This is a long-ass review of my Panama Canal cruise. I'm putting it in the extended entry because most everyone other than my mother would be bored to tears with the level of detail I sometimes include.
But if you are a cruise fanatic like me, I know you love to live vicariously through other people's reviews, so click away and read the whole thing.
Here is a link to the photos: Panama Canal Photos
Cruise Review, Celebrity Infinity, December 21st,2003 - January 4th 2004.
Ft Lauderdale - San Diego (via Panama Canal)
This is an extremely detailed day-by-day review followed by overall
impressions of the ship etc. We are two experienced cruisers in
our mid-30's. I've taken 17 cruises, Ben has taken 10, on all mass
market lines, plus one on Radisson Seven Seas. We live in SF Bay Area.
Day -1, Ft Lauderdale.
We flew into Ft Lauderdale the Saturday before the cruise having done our own
air cheaply through JetBlue. Since the cruise was a one-way Panama Canal
cruise, going with the airline that sells cheap one-way tickets was a no
brainer.
I got us a room at the Sheraton Yankee Clipper through Priceline.com, so
we took a cab there from the airport. After checking and resting up a little
we decided to have an early dinner nearby. We started walking north and
came across "The Florida Tap Room", just North of the Radisson. It sounded
good to us.
Either we lucked out and got the best things on the menu, or everything
there was good. Ben got a smoked fish appetizer and I got the spice-fried
mahi-mahi wrap. Both were excellent. In addition Ben sampled most of
their beers declaring many of them to be very good.
We went back to the hotel room and after trying to watch a pay-per-view
movie ("Old School") and dozing off continually we finally gave up and
went to sleep a little after 9pm.
Day 0, Embarkation.
We got up around 9am after a good 12 hours of sleep -- no better way to
start a vacation. Checkout time was 11am so we decided to head to the
pier then even though the documents said boarding wouldn't start till
2pm that afternoon. We caught a cab and got to the port around 11:20.
We handed our luggage off to the porter and walked into the uncrowded
waiting area. There were a couple of staff walking around making sure
people have the correct paperwork filled-out and ready. I asked one
of them when embarkation would start and she said about 10 minutes.
Sure enough in less than 10 minutes the doors opened and we get to go
through metal detectors and to the check-in counters. We filled out all
our information in advance on Celebrity's website, so the process was
amazingly quick. They scanned Ben's credit card for on-board charges
looked at our passports and handed us our room keys. We walked up to
the ship, past the photographers, onto the ship where our picture was
taken for the security, were offered champaigne and orange juice and
were asked to go to the Oceanview Cafe for lunch which would start at
noon since our cabins wouldn't be ready till 1pm. It was about 11:45
at that time.
We dropped off our carry-on bags in the cafe and walked around a litte.
Cafe is on deck 10 aft and our cabin 9173 was deck 9 aft so we peeked
into it. It was mostly clean but not quite set up for us.
We had some lunch, a slice of pizza and a couple of items from the buffet.
It was decent, nothing too special for good for a buffet meal. By 12:30
our cabin was ready so we went down, checked out keys and unpacked the
carry-on. Our room stewart was nearby, he introduced himself and we
asked him to put the beds into one queen configuration. No problem.
We went to tour the ship, from deck 11 all the way down to deck 3. We
checked out the spa (the Persian Garden looked fantastic) the pools,
the bars, the library (which had all the books I'd brought with me!)
the music library (I had my own headsets but not the 1/4 inch adapter
I would need to use it with their system so we'd have to borrow the
headphones on deck 3 for use on deck 11 every time), more bars, the
show room, lounges, dining rooms (making reservations for the alternative
restaurant SS United States along the way for three nights including
tonight), and the internet cafe where we waved hi to the webcam.
We also studied the schedule for events. With 6:30 dinner at the SSUS
we figured we'd miss the 9pm "Welcome aboard" show (we did). The only
thing left to check out were the various musical groups to see if we'd
be able to dance to any of their music. We heard the duo that played
in the Rendez Vous lounge before dinner, they would probably be okay
for a rumba or a nightclub two-step, or a tango. Nothing too fast.
After an uneventful lifeboat drill we heard the announcement that we'd
be sailing 30 minutes late due to a flight with passengers that was
late into FLL. This is why when you book your own flight it's good to
come in the day before. Anyway we were on our way by 5:30pm. Before
going off to dinner we hung up the holiday lights we brought with us
on our balcony. Seems we were not the only ones we that idea for
the holiday sailing, the balcony two floors below us had a blue light
garland. We had one of red stars. Since our balcony rail was under
an angle all the balconies forward of us had a good view of them and
we got quite a few kudos for the idea. (Since I didn't think we'd be
able to get an extension cord out to the balcony I got battery powered
lights).
