LouisV

Not worth paying extra for !!!

yes that is rude....we should all give thanks that we can go on a cruise at all. There are a lot of people in the world that are just struggling to exist....

Be aware that any cheese included in the dishes marked as suitable for vegetarians contains animal rennet (from the lining of a calves stomach) and isn't vegetarian cheese. We found this out last month on the Eclipse and it was confirmed by the head chef. All cheese in the buffet including on the vegetarian pizzas also contains animal rennet. Probably around 75% of the dishes on their menus marked as suitable for vegetarians contain cheese.

 

 

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I never knew this fact before. I wonder how much cheese that is produced contains animal rennet?? I don't think my mom knows this either as she loves cheese.

Mo

This is a list I compiled a couple of years ago. On some menus one of the items overlapped what was on the regular menu. I will find out how current it is in December.

 

Menu 1

Appetizers: Blue Cheese Souffle; Mille Feuille of wild mushrooms

Soup: vegetarian tomato; Japanese vegetable consommé

Salad: Baby spinach; mixed lettuce Daikon radish

Entrée: Orrechiette pasta, porcini mushrooms; vegetable korma

 

Menu 2

Appetizers: wild mushroom napolean; ambrosia of fresh fruit cocktail

Soup: Cream of asparagus; vegetable consommé with root vegetables

Salad: Jicama (cucumbers, watermelon & mint); seasonal greens

Entrée:Fried marsala potatoes; grilled vegetable tart

 

Menu 3

Appetizers: heirloom tomato stuffed endives; grenadine scented pineapple

Soup: tomato and cucumber gazpacho; vegetable consomme

Salad: shaved pear salad breakfast radish; crisp romaine lettuce

Entrée: vegetable paella; Imam Bayadi (eggplant stuffed with ratatouille)

 

Menu 4

Appetizers: marinated grilled eggplant; citrus delight

Soup: Cream of mushroom; vegetable broth

Salad: green leaf and iceberg lettuce; radicchio and watercress

Entrée: toasted Israeli couscous cake; vegetable prima vera lasagna

 

Menu 5

Appetizers: vegetabler summer rolls; fety and fresh fruit

Soup: cream of broccoli; watercress and orange

Salad: Boston lettuce and gorgonzola; market fresh

Entrée: spinach and ricotta ravioli; vegetable cassoulet

 

Menu 6

Appetizers: Supreme of chilled melon Midori; spinach turnover

Soup: market vegetable minestrome; roasted plantain and corn

Salad: sliced tomato and red onion; green leaf and radicchio lettuce

Entrée: Asian tofu stir fry; vegetable spaghetti with marinara sauce

 

Menu 7

Appetizers: marinated bell peppers and Portobello mushroom terrine; fresh papaya. mango and kiwi cocktail

Soup: oven roasted tomato and garlic; creamy chilled Haas avacado

Salad: Asian; crisp garden green

Entrée: stuffed Portobello mushroom; vegetable turnover

Thanks so much for taking the time to post this! My mom will find this interesting.

Mo

I do not eat meat but am a pescatarian. I had no problem getting a vegetable meal, non dairy or meatless meal at any location on the ship. They are very accommodating .

My mom is a pescatarian as well and I don't think she'll have a problem either!

I read somewhere that there is a dedicated vegetarian menu in the MDR. We are sailing on the Equinox in November. Does anyone have any photos of it that they can post?

Thanks

Mo

what a wonderful review!!! Thanks so much.

Mo

Very well said! I too, am grateful that we can cruise at all. I love everything on a cruise!! Well......maybe not the chair hogs, but that's ok.... ;)

Andy, the changes may not please or enhance every passenger, but it does show that Celebrity is trying new programs, hoping that most people are receptive and delighted.

 

 

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Even though some people think of these little things as rubbish, I love it all and am thankful to be cruising at all. Maybe the complainers have taken one too many cruises!!

Mo

That happened to us too on the November 2016 sailing. Talked to Celebrity about another issue last week and everything worked out with our request for early seating. Could be just a standard thing to see both seatings are waitlisted.

We tend to gravitate towards tours and activities that get us away from the most popular and crowded areas, especially when we've visited a port many times. In our opinion, one thing that was great about the food tour was it got us out away from the tourists’ Cozumel and into the locals’ Cozumel. Our first stop on the tour was at a tiny restaurant specializing in quesadillas.

 

 

 

 

We were given a choice of Coke, hibiscus water, or rice milk for a beverage. The Coke in Mexico tastes very different than what we get in the U.S., because it’s made with sugar cane instead of corn syrup. I knew that would be too sweet for me and I chose the hibiscus water. It had a very different taste, but it was refreshing and delicious.

