Equinox Review 3/16 sailing

[ginger123snaps]

We are mid 40's with 3 kids ages 11, 11, 9.  We have cruised RC, Carnival, NCL, Princess.  25+ cruises for us.  We sailed with 2 other families.

 

Ship Appearance/Service:  Second time on ship for us.  The ship is dated but CLEAN!  Other then the decor there was no sense of the ship being dated...never noticed anything dirty on this ship.  Its one of the reasons we sailed her again....the ship is in great condition.  The service was phenomenal also.  Grass was in great shape...hope they don't get rid of this...it was so fun for our group to hang out on the lawn!  They also had great pool  side bar service.  

 

Family Veranda Room:  Spacious.  Storage was not great!  Specially the kids room...very narrow shelves and hard to reach to the back in such a tight space.  If you bring a garment bag with hangars then you are better off.  The toilet had a urine smell to it....so yeah...needs replaced.  Walls/ceiling are magnetic..having extra hooks with a family of 5 is helpful to bring.  The balcony was tired looking but again a refurbishment is coming.  

 

Kids club:  Last time my kids sailed her they were 2 years younger.  My kids were not as excited about the kids club staff this time around.  Again my kids are older now and this might have something to do with their opinion.  There is a VIP pass you can purchase.  It gets your child full access to parties.  Also, they get a captains bridge tour and backstage theater tour with this package.  They give them a bag of goodies when you sign up that includes a water bottle, t-shirt, lanyard, stress ball.  There is one night that they take them to the arcade and let them play for free.  

 

Specialty restaurants were great!  Its slow service but part of the experience.  

 

Punta Cana:  I would skip this port if I had to do it all over again.  We did tender...but it was a long, hot, and  wavy tender ride.   The port area itself is beautiful but not worth the tender ride for us.  We had the scape adventure park booked and we were really disappointed here.  Even though we had purchased through the cruise line we had to wait 1.5 hours to get our wristbands before entering the park. Then they told us to go straight to the zip line so that we could do everything.....we got there and they had run out of equipment.  By the time we tendered and waited in line at the park entrance...it was 10:30 before we made it in the park.  We were told lunch was from 11 to 1 and then we would be transported to a beach.  The zip line takes one hour.  So we didn't get to zip line....and had very little time to enjoy this park.  My family paid over $700 for this excursion...so you can imagine our disappointment.  All three families had paid $$$$...Celebrity did the right thing and gave us a partial reimbursement fo this excursion.  The park itself is beautiful but it is poorly managed.  Those wristbands could have been given to us on the bus or on the ship. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[friendswithdave]

Thanks for sharing, we'll be on board in 8 days!

[cruisinsusin]

Thanks for your report- we have been trying to decide what to do with the Punta Cana port day- did Celebrity offer the shuttle to a beach that was discussed on a previous thread? Any idea of cost if it was offered?

Thanks, Susan
 

[yhz123]

I agree with your thoughts on the kids activities. We were on this cruise too and my11 year old daughter really didn’t feel there was enough to keep her interest. This is very unusual since she generally wants to spend all her time there. There didn’t seem to be a lot of activities. We otherwise loved the cruise. 

[portofrome]

Thanks for the review!

[ginger123snaps]

23 hours ago, cruisinsusin said:

Thanks for your report- we have been trying to decide what to do with the Punta Cana port day- did Celebrity offer the shuttle to a beach that was discussed on a previous thread? Any idea of cost if it was offered?

Thanks, Susan
 

 

We are not sure about the shuttle to the beach.  We had booked through Celebrity for the scape park adventure tour and from there they did offer a shuttle to the beach as part of the excursion (we did not have to pay extra).  Sorry I don't have more details on this.  Scape park is beautiful...and we did enjoy what little we got to experience...and if you can complete all the activities...I still think its worth it!

 

I will say that a couple of our group members got sick from the tender ride and it just triggered them being sick the rest of the cruise.  They were fine up until the tender ride.  To be fair though...we had a pretty choppy day after leaving Punta Cana and it seemed like half the boat was in their rooms.  My husband and I cruise a lot and have never experienced this...we both were really tired on that choppy sea day and slept.  

[cruisinsusin]

thanks - we'll just have to play the Punta Cana day by ear 

[Lady Arwen]

Excellent review, thank you

[ginger123snaps]

Just a side note on Punta Cana.....captain Kate got on and said that was the nicest she had ever seen Punta Cana.  Let me tell you that was a rough tender ride.  We have tendered multiple times and it has never been like that.  There were elderly that were struggling.  I was struggling because of the heat and it wasn't even that hot outside.  

 

 

 

 

[ginger123snaps]

Also I did the galley tour..which is free.  It was excellent and I really enjoyed seeing everything behind the scenes.  FYI I'm a bit of a germ freak so I was happy to see a spotless kitchen Galley!  