Dinner was a very pleasant almost three hour affair. It was only four
courses (plus an amuse course) but very elaborately done and we joyfully
lingered over the amuse of a tropical fruit soup, first course of lobster
soup and goat cheese souffle, a main course of sea bass and shrimp
scampi (which was prepared and flambe'ed table-side), six different
cheeses we selected from a cart of ten, and a dessert of crepes Susette
(also prepared tableside) and an assortment of mini-desserts (some of
which were *amazing*). We were given a bunch of petit fours which we
couldn't eat so we took them to our cabin for later. Ben had two glasses
of wine which he enjoyed -- he opted for the ones recommended with the
courses he had.
Interestingly, the alternative restaurant was basically fully booked
up for the two weeks of the cruise by that evening, but the first night
there were only ten people there. We were first and for the first hour
we were there we alone in this lovely large restaurant, getting very
attentive service from the seven or eight people working there. We had
picked two random nights the following week to come back, both of which
fell on casual nights -- we figured on formal nights the regular dining
room might have something special.
By the way, on our way to dinner we peeked into the dining to see our
regular table. It was a six-top by the window on the top level of the
dining room. There was only one couple there, they looked like they were
close to our age. We wouldn't get to meet them till the next day though.
After dinner I stopped by the show which had just ended (30 minute show?
Must be because everyone tends to be tired the first night and goes to
bed early?)
After stopping by the cabin to check out the schedule for the next day
and write some of this trip report we went off to check out the rest of the
entertainment on the ship including the disco with its party band and DJ.
The "party band" was playing the disco and they were pretty good, both
in quality and the material selection (at least while I was there). It was
all pretty dancable stuff. The duo in the lounge downstairs was okay for
the easy listening sort of stuff. Surprisingly, even though this was the
first night, the disco, lounges, and the casino were packed.
I ended up going to sleep around 1am (when it suddenly became 2am because
we changed to Aruba/Caribbean time) and Ben didn't get in till 3:30am at
which point he put out some laundry and dry-cleaning (cheaper than on land,
and that way you get your nice clothes all neat and don't have to worry
about wrinkling them in transit) out so it'd be picked up by our stewart
before 9am.
Day 1, Cruising to Aruba
I woke up just in time for the "Battle of the Sexes" trivia at 9:30 the
next morning and after leading my team to victory went off to the gym
around 10am. There were 14 treadmills which were all occupied and there
were about five people waiting. There is no signup list so it's sort
of quite disorganized. I started on the rowing machine but after 10 minutes
there was a free treadmill and no line so I switched. 10am must be a
really popular time for some reason. After the treadmill I went to check
out the weights machines. They were all nautilus, no free weights at all,
not even dumbells.
I went back to the cabin after picking up some breakfast (herring!) in the
buffet and ate it on the balcony while Ben was waking up. He also went up
to get some breakfast while I was in the shower (they were serving it in
one line till noon) and we watched a free movie on the TV while gearing
up for the day. We went to catch a quick lunch at 1:30 (nothing good at
the buffet so I got some pasta at the pizza and pasta station which had
no pizza!) and I went off for my haircut at 2pm. I try to stay away from
Steiner on-board except for putting hair up for formal night for a few
reasons: the ridiculously inflated prices and the amazing hard-sell of
products for the most part. This time was no different. For cutting about
an inch off of my (long) hair and then blow-drying it extensively I was
charged $77 (okay, I can live with that) and sold two products to go with
it for another $47 that I didn't ask for. I sort of didn't notice it
until she handed me the bag and by then I was late for the 3:30pm enrichment
lecture. I figured I'd deal with it afterwards.
Normally I don't bother with any "enrichment programs" but one of the three
on this cruise was a voice teacher who was going to do five classes on vocal
technique. This recently became a hobby of mine so I thought it'd be cool
to take advantage of it. Ben joined me there after the complementary wine
tasting for Captain's Club members. The class was enjoyable, and I'm
assuming I'd go to the rest of them as long as they didn't conflict with
anything else.
Ben went to the cabin to get ready and I went to the Steiner salon to return
the goods. The girl who "sold" them to me came out and basically said no
problem as long as I applied their price to a future treatment. I was going
to come back anyway to have my hair put up for the next formal night so I
left it at that. I couldn't believe her nerve when she told me that she gave
me a $30 discount on my haircut because I was buying product. I think if
they tried to present me a $107 bill for a haircut I'd probably ask for
a refund on that too.
Tonight is the first formal night, with Captains cocktail hour (after dinner
rather than the usual before), a show, karaoke, etc. Ben wears his tux and
I wear my all-black floor length formal gown. I'm pleasantly suprised at
how many tuxes I see -- easily more than half the men.