 

Coke, Rice Milk, and Hibiscus Water

 

 

When I think of quesadillas, I think of a flour tortilla filled with meat or chicken and oozing with cheese. What we had at the first stop couldn’t have been more different than the Americanized Tex-Mex version of a quesadilla. The quesadillas we had were made with corn tortillas, not flour. One was filled with cactus and cheese, which I thought was OK. The other one was delicious and was filled with – wait for it – corn fungus!

 

 

 

After we ate, Jerry showed us pictures of the ingredients before they were prepared. I decided it was a good thing I had already eaten and loved the corn fungus, because I’m not sure I would have been in such a hurry to devour the quesadilla if I had seen the picture first!

 

Cactus

Corn Fungus

What did the corn fungus taste like? Mushrooms?? My mom has had some corn fungus on her corn stalks over the last few years and we just stare at it. It looks like an alien!!!

Mo

I am really enjoying your review and all the pics. What days were the "formals" as we'll probably follow the same schedule? (I still call them formals and also looking forward to them)

I'm really enjoying your review and pics! What type of camera did you use?

Mo

Enjoying your review. We were on the Equinox in the Med shortly after she was built and loved it! We had planned on being on this cruise (and the Caribbean Princess you were on in December), and had to cancel both. Now I am looking to book this cruise again in November of this year, again on the Equinox. Love the idea of this itinerary since it is unique. Looking forward to hearing about the rest of your cruise.

We are also booked on this cruise in November of this year!

On our first cruise with Celebrity, we were upgraded to a Royal Suite from an aft family cabin. Now that was spectacular!!! I think we spent most of the cruise in disbelief!!!

Mo

I'm friends with Ashley on Facebook and can tell you that she appears happy and fine. Hope she will come back and post.

Thank goodness! I hope she comes back!

Ashley, where are you? Hope everything is ok??!!

Loving your review as much as your engagement one! My mom and I are cruising on the Equinox to the Caribbean on almost the same itinerary in November 2016!

Mo

I was really hoping that saga would disappear when the moderators closed the thread :rolleyes: Based on the number of replies to that 20+ page long thread, I am fairly certain that there is no active reader on the Celebrity forum who does not already know the flip flop story! haha No need to revisit that drama here! :D

Boy am I ever out of the loop here!!! I've never read about the flip flop story :confused:

Mo

I'm loving this review. We are sailing on this itinerary with Shirley and ghjohnson next year...our first Celebrity cruise and all new ports for us. I am in planning mode and there isn't a whole lot of info about these ports. I am so appreciative that there are now two reviews going for this itinerary. Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time and all of your effort doing this. I also love your writing style!

Hi Robin!

Can you point me in the direction of the 2nd review please and thanks?

Mo

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 ;)

 

 

We are doing this itinerary in November so it will be timely to read your review.

Not sure where you cruise, but taking a chance in the port is like Russian Roulette. You have not checked the companies rating or reviews. Also, don't have the ability to compare what your get for what you pay. In some countries finding someone at the dock is a problem since no-one is there with tours. This is true in Asia. Also, many of the best South American tour companies book up early.

 

It might work for the Caribbean and perhaps for some ports in Europe, but not everywhere.

Most private tours allow you to pay on the dock or only pay a modest deposit in advance.

We are cruising in the Caribbean so hopefully it won't be an issue.

We have never pre booked excursions. We have never had a problem getting signed up on the first day of the cruise. WE have also found that many excursions can be purchased once at the port from local tour companies, many at lower prices. If there is something you definitely absolutely positively do not want to miss, then pre-book. Enjoy

Good suggestion about purchasing something in port! I've seen tour operators in ports but have never used them.

Hi All,

 

For us, celebrity has done really well with our special occasions. We have them noted, and I usually confirm the details at the beginning of the trip, and then again not he day(s) of those events.

 

They have provided chocolate covered strawberries compliments of guest services, as well as other specials touches (cakes, small floral arrangements, on one occasion champaign)

 

I would suggest connecting with the guest services team.

 

PK

Thanks PK! I just might do that! Even if nothing comes of it, hey we're on a cruise after all. That is a celebration in itself!!!

Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences, especially your's Steve!!!! I'm not expecting great fan fare but just curious as to what people have had. Mom is excited enough to just be going on a cruise. Only her second time!

Mo

Do wedding anniversaries or other special occasions get any special recognition on board? My mother's 60th wedding anniversary comes up during an upcoming cruise. Dad doesn't travel anymore so I'm taking her as sort of a celebration.

Mo