Review Celebrity Eclipse Jan. 10-24, 2016

[ROWSE]

Hi! I am really enjoying your review and photos - especially the drink photos! Did you upgrade to the premium package, or are the drinks you showed all on the classic? I'm trying to decide if I need to upgrade on our upcoming cruise - that Cosmo really called to me! Thanks!

 

Welcome Boiler Fan!

 

Thank you for reading along! Before we left, I had read that the ships crew really nag you to upgrade to the premium package, but in our experience that was not the case. Not one person suggested it to us. Maybe we look like the cheap drink type of people (very true!).

 

We definitely had plenty of choices and yes everything was on the Classic Package that I am showing in pictures. I did not think we would be able to enjoy the Martini Bar as that is high end drinks, but they fit things in the Classic Package for you. We were able to get Cosmos, Apple Martini's, and Gin Martinis. That was definitely the strongest Cosmo I ever had.

 

They may come in a smaller glass, but just have another is our thoughts.

 

I believe you can change packages along the way and pay the up charge for the days left of your cruise. They may have a cut off date for that when your cruise nears the end. Anyone know?

[ROWSE]

We were on the same January 2016 Eclipse sailing as Rowse, same deck, cabin 1018 (C3). Loved the cruise.

 

I agree about the bread, same boring selection every night. Although it stopped me eating too much bread which can pile on the pounds.

 

One thing I didn't like about our cabin was that the bed was next to the balcony, I prefer the sofa to be next to the balcony. I was interested to see in the OP picture that their sofa was next to the bed. According to the Celebrity brochure both cabins appear to be C3 with convertible sofa bed.

 

Can anyone explain why the difference, as next time I would prefer to book a cabin with the sofa next to the balcony door.

 

Thank you.

 

Welcome YORKI1!

 

So glad you are reading along and you can interject some of your experiences too. Don't you wish we were still on?

 

I loved having the extra room by the balcony and can understand not liking the bed by the balcony as much. Somewhere, and maybe someone can put a link on, I read reviews of certain rooms on this ship and knew ahead of time that our room had the sofa by the balcony. Seems to go every other room.

 

We just loved our room!

[ROWSE]

@YORKI1: The placement of the bed and sofa in relation to the balcony varies between these two configurations for every other cabin, and is due to the fact that the cabin is broader where the bed is. So in order to fit the cabins together and using as little space as possible, they place them in this every-other type of configuration. I am sure there is someone on Cruise Critic who has calculated which cabin has which configuration on the different ships...

 

Based on a recent cruise on the Equinox (also Solstice class), I can for example say that Concierge cabin 1174 on deck 10 has the sofa by the balcony config that you desire, but cabins 1172 and 1176 did not, they had the bed by the balcony.

 

A big thanks to ROWSE for the great review! It makes us revisit our recent cruise, although it was on the Equinox :-)

 

Welcome Psilor!

 

Thank you for that information! I bet the Equinox was just as wonderful!

[ROWSE]

Hi again and thanks for doing this Eclipse review, particularly as we shared a dock together in St Kitts and St Maarten.

 

Off to a great start- keep the photos coming!

 

Norris

 

 

Welcome Norris,

 

I am quite honored that you checked out my writings. You are the master!!!

 

I am rather embarrassed at my quality of pictures compared to yours. Still the pictures in my mind and heart are much more amazing!

 

I am keeping up with your wonderful review, keep it coming as well!

 

Also I had not read on your Emerald review about your robbery till I saw someone refer to it, so I am so sorry, and so glad you were in one piece afterwards!!!!

[snowyboy]

Enjoying your review and photos ? I will be following closely as we sail on Eclipse on March 6.

 

Hello Jennifer,

Thank you for the lovely comment. I bet March seems like a very far way off. You are in for an amazing time!

 

We are also on the 6 March trip enjoying your review very much looking forward to more.

 

John

[snowyboy]

Welcome Boiler Fan!

 

Thank you for reading along! Before we left, I had read that the ships crew really nag you to upgrade to the premium package, but in our experience that was not the case. Not one person suggested it to us. Maybe we look like the cheap drink type of people (very true!).

 

We definitely had plenty of choices and yes everything was on the Classic Package that I am showing in pictures. I did not think we would be able to enjoy the Martini Bar as that is high end drinks, but they fit things in the Classic Package for you. We were able to get Cosmos, Apple Martini's, and Gin Martinis. That was definitely the strongest Cosmo I ever had.