We dine in the dining room for the first time. We are at a six-person round
table. It seems there are only four people assigned to it, us and another
couple who look to be in their 30's as well. They are from Florida and they
seem nice enough. My personal preference is for a large table or for a table
for two, since if there's only one other couple and you have nothing to talk
about it can be a long cruise. Luckily Scott and Jessica seem cool enough
and we end up chatting all throughout dinner. Dinner is okay, nothing too
gourmet, but everything is nicely done. With the dessert it really ends
up being too much food though.
We proceed to the mid-deck five to listen to the acappella singing group for
20 minutes before going to the theatre for the Captain's toast (free drinks!)
before the big production show.
As this is my 17th cruise and Ben's 10th, we usually skip all shows that
aren't comedy, but we decided to give this one a try (aisle seats towards the
back for easy get-away if it sucked). "They've Got Rhythm" was a tribute to
songs of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rogers&Hammerstein and Irving Berlin.
The dancing was decent and the singing was quite good. Overall an nice show.
Afterwards it was karaoke time. No cruise is complete for us without karaoke.
The crowd was pretty lively and the singing quite decent. We didn't finish
till close to 1am, and by then it was time to go back to the cabin, by the
way of internet cafe where we hung out for a few minutes waving hello to the
web-cam (if any of the pictures are still in the archive at celebrityatsea
I'm sure they'll be included in this report). Before going to bed I put out
a bag with a couple of items I needed laundered so they'd get picked up before
9am.
Day 2, Cruising to Aruba
We slept through breakfast and several trivia quizzes and I grabbed a piece of
fruit on the way to the 11:30 enrichment lecture (singing again). When I was
done, Ben and I went off to have lunch in the dining room before the 2:15 trivia.
Lunch took WAY too long -- it took about 25 minutes between when we were seated
and when the first course arrived. We didn't eat much and hurried off to the
trivia: "Name that tune: Music of the 80's".
Ben and I are both "Children of the 80's" so we expected to kick butt. There are
really three reasons we go to trivia. Joint reason: to get stuff for winning.
Ben's reason: "to kick our fellow passengers' butts" and my reason: to get
someone to turn around at some point and say in amazement: "How in the world
do you know this stuff?" (I achieved my goal the first day by knowing what
Madonna's first hit in the US was). We achieved all three goals by getting
14 out of 15 songs (artist and title based on a short intro played). Someone
actually asked if we were DJs. We got Celebrity baseball caps for the effort.
Afterwards, we put on swimsuits and headed to the AquaSpa. Ben bought a cruise-
long pass into the Persian Garden where he spent the next 45 minutes and I went
to the Thalassotherapy pool and then the regular pool to cool off. We hung out
at the AquaSpa for a while reading until it was time to go back to the cabin to
start getting ready for dinner.
By the way, the "healthy cuisine" at the AquaSpa was quite nice. Every day
from noon till 8pm they had a few plates of healthy food (poached salmon with
vegetables, cold turkey plate, fruit plates), a chilled soup and a couple of
desserts that were marginally better for you than the ones at the regular buffet.
Rumor had it they also served breakfast till 10am but I hadn't gotten up early
enough to check it out yet.
We tried to figure out what we wanted to do in Aruba but one of the tours we
were interested in left at 8:30am (yeah, right!) and the other was sold out, so
we figured we'd play it by ear. Ben's dry-cleaning was delivered at that point.
Good deal and they did a great job. ($14 for a suit and two dress shirts)
At one point I needed to go to guest services to replace my card-key which was
last seem the night before. We suspect it ended up in the laundry bag. It
only took a few minutes for them to de-activate it and make me a new one.
Dinner was informal (I think the term semi-formal would be more descriptive).
Ben wore a light jacket over shirt and tie, and I wore a nice long dress. Our
tablemates were at the alternative restaurant so we had a table for two. We
enjoyed dinner but were smart enough not to finish more than half our entrees
even though they were good, and only had a couple of bites of dessert each. It
made the rest of the evening more pleasant.
After dinner we had some time to kill before the comedy show so we walked around
the shops (some good deals, some rip-offs) and went back to the cabin for some
dessert wine (we brought two bottles with us and kept them in the mini-bar in
the cabin).
The comedian was good in my opinion and lame in Ben's opinion. Anyway it was a
fun way to spend an hour considering there was nothing else going on all night
we were interested in -- it was sock hop 50's and 60's night which is just
boring after the second cruise or so.
We ended up sitting in the Martini bar listening to the duo who were playing
in the Rendez-Vous lounge right below and sipping cocktails. Around midnight
we sampled a couple of "gourmet bites" (which is what's available instead of
the midnight buffet on most nights) and they were anything BUT gourmet.
