DragonOfTheSeas goes LIVE to Mardi Gras on the Equinox 2.20.17

We booked this cruise in December 2014 and we are excited it is finally here. We have never booked anything that far in advance. We usually sail Royal Caribbean and will be comparing the two lines in this live review. If you have questions post them here and I will find an answer if I can. If there are others on my cruise that read this—do not be shy. Add your 2 cents.

We have a great itinerary:

Fort Lauderdale—Monday, Feb 20

At Sea--Tuesday, Feb 21

Grand Cayman—Wednesday, Feb 22

Costa Maya—Thursday, Feb 23

Friday—Friday, Feb 24

At Sea--Saturday, Feb 25

New Orleans—Sunday to Tuesday, Feb 26-28 [Mardi Gras]

At Sea--Wednesday, March 1

At Sea--Thursday, March 2

Fort Lauderdale—Friday, March 3

I have only done 1 other live thread and that was from Alaska. I enjoyed that cruise so much by sharing with others. . . . and our family and friends could follow along. The limiting factor will be internet access. I do not plan to buy a plan [although I might change my mind]

We are Diamond plus members with Royal Caribbean and will get 45 min each free internet since that makes us Elite with Celebrity. I have free data with my Verizon unlimited plan in Mexico and once we are in New Orleans I am on my Verizon plan again. . . . We will see if that works.

Now for a little about us-- We are active 60somethings. We have sailed on Carnival,Celebrity and Royal Caribbean. We havecruised mostly on Royal Caribbean and are Diamond plus which gives us Elitestatus on this cruise. [which will notcount for much] Someone who is doing a Back to Back and now aboard the Equinox says there will be 19Zeniths and ~ 1000 Elite/Elite plus for our cruise.

This cruise is billed a “Signature Sailing.” So, it attracted many frequent cruisers.

Our last Celebrity cruise was in 2010 and we expect lots ofchanges since then. We have the classicdrink package, OBC and free grats as part of our booking. My Mardi Gras masks and beads are ready. I will be back tomorrow. :D

Also on this cruise. Booked the first day and landed a prized 1A hump cabin at far less than if I had waited. Shoreside Concierge called Thursday and said that there were 16 Zeniths. Perhaps 3 added and that would be a record. I was on a cruise with 17 Zeniths. With over 1000 Elites and Elite + members they might use vouchers. I agree that the numbers of very experienced cruisers shows the popularity of this cruise. Also shows that people will book at almost any price when Celebrity offers a great itinerary. These Signature Cruises certainly book very quickly. There is a great staff on Equinox and I am looking forward to a wonderful adventure.

We're booked on the '18 cruise. What I'm most interested in is how the ship parks in NOLA & do they turn in the middle of one of the days in port to avoid backing out at night?

We're booked on the '18 cruise. What I'm most interested in is how the ship parks in NOLA & do they turn in the middle of one of the days in port to avoid backing out at night?

We'll see what they do this year, but no guarantee what they might do next year. We don't know if they will be using the same pier next year.

We're booked on the '18 cruise. What I'm most interested in is how the ship parks in NOLA & do they turn in the middle of one of the days in port to avoid backing out at night?

We'll see what they do this year, but no guarantee what they might do next year. We don't know if they will be using the same pier next year.

There was a lot of discussion over the last months regarding which pier we would use and when we would arrive/clear customs.

Some thought we would go to the Poland St pier. Others contacted Celebrity and they port and were told we would go to Julia Street.

We will let you know how it goes. :) Thanks for your interest.

Thanks for the review.

Looking forward to your LIVE report! Wishing you a fabulous cruise.

Thanks for the review.

Looking forward to your LIVE report! Wishing you a fabulous cruise.

We are leaving the hotel now. The next post will be from the ship. Yeah!! :D

Thanks for the review.

Looking forward to your LIVE report! Wishing you a fabulous cruise.

We are leaving now. The next post will be on the ship!!

edit: Sorry, double post. CC must be having issues this morning. It told me my post failed and when I wrote it again it posted both of them.

We booked a concierge cabin mainly to get the 3 perksincluded. [i cannot remember if the balcony cabins got all 3 perks, too. Maybe someone else can answer that.] I have read a lot on CC that most do notthink the extra money is worth it for a concierge cabin. I will let you knowwhat we think.

Here is a look at our cabin. It is the same size as a regular balcony cabin. Yes I know they are called veranda cabins onCelebrity—but, I come from Royal Caribbean. It will not take me long to learnthe X lingo.

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This is the balcony. Thebig plus we have read on concierge class cabins are these foot stools.

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Here is the bathroom—it has the glass tube showerdoors. It is bigger than on Royal.

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I am not sure why my pictures posted as they did. I will try to insert them differently. :confused:

--Tried another method and that did not work, sorry. I will get it fixed.

One of the perks for a concierge cabin is expedited checkin. We arrived at the terminal after dropping off our Alamo rental at FLL. It took us 25 minutes to check in Terminal 18and we were onboard at 11:40.

You can see that there was a pretty empty terminal as wearrived.

Another perk for concierge class is a sit down lunch on embarkation day. I have read that this just started in the last few months. We found this to be a very nice way to start the cruise. [We find the buffet on many cruise to be chaos on embarkation]

Here are a pic of the menu:

IMG]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w519/DragonOfTheSeas/70391689-e81a-4191-8e29-e942a082642f_zpsb2nhgymx.jpg[/img]

We had the best muster drill Ever. We were in the Ensemble lounge and the Activities Director led it. We had comfy chairs and a funny man in charge--yet, he covered everything that needed to be covered. :D

I hope CC is working better tomorrow. :(

I am happy to see this Live thread as we were originally booked on this cruise and canceled to go on a Mexico land trip.

If any of you go to Cafe al Bacio and see Bar Server Eugenia from the Ukraine, please tell her Kathy and Jack are thinking of her and wishing her a fun Mardi Gras cruise and wish we were there to see her. She knows we canceled as we have been in touch by email. She is very sweet and so helpful and will serve you very well.

I wish all of you on the cruise a wonderful time!

CC appears to be having a lot of problems today.

Kathy

Thanks for doing this. We have some friends on this cruise so will enjoy following along.

By the way, you are entitled to 90 minutes internet each as Elite Captain's Club members so you have more to play with than you thought.

Happy sailing :)

BON VOYAGE TO ALL!

We have friends on this sailing so can't wait for the live reports.....Definitely should be fun....

For some reason when I posted the above, thread did not advance ..????

Test

My post did not cause thread to advance....this is a test

Dragon...dropping in to cruise along with you.;) Can't wait for this vicarious experience to get under weigh. Bon voyage and laissez les bon temps rouler!:D

Hoping CC is working again and we will be getting live reports from this thread...

We wanted to book this cruise when we were on board the Equinox in 2015. Unfortunately Concierge and above was fully sold out that far back.. As a result there were no perks on other staterooms, so we backed out and booked for a later cruise which is now only 2 weeks away.

We will be following your posts with extreme interest.

Have a great time

Something wrong with this thread. No sign of my original post. Just a test message to see if this appears.

Edit: Aha, and now it finally appears

Sure wish they would fix whatever is wrong with the boards.:(

Also following along!

We are not back on the Equinox till November :( so thanks for going live!

EW

ps: tell everyone in the GastroBar hello from the crazie Cowboy fans from Tx.