Detailed Photo Review of 3/14/16 Celebrity Equinox 11 Night Cruise

Hi Everyone! My name is Dana and I recently returned from an 11-night cruise on the Celebrity Equinox (March 14-25 sailing). I am still sorting through the over 1,200 photos I took, but I wanted to get my review started! As you can see from my cruise history listed below, I have taken several Carnival cruises in the last few years, as well as one Celebrity cruise on the Summit in 2010 (pre-dry dock renovations for the Solstice upgrades). I tend to prefer port-intensive itineraries with fewer sea days, and I pick cruises based on the itinerary more than the ship itself. I am a total Cruise Critic-aholic, and I love reading as many threads as possible to help me research my upcoming cruises. As you can also see in my signature below, I always write a detailed photo review when I return home from my cruises, with a journal-style day-by-day format. This cruise will be no different! If you are looking for a short and sweet review, you might want to look elsewhere... I tend to write like I talk, and I can be a bit long-winded, so my reviews closely resemble novels. On the other hand, if you like reading about lots of details, and if you want to see TONS of photos, this is the review for you! With all of my pre-cruise research, I didn't find very many detailed photo reviews of the Equinox (specifically for this itinerary), so hopefully my review will help some of you to plan for your upcoming cruises! Please feel free to ask questions and post comments along the way... I welcome your feedback :)

I took a Southern Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Valor last March with my boyfriend (he doesn't want his name listed on this site, so I'll just call him J), and within a few weeks of returning home, I felt that urge to book another cruise. Life just isn't as fun without an upcoming cruise to plan for! I had my eye on a Carnival Breeze 8-night sailing when I checked my email and found an interesting email from Celebrity. I have been getting emails from Celebrity since 2010, and I always intended to sail with them again. The email said they were introducing new itineraries with overnight stays in one of the ports. Strangely enough, when I opened the link, none of the itineraries that interested me had an overnight stay! I found an 11-night cruise on the dates we wanted to sail, and the oceanview and balcony cabins had the same price! This deal seemed too good to be true and we didn't want to miss out on it, so that night, J and I called Celebrity and booked the cruise! We decided that we were better off booking then while the balcony price was affordable, and taking the time to think it through (and get vacation days approved from work!) afterwards since we could always cancel if we changed our minds. Also, we booked during a Pick You Perk sale so we opted for the Classic Beverage Package (more on that later!).

Here was the itinerary we booked: Fort Lauderdale --> sea day --> Grand Cayman --> sea day --> Cartagena, Colombia --> Colon, Panama --> Puerto Limon, Costa Rica --> sea day --> Costa Maya, Mexico --> Cozumel, Mexico --> sea day --> Fort Lauderdale. The cruise started on a Monday so we could fly down over the weekend a day or two early, and ended nearly 2 weeks later on Friday of Easter weekend. Yay! We are booked on a cruise!

I'm looking forward to hearing about your adventures. We leave on nearly the same itinerary on Monday.

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Thanks for your report.

I'm looking forward to hearing about your adventures. We leave on nearly the same itinerary on Monday.

 

 

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More likely, you are leaving on the exact same itinerary... just wait until I explain that in my next post ;) Hope you have a fantastic cruise!!

So remember how I originally found out about this cruise because it was listed in an email featuring cruises with overnight stays in port? Well, despite there being no mention of that either on the Celebrity website or in our booking confirmation letter, we were about to hear some big news. The day after we booked the cruise, I hopped on Cruise Critic to find the roll call for our sailing. This was quite an active day in the roll call because apparently, that was the day the people already booked on the cruise found out about a big change in our itinerary. The order of all of our ports was being reversed, we were no longer stopping in Costa Maya, and we would now have an overnight stay in Cartagena, Colombia! This didn't surprise me too much considering our sailing was mentioned in that overnight stay email, but I found it a bit annoying that Celebrity sent out the promotional email before updating the itineraries on their website. Basically we had just booked a cruise that had a very different itinerary from the cruise we were actually going to take, and Celebrity knew about it at the time we booked, but didn't tell us! In fact, it ended up taking Celebrity several months to update the itinerary on their website, so I imagine many other people who booked around the time we booked had the same problem. Thank goodness for Cruise Critic or I might not have known until I got on the ship! Now THAT would have been a HUGE surprise!!!