Day 3, Aruba
We slept in again and missed the 11:30 trivia. So we just grabbed a very light
breakfast (available till noon) and went off the ship. We caught a cab to
the Palm beach ($10), rented a couple of recliner chairs ($5/each) and spent
the next couple of hours on a gorgeous white sand beach with clean clear blue
water which felt fabulous. After feeling sufficiently baked we caught a cab
back to town and found an internet cafe right across from where the ship was
docked. After checking email, etc. we headed back on-board.
We got some very late lunch, went to trivia (second on a technicality) and then
went back to the cabin to veg for the next few hours. Dinner menu at the
restaurant didn't really catch our eye so we decided to skip it in favor of
the more casual options at the Oceanview cafe (which had pizza, pasta, and
sushi every night) also because tonight was the big Christmas buffet which we
definitely wanted to try and it's hard to be hungry for the buffet after a
dinner in the dining room, even if you have the early seating and don't finish
everything.
We spent a little time listening to the party band Legacy in the Constellation
lounge. They are quite good as a dance band but also just for listening.
After splitting a pizza slice and a little bit of baked pasta of the day
upstairs we hung around the aft bar on deck ten (which is where the cigar
smokers gathered in the evenings, but we found a nice upwind spot) and
listened to the guitarist/singer who was there nightly. He entertained with
a nicely balanced set of songs, providing us classics from the 60's, 70's
80's and even 90's.
A little after midnight we headed to the dining room for the stampede which
was the Christmas Buffet.
It was pretty impressive, especially the huge ice sculptures, the entire
gingerbread house neighborhood (actually there were three!) and all the various
decorations. I actually went back upstairs to get the camera to take some
photos. The food was okay. They had a goose at the carving stations. All the
shrimp and smoked salmon you can eat, so what else does one need?
Day 4, Cruising to Panama canal (Christmas Day)
Inexplicable, I wake up very early (we did set the watches back an hour last
night) and end up in the gym a little before 7am. Almost all the treadmills
are taken, but it doesn't feel quite as crowded as it does later in the day.
This time I looked around and found that in fact there is a little room to
the front starboard side with free weights (four incline benches and dumbells
ranging from 5 to 45 lbs pairs). By the time I'm done working out full breakfast
is being served so I have some, including a fresh made-to-order omlette at the
station where they also make any eggs to order. They sort of need to as the
breakfast buffet hot selection is rather pathetic. I must say I've been
really underwhelmed by the buffets so far this cruise.
After a mid-morning nap we wake up and go about a do-nothing at-sea day.
We have a long leisurely lunch in the dining room. We go to Christmas themed
trivia where we pick up some keychains. We walk around the ship, we watch
some TV (lots of programs on the history of Panama Canal are playing), I go
to other enrichment lecture from the vocal teacher. We check out the
afternoon tea. We relax around the cabin, eventually we get dressed for
Christmas dinner.
After dinner there is nothing around the ship we're interested in so we go
to the cabin and watch a pay-per-view movie ("Swimming Pool") which is half
in English and half in French with no subtitles. Oops.
Afterwards we wander around the ship a little and eventually get tired and go
to sleep to get up early the next morning to watch the ship go through the
Gatun locks.
Day 5, Cruising through Panama Canal
We wake up at 8:30am as the ship is approaching the locks. We go up to OceanView
cafe, get breakfast and watch our approach as we eat. We spend the next couple
of hours walking around the ship checking out our progress through the locks from
various decks, aft and forward, eventually we settle on our balcony which has a
pretty nice view, no crowding and is close to the airconditioned cabin. After
the ship enters Gatun lake I go to the swimming pool to cool off. Lots of people
had the same idea as it was packed (while the hot tubs were completely empty).
Ben spends the rest of the morning on the balcony watching the lake, the shore
and the other ships go by.
I take a nap in the afternoon and miss some of the later locks but get up in time
to see us pass under the bridge of the Americas.
We have a super fast dinner as our tablemates are planning on taking the tenders
into Panama which we decide to skip.
Day 6, Cruising to Costa Rica
A usual sea day -- some trivia, some food, some gym-time, some pool-time.
Second formal night is tonight so a dinner and more karaoke and some dancing.
There is a black jack tournament which I enter but I end up regretting it as it's
not very well organized. I end up waiting around for over 40 minutes for my round
to go, get unlucky, then mount a comeback and then have the wrong thing happen
on the last hand and I'm out.
Day 7, Costa Rica
We stop by trivia on our way ashore to Costa Rica and win some pens. We get off
the ship and walk around, looking for a tour or something like that, but the
oppresive heat is getting to both of us and after 40 minutes we decided that
we're not up to braving the heat and head back to the ship for cooling off.
