CruisingWalter

Thanks so much Paul and safe journey home. We are set to board Equinox now for an 11 day run. We will take good care of her!

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

No clue why this shows as 2017 in the app. Clearly dated 2016 in the original review.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Confirmed, but of course everything is subject to change once we sail. Actually impressed we kept most of the original ports. We fully expected to go west.

Sept 4 - Miami

Sept 5 - At Sea

Sept 6 - At Sea

Sept 7 - Willemstad, Curacao

Sept 8 - At Sea

Sept 9 - Bridgetown, Barbados

Sept 10 - Castries, St. Lucia

Sept 11 - Phillipsburg, St. Maarten

Sept 12 - St. Johns, Antigua

Sept. 13 - At Sea

Sept. 14 - At Sea

Sept. 15 - Miami

Thanks for the heads up on the new itinerary starting Monday. I received confirmation from Celebrity on the change. Really looking forward to the sail!

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Celebrity called me an hour ago and left me a message giving me the same info that Van Fleet gave me on twitter.

Btw, For that may not be aware James Van Fleet is Royal Caribbeans corporate meteorologist

We have not received anything yet, but good to know the info is confirmed.

I saw the same tweet from James and it's good to have a sense of what might happen. We have not received any notification from Celebrity and have been told by others that often the notification comes during check-in. Interesting to see that the majority of the itinerary actually held, though the order was shuffled up. I didn't think we'd be going near the Eastern Caribbean. I suppose one reason we have not been notified yet is this has not been 100% decided upon yet. They still have time to change the itinerary based on the latest hurricane track overnight.

My guess is Western Caribbean or a run far south. Panama Canal area would be awesome too. Keep in mind that even if we miss the hurricane, some of the islands we're supposed to visit won't. So even if we avoid the hurricane, doesn't mean we'll actually be able to visit the ports that get hit directly or indirectly by the storm. Regardless, we're on a ship, we'll be protected by the Captain and crew it's going to be a good vacation no matter what. As I tell friends, if you MUST visit any of the destinations on a cruise, fly there instead. No guarantees the ship will make any stop, just go with the flow. This is our 5th or 6th Caribbean cruise in Sept. and the first we've actually hit a hurricane. Bound to happen sooner or later.

Thanks so much for your blog Paul, it's been a treat reading along. I second the others who have commended you on your frank and well spoken response above.

The World Class Bar was a great find for us last year on the Reflection and we plan to make good use of that during our trip next week. Easily the best drinks on the ship and now I really want to try the Zacapa Above the Clouds. Looks amazing. Happy travels on your weekend and safe journies home!

Have to ask. Did you go see "Ellysium" on the first night and what is your honest opinion? We saw it last year. That's all I'm going to say at this point. :)

Awesome detailed review. Thanks so much!

Thanks so much!

Can we get the jump on this and add a Virgin Voyages forum now to follow along with the construction of their first ship in 2017 and subsequent launch?

Nice press event from Richard Branson today and it appears this time a Virgin cruise lines is actually happening.

http://virginvoyages.com/#home

We love DCL' date=' but.....

 

There are other lines more suited to adults. For half the cost of a DCL cruise, you can do the same or similar ports in a mid-level line like Princess or Celebrity. For the same price as DCL, you can do a truly upscale line. DCL pretends to be one of these, but is not. [/quote']

 

The cost it the main reason why we took this cruise. The cabin rate was right in line with Princess, Celebrity and Holland because we were off season. We would NEVER recommend anyone pay the full priced fares which as you say, can be double of the other cruise lines.

 

But since the cabin price was right in line with what we're used to paying for a Verandah cabin on other lines, we felt this was the perfect time to try a Disney Cruise. Glad we did!

Just read your review, thanks for being so detailed. As two adults we'd like to try Disney, and your comments are extremely helpful to our planning.

Thank you for your kind words. We have found so much help from these CC forums and Trip Advisor for all of our planning that I try to create reviews that are as helpful as possible to others.

Have a great day!

.... may only be a 'short term' removal, if enough people request some form of it on the buffet, I do believe they would eventually come up with a compromise solution for this.

 

Was sushi ever on the room service menu? I do not recollect.

