owensamo

We disembarked in Valparaiso on 12/23 and it was easily one of the weirdest disembarkation I've ever had (in over 20 cruises across 3 cruise lines and various continents). The gangway itself was rather... sketchy - and harder to navigate than the one we had in Manta which was gangways attached to shipping containers. This is the first time I was aware there were doors on deck 4 on a S-class ship! Considering our tour guide in Lima said they get 20 ships a year during their "high season" - which was just starting when we got there, I imagine Valparaiso (which is technically a smaller port than Lima) probably has similar traffic and only a few of those are turn-over days. The port itself is not a dedicated cruise port - it's primarily a shipping port so handling the turn-over on these ships is not very common (unlike Civi or Miami or even Los Angeles). We had a post-cruise tour ending at the airport, but the disembarkation was a mess (though slightly better organized than it could have been) and once we arrived in the port building, there was *no* information on where to go, so it was a challenge getting to the bus. It was annoying, but honestly not unsurprising. It was also obvious on the tour that it wasn't a commonly run tour - the guide was fine, but the bus driver had issues and didn't know where he was going all the time so we ended up with a near mutiny on the bus to get to the airport (we had plenty of time once we got there, but it was an... interesting tour). All of this to say - if you're embarking/disembarking at a less commonly used cruise port (like Valparaiso, Lima, Bali, etc.), pack your patience and tolerance as things can take time. But the goal is to have everyone on the ship by departure, so once you're in line - you'll get there. The staff is probably just as frustrated by the hassle as you are. Embarkation is a short, anxious time, but once you're on board, you'll have an amazing cruise! We were thrilled with the service of the staff on our cruise - I hope you are enjoying the ship, and I highly recommend attending all of Milos's Beyond the Podium talks! He's probably the best entertainment on the ship!

If, as someone has said, these are the old Family Verandahs at the front of the ship, we stayed in one on Deck 7 in 2021. The room itself was nice and had plenty of space for 3 adults, but the verandah was normal sized if not smaller, with Suite-level furniture - i.e. much too large of a table for the space. The bathroom is also just a normal balcony bathroom, and not really suite-level. For us, however, the main reason we won't book these rooms again is that every day there was a port, the crew started docking procedures 1-2 hours prior to port arrival time. Whatever these entailed, it was loud in the room. I mean, shock you out of bed because it sounds like someone's banging on the metal walls with a hammer right next to your head loud. The same could be heard for ~1 hr after leaving port as well, but that wasn't usually an issue. We've stayed in front-facing rooms on other lines in the past, and it never felt like we were in the middle of the winching process without adequate ear protection. There was also a day when they were doing some kind of maintenance on the front of the ship where they were actually banging something against the hull right outside our room. Honestly, that wasn't actually as loud as the docking procedures! This was our first suite experience, and Lumine and the Suite Sundeck were amazing. We thoroughly enjoyed everything about the cruise except for the unexpected early morning wake-up calls. One thing I recommend is to arrange to get chicken nuggets via room service to your suite - the ones we got were the best chicken nuggets my daughter said she's ever had.

In my experience on the Summit (2 cruises since restart, one with early fixed-time dining and one with my time dining), the 5th deck section of the dining room is for fixed time diners, and deck 4 is for my time diners. So if you want a deck 5 2-top, make sure you are set up for either early or late dining and not my time dining.

My daughter swears by the mudslides from the pool bar (or any bar that can crush ice). She's also had virgin Pina Coladas and virgin Strawberry Daiquiris on Celebrity. Our last cruise was on Royal Caribbean, and she had a lot of fun asking the bartender for something "Non-alcoholic, non-carbonated and fruity" and seeing what they came up with - I don't think she ever got a bad one. She really enjoyed the virgin Painkillers (no nutmeg) at Boleros!

I don't like flip flops, but I wear Croc dress slides (a couple of different types) on cruises and had no issues with them in Luminae.

I have found for both the Royal Caribbean and Celebrity apps (which appear to be essentially the same), that the number of days you can see menus for your upcoming cruise matches the number of days of the current cruise the ship is actually on. So, if you have a 7-night cruise, and the ship is currently sailing a 5-night cruise, you'll see 5 nights of menus, then 2 extra nights with nothing (or Venue Closed for the current cruise's debarkation day). The actual menus for your cruise will load on embarkation day.

We have a 5n in Feb that I repriced yesterday down $150 - not a lot, but that means our FCC more than covers the cost of the fare. I submitted a Best Price Guarantee form last night and got the "we got it!" email today. We'll see if it works, but if not, it was only an email and not hours on hold!

We thought it was odd too. We both have traditional dining, with different times showing in the app. I guess we'll figure it out once we get on the ship!

Does anyone know where they seat each dining time? We have 5:00 dining on one of our upcoming Harmony cruises, but friends on the same sailing have 5:15 for a dining time. Do they stagger entry for early/late dining? Or are those separate dining rooms/floors/etc?