After sitting in the pool for 20 minutes and then swimming some laps I have a
light lunch and we go to another trivia (more pens!)
We end up eating around 5pm between tea sandwiches, a hot dog for Ben and some
pasta for me we figure we'll just skip dinner. We catch a movie in the cinema
(Confidence) then we hear the acapella group, and then the evening's show which
is an Argentine group doing some Tango, some folk dancing, drumming, tapping etc.
Pretty cool and a bit different.
We have some sushi at the Sushi Cafe (not horrible but not very high quality
either) The Newlywed and not so newlywed show is okay, it's a little old, but
some of the answers are funny enough to make it worth-while still. We then do
a little dancing to "Motown night" and end up calling it a night.
Day 8, Cruising to Mexico
At this point we've got a routine. Breakfast at the buffet between 10 and 11,
some morning trivia, another enrichment class, light lunch, frequently in the
AquaSpa Cafe where the chilled soups are. Maybe the pool, or steam room for
Ben, some more trivia, gym. Today there's a passenger talent show which I take part
in with the rest of the singers from the enrichment class (we do a group number).
Tonight is "informal" and island night so we both incorporate hawaiian shirts into
our outfits. The show is two piano players. The movie is Lord of the Rings the
Two Towers which I might try to see if not for the fact that it's over three hours!
The piano players are AMAZING. Vladimir and Nadja Zaitzev (from Kiev) are award
winning pianists and they play a nice wide range of numbers including a few for
four hands on the piano. At one point he asks how many people want to hear
country music (which I hate). Lots of people say Yay so he says "Okay! But from
my country!" I laugh my head off.
Day 9, Huatulco, Mexico
Our plan is to get off the ship and find some watersports, maybe rent some jetskis.
It's oppresively hot, Huatulco is a tiny place with lots of vendors selling stuff
and a beach just off of the pier. There is one little internet cafe where most
PCs don't work and the ones that do are useless as their connection is down.
Jetskis are $45 for 30 minutes so we pass and end up going back to the ship to enjoy
it while it's somewhat uncrowded.
We have another dinner at the SS United States. The chocolate souffle alone is
worth eating there every night, I decided. It was incredible.
Day 10, Acapulco, Mexico (New Year's Eve)
We were undecided on whether to bother with seeing the divers so we played things
by ear. We end up coming off the ship around 12:30 and hiring a driver to show
us around for $35. He takes us to some nice outlooks and then we end up catching
the divers at 1pm. Loads of tourists there. It's not really that impressive,
but I'm glad we did it so I'm not wondering if we missed something amazing. I
bet it looks a lot more impressive at night after dark.
After dinner I sneak into the terminal building to do some more email and phoning
(it's New Year's Eve) and while I'm typing some email the power goes out in the
whole building. It comes back on in a few minutes and I'm guessing that it happens
quite often as no one seemed surprised or bothered by it.
We watch "Down with Love" in the cinema which I've seen before. We find it hilariously
funny, but same as when I saw it before, I don't think anyone else does.
New Year's Eve is a huge deck party with passengers, officers, crew -- everyone.
They hand out (free) champaign about 10-15 minutes before midnight and there is a
ship-wide count-down. Luckily it wasn't quite as hot as the previous few days,
otherwise dancing out on deck would have been horribly uncomfortable. We don't
stay up too late as it's very crowded with lots of kids running around and lots
of ship officers smoking cigars all over the deck.
Day 11, cruising to Cabo
Yes another sea day. I get to the dining room for breakfast (first time all cruise).
It's slow just like the lunches.
We also make it lunch in the dining room and end up at the table from hell. This
is why I don't like open seating. Whatever your political persuasion, your worst
nightmare was sitting at this table and wanting to talk politics. Blech! And
the food took forever to arrive which made people both idle-mouthed and grumpy.
Never Again!
More trivia, more library for some more books, more movie watching and more trivia.
I fall into a great book by Ken Follett (Hornet Flight) and don't emmerge till I
finish the whole 500 pages. I decided to skip the second black jack tournament
since the first one seemed very disorganized and I felt the house kept way too
much of the entry fees as their cut.
Last Karaoke was tonight, unfortunately even though it was advertized as "adult
karaoke" which was enforced the first two nights, this one was pretty much taken
over by the teens and pre-teens which was quite annoying. The activities staff
let it happen even after a couple of complaints.
There was a "later" comedy show which was horrible. After the first three jokes
all of which were mind-bogglingly bad I left.
Day 12, Cabo San Lucas
Our only ship-bought tour, kayaking and snorkling. We take the tender to land
which is a very messy and disorganized process as they call open tenders right
as we are waiting for our number to be called so everyone rushes down at once.