The itinerary change made a few impacts on our cruise. Firstly, we would now be in Grand Cayman with over 20,000 other cruise ship passengers! When I research itineraries, one of the first things I check for is how many other ships will be in port with us. This would not have been my first choice, especially since it is a tender port and I had a specific private excursion in mind that I wanted to book. Secondly, as I already mentioned, we were no longer going to Costa Maya. This bummed me out because I prefer visiting as many ports as possible on my cruise. We used to have 6 ports and now we would only have 5 ports on an 11 night cruise. Thirdly, on the original itinerary, my birthday fell on a sea day. I was looking forward to this, knowing it was a formal night (based on reviews I had read from that itinerary). With the changes, my birthday now fell on our second day in Colombia. I know we could have planned to just stay on the ship and make it into a relaxing sea day while docked, but I can't give up the chance to explore a port (even if it is a port that I just explored the day before!). So now I needed to find something exciting to do in Colombia that would be worthy of a birthday excursion! And finally, of all the ports on the itinerary, Cartagena was probably the least interesting to me, and that was the port we were staying at overnight! Go figure! I had lots of things I wanted to do and explore in all the other ports, but I found Cartagena to be very limited in things to do, and I read several reviews saying people who had been there before didn't think there was enough sightseeing to fill one port day, let alone two! It's a good thing I love researching my cruises because planning this was going to take a lot of work!!

So why didn't we cancel the cruise and find a different itinerary? Well, I really did want to go to the other ports on this itinerary. I had never been to any of these ports before (including Ft. Lauderdale!!), most of the ports were new to J as well (he had only been to Cozumel and Grand Cayman on prior cruises). We were both looking forward to experiencing this part of the world for the first time together, including setting foot on a new continent in South America. I was also thrilled to be going back on a Celebrity cruise, especially one on an S-class ship (I had been waiting years to check out that hot glass show!!) And all the other itineraries that week were charging more money per night for the balcony cabin, so this cruise was just too good a deal to pass up. I was determined to find amazing things for us to do each day in port, and I was looking forward to exploring the beautiful ship on our 4 sea days. After a bit of thought and discussing our options, we committed to staying on the Equinox for the March 14th sailing.

Here is our revised itinerary map:

Dana, thanks for pushing the boat out on the review! I have been waiting patiently and am in for the long haul.

Have at it!

Norris

Following

Dana, thanks for pushing the boat out on the review! I have been waiting patiently and am in for the long haul.

 

Have at it!

 

Norris

Thanks Norris! I'm glad you found the thread :D

Nice start, following.:)

Enjoying your posts and looking forward to the additional ones.

Keith

Looking at this itinerary for 2017 or 18. Interested to read your review and see pics

I can't wait to read this! You're putting me to shame...I have my pictures on my laptop, but that's as far as I've gotten for now!:o

Subscribed!

Following! Love detailed reviews with pictures. Equinox is my favorite ship.

Looking forward to your review. Will be on Equinox in a month or so too.

Hate the change in port plans, but like a good story, will follow and see what happened. ;)

emelle

Yes! A deladane review... very nice! Looking forward to the rest.

Nice start, following.:)

Thank you!

Enjoying your posts and looking forward to the additional ones.

 

Keith

Thanks! :)

Looking at this itinerary for 2017 or 18. Interested to read your review and see pics

That's great! I hope my review will offer some helpful information for your decision making process!! Please let me know if you have any questions :)

Subscribed!

Thanks!

I can't wait to read this! You're putting me to shame...I have my pictures on my laptop, but that's as far as I've gotten for now!:o

Haha don't worry! It's not a race :p I also have a ton of sorting to do with my photos (for some reason, the date stamp reset on my underwater camera so the photos don't automatically go in order between the regular camera photos... ugh!) It'll take me a while to get everything posted, but I like to start early so I don't forget too many details :D

Following! Love detailed reviews with pictures. Equinox is my favorite ship.

Then this should be the perfect review for you to read! haha Thanks for following :)

Looking forward to your review. Will be on Equinox in a month or so too.

Hate the change in port plans, but like a good story, will follow and see what happened. ;)

emelle

I hope you will see that all turned out well in the end with the port changes :) Let me know if you have any questions about everything, and I will try my best to finish the review before you leave for your cruise!

Yes! A deladane review... very nice! Looking forward to the rest.

aww, thanks! I hope this review lives up to the standards set by my prior ones ;) haha

Six weeks after we booked the cruise, JetBlue finally released their March 2016 flight schedule. We live in San Jose, CA, and we usually prefer to fly out of the San Jose airport. It is small, rarely crowded, has short lines at TSA, and is just an easy, enjoyable airport to use. Unfortunately, the only way to get to Ft. Lauderdale from San Jose would involve several plane changes. No thank you! I prefer direct flights whenever possible. Luckily, JetBlue flies direct to FLL from San Francisco's airport. We could take a redeye on Saturday night, land in Florida early on Sunday morning, and have all day on Sunday to recover from jet lag, shop for last minute necessities at the supermarket, and soak up some beach time, before boarding the Equinox on Monday. Sounds like a good plan to me! With our flights booked, it was time to book our excursions.

