Live Celebrity Summit April 1st, from a loyal Royal and a few days in Puerto Rico

Hello all,

The time has come for our vacation to Puerto Rico and our 7 day Southern Caribbean cruise on the Celebrity Summit! (at least we hope) As most of you probably know the Summit is having propulsion issues and the cruise before us was shortened by 1 day, the cruise after us is canceled and the cruise after that is shortened to 4 days. (I will say I feel really bad for the altered and canceled cruises, sorry guys:() Hmmmmm, are we nervous? Heck ya!! But really nothing we can do at this point, so were off tomorrow to Puerto Rico.:p

Our vacation will be 3 days in Puerto Rico, Western Puerto Rico and the 7 day Summit cruise to Barbados, St Lucia, Antigua, St Martin, and St Thomas. 3 of those port are new for us, Barbados, St Lucia and Antigua. I will do my best to provide pictures of our adventures in both PR and the cruise but if you have any questions please feel free to ask and I will do my best to find out the answer or get a pic for you.

There will be 11 us in total but my immediate peeps are here.

This was us on Oasis last year.

And this is, well, most of the rest of us (the only pic I could find from last years cruise.

We are Loyal Royal cruisers with one exception thrown in there on the Celebrity Eclipse back in 2011 I think (which BTW was one of our best cruises ever). We are Diamond on RCCL which equates to Elite on Celebrity so we'll so how that compares (although we have only been on 1 cruise as Diamond on RCCL) So I will probably do a lil comparison but mostly I'm just going to enjoy the cruise and hopefully convey that all to you.

Here we are back on the Eclipse.

We booked this cruise while we were on the Navigator a few years ago but unfortunately we didn't exactly know what week to book (spring break week) and we booked the Jewel of the Seas with basically the same itinerary . Come to find out that it was the wrong week by 1 week, so we needed to switch cruises but we didn't like the Jewels itinerary the next week but saw the Summit. The only issue we had is we booked this onboard with the Next Cruise and wasn't sure if they would switch it to Celebrity. We called our T/A and he called RCCL and no problem, plus the cruise was $100pp more but we booked during a 2 "free" sale so we got the classic drink package and a $300 obc from Celebrity and a $240 OBC from out T/A. Score!!! Crazzzzy! (at least I thought)

Our Itinerary

Joining you on here..... and on the Summit! Our family of 5 will also be spending Spring Break sailing!

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Good luck! I'm on the April 22 cruise, after the fix. I too feel sorry for all who have had their cruise cancelled or shortened.

I saw tonight that the April 1st cruise is cancelled. You should have received a e-mail from Celebrity. I hope you read this tonight! Good Luck !

(11 a.m. EDT) -- Celebrity Cruises will pull Summit from operation for a two-week emergency dry dock after ongoing problems with the ship's propulsion system continue to plague the ship. Celebrity previously shortened the March 27 sailing of Summit by one day to work on the same issue.

"Celebrity Cruises is canceling one sailing on Summit to work on an electrical issue on one of the ship's propulsion systems," said Owen Torres of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines' Global Corporate Communications division. RCCL is the parent company of Celebrity Cruises. Torres also confirmed the sailing following the canceled cruise will be shortened.

The affected sailings are the April 1 cruise, which has been completely canceled, and the April 15 sailing, which has been shortened to a four-night cruise departing San Juan, Puerto Rico on April 18. The ship is expected to return to its regular sailing schedule on April 22.

Passengers on the canceled sailing will receive a full refund, as well as a 25 percent credit of the cruise fare paid for a future cruise and $200 per person to cover any flight change fees.

Cruisers on the shortened sailing will receive a direct refund for three nights, as well as on onboard credit worth the value of one night of the cruise fare paid, plus up to $200 per person for airfare change fees and/or hotel costs in San Juan.

--By Dori Saltzman, Senior Editor

So we leave tomorrow night, LAX at 10:35pm to connecting to SJU and Arriving at 12:09pm Wednesday. We live in Northern San Diego county but I can usually find cheaper flights from LA, this flight I found the day the flights opened up, 330 days out. One way to SJU for $172 which I thought was a pretty good deal. I always book one way, I seem to find better deals that way, unfortunately I didn't find quite as good of a deal coming home, I booked a couple months later for $206, so $378 round trip from LAX to SJU, I'll take it. Now our original flight was going through Atlanta but that flights departure time was moved from 10:45pm to 4:30pm and that wasn't going to work since we all need to work on Tuesday and we have a 2 hour drive to LAX. So our new flight goes through JFK but we only have an hour layover, we're praying that's enough time to get to our other flight:eek: I have been google mapping the time from our house to LAX everyday and it looks like about 2 hours at most, my youngest daughter gets off work at 5:30pm so that puts us there around 8pm (again LA traffic, so who knows)

Liked I said we will staying on the west coast of Puerto Rico, Rincon area. We rented a house for all 11 of us which netted each couple about $400 total, way cheaper than a hotel in San Juan plus we get to see more of the island. It's a 2 to 3 hour drive from San Juan so Wednesday afternoon we'll be dead but that's ok because we'll be on vacation:D

Our patio

We really don't have any plans for PR except maybe explore some of the west coast beaches on Thursday and Friday we need to go to San Juan to pick up our niece at the airport at 6pm. We thought maybe we would go early and go to El Yunque rain forest for a quick hike in the am and go back to San Juan for lunch and maybe a quick fort tour (we've never been to El Morro) then off the airport to pick up our guest.