Eventually we make it and meet up with the group of 17 people doing this tour.
We take the water taxi to a beach five minutes away, suit up and paddle (across
the way of all the tenders and fishing boats and jetskis, yikes) past the
pelican rock to natural arches and then to lover's beach for 45 minutes of
whatever. We choose some rock climing and general loitering around instead of
snorkling, and eventually all paddle back to the other beach and catch the
water taxi and tender back to the ship. It was quite fun though we feel exhausted
both from paddling for over an hour and from being in the sun for three.
After a quick lunch I take a long nap before the final formal night.
Final formal night included the lobster tail and the baked alaska parade. We
also got vouchers for the pre-paid gratuities in the cabin in the usual envelopes.
We filled out a form half-way through the cruise to charge standard gratuities to
out account figuring we could add some cash to the envelope for those who go
above and beyond.
Day 13, Cruising to California
We get our luggage tags while we're at breakfast (table for two please!) and we
have early disembarkation. We're expected in a lounge on three at 8:05 am. Since
the ship is scheduled in at 8am I'm thinking either we'll be sitting and waiting
for a long time or maybe they get in a lot earlier and expect to be cleared by
8am.
We filled out our custom forms and turned them in (they were collecting them for
everyone to turn them all over rather than the usual when you hold your own and
hand it in as you get out of the customs area).
Other than some more trivia nothing on the schedule is calling out to us. We don't
feel the need to hear the disembarkation talk as it's my 17th cruise and I can't
imagine what they'd say I haven't heard before. We sit around and debate taking
all our luggage with us versus putting it outside that night and hoping that we'll
see it again on the pier (on a previous cruise our luggage got stolen during that
procedure by HAL Zaandam crew).
We manage breakfast in the dining room due to all these favorable time changes.
For once we get our order taken promptly and our food shortly thereafter. It's
better than the buffet.
Lunch is the buffet. Then a couple of trivias -- we finally win the t-shirts
-- and some packing. Quick dinner, some more packing then we go to the theater to
see "A League of Extraordernary Gentlemen". The kindest thing I can say
about it is that we were both baffled how this movie managed to get made.
We handed out our envelopes in the evening. We tipped everyone the
stardard recommended amount, including the assistance matre'd and the
chief housekeeper, as I heard in the final talk "The chief housekeeper
makes sure your luggage makes it to your cabin and then back onto the pier"
We're *always* going to tip the chief housekeeper.
After finishing packing and putting our bags in the hallway (fingers crossed
that we'll see them again tomorrow) we go out for a final nightcap and some
dancing before retiring for the last time in our cabin. Two week cruise can
really make you attached to a little room on a big ship.
Day 14, Disembarkation, San Diego
Our flight is from Orange County airport which is about 80 miles from where we are
docking in San Diego. I have a one-way car rental which was the cheapest way to
get there for the two of us. Our flight is at 1:20pm and the ship is due to dock
at 8am. The guest relations desk put us on an early disembarkation list since we
have to be at the airport by noon and they consider this close. I figure if we
are off the ship by 10am we'll cab to car rental company two miles away, get the
car and be in Santa Ana in less than 90 minutes with plenty time for a leisurely
lunch.
We go down to the Gamma room on Deck 3 around 8am and alternate milling around
and sitting around with everyone else. About 8:20 a staff person comes by and
says that sorry we're running about 20 minutes late. At this point a few people,
including us start drifting towards the gangway (which is on the same level).
We end up sitting around in the shore excusion office area, which has TVs and
is right next to the gang-way, until a few minutes before 9am when the security
gets a thumbs up to let us off.
We walk off, get our luggage and see that there is no immigration or anything,
we just walk straight off to the cab line. 10 minutes later we are at Avis
by San Diego airport, and by 9:30 we are driving up to Orange County.
We make our flight easily with time for a leisurely lunch. By the way, the
one-way car rental is $40 total, much better than various limo and bus rates
from San Diego.
Overall impressions:
The ship is nice. Everything was easy to find however, detailed maps on each
floor near stairs/elevators would have been welcome the first day or two.
By floor: Constellation lounge (disco at night) could use a better dance floor,
the metal over concrete is very hard on the feet after a few hours of dancing.
The sound system is good and both the band that played there and the
NY eve when the orchestra played there the layout allowed enough room
on the little stage for them to play without blocking parts of the dance
floor. Lots of seating, quite comfortable.
The jogging track was good: 1/5 of a mile around, but it was far too hot for
running outside on this itinerary. AquaSpa was nicely equipped, though a bit
under-air-conditioned. 14 treadmills were always in use but tended to be
enough, seldom was the wait very long. The classes seemed to be packed even
though they charged for many of them.
