Loyal Royal goes X! Equinox Nov 9-20 2015 Photo Review

Still loving this review Darkwolfe. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

As one who was on board Equinox while all of you were delayed, we were dealing bad for you. Kept checking with the Blu maitre d' who kept saying "322 people still not on board".

But I still have to disagree with you on a Panama visit. We really enjoyed our tour to the Gatun Locks and the new locks under construction. Colon is as unsightly and gear-inducing as you say but the locks were interesting. And I talked to folks who took an excursion to Panama City and enjoyed it.

keep it coming!!!

Still loving this review Darkwolfe. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

 

As one who was on board Equinox while all of you were delayed, we were dealing bad for you. Kept checking with the Blu maitre d' who kept saying "322 people still not on board".

 

But I still have to disagree with you on a Panama visit. We really enjoyed our tour to the Gatun Locks and the new locks under construction. Colon is as unsightly and gear-inducing as you say but the locks were interesting. And I talked to folks who took an excursion to Panama City and enjoyed it.

 

keep it coming!!!

Agree with lovestx here, I'm sorry you had a bad time, but I had a totally different experience in Panama. We took the Gatun Lake Eco Cruise and Locks tour and had a fantastic time. One of the highlights of our trip. Agreed that Colon isn't somewhere you'd want to just wander around, though. This is a great review so far, thanks for posting!

Loving your review & photos!

I agree that Panama is pretty much a dump. We did however take a nice tour to Portobello (meh) & the Gatun Locks ( fascinating) . We had a great tour guide who kept apologizing for the litter, saying that the residents re litter as fast as its cleaned up, & they take no pride in their environment. We had taken a PC cruise in the past, & it was neat on this trip to see the locks from the outside, as well as the new ones veing constructed. Our guide was very skeptical as to the new locks being finished by April.

Still loving this review Darkwolfe. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

 

As one who was on board Equinox while all of you were delayed, we were dealing bad for you. Kept checking with the Blu maitre d' who kept saying "322 people still not on board".

 

But I still have to disagree with you on a Panama visit. We really enjoyed our tour to the Gatun Locks and the new locks under construction. Colon is as unsightly and gear-inducing as you say but the locks were interesting. And I talked to folks who took an excursion to Panama City and enjoyed it.

 

keep it coming!!!

Our cruise on Royal C...was a bit different than Darkwolfe's tour..,. Although not a full transit....it did a transit thru Gatun lock, then folks on excursions got off while cruising the lake, then we went to Gamboa. Aerial tram tour....nice butterfly preserve, then the tram ...great views...then to a resort for drinks, and back to the ship via a very nice pier area...great shops, food and music..... In Panama, areas that US formerly developed were much nicer than other places...but the rainforest was nice....but very hot !

On this itin next yr we'll do the info tour about the new locks,...and appreciate all the pictures! Really awesome...thanks

We did a tour of the Gatin locks and the expansion with Roberto and then ugly it was a good tour and very informative. I agree that Colon was nothing to see and very run down but it was worth while to see the locks.

If we ever have this port on a future itinerary I th No I would just use it as a ship day as there is not much more to see aside from the canal.

We did a tour of the Gatin locks and the expansion with Roberto and then ugly it was a good tour and very informative. I agree that Colon was nothing to see and very run down but it was worth while to see the locks.

 

If we ever have this port on a future itinerary I th No I would just use it as a ship day as there is not much more to see aside from the canal.

Agree..on a second trip we stayed on the ship and spent only a few minutes at the flea maket...really a seedy place!

I apologize for being slow on the update. Nasty cold slowing me down a bit.

Actually I'm glad some folks had a better experience than I did. Had mine been the average, that would really say bad things about Panama.