 

bon voyage

the sushi was decent in the buffet, but nothing great. Really didn't have a lot of flavor to it, but that was to be expected since it was just part of the included buffet. What I'm seeing of Sushi on Five menu looks like it's on par with a good sushi restaurant. The reviews of Sushi on Five here on CC seem to back that up. I'm seeing reviews with people eating there 2-4 times on a single cruise.

I used to really like the Bistro on 5. I will never eat at this new one. The prices are ridiculous.

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Prices are right in line with any standard sushi restaurant. In some cases lower.

Starters - http://www.celebritycruises.com/onboard-celebrity/cruise-restaurants-sushi-on-five#

Thanks for the link, super excited to try this in November onboard Reflection.

you are welcome Krista

 

My wife is more of a sushi fan,but I really enjoyed it!! we tried just about all of sushi varieties,and liked them all...best quality sushi I have had..

 

which ship are you going on?

Thanks so much for the firsthand information. We're sailing Reflection in November and looking forward to the new Sushi on Five. We avoided the Bistro on Five as it looked pretty useless to us when we sailed Silhouette in March. Really looking forward to sampling this new space!

Great review. I agree with much of what you've said.

By the way, I see in your signature you're sailing Freedom of the Seas. We sailed her November '14 for Thanksgiving. Had a wonderful type despite engine trouble and 1000 kids sailing for the holiday. :) The freestyle coke machines were awesome and we still have the cups.

I posted a review of her after our trip, link is in my signature. Have an awesome time!

Absolutely fantastic review! It's funny you mentioned you couldn't hear the fireworks show - I didn't even know there was a show to go along with it!

that's too funny! We could see Jack Sparrow drop from the front stack and then we could see about 1/3 of the top of the main screen so that's how I knew it was a Benny Hill / Keystone Cops type of "run around the deck" type of show. The fireworks were pretty darn cool though!

Great review. I agree with much of what you've said.

We don't even attempt "night life" on DCL any more - it's usually quite dead so we have quieter nights and save our late nights for other cruise lines.

This is the one area we missed, at least having the opportunity to walk in on a show or on Royal Caribbean their live band would pop up somewhere in the ship if there wasn't a main show in the theater. Even a true piano bar would have been nice. The Piazza is pretty but it's pretty much a hallway to get to the rest of Europa so it's not conducive to listening to music.

I did love the Skylight Lounge though, that was beautiful.

Thanks! Very useful

My pleasure, enjoy your next cruise!

My latest review is here on Cruise Critic on the Disney Fantasy from an Adults Only perspective. We have no children but we love Disney. Overall it was a great trip, but we felt there was a bit lacking from the adult perspective. I hope you find this helpful!

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=547367&et_cid=2764671&et_rid=85437048&et_referrer=Boards_Million_Member_Newsub

THIS article on using wi-fi to make/receive calls on your cell phone may be of interest to some of you.

 

Tom

All iPhones offer WiFi calling as well. It's a simple switch to activate in the Settings menu. I started using the feature about a year ago on AT&T and still use it now that i've switched to Sprint.

So, not exactly a review, but on my recent sail on the Celebrity Silhouette, I was able to combine two of my passions. Videography and cruising. Just before sailing I picked up an iOgrapher which makes a very useful camera platform for the iPhone and iPad. Featuring interchangeable lenses, cold shoe mounts and tripod mounting points the iOgrapher essentially turns the iPhone into a professional camera giving the videographer great camera stability.

The one thing I didn’t have on this trip was a shotgun microphone. Since the phone is mounted sideways on the iOgrapher, the microphone on the phone is not great for picking up natural sound and spoken word. Before the next vacation, I'll be adding a shotgun mic.

All in all, very impressive to see the picture quality and especially the stability of the images. This entire project was filmed with the iPhone 6. Absolutely NO camera stabilization was added to any of these images in the video below.

Also VERY impressed with Celebrity Cruises and their Silhouette. This was our first time on Celebrity and we were so impressed with the ship, the crew and of course, the food that we booked another cruise on the Celebrity Reflection. Celebrity is just top notch, white glove treatment but without the stuffy attitude. Beautiful ship, wonderful people and a great time.

If the video player doesn't work below, here's the direct link to YouTube:

[YOUTUBE]

I was standing outside on the balcony I think when these were taken. Cabin 9662 behind the kickout, probably under "of the" in the Freedom Of The Seas name.

 

sent from my galaxy s4 please excuse any error's thanks