 

They may come in a smaller glass, but just have another is our thoughts.

 

I believe you can change packages along the way and pay the up charge for the days left of your cruise. They may have a cut off date for that when your cruise nears the end. Anyone know?

 

 

Cut off date is with 4 days to go hope this helps, just remember one full Martini equals one days upgrade.

[ROWSE]

Well, now that I am all caught up with my responses, I am ready to

move on.

 

We had an amazing night sleep on that cushy bed. I'm sure there was some hint that we were on the ocean, but for the most part the movement didn't show it. What greeted us as I opened the balcony curtain certainly did.

 

At home, our choice of exercise is yoga, and somehow we managed to fit our mats in our suitcases. With the ocean sound all around us, and moving a bit of furniture, we were able to enjoy this on our balcony!

 

 

What a beautiful view in front of us!

 

After getting ready, we had a bite to eat in the Aqua Spa and then it was time for our Cruise Critic Meet and Mingle at 9:30 in the Sky Lounge. A huge thank you to ChrisJH (Chris) for all his work on organizing! There was a huge turnout. It was so nice to meet so many great people! Cruise Critic is the best!

 

I appreciated that it was held early so that we could go out and enjoy laying in that glorious sunshine that we lacked of recent.

 

We enjoyed lunch and drinks out there and probably a few trips to the bathroom which now gives me a place to thank Celebrity for actually having small cotton hand towels in their bathrooms and keeping them so immaculate!

 

 

I took a short deck nap and upon waking found my hubby off somewhere. I left him a note for him to meet me later at 3:30 for Music Trivia, and headed off to a lecture at 2:00 by Geraldine Velasquez called, It Never Rains in Sunny Aruba. She immediately had a disclaimer that last week it did indeed rain there. It was a good time.

 

I headed up for the Trivia and waited, and at the last second my hubby joined me. He had been enjoying many beers on the drink package. He definitely got his money's worth today! He had three more while we played and looked very sleepy. I decided a balcony nap would do him good.

 

[ROWSE]

We are also on the 6 March trip enjoying your review very much looking forward to more. Cut off date is with 4 days to go hope this helps, just remember one full Martini equals one days upgrade.

 

 

Welcome snowyboy!

I just knew someone would know that answer, thank you for adding that!

You are in for an amazing time!

[ROWSE]

He REALLY enjoyed his nap, and just kept on sleeping. Time for the first show of the night was fast approaching so I dressed in what is now not called Formal Wear, but Evening Chic. Seemed like most people wore Formal to me!

We just wear what we usually do for Formal Night.

 

Evening Chic on this cruise was first sea day and fourth sea day.

 

The show times are usually 7 and 9 p.m. but did vary on some days. There were always two shows.

 

I again wrote him a note and went to the show. I am so glad I let him sleep, this was probably not his type of show anyway. It was called "Topper". Bizarre? Yes! Really good? Yes, as well. The talent of singing and dancing and acrobatics of these entertainers is amazing!

I took this picture before the show started.

 

Another really wonderful thing about Celebrity is they have shows longer than the 30 minutes that Princess has recently gone to. I so appreciate that. I have heard that some Princess shows are lasting longer lately.

 

I went to collect my hubby who was now all spit shined and ready to go, apologizing, but also adding he certainly got his money's worth of that drink package!

 

We were in line at the Select dining at around 8:15 and the hostess ended up putting us down in Traditional dining for this night. I am extremely glad we had Select Dining after this one time there as the meal took so long, and the service was terrible. I'm sure it was the luck of the draw. I tried a new wine for me. My hubby, for some reason, was done using the drink package tonight.

 

 

It took about 45 minutes to get the wine.

 

Here was a yummy salad that I had.

 

 

My hubby had the French Onion soup this night and it is yummy. However he finds something hard in it and we both cringe, but it turns out it was the cap off of one of his teeth. Who knows why these things let go, and we counted ourselves lucky he didn't swallow it. Luckily it never hurt the entire cruise and when we got home the dentist was able to put it back on.

 

After dinner we did a little more exploring and found the area on Deck 5 that has the specialty restaurants. We have only done one other specialty restaurants in our life. We talked to someone at Q'sine and he showed us several options for us. He also dropped the price from $45 per person to $30 and we were sold. Our reservation was on the port day of Aruba.

 

We headed back to our room for some stargazing. The balcony's are not lit, so there is some wonderful opportunities for this. Since dinner took so long, it was now 11:30 and we called it a day.