Puerto Limon, Costa Rica (Bonus Bucket Check- Rafting the Reventazon)

If Panama was the low point of this trip, Costa Rica was arguably one of the high points. Long term CC member Dirtgirl was behind the plotting for this stop and it was a very good choice. We were going white-water rafting on the Reventazon River. I'm not totally sure but I think we had a complete collection of newbies on this trip. So here we are standing all rigged up, lifejackets, helmets, paddles... and some very intimidating looking rapids in front of us. I wasn't the only one with "What have I gotten myself into?" going through my head.

That feeling didn't last long. Once into the water and our first good dunk, it was all "Bring it on!" for everyone in the boat. Our guide did a very good job of explaining the commands he would need us to follow to make a fun and safe journey down the river. Initially he tried to stick to English for everything but forgot and slipped into Spanish for a brief moment. He apologized for it, but we reassured him that we got it with no problem. After that, he'd use whichever came to hand first. It made sense and we had a very good time on the river.

Three or four miles down from where we started we saw the ship tour boats coming into the river. I felt somewhat sorry for these guys, they had only Class 1 rapids to play with. We'd been tearing through up to Class 3 and loving it! I don't know that I'll ever be crazy enough to tackle Class 5 rapids, but I'll be looking for more Class 3s to enjoy at the very least.

After clearing the rapids and a little delay waiting for our ride (van had a flat), we got back to the rafting company's location and had a pretty good lunch. Very tasty chicken, rice, and black beans. Knock back a couple of locally produced Imperial beers and all was good.

Our return to the ship was just the way it should be, uneventful and reasonably quick. Thus ended a very very good day in Costa Rica.

Tackling the river

DSC_5265 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

Not getting out of this without a soaking!

DSC_5361 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

A quiet spot between rapids.

DSC_5437 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

(Note: The above three were taken by the rafting company. They did a good job too.)

And a little something to wash down lunch afterwards! :D

DSCF0128 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

Next up: Adventures in Belize!

Puerto Limon, Costa Rica (Bonus Bucket Check- Rafting the Reventazon)

If Panama was the low point of this trip, Costa Rica was arguably one of the high points. Long term CC member Dirtgirl was behind the plotting for this stop and it was a very good choice. We were going white-water rafting on the Reventazon River. I'm not totally sure but I think we had a complete collection of newbies on this trip. So here we are standing all rigged up, lifejackets, helmets, paddles... and some very intimidating looking rapids in front of us. I wasn't the only one with "What have I gotten myself into?" going through my head.

 

That feeling didn't last long. Once into the water and our first good dunk, it was all "Bring it on!" for everyone in the boat. Our guide did a very good job of explaining the commands he would need us to follow to make a fun and safe journey down the river. Initially he tried to stick to English for everything but forgot and slipped into Spanish for a brief moment. He apologized for it, but we reassured him that we got it with no problem. After that, he'd use whichever came to hand first. It made sense and we had a very good time on the river.

 

Three or four miles down from where we started we saw the ship tour boats coming into the river. I felt somewhat sorry for these guys, they had only Class 1 rapids to play with. We'd been tearing through up to Class 3 and loving it! I don't know that I'll ever be crazy enough to tackle Class 5 rapids, but I'll be looking for more Class 3s to enjoy at the very least.

 

After clearing the rapids and a little delay waiting for our ride (van had a flat), we got back to the rafting company's location and had a pretty good lunch. Very tasty chicken, rice, and black beans. Knock back a couple of locally produced Imperial beers and all was good.

 

Our return to the ship was just the way it should be, uneventful and reasonably quick. Thus ended a very very good day in Costa Rica.

 

Tackling the river

DSC_5265 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

 

Not getting out of this without a soaking!

DSC_5361 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

 

A quiet spot between rapids.

DSC_5437 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

 

(Note: The above three were taken by the rafting company. They did a good job too.)

 

And a little something to wash down lunch afterwards!

DSCF0128 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

 

Next up: Adventures in Belize!

My very favourite excursion of the cruise!!!:D What a rush that was! :D And I, too, felt sorry for the ship excursion people with at least 12 people crammed onto each raft!