As a rule, I never book excursions through the cruise line. I would much prefer to do the research on my own and find a smaller, private company to show us the sites. In my experience, private companies cost less money, take fewer people on their tours, and bring you to more sites with better attention to detail and customer service than the tours offered through the cruise line. Based on the reviews I have read over the last 5 years, I KNEW I wanted to swim with the sting rays in Grand Cayman. After being rejected by 3 or 4 companies because they were already booked that day or because their tour times didn't match up to our port times, I finally found a company that worked for our schedule and booked the tour. I also had an easy time researching Cozumel because there are so many cruises that dock there and they are a very touristy port, so there was a lot of information available to me.

On the other hand, Puerto Limon is not a very popular cruise port, and Cartagena and Colon also don't see the same volume of cruise ships as compared to the more touristy islands in the Caribbean. As a result, there aren't as many private companies offering tours, nor are there very many reviews online to help me decide what to do each day. In the end, I found that I only had two or three companies with decent reviews from each port, and these companies took waaaay longer than normal to reply to my emails. I will go into more detail about what we did each day when I get to the day-by-day part of the review, but in summary, here is a list of the tours we planned:

Cozumel: Chankanaab National Park

Puerto Limon, Costa Rica: Oscar Brown Tours- Jaguar Rescue Center and Tortuguero Canal Combo Tour

Colon, Panama: Almiza Tours with My Friend Mario- Gatun Locks, Canoe Ride, Waterfall, and Embera Village

Cartagena, Colombia: 'Free Tour Cartagena' Walking Tour, Chiva Bus Night Rumba Tour, and El Totumo Mud Volcano

Grand Cayman: Captain Marvin Three-Stop Stingray/Snorkel Tours

By the end of July, we had all the port days planned out, and hotels and flights booked. All that was left to do was count the days until we flew to Florida! Or so I thought...

In September, J and I took a trip to visit his parents, and my parents went too so our parents could meet. Little did I know, J used this trip as an opportunity to propose! So now J is no longer my boyfriend but instead my fiancé :D It's a good thing I was mostly finished planning for this cruise because now I had A LOT of planning to do for our wedding!! J actually commented on that because he knows how much researching and planning I do for everything, and he knew I would be happy to focus all my efforts on planning the wedding without having to worry about the cruise too. Unfortunately, having this cruise planned meant that our honeymoon would have to be delayed until long after our wedding as this cruise used up all of our vacation days. Despite that, I refused to call this our honeymoon as it was 6 months before the wedding!

But anyway, back to stuff pertaining to this cruise hehe In mid-February, I emailed all our private excursion companies to reconfirm that our tours were all set. With all our tours confirmed and our cruise documents printed and organized, we were ready for vacation!

Since there was no photo related to this post, I will post this sunset photo to hold you over until the next post ;)

Not to be impatient, but we are flying out for this same itinerary on the Equinox in a few days.

Can you tell me how you found the free walking tour in Cartagena? We've been once before so not really interested in going back up to the Monetary or shopping for emeralds, although I wouldn't mind touring the fort a little more in depth.

I am mostly interested in just getting a feel for what is in this area ... not just the touristy things. I think a walking tour might just be the best way to accomplish that. Also, was it ungodly hot out? As I recall, it was last time we were there. Did you feel the tour was worth your time? thanks!!

Not to be impatient, but we are flying out for this same itinerary on the Equinox in a few days.

 

Can you tell me how you found the free walking tour in Cartagena? We've been once before so not really interested in going back up to the Monetary or shopping for emeralds, although I wouldn't mind touring the fort a little more in depth.

 

I am mostly interested in just getting a feel for what is in this area ... not just the touristy things. I think a walking tour might just be the best way to accomplish that. Also, was it ungodly hot out? As I recall, it was last time we were there. Did you feel the tour was worth your time? thanks!!

I booked our free tour on this website:

http://freetourcartagena.com.co/us/

We thought it was fabulous! Our guide Edgar really loves his city and he kept us entertained for over 2 hours as we walked all over the old city, seeing the most important sites. Considering the tour was free, we had low expectations going in, but I would definitely recommend the tour!

As for the weather... Ugh!! It was in the upper 80's with like 99% humidity! I was a sweaty mess the entire day, but just drink a lot of water and try to find some shade and you'll be okay.

I hope you have a fantastic cruise and come back to tell us how it went!

Second cruise for us and first with Celebrity. We have another itinerary (10 night Ultimate Caribbean) on board of the Equinox and so far didn't find great reviews/photos of the ship or I didn't find them.

So Thx and I am following !