(11 a.m. EDT) -- Celebrity Cruises will pull Summit from operation for a two-week emergency dry dock after ongoing problems with the ship's propulsion system continue to plague the ship. Celebrity previously shortened the March 27 sailing of Summit by one day to work on the same issue.

"Celebrity Cruises is canceling one sailing on Summit to work on an electrical issue on one of the ship's propulsion systems," said Owen Torres of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines' Global Corporate Communications division. RCCL is the parent company of Celebrity Cruises. Torres also confirmed the sailing following the canceled cruise will be shortened.

The affected sailings are the April 1 cruise, which has been completely canceled, and the April 15 sailing, which has been shortened to a four-night cruise departing San Juan, Puerto Rico on April 18. The ship is expected to return to its regular sailing schedule on April 22.

Passengers on the canceled sailing will receive a full refund, as well as a 25 percent credit of the cruise fare paid for a future cruise and $200 per person to cover any flight change fees.

Cruisers on the shortened sailing will receive a direct refund for three nights, as well as on onboard credit worth the value of one night of the cruise fare paid, plus up to $200 per person for airfare change fees and/or hotel costs in San Juan.

--By Dori Saltzman, Senior Editor

Fortunately that was posted in error by cruise critic, it should have read April 8th, not April 1st, so as far as I know we'e still on!!

Joining you on here..... and on the Summit! Our family of 5 will also be spending Spring Break sailing!

 

 

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Woohoo, we'll see you in a few days!

Glad to hear that ! Have a great cruise

Our tags are ready to go!

So far our weather looks good for Wednesday through Saturday in Rincon, PR.

When we board the Summit we will have 5 balconies in a row, deck 7 midship (2a catagory)

This will be the smallest ship we've been on since the Legend of the Seas back in 2003? I think. Coming off Oasis last year, this will be interesting to say the least. Like I said we were 1 other Celebrity sailing and that was 6 years ago and we loved that cruise. Now again the issue of the propulsion issue, hopefully everything will go as planned, I have heard rumors of our cruise being shortened so the can extend the dry dock, or our port time in Barbados will be shortened due to speed issues and even our sailing being canceled. So who knows...

Our port plans are as follows;

Barbados- Silvermoon Catamaran- https://silvermoonbarbados.com/

St Lucia- Nada, walk around the port and do some shopping

Antigua- Antigua Paddles- http://www.antiguapaddles.com/

St Martin- Nada, Walk around and shop and the STAR WARS museum. My wife is a huge Star wars freak!

St Thomas- St John on your own- http://www.celebritycruises.com/plan-a-cruise/shore-excursions/productDetails?productCode=STO3&productId=100000002726025150

ok, I think thats it for tonight, more to come tomorrow.....

Following along. We are on the April 22 repo cruise.

Whitwell

We're on this cruise also been in San Juan since sun weather has been so so brief periods of rain then glorious sunshine then brief period of rain again but nice and hot. Just heading out to get rental car then heading to rainforest for the day see you at the connection party

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Whitwell

We're on this cruise also been in San Juan since sun weather has been so so brief periods of rain then glorious sunshine then brief period of rain again but nice and hot. Just heading out to get rental car then heading to rainforest for the day see you at the connection party

 

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Awesome, we leave in about 12 hours. Can't wait. Thx for the update.[emoji4]

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Following along :) Have a great trip! Some of the pictures are not working for me, but I can see most :)

Sitting on balcony now watching Summit enter the Atlantic after clearing the San Juan harbour sure is a pretty site

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We have made it to LAX! [emoji4]

Sorry no post today with work and driving up to LAX, more to come tomorrow.

Hopefully the pics will show up, I'm only using Tapatalk now so let me know if you can see them.

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Pictures loaded up very quickly. Looking forward to more of your review.

In JFK now, not a bad flight in.

And of course, were delayed. Ughhh

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Sorry, that was a day! Left for LAX last night at 6pm and arrived a little bit ago at out house in PR via JFK. It was about a 3 hour drive from San Juan, but only like 70 miles, traffic is so slow. So we'll worth it tho. A few pics

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And bbq'n some chicken tonight

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Our view flying into San Juan

Adventure of the seas in the background.

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Following! Good Luck with everything! I hope your trip goes off without a hitch!! Can't wait to see your reports at your vacation goes along!!

DH and I have limited cruises - 2 RCCL and 1 next year, and 1 Princess to Alaska. I would really like to cruise on Celebrity so I've been searching around their boards.

Have a great vacay!!

Carol

That house looks fabulous. Right on the beach? Would you be so kind as to share the rental information? Thanks.

Enjoy your cruise.

Following! Good Luck with everything! I hope your trip goes off without a hitch!! Can't wait to see your reports at your vacation goes along!!

 

DH and I have limited cruises - 2 RCCL and 1 next year, and 1 Princess to Alaska. I would really like to cruise on Celebrity so I've been searching around their boards.

 

Have a great vacay!!

 

Carol

Thank you very much. This will be only our second cruise with Celebrity but we really liked the 1st. Now with the perks included in the price, we may be slowly migrating over.

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