Love your pictures! A question: Did your RCCL status easily travel with you to Celebrity? After this year we will be elite on X and will consider RCCL again should it be easy to transfer the reciprocity. Did it happen automatically for you or did you have to take action?

Would love to hear about your excursions as your review continues. We go January 2.

Thanks in advance.

Love your pictures! A question: Did your RCCL status easily travel with you to Celebrity? After this year we will be elite on X and will consider RCCL again should it be easy to transfer the reciprocity. Did it happen automatically for you or did you have to take action?

Would love to hear about your excursions as your review continues. We go January 2.

Thanks in advance.

So far as I understand it, when you create your C&A membership, you can enter the membership from Celebrity to have the Elite/Diamond status transfer. I actually let my TA do that on this trip so I didn't even see it. Just pop on Celebrity website and it showed "Elite".

I expect you could call the loyalty program desks on either line to make sure the credits are covered.

Enjoying your review! We've been on EQ twice with another booked for 2017.

On Celebrity/Royal reciprocity- very easy (in both directions). Call Captains Club for Celebrity & give your Crown & Anchor number (or reverse if you are starting with Royal). They'll give you their respective club number, book your cruise the way you normally would using your new number & appropriate status (up to Elite/Diamond) is listed. Easiest thing I've ever done with either cruise line

Dark Wolfe, thank you for the review. Could you tell me what excursion you did in Colon? Was it ship or independent?

Thanks for the great review. I am following with interest as we are on this same cruise in April- although we will overnight in Cartagena.

Karen

Dark Wolfe, thank you for the review. Could you tell me what excursion you did in Colon? Was it ship or independent?

That was independent through ShoreTrips. Worked out quite well.

Thanks for the great review. I am following with interest as we are on this same cruise in April- although we will overnight in Cartagena.

 

Karen

Thanks! Sorry I'm slow on the updates. But, I will keep at it!

Honestly, I think you guys are getting gypped a bit with the overnight in Cartegena. Spending a night on a Belize cay beach would be much more relaxing I think. Just my .02 though. Overnight stays do open up opportunities.

Belize City, Belize (Bucket Check- Climb a Mayan Pyramid)

(Full disclosure- I first hired Major Tom for a cave-tubing tour in 2007 on my second cruise. We got talking that day and the conversation has literally never really stopped. I count him as both friend and my "go-to" guy in Belize.)

A good number people don't care for Belize. I haven't really figured out why unless it's just that annoying tender ride in. It's the longest tender run in the Caribbean and can be a real pain if the water is rough. This trip it was easy and very smooth. Our inbound run was less than 20 minutes on one of the fast tenders. Caught a slower one coming back, but that was only about 30 minutes so still not bad.

Sometimes people complain about Belize City being rough. I've been there twice before. Hah! After seeing Colon and Cartegena, Belize City looks downright relaxed to me. Doesn't mean I'd wander about on my own any time soon, but Belize City at least doesn't look like it's expecting block warfare at any given moment.

I'd planned this little adventure on our CC roll call thread and 20 fellow CC folks jumped in and went for the adventure. Major Tom was our main guide for this trip, but we had a little extra adventure that forced him to miss part of the tour and change out our transportation to get back to Belize City on time.

Our extra adventure was our bus. Some miles out of Belize City it started acting a little weird. Step on the gas and it would jerk weird until it got up to about 45mph and then it would smooth out. Worse, we started smelling some hot metal like a dragging brake. I was right behind the driver and could see the gauges, all looked good. Then BANG! Look out the back window and there's bits of rubber all over the road. One of the rear duals had let go rather spectacularly. Ok that's why there are duals, we keep on. Tom starts planning to get new tires on the bus and bill the motor pool for it. BANG! Again, more bits on the road. Same tire, peeling off the tread. Made a nasty sound that caused more than a few "yipes!" on the bus. Tom's grumbling good by now, so was I.