[ROWSE]

After another glorious sleep, we decided to check out the possibility of ordering room service from the TV.

 

It took us a little while to get it all straight, and if you want to do some write in items, that is not possible. You can write something in on the room service breakfast menu's that you hang on your door handle the night before.

 

As soon as I hit the ORDER button the phone rings and says they got our order and when it would be delivered. I asked at that time to add peanut butter on and they did that. We only ordered this way once, so I am not sure if they call like that every time. If they do then adding something would be easy.

 

This day our room steward, Chris, who was the best, brought it to us. Other days it was random. We did use the door handle menu method a few other times. We tipped a couple dollars each time, but it is not necessary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

These lovely heavy robes come with the Concierge room. Also just to note, we also had use of a small umbrella, large umbrella, and tiny binoculars.

[LuvCruzn4Evr]

Seems several are looking for this info. There is a sticky that contains a wealth of info on cabins for the Solstice Class of ships. It will tell you the bed position by cabin # and ship if the info has been reported. Here's the link to the thread:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=911018

 

The first post has a link to the layout info.

[ROWSE]

Our next adventure out was the Galley Tour called the Heart Beat of the Operation. It was held at 10:45.

 

They had us assemble in the main dining room and greeted you at the door with champagne or my choice, a mimosa. YUM!

 

Here are some pictures....

 

That ceiling is just lovely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ROWSE]

At the end of the Galley Tour we were directed down to the Specialty restaurants. They had food displays out and we were very interested in

Q'sine since we would be partaking of that the next day.

 

 

 

The weather was a bit stormy today so my hubby chose a balcony nap today. We so loved that balcony!

 

Next up at 3:00 was the Hot Glass Show. We weren't sure we would like spending about two hours watching this, but it was mesmerizing and the talent of these young people is amazing!

 

 

 

[ROWSE]

 

If you notice at the bottom of the picture is raffle tickets. The two times we went to their shows they chose some of their amazing work and raffled it off to the crowd. I grabbed on to my favorite, and vowed someone would have to snatch it from my dead cold hands. No not really, it was all civilized, and sadly, though I was a couple numbers off, I did not win.

 

These were complimentary tickets, but at the end of the cruise they had an auction for several pieces to earn money for Corningware Glass blowing scholarships, and also Breast Cancer research.

 

 

[ROWSE]

Another feature on Concierge class is afternoon snacks. We let our room steward know our preference for no meat, and he was wonderful. Here is our snacks for this day.

 

 

 

Tonight we chose to have dinner early at about 5:45. We stuck with a table for two the whole cruise but enjoyed so many people and conversations

with those seated close by.

 

 

 

Tonights show was Shades of Buble. There were three young male singers and they were fantastic.

 

We went to a fun game show called Minute to Win It. It was hilarious and fun all at the same time.

 

We did not stay up very late anticipating a big day on Aruba tomorrow. Earlier in the evening we had this wonderful sunset off our balcony.

 

[ROWSE]

This is what greeted us out the balcony today.

 

 

 

[ROWSE]

This was another ship in port.

 

 

 

 

We were off quick as a flash. There was never a time on any of these ports that it took more than a minute or two to get off.

 

My plan this trip was to use the islands public transportation whenever we could. This was one of those days. The bus terminal in Aruba is just across the street from the port. Our plan was snorkeling and the port agent warned me that it was rough water out there today and to watch for the red flags. If you see red, stay out of the water!

 

The beach for the best snorkeling in my research was Malmok. The bus we wanted was bus #10. Now when we got to the area the ticket booth didn't have a line, but by the time we got on the bus it was huge. If you buy at the ticket booth you can get a round trip ticket for $4 per person which is $2 each way. If you choose to buy it on the bus it is $2.30 each way. We did buy the passes, but if I would have come across that line I would have not waited and just paid cash.

 

It wasn't a long wait though the bus area is very hard to figure out which bus is the one you want. Just ask another driver, they will point you in the right direction. They were very helpful in telling us where to get of as well.

 

Here are some pictures of the area we went to.

 

 

[ROWSE]

We walked a little way to the right as there was beach. It is always best to have a sand entry versus rock. We learned this the hard way in Grand Cayman once. We also learned to ALWAYS have fins in rough water!!!!

 

 

Though this picture looks calm, it wasn't. The waves were pretty fierce. We waited it out and it calmed down considerably. The first time I snorkeled all I could see was a face full of sand, but later it was much better and we enjoyed it immensely.

