mahdnc

Forgive my perfectionist ways, here is a better comparison to the statues:

Looks like you had very nice weather today.

Some other notes: Xpedition is not in the Celebrity app, so it is of no use when you are onboard. There is no formal embarkation check in that I can remember. If we did it, it was likely at the JW Marriott. Wherever we did it, it was effortless and easy. Our cabin key card had a blue footed booby on it. Your passport gets stamped by Ecuador when you enter and when you leave the country at the airport. There is also an additional immigration-like process that you have to go through when you land in Baltra. Your passport receives a Galapagos National Park stamp for your trouble. My wife and I each brought one checked bag, one carryon bag (that went into the overhead compartment), and a backpack that stowed under the airplane seat in front of us. My backpack contained all my precious camera gear and it was pretty heavy. When going to the Galapagos, Celebrity limits you to one checked bag at 44 lb (20 kg) and one carryon bag at 22 lb (10 kg). Our bags were not weighed when we flew to the Galapagos (that I could see). However when we checked in at the Galapagos airport to fly back to UIO, our checked bags were weighed by the agent at the ticket counter. My wife, I mean “we” accidentally locked us out of our cabin safe. 15 minutes later, Guest Relations opened it with their master key. Flamingos, Flying, Floreana

You are welcome. When you click on the Cruise Planner for your Galapagos sailing, you get this response: Celebrity is basically saying: "Relax! We got this!!" And that is so true, they really do. There was a nice couple on board where the husband came down with a virus in the middle of the cruise. The medical department confined him to his cabin for a day or two. Fortunately for them, they were staying in an Xpedition Suite which has a balcony..... BTW, Xpedition has two medical doctors on board which is impressive--they are staffed to give you a second opinion! Anyway I digress. .....the couple told us that without asking for it, Celebrity issued them a credit for one day of the cruise (or maybe it was two days, I can't remember) and it was for both of them even though only one was sick. Given the cost of this cruise, I was impressed. So, see, Celebrity really does a good job of watching out for you.

After filling out your Xpress Pass information, it takes a few weeks before your cruise documents appear. The luggage tags will be one of the links. The other link is for your Guest Ticket Booklet and the luggage tag is on the last page.

Do you have a doctor's note for this?!

I am surprised. Even on Xpedition we had room service and we were in a suite but not the PS or RS. Perhaps this is a benefit of only having 48 passengers max.

Here is a pricing data point: We will be on Summit for 14 nights this coming April. I purchased premium Wi-Fi for 2 devices for the entire cruise during a flash sale for $377.86 which works out to $13.50 per day per device. Here is the current pricing (premium wi-fi for the entire cruise) today in my cruise planner for this Summit sailing: $17.99 per day for one device and $32.99 per day for two devices.

Yes, it is very easy to cancel and rebook. OBC is refunded instantly when you cancel and will be there for you to use when you rebook.

Yes. We did a complete 360.

Thank you. When our 2 kids cruised with us, we had 4 free bags of laundry. Now my wife and I can get our 4 free bags without them!

We finally made Elite Plus from our Galapagos cruise last month. The 360 Club Points we received from it meant that all the PUP earnings were not needed to achieve it. 2 free bags of laundry here we come!

My wife and I are in our early 60's and I was concerned about this trip since I did zero conditioning to get ready--so I have several observations and opinions for you--all of them positive. Keep in mind that my observations about the difficulty of the activities is based on what I saw for our particular Southern Loop itinerary (the Northern Loop done by Xpedition could be different--same thing with Flora's itineraries). Demographically, most of the passengers were retired. There were quite a few people in their 70's but "didn't look it" which is how it appears you have described yourself. There was also one passenger who had wheel chair assistance at the Galapagos airport although I did not see her in a wheel chair during the sailing. On the other end of the fitness spectrum we had a woman who was a marathoner and looked every bit of it. And on the other end of the age spectrum there were also 3 kids on board (one was a toddler). All the hikes on our trip were relatively short and I thought pretty easy--1 mile max with minimal elevation gain. Some of the trails were a little rocky but if you exercised care, you got through it ok. All the trails were described conservatively in the Xpedition Director's evening description of the following day's activities. The pace of every hike was extremely slow because we were stopping frequently to listen to the naturalist give a talk: Or we were stopping because a sea lion would rudely cross the trail in the middle of our group: Even an iguana could also stop us dead in our tracks by just sitting on the trail: There were several beach hikes. All of them were easy. You felt like you were in Florida (minus the sea lions): Each hike always had either a shorter hike option such as our day at South Plaza Island: Another example is the short hike option offered at Floreana Island for the afternoon activity: OR in some cases Celebrity offered a zodiac ride as an alternative to hiking as they did during our time at Santa Fe Island. By the way, there is a lot to see from a zodiac ride: The trip to see the Charles Darwin Research Center (tortoises) involved a long walk from the formal entrance (see photo below). Our Xpedition Director mentioned that Celebrity worked out a special arrangement with the Research Center which allowed them to drive in any passengers who had mobility problems. This assistance was mentioned verbally and was not on the presentation slide. As far as snorkeling was concerned, the ones done from the beach meant that you were self pacing. They were not (or rarely) guided but there was always a crew member in a zodiac watching you and would pick you up if you wanted it: On the other hand snorkeling from the zodiac (aka deep water snorkeling) was more strenuous and may be something that you will want to avoid. Keep in mind that wearing the wet suit and the optional flotation vest (both supplied by Celebrity) meant that you were very buoyant which meant you spent less energy keeping afloat. During the full day guided tour of Quito which involves some walking under the hot sun and riding a tour bus, an option was given to passengers who wanted to terminate their tour after lunch. For those people transportation was standing by to take you back to the hotel. We didn't do it, but I will admit to you that it was awful tempting! In summary, it was obvious that Celebrity designed each day's activities with different options in mind to satisfy a wide range of physical conditions. Nobody got cheated (except maybe the people who were in awesome shape looking to hike or run multiple miles each day). When I thought about it, it made a lot of sense to me: Celebrity's primary customer demographic that could do an expensive trip like this were going to be older people who had the time and the money. So Celebrity designed a product which takes good care of us older people while also taking our money. If you have any more questions, let me know.