Bus starts that annoying jerk again when trying to accelerate. By this point, Tom and I are in a discussion about the overall condition of the bus. I can tell my fellow travelers aren't feeling real confident about any longer and it needs to be swapped. Tom gets on his phone and has a fast chat with the motor pool. Contingency plan established. I quit worrying about it.

We pulled up to the boat dock at the New River and everybody bailed out of the now very unpopular van. Bathrooms were handy and were quickly made use of by those that needed them while Tom went ahead to discuss the plan changes with the guides here.

P1010222 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

Tom had gotten our group a private, covered boat for the trip. Looked like a reasonably confortable ride to me. About that point I noticed the twin 300 horse Yamaha kickers on the back of the boat. Well, no worries about power for this trip. Didn't give it much thought for a few minutes after that. Everybody boarded, our guide (Alberto I believe) gave a little intro speach about the New River, then the boat captain says "Hold on to your hats, we're going to kick this time-machine into high gear!" Then the Yamahas dug in, the prow kicked up, and off we went tearing through the New River's channels on a curving, twisting, racing ride that was way more fun than a lazy river cruise could ever be.

P1010232 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

After about an hour of this, the New River open up to nearly a mile wide (for those that like nosing around Google Earth, we came into the wide area at the north end) and our destination was in sight. Once docked, Alberto led us ashore. We made a brief visit through the museum and then we were off to explore the ruin of Lamamai.

P1010233 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

One of the museum exhibits..

DSCF2258 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

One quick side note, take some bug spray. The mosquitoes here are downright vicious at times. Carry a man off if you aren't paying attention. Fortunately they don't like sunscreen either. But I still killed at least three that went after my hands where I didn't have any sunscreen.

We now set off through the paths in the park. First stop was the ball court. Not much known about the game still, but it's starting to sound like it could have been a distant cousin to basketball. There's also still much debate about what happened after the game was over. Given that the Maya were at times rather bloodthirsty, I make no bets.

We also had howler monkeys serenading us for a bit. Fortunately no one had to dodge any... umm... falling projectiles. The monkeys were behaving.

P1010241 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

After the ball court we came to the largest excavated temple in the park. Thankfully, they have constructed a stairway up the back side of the temple so you can reach one of the mezzanine levels without climbing the front steps. From that mezzanine, you can then climb the remainder. I'm not in the best of shape (trying to change that) so the stairway was enough for me. My girlfriend on the other hand, made it to the very top without much trouble. We both managed to get some good pictures around the temple.

Get a good look at the people on top. This thing is much larger than it first appears.

P1010243 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

P1010252 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

Back on the ground again, we set off for the Mask Temple. This temple is not fully excavated and likely never will be since the buried portion of the temple began to crumble when exposed. That caused an immediate halt to the dig. If the lower sections were to disintegrate the entire temple structure would be lost.

P1010259 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

Belize will continue...

Dark Wolfe, thank you for the review. Could you tell me what excursion you did in Colon? Was it ship or independent?

That was independent through ShoreTrips. Worked out quite well.

 

 

 

Thanks! Sorry I'm slow on the updates. But, I will keep at it!

 

Honestly, I think you guys are getting gypped a bit with the overnight in Cartegena. Spending a night on a Belize cay beach would be much more relaxing I think. Just my .02 though. Overnight stays do open up opportunities.

I think Dark Wolfe was confusing Colon with another port. It was a ship excursion through the Panama Canal. I would not do it any other way, due to how long an excursion it was!

Celebrity is opening up evening tours for those overnight stays. I quite liked Cartagena, and did not like Belize City at all. Our cave tubing was cancelled due to high water levels. So, we wandered in Belize City, which I don't recommend doing! I had a guy grab onto me demanding money when I got separated from the group. That was it for me. I could not wait to get back to the ship! I am sure that Belize outside of the city is gorgeous. :)

I think Dark Wolfe was confusing Colon with another port. It was a ship excursion through the Panama Canal. I would not do it any other way, due to how long an excursion it was!