Salon, run by Steiner, is the usual outrageous rip-off. They have gotten
completely shameless and now ring stuff up for you that you never ask for,
nor are you even told about it until you question the bill. In addition
they just lie through their teeth about *everything* at this point, all to
get a sale. As a particularly ridiculous example, they have big banners
selling their fitness services claiming that an average passenger will
gain 2 pounds a day on a cruise (that would be an average gain of 28 lbs
for our two week cruise). It's bad enough when they try to sound all
scientific about "toxins" this and "toxins" that, but this was just laughable.
By the way, they include 10% gratuity automatically now, I'm not even sure
it's optional to remove it.
The pool is okay. There's one that's large and deep and a second one next
to it that's smaller. There's also the Thalassotherapy pool in the AquaSpa
which was pretty warm but not quite hot enough to sub for a hottub of which
there were two in the AquaSpa (no kids allowed, enforced) and four
more by the regular pools (kids must be adult-supervised, not enforced).
Lots and lots of deck chairs, not much saving going on, things removed when
left on chairs for too long.
Food on deck ten was the AquaSpa which was a nice healthy selection, always
a chilled soup, three or four cold plates plus a couple of desserts. Only
decaf in that area though. The grill by the pool had pizza and pasta along
with burgers, hotdogs and fries during the day (late at night the pizza and
pasta moved to one of the stations in OceanView Buffet).
The buffet itself was decent at breakfast and generally underwhelming for
lunch. Nothing was really bad, just nothing very good either. I'd rank the
buffet food as equal or worse than buffet on my last Carnival cruise earlier
the same year. At breakfast the french toast was great as was the omelette
and eggs-made-to-order stations. At lunch those stations usually had pasta
made to order (as opposed to baked pasta dish of the day which was with
pizza at the grill).
Dessert selection was always decent looking, but very few things impressed me.
Only bread pudding and lychee tartlets were memorable after two weeks. All the
way aft was a sandwich and soup buffet open later, and afternoon tea was also
in the buffet area except for one day when it was in the dining room. For
tea the sandwiches were usually excellent and ranged from the usual to the
unusual. They had cheeses for lunch in the dessert section but the selection
was always minimal and tended to be the same.
Casual dinner and Sushi Cafe were also in this area. The simple menu seemed
like a good choice for people with little kids who didn't want to sit through
five courses in the dining room. Sushi was self-serve and like I said before
was decent without being very impressive. Mostly same two or three kinds of
rolls, tuna, salmon, shrimp and sometimes eel. The program said there was
sushi and sashimi, but there was never any sashimi, I asked.
Dec 10 aft was a nice bar (which became a cigar lounge in the evenings,
but it was outdoors). Nice happy hour special drinks there late afternoons,
and a guitarist/singer till 1am every evening. He was quite good.
I didn't make much note of the children's center or the kid program but there
were about 400 kids on our sailing and I'm guessing about 350 of them were
happily in the children's program because we never saw them. The other fifty
tended to do the usual annoying thing: sit on the stairs all night, run up
and down the hallways past our room, steal decorations from cabins' doors,
push all the buttons in the elevators and the like. Not too bad for holiday
sailing though.
Speaking of holiday sailing, the Christmas decorations were minimal and
tasteful, not gaudy and overbearing. The only special thing (other than
the Hanukah and Christmas services that were listed in the program) was
the Christmas theme grand midnight buffet evening of the 24th.
Our cabin, category 2A, 9173 (slightly larger balcony due to shape of ship).
Decent cabin, a little on the small side compared to the last few we had
(Top category of balcony cabins on Princess and a suite on Carnival Paradise).
Shower only, no bathtub. Big enough shower and well designed shower curtain.
Very, very, very poor lighting in the cabin. Reading lights were useless for
night-time reading. The two lights over the little "makeup table" were useless
for actual lighting -- only providing general light.
Closet was big enough for the two of us for two weeks and the safe worked great.
The "mini-bar" refrigerator worked great to chill the two bottles of dessert
wine we brought with us as well as a couple of bottles of lemonade and juice
we kept there so we wouldn't have to go to the deck every time we got thirsty.
We did not purchase anything from the mini-bar.
Unfortunately the last night we got charged for a bottled water that
was supposedly in our cabin (it never was) and it took an annoying amount
of time to get this fixed (which it never was) as the guest services
desk insisted that only the room stewart could reverse this charge since
he was the one who charged it and he didn't show up to deal with it
till 7:30am disembarkation morning. After explaining how they put the
bottled water into every cabin and me saying, well, that's nice but
where is it then -- we didn't drink it -- he offered me $3 cash from
his own wallet for it (why didn't he offer to remove the charge from
the account?) At this point I told him to forget it -- we were going
to leave a few extra bucks for him when leaving in the am, but this
fiasco convinced me that $3 (or the bottled water or the 15% gratuity)
was enough extra for him.