 

 

[GenerationX]

On 3/29/2019 at 8:50 AM, ginger123snaps said:

Grass was in great shape...hope they don't get rid of this...it was so fun for our group to hang out on the lawn!

 

 

Thanks for your review! I just got off Equinox and asked while onboard about whether the Lawn would survive the refurb (one of my favorite spots too).  I was told they are keeping it but will be turning the hot glass area into the Lawn Club specialty restaurant that is on Reflection and Silhouette.

[mari10]

34 minutes ago, GenerationX said:

Thanks for your review! I just got off Equinox and asked while onboard about whether the Lawn would survive the refurb (one of my favorite spots too).  I was told they are keeping it but will be turning the hot glass area into the Lawn Club specialty restaurant that is on Reflection and Silhouette.

Wow !  Lawn Club restaurant will be a great addition to the Equinox. I have not heard that Celebrity was intending to do this. We love the Equinox but missed having Lawn Grille and The Porch which we frequent on the Silhouette and Reflection.

We are on the June 1st cruise , first one after refurbishing, so we’ll get to check it out soon. 

BTW, loved your cruise blog, very entertaining! Glad you enjoyed and had the time to sit back and refresh. 

[LMEEE06]

After reading your review about the Scape Park excursion I'm not sure what to do. We were looking forward to this but I'm wondering if we would be better off heading straight to the beach. Long lines and missing activities doesn't sound fun! I wonder if your experience is the norm or if there were extenuating circumstances that day.

[hiccups]

12 hours ago, GenerationX said:

 

Thanks for your review! I just got off Equinox and asked while onboard about whether the Lawn would survive the refurb (one of my favorite spots too).  I was told they are keeping it but will be turning the hot glass area into the Lawn Club specialty restaurant that is on Reflection and Silhouette.

 

Huh... we are on the first cruise after dry dock, and I've already booked the hot glass class!

[CardRock]

12 hours ago, GenerationX said:

 

Thanks for your review! I just got off Equinox and asked while onboard about whether the Lawn would survive the refurb (one of my favorite spots too).  I was told they are keeping it but will be turning the hot glass area into the Lawn Club specialty restaurant that is on Reflection and Silhouette.

We have already paid for glass blowing on our June 15 cruise...so I hope not changed in the revolution.  

[chemmo]

Ginger123snaps, thanks for your review! We are on the last Eclipse cruise before refit in 2020 so are pleased that X are not letting their general standards drop before refit. Dated is not an issue, we are becoming quite dated ourselves.....

 

We are on Equinox in September. On our last two cruises we have been asking as many officers as we could corner what to expect post Revolution....Answers have been varied!

 

Hiccups and HardRock, I look forward to looking for your posts!

 

 

[ginger123snaps]

On 3/30/2019 at 5:23 PM, LMEEE06 said:

After reading your review about the Scape Park excursion I'm not sure what to do. We were looking forward to this but I'm wondering if we would be better off heading straight to the beach. Long lines and missing activities doesn't sound fun! I wonder if your experience is the norm or if there were extenuating circumstances that day.

 

We were the only ship in port that day.  They had a lot of hotel guests there.  It was awful waiting in line in the heat with 7 kids between the three families.  Had we been able to enjoy the park leisurely I would highly recommend this place...but this just wasn't the case.  It was poorly managed and they wasted so much of our time.  When cruising your port time is limited anyways....every minute counts...I felt like they should have had a separate line for cruisers who had already pre-paid for the excursion.  They could have handed out wristbands on the bus.  The waiver forms could have been handed out while waiting in line....which by the way was not a simple signature like most waiver forms...they wanted all kinds of information.    

[CruisingWalter]

On 3/29/2019 at 8:50 AM, ginger123snaps said:

We are mid 40's with 3 kids ages 11, 11, 9.  We have cruised RC, Carnival, NCL, Princess.  25+ cruises for us.  We sailed with 2 other families.

 

Ship Appearance/Service:  Second time on ship for us.  The ship is dated but CLEAN!  Other then the decor there was no sense of the ship being dated...never noticed anything dirty on this ship.  Its one of the reasons we sailed her again....the ship is in great condition.  The service was phenomenal also.  Grass was in great shape...hope they don't get rid of this...it was so fun for our group to hang out on the lawn!  They also had great pool  side bar service.  

 

 

From what we've read part of the grassy area will remain but it will be restricted to suite guests.  This might have changed but it sounded like it was going to be a cabana type of area requiring a fee or suite admission, similar to the Sanctuary on Princess.

 

Lawn Club Grill was our least favorite restaurant on the Reflection.  Overpriced and not that great of quality for what you paid.  We're sailing in Sept. after the "revolution" so it will be interesting to see how she has changed from when we sailed last year.