deserttraveler

I had 1116 on Summit 3 years ago and balcony did not drain properly. Always a pool of water just outside the sliding door.

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The naturalist on the Solstice, Brent Nixon, will make the cruise unforgettable. And Celebrity has the best food.

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I found the MDR service on the Vancouver-Yokohama segment of this cruise to be fabulous, and slightly better at dinner than at lunch. I had Select dining, and was with one waiter team for about half the dinners and another team for the other half. Both were great, and the pacing (and temperature) of food service was just fine. I do believe that Celebrity has learned to put its best dining room teams in Select because it is more challenging than fixed-time seating.

At lunch, we usually sat with larger tables than at dinner, so, yes, things do take a little longer. I had no lunch experience that came close to the time issues cited by the OP.

Because this relocation cruise often has many staff who just got on or who are about to get off, I expected a lot more wrinkles than I encountered.

Overall, this was a great cruise and the Millie was in excellent condition. It was my fifteenth cruise, so I have some basis for comparison.

HAL Amsterdam did not have one in June of this year. Painful after having Brent Nixon on Infinity 5 years ago.

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I've enjoyed all three classes of ships, but Aqua Spa cafe has changed a lot and now pushes extra-cost items. You could no longer get plain yogurt there when I was on Century in December, but you could buy yogurt concoctions.

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Onboard: Library closed and magazines put away, but future cruise brochures available as of last night.

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I'm onboard, and with all the other precautions, am very surprised to see pool open and full of children . . . while hot tubs are closed and drained.

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Even in early April, temps were 90 degrees, 90 percent humidity. Not so bad if you are viewing canal passage from inside, but horrible if you want to view from outside. There is no escaping the sun when you are that close to the equator.

I have never had trouble getting a two-top during anytime dining because they can turn these tables around three times during the dining hours. They are more available than tables for larger groups, which can only be "turned" twice. This means that a twosome can eat without being rushed in about an hour and fifteen minutes, including dessert. 7 p.m. seemed to work really well, since that's when the 5:30 diners would have finished and had the tables re-set. 8:30 should work really well for the same reason.

I have been in both locations, and very much prefer the Deck 3 because the Deck 7 involved HORRIBLE anchor chain noises each morning that we were anchoring at a tender port and lower-case horrible noise when we were docking. All the docking and anchoring cables come out from near those cabins. Also, the Deck 7 cabin only had one easy chair in addition to whatever was at the desk/vanity and the sloping front window didn't add to my sense of spaciousness. I am surprised each time I hear someone refer to these forward Deck 7 and Deck 8 cabins as "oversized," as I found the space better organized in the Deck 3 cabins.

Hi

 

 

- We have booked our Cruise already. When should we begin reserving the tours? Is there a way to get good deals on these through Celebrity?

 

 

- Any advice about specialty restaurants? Which ones are worth reserving in advance?

 

Thanks.

 

Larry

I took this cruise last year on the Silhouette and it was outstanding. Yes, do join your rollcall for more information about private tours. Celebrity never offers any "deals" on their excursions. (Their "packages" offer a slight discount, but you have to want to go exactly to the places they've packaged.)

In most of the ports, you don't need an excursion to have a wonderful time. If you enjoy walking, you can guide yourselves around Dubrovnik, Ravenna, Split, Kotor, Valletta, Catania, and Naples. (Ship will offer a shuttle bus to the center of Ravenna and to the gates of Dubrovnik.) At Koper, you can also have a lovely walk, but many people opt for tours to the interior of Slovenia, and here is where you might join up with some people on your roll call for a private tour that will cost less and involve a smaller group than the ship's excursion. And if you've not been to Naples before, your rollcall will probably include people organizing tours to Pompeii and/or the Amalfi coast, both extremely worthwhile. Privately organized tours are often 40-50% less cost than ship's excursions.

Also spend some time reading the ports of call boards (the ones with input from passengers on all cruise lines, not just Celebrity), and you'll hear about the places you're visiting from a lot of perspectives. There's an especially great strand on Dubrovnik in which a person who lives there answers questions (she may no longer be doing this, but the old Q and A should be there.) Here's the link to the forum that has most of the Adriatic ports: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=234

And as to specialty restaurants, I second the motion about Qsine. It's unique and fun for a special celebration.

OP here: No need to bother staff. This is a great cruise on a great ship. Staff could not be nicer or more accommodating. It was my mistake to complain about an isolated glitch. I expect to enjoy the rest as much as I've enjoyed the first half -- VERY much.

OP again. Perhaps in addition to leftovers in the buffet, I can order crow in the MDR. Thanks for all the feedback. Both my own hasty action in posting and a few of your responses help me in my personal quest to reduce the occasions when I feel that I must chime in. I've received enormous help from these boards over the years, and I value this community.

Hi everyone, here's the OP again. I thought I abandoned my complaint quite a while back. Perhaps read the thread before you pile on.

Everyone makes good points. I had some of the pureed yams, but there were no mashed "regular" potatoes at 8:20 or at 8:30 (i checked), and this seemed strange since they are almost always available. But that, along with my original complaint, is all beside the point made so beautifully about our wonderful multicultural staff and crew and the limitations any one of us has in putting ourselves in the shoes of another. I will enthusiastically concede this point.

I especially love the well-developed example about nationality and culture and wish everyone who cruises on any ship or line could read it. We are being served mostly well-prepared and delicious food by hard-working people who often can't imagine eating the very thing they are tasked with serving. Many of them also grew up in circumstances where the quantities they see consumed and wasted would have been unimaginable.

Thanks for putting some perspective on this. Yes, I'm grateful to have the privilege of being in Hawaii for Thanksgiving. And I will definitely continue to enjoy this cruise.

Not an easy situation, in port at Maui until midnight. This means many passengers on tours, etc., not back for MDR times. OK, as one such person, still hoping at 8:20 for my traditional Thanksgiving foods at the buffet, I was extremely disappointed to find no turkey dark meat, no mashed potatoes, and nothing remotely resembling American Thanksgiving desserts. Oddly, there was a big cake that had Happy Thanksgiving Day written in frosting. OK, I chose a cruise that included a long port stop that interfered with dinner service, but I'm baffled by Celebrity's failure to come through for the hundred or so passengers who need