fault.

 

My mother and I traveled on the Summit last August and we frequently went to the trivia games. There were a couple people there, each and every time, that took the game so seriously that they really took the fun away for everyone. I'm a competitive person...but really, this is not something to get competitive or aggressive over.

 

I don't think that anyone at the trivia contests ruined the fun for everyone, because every single person either: (1) agreed with us about the real names of the four Golden Girls and the city in which The Mary Tyler Moore Show took place, or (2) said that they didn't know, or (3) said that they used to know, but had forgotten. Not one person took Justin's side and agreed with him that he got the names and the city correct. As for J.T., not one single person agreed with him and insisted that Ben Franklin was a president.

 

You mentioned that embarkation was a breeze. That is great to hear but can you be more specific. We were on the Quantum twice and the parking and embarkation changed as they better learned how to handle the # of passengers. Summit is smaller but we are still interested in if you drop off luggage and then park of if the luggage drop off is at the parking lot for those arriving in personal cars. Also, if you boarded right away or if they did not start boarding until a certain time.

 

We used a car service, so I don't knw how the dropping off luggage thing and parking thing were handled. We were dropped off near a porter, who took our suitcases, and we walked inside and got on line to check in. We didn't have to wait very long for our turn, and after we were processed, we got on the ship right away. And we easily found seats in the Oceanview Cafe. This was before noon.

[emcee207]

Andy, we're beggin' ya............please kill this one, please??!!:rolleyes:

[FreestyleNovice]

Hm, was hoping for a nice read of the Summit.. :rolleyes:

 

Had a great time on board Summit in '13 in the southern Caribbean, great food, great service and our room steward Soccoro (deck 7 fwd) was the best ever.

 

I generally can't really care much for being longlife friends with crew as some others do but I hope to meet him again, what a lovely person.

[Fish Lover]

I enjoy reading the boards because I love cruising, and I go 1x yearly with my favorite person. I look forward to it all year and live vicariously through other people's experiences.

 

That said, I am not compelled to post very often. However, I absolutely stand by my comments that the aggressive play at some of the trivia games went well beyond "fun play" and ruined it for others. I doesn't matter who wins. Becoming indignant about not getting a prize, or whether an answer is right or wrong, is over the top.

 

Also, why do you assume that "critic" means negative? It does not. You are most certainly entitled to your opinion, however you can also assume that the critical critic may receive a rebuttal critique.

 

Further, I have noticed that there are one or two people on this board who are prolific posters and long-time cruisers (as they ferquently state how many years and cruisers they have been on) and therefore rather insist on being considered abolute authorities on the ship etc., yet, frequently have to retract their statements based on more recent comments. You can not know for sure how circumstances on a recent cruise may have influenced a temporary or permanent change. That is why we continue to read recent posts!

[richsea]

We've also been to trivia games & witnessed some who take it entirely too seriously. That's why I like it when the moderator says up front, that the answers they have are the right answers, regardless of whether they are or not. That is supposed to ward off those who do take it so seriously,...but sometimes even that does not work. I can only imagine some of the wars if the prices had any value!

[soxfan2013]

I don't mind at all if the person in charge of trivia insists that he is always right, provided that he is always right. One of the two things that Justin eventually agreed that he was in the wrong about was the first names of the four Golden Girls. He could have looked the names up at wikipedia, but for some reason, he decided to rely on his memory instead, and his memory wasn't 100% accurate. The other thing that Justin eventually agreed that he was in the wrong about was the name of the city in which "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" took place. Again, he could have easily found out the correct answer at wikipedia, but he decided to rely on his faulty memory instead.

 

It's just so strange that two answers that were so easily arrived at (all he had to do was check wikipedia) were so very wrong.

 

 

 

He certainly didn't learn my name, and those who disagreed with him about the names of the Golden Girls and the MTMS city didn't appear to adore him.

As a matter of fact, I omitted an encounter I had with him in my initial post, because it did not seem necessary to my story, but I will tell it here, just so that you can see why I don't adore Justin.

 

I had said that Mark ran the following day's 4:00 PM trivia, and that was true. What I did not say at the time was that on that morning, I ran into Justin (who did not remember my name), and I told him about J.T. refusing to give us prizes for winning trivia the previous day. He said that J.T. had been told to hand out prizes, and he said that he would speak to J.T. I said, "That won't do me any good. I want a prize." Justin then asked me if I would be at 4:00 PM trivia that day. I said yes. He said that he would be running it, and that he would talk to J.T., and he would take care of things, which I understood to mean that he would give me a prize.

 

So I was very surprised to see that Mark, not Justin, was running the 4:00 PM trivia. I mentioned it to Mark and found out that Justin had lied to me. I repeated the story about J.T. not giving out prizes and his refusal to acknowledge that Ben Franklin was never a president of the USA. As I said before, Mark gave me a prize.

 

 

 

So we weren't the only group that he refused to give prizes to! I hope that Mark is aware of that. Sorry, but I don't agree that J.T. is sweet. What's so sweet about refusing to hand out prizes after he is specfically told to do so? It's not like handing out prizes to the winning team is so difficult. BTW I don't know Brad.

 

 

 

Yes, I got a little of that, but I also had to listen to him say that on a number of cruises, they don't give prizes to any of the winning trivia teams, because you're supposed to play trivia just for fun, not because you hope to win something.

 

 

 

I didn't have any issues with Select dining. Someone at Celebrity decided to assign me to first sitting, but that wasn't Select dining's fault. And it wasn't Select dining's fault that Franko was so horrible. I had to wait only once to be seated when I didn't have a reservation. That is not an issue.

 

 

 

Ha ha ha!

 

 

 

As I said before, i loved all of the food in the MDR. I was very happy to see that they had a brunch. I strongly recommend the fried chicken and waffles.

 

 

 

I loved IMagic, but then, I love magic shows.

 

 

 

I reported them afterwards, in my cruise survey, as opposed to standing on line at Guest Relations. My reason for doing this is that I felt that I had already wasted enough time standing on line to see Franko, and then standing in another line to have Roxana help me, and I really hate spending my vacation time standing on line to complain about things that were not my fault. Besides, the guy who wouldn't give us ice had already refused to give us ice, and Guest Relations couldn't turn back the clock so that he would give us ice, so I didn't see the point of wasting additional vacation time standing on line just to hear someone who wasn't even there say "Sorry about that."

 

 

 

I didn't see any double-take. He didn't even flinch. However, I don't know what his reaction was when my TA complained to him.

 

 

 

Bayonne, NJ.

 

I was SO glad to learn that we didn't have to endure another Ken Mills cruise. He was the CD on Summit last fall. IMHO -- the man is in love with the sound of his own voice!]/quote]

 

Yeah, I know what you mean.

 

 

 

I don't agree. I don't see the point of trying to solve it the next day, since my only Select reservation was for the first night, and I think it would be silly if I said on Monday, "My reservation for Sunday night dinner was screwed up." What if they said, "Why didn't you say something yesterday?"

As I said previously, this was our group's fourth sailing with Celebrity, and on none of the previous three cruises did Celebrity screw up our reservations.

 

And I don't even see that it was a true "mix-up." For whatever reason, some Celebrity employee (not necessarily Franko) decided to ignore my Celebrity Select dining confirmation and reservation for that night and decided to seat me at the early sitting. I don't see how ignoring my confirmation (and the fact that I had prepaid my gratuities) counts as being a "mix-up."

 

This sounds like way too much drama over little things.

[soxfan2013]

Thanks so much for taking the time to write a review. We are also not fans of Ken. When we found out he was on board we skipped certain venues to avoid him.:(

 

Who is the cruise director this month?

[CruisingChick]

Who is the cruise director this month?

 

Ken Mills came back on Summit May 31st from vacation, so he should be on through September.

[soxfan2013]

Ken Mills came back on Summit May 31st from vacation, so he should be on through September.

 

Hmm. That's the guy no one seems to like. One of my recollections from my previous cruise is that there were very few annoucements during the cruise, which I appreciated.

 

Usually cruise directors are pretty good, very upbeat, etc.

[Fish Lover]

I had said that Mark ran the following day's 4:00 PM trivia, and that was true. What I did not say at the time was that on that morning, I ran into Justin (who did not remember my name), and I told him about J.T. refusing to give us prizes for winning trivia the previous day. He said that J.T. had been told to hand out prizes, and he said that he would speak to J.T. I said, "That won't do me any good. I want a prize."

 

Really? You complained about the game host and insisted on being given one of those chachki prizes? And...then you accuse him of lying? More likely they just changed work assignments. Geez. Some people are paranoid about being short changed in some way. This is exactly the sort of ridiculous competitiveness that spoils it for everyone else just looking to have a few laughs.