Although we did not use it a lot, we booked the Xpedition Suite so we could have a balcony. I mainly got it as an anti-sea sickness measure. However it is always nice to step out onto the balcony from time to time to take in the view and the fresh air. I measured the balcony to be 14 feet long x 3 foot 10 inches deep which works out to be 53 square feet. The balcony and cabin were fairly quiet. No noises. Above is an exterior view of the balconies including ours (XS 502). One thing to note is that the balcony for XS 500 is much smaller than the other Xpedition Suites. XS 500 did not originally exist when Celebrity put Xpedition into service in 2004. It was retrofitted in during a drydock several years later along with other changes that were made to the ship (e.g. the conversion of some Deck 6 public space into cabins which included a Penthouse Suite and Royal Suite).

Here is a tour of our cabin, Xpedition Suite 502. The cabin is on the starboard side of Deck 5. It is an Xpedition Suite (details from Celebrity website). We were pleased with our cabin although we have been spoiled as my wife and I have always booked the spacious family cabins since we previously always travelled with our two kids. The Xpedition Suite was the first cabin where we would occasionally be in each other's way when trying to move around. It was a strange experience for us (we were spoiled). Don't get me wrong, the Xpedition Suite was quite roomy for two people. We were very pleased with it. It appeared that the couch could fold out into a bed. Housekeeping was performed twice a day in our cabin. There was sparkling wine in an ice bucket to greet us when we first entered our room. We never got around to drinking it. The bathroom was fairly standard for Celebrity. Compact yet very functional. The shower had a glass door (no curtain) and there was a retractable clothes line which is visible in the photo below. The shower had independent knobs for temperature and flow like you find in the other Celebrity ships. To the extreme left in the photo below were wall mounted dispensers for body gel, conditioner, and shampoo. The shower water temperature and flow/pressure were excellent. We were told that the water in the bathroom sink was suitable for brushing your teeth but we were advised to use the water filling stations sprinkled throughout the ship for drinking and filling our Xpedition water bottles. Room service was available for free. We never made use of it because it was so convenient to eat at the restaurant. Here is the room service menu (the menu is blue and on the left side of the photo below). The binoculars supplied were Tasco branded. Apparently you can buy them at Guest Relations for $45. They were ok. We actually brought my favorite pair from home. Sliced fruit was always waiting for us in our cabin: My wife uses a CPAP so our travel agent made the customary request for DI water and an extension cord. Both were waiting in our cabin when we arrived. There were power outlets by the desk which were intended for passenger use. There was an additional Euro style plug near the floor just outside the bathroom which I presume was used for plugging in the vacuum. A power strip was provided to give you more outlets although apparently they are not of the right design for ship use because it has surge protection. This style was likely provided in all the cabins. There were a couple of wall mounted brass hooks on the wall by the main door. We brought additional magnetic hooks with us which stick firmly to the walls. The climate control in our cabin was excellent at all times. A re-usable cloth laundry bag was supplied in the cabin. Because we had a suite, we were allowed 2 free bags of laundry which we did use. Both time we got our laundry back on the next day. The refrigerator was stocked with complimentary beverages. We were so busy during the cruise that we didn't drink a drop! Although it is hard to find the documentation, Xpedition Suites are worth 12 Club Points per night in the Captains Club loyalty program which is higher than a Sky Suite on a normal Celebrity ship (8 points/night). Since we were on a Celebrity cruise tour (2 nights pre-cruise + 7 night cruise + 2 nights post-cruise), we were awarded 12 Club Points for 11 nights.

Hi. Thank you for the information. I figured HEIC format would be a problem. However if you look at both of my screenshots, you can see that I am having problems loading the JPEG file from my iPhone. However I can load the same JPEG file from my laptop successfully. It may be that the desktop version of Cruise Critic can handle larger files than the mobile version. Or maybe it is a limitation with the iPhone itself.

Thank you. Have a good night and a pleasant day tomorrow boarding Flora.

I was expecting to be bored and dreaded going there after lunch. But I was wrong. It was done quite well. Where was lunch?

Jules, Here are some posts I made on this subject. We have been on a Christmas + NYE cruise twice (including Infinity) and will be doing one again in a couple of weeks. The posts have links to Celebrity holiday brochures, photos of the ship decoration, MDR menus, and some copies of the Celebrity Today so you can see all the different activities that were planned. I hope you have an awesome holiday cruise! David

no picture of the shrunken heads?

12%. Thank you, Ken. I look forward to seeing your equatorial photos.

This is what I get when I click on the 3rd link in your post. Try a different web browser. You can see the URL:

No (for American citizens)

I would also advise that you join the roll call for your sailing. Here it is: These people will be on your cruise and will be happy to answer all of your questions.