As long as I'm on the bill, everything else was fine. There were
two charges that were reversed, one when we accidently got charged
a regular price instead of drink-special-of-the-day price for a drink,
and the other was for the movie we saw in the cabin as it was half
in French and not subtitled. They were quite apologetic about that one.
The library seemed nice -- they had all the books I brought with me to read, which
was slightly annoying. I ended up borrowing a couple of paperbacks there to read
that others left and left all of mine behind by the end of the cruise. Hours
seemed generous.
The Tower seemed to be a teen club/hangout, they had some games but nothing we
found interesting. Btw, this was another shortcoming of this cruise, we couldn't
find games we wanted to play, all they had was scrabble, monopoly, Sorry and
checkers. We like Trivial Pursuit, Outburst, Tabboo, etc.
Deck five was the top level of the dining room which is where our tables was,
the Martini-Champagne bar where we spent a bit of time drinking, the cafe Milano
where we spent almost no time, but where you could get pastries or espresso/latte
type of stuff. Further along was the "Emporium", all the shops on deck. The
selection was decent but some of the prices were highway robbery. 4oz bottle
of contact lense cleaning solution was $7.45. At home you can get 16oz for less
than that. The top level of the tri-level theater was all the way forward on five.
Drink prices, btw, were quite reasonable, especially to us San Franciscans.
The theater was fantastic. There seemed to be almost no bad seats, aside maybe from
the ones all the way on the sides. Rows were far enough apart that you could get in
and out without disturbing people too much, and the drink tables had little internal
lights so you could see where you were going after the lights went down.
The dining room was nice enough. Where we were sitting you had the impression
of a very small room, but if you were in the middle of deck four or on five right
near the railing you got a much different feeling of the room. Tables seemed
plenty large enough for the number of people seated at them. We had a table for
six which only had four people and about half the dinners we ate there (out of
eight total) we were by ourselves because the other couple made other plans.
That worked out very well, we also got lucky that they were cool to chat with
(and no one ever brought up politics).
Internet cafe was open 24 hours as it should be, and we'd pop in a lot to wave to
the webcam. The 75 cents per minute price however seemed WAY excessive so we mostly
kept to the plan of using internet in ports. I never stopped by the card room but
it looked like there were a few bridge players enjoying some duplicate games.
Deck four also had Michael's club which is sort of a piano bar where you
listen to a guy play old standards and get a cognac. No smoking allowed.
Casino is also here. Seems okay, but I didn't spend too much time there
except for the single black jack tournament (I blew off the other one)
and just enough time to cash in the Captain's Club match play coupons
(+$20 ka-ching). Btw, other things we got for being members were lots
and lots of chocolates in our room. And a party.
Photo gallery. We looked but didn't purchase anything. They had
digital cameras for sale, also for a price you could dump photos from
your digital camera onto their computers and had them burned onto a
CD. Seemed like a great service if you were the sort of fill up the
digital camera and didn't have extra memory sticks. I think it was
$15/CD not sure about capacity limits.
Rendez-Vous lounge was next to the dining room. We went there for
almost all the trivias and for Karaoke. Black & White Duo played
there many evenings, and they were very close to the worst entertainment
group I've ever heard on a cruise ship.
Deck three was the guest relations, bank (which only took cash for
stamps and postcards) and shore excursion desk where we never went
as we booked the only excurions we took on the TV-based video system
in the cabin. We also used the system to check our account nightly,
otherwise after two weeks it'd have been hard to reconcile the
four page bill on the last morning. The system could also be
used to gamble, check stocks (free), order pay-per-view movies.
Also on three was the cinema (not too well laid out, screen blocked
by heads unless you're in the front row), meeting rooms -- decent
chairs with horribly designed retrackable folding desktop that
tended to fold itself when it had a drink on it (ouch!), and
the SS United States, the alternative restaurant with its own
kitchen.
Our only occassions to go to decks one and two were the tenders
and gangways. Medical center was on one and I almost had to go there
when I started getting sick on the 12th day and wasn't sure I could
make the shore excusion -- you can get a refund with a note from the
medical center verifying you were sick, quite a reasonable policy.
I did overhear people say their prices were amazingly reasonable.
Overall the ship was quite nice -- the elevators were fast and plentiful
(three forward, three aft and four glass scenic elevators midship),
lots of public space, quite clean. I would sail on a Millenium class
ship again, which is not how I feel about Century class Celebrity ships.
Any specific questions, feel free to email me. If you've read this
far, you haven't had as much fun reading this as I had writing it,
but I thank you anyway. :)
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