 

Celebrity is opening up evening tours for those overnight stays. I quite liked Cartagena, and did not like Belize City at all. Our cave tubing was cancelled due to high water levels. So, we wandered in Belize City, which I don't recommend doing! I had a guy grab onto me demanding money when I got separated from the group. That was it for me. I could not wait to get back to the ship! I am sure that Belize outside of the city is gorgeous. :)

Dirtgirl is right. I had my head wrapped around Costa Rica when I wrote that and was thinking about the excellent rafting tour instead of the very-not-so-excellent canal tour. Thanks for the catch on that.

And getting out of Belize City is a MUST! :)

Will continue late tonight. Very busy weekend or I'd have had this finished! :(

So much for that original plan. Oh well. Time to wrap up.

Our last stop was Cozumel. We were originally planning to run with friends on an island tour but I got a bit sick that morning and we didn't wind up going. We had brief forays ashore but that was it. Cozumel's port vendors have gotten extremely pushy and that sent my girlfriend back to the ship in a pretty good state of irritation after they would not leave her alone.

I took a few quick shots around, but really wanted to quit feeling blah so not much happened here.

P1010301 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

Much better by mid-afternoon and the weather decided to put on a bit of a show.

P1010307 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

This one is color enhanced just so you can see how wide the rainbow was.

P1010312 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

And our sunset as we turned towards Florida was nothing to ignore either. So even a "sick" day turned out fairly well in the end.

P1010321 by Wulfgar28, on Flickr

Once we returned to Fort Lauderdale, we did a walk-off debark that morning. There was a fairly decent line for it, but the process was as painless as you could ask for. Customs was brief and courteous. We had a cab to the airport within moments of clearing customs and were at our gate to fly home by about 8:30am.

We'll be back on Equinox again, already have it booked even. This was, despite the hiccups, a fantastic trip. Made even more so by our traveling friends from Miami and Canada. Never underestimate how much a group of friends can make a trip so much more fun!

If anyone wishes to ask any questions, do feel free! Safe travels!

~fini~

Very nice report, and well stated.

Thanks for leaving the Equinox in wonderful shape for us to get on as you were leaving. My wifester said last night to a few people it was her best cruise in 25 years!

Thanks Darkwolfe for the great review. I know it's a ton of work so many thanks.

Like you, our cruise was made all the better sharing it with friends.

I would love to hear your comparisons to Royal as we have never done that. Are the demographics that much different? Entertainment? Chair hogging? Did you feel more pampered or welcomed on Equinox?

That type of thing

Okay, so the title of your thread is "Loyal Royal goes Celebrity", I need to ask, was it worth it?

As you can see, my wife and I have been on a couple RCCL cruises and really like what they have to offer offer. Their ships are beautiful and well designed.

We had heard that Celebrity was a "step up" from RCCL. A little classier and more laid back, a bit finer cuisine, just more upscale in general. So we decided that for our upcoming 30th anniversary, we would give Celebrity a try and we booked the Equinox.

So from one "Loyal Royal" to another "Loyal Royal", will we be pleased, impressed, disappointed, torn? Will we miss the outside wrap-around promenade or helipad? Is the nightly Captains Club event on par with that provided in the Diamond Lounge?

It's always a bit "scary" trying something new when your so accustomed to one thing. (i.e. did I make the right decision?)

Really appreciate your honest opinion.

...So from one "Loyal Royal" to another "Loyal Royal", will we be pleased, impressed, disappointed, torn? Will we miss the outside wrap-around promenade or helipad? Is the nightly Captains Club event on par with that provided in the Diamond Lounge?

...

And if you don't mind comparing the "smoking" areas of ship both lines that you observed...One major factor in sailing with X is for the lack of smoking. (not smoke free, but pretty close...close enough that we can avoid the few areas that allow it).

Great Review.

Loved the temple picture!