 

 

We brought one floaty toy besides our snorkel gear.

 

 

Here is one picture underwater and you can see it was very murky.

 

 

 

 

When we had had enough of this wonderful sea and sand, we just walked back up to the road and flagged down the first bus that passed. Easy as could be we were back at the terminal.

[ROWSE]

There were other Cruise Critic people that we saw out there. Hello Pat and Jim if you might chance be reading. They had gotten on bus #10A and that took them to Arashi beach, which is just a little way down from Malmok. They said it was an easy walk back to Malmok from there. They were also the snorkel lovers that we are!

 

Here is a little hint, if you are a beginner snorkeler. Buy yourself a cheap travel bottle of baby shampoo and put it on your mask glass. Rinse and you are ready to go and you will not have fogging. In years past I had a bottle of EXPENSIVE solution, but this worked even better than that.

 

After walking back to the ship to change and have a tiny bite to eat, we were off again to explore Aruba some more. All aboard was not till 7:45 tonight, but we did have reservations at Q'sine for 6:30.

 

We took our phones this time to search out some free internet, but all the places that the crew were at, were not working for us. We did a little shopping. Seems my husband ended up without any flip flop type shoe wear. He swears he packed his Choco's and was sure they were stolen. I was glad to find them stuck in a suitcase that he thought he was going to take when we got home.

 

He ended up getting a cheap pair of Croc's that worked for the cruise.

 

After winning $6 in the Casino we headed back to the ship. That isn't much, but it was 6x's as much as I won at the ship's casino.

 

Soon it was time for our Q'sine night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 28, 2016 by ROWSE

[ROWSE]

More Q'sine pictures

 

 

 

 

 

To cleanse the pallet

 

[ROWSE]

Dessert time at Q'sine

 

 

We rolled ourselves out of there, and had enjoyed it all so much.

 

Tonight's show was magician Ryan Joyce. He was fantastic and we loved him.

 

So we thought back on the day and thought we had had a wonderful excursion for $8 total. We were exhausted and off to bed. A big day in Curacao lay ahead.

[opa&oma]

ROUSE, thanks for writing a very fun to read review. Your enthusiasm is infectious!

[ROWSE]

ROUSE, thanks for writing a very fun to read review. Your enthusiasm is infectious!

 

 

 

Welcome opa&oma!

I am guessing your grandchildren called you that. If so, aren't they the best, we have twin grandsons that are 22 months now and the joy of our lives.

[ROWSE]

We awoke and ate up in the buffet today. There are so many choices up there and it encompasses such a large area. We were quite impressed.

 

The view coming in to Curacao was beautiful.

 

 

 

We had a non Celebrity excursion today with Island Experience and we were to meet near those white tents that you see in the picture. As a matter of fact we only took one Celebrity excursion and that was on Disembarkation that went to an Everglades tour and dropped us at FLL airport.

 

Again we were off in a flash to meet up with Sharella the spokesperson for this company. This was a 4 and a half hour tour encompassing the Aloe Vera Plantation, Ostrich Farm, Chichi factory, and Hato Caves. The price was $60 but I believe they have since raised it to $65.

 

Our tour guide was Judith for the day. There were 9 of us. It was a nice van for our transportation. We drove to the huge bridge connecting sections of Curacao. Here is a lovely look back at our ship and of the Holland ship which got the pier in town. Now, when we were overnight, this seemed odd that we didn't get this spot.

 

 

 

If you look behind the Holland ship there is a floating bridge and it moves over to the side whenever something needs to go out of the harbor. We saw it do this a few times. There is a ferry then that starts taking people across if the bridge is not there. If something small goes through they just move a little of it and then the ferry does not run.

 

Our first stop was the Aloe Vera farm and factory. A little presentation was given and were were able to try a little piece of aloe to eat.

 

 

The owner's wife makes up some amazing juices containing the aloe and of course I tried one with Kale, remember I am vegetarian and missing my Kale.

It is the green (center) one in this picture. A bit pricey at $5 but so yummy! I immediately felt healthier!

 

[ROWSE]

Next we drove a short distance to the Ostrich Farm. Here you have a tour in a large jeep rig that holds maybe 20 people.

 

Our tour guide was very funny.

 

 

 

There were also many many adorable pot bellied pigs.

 

 

We were both able to have a feeding time with the Ostrich

 

 

This Ostrich egg is the size of 21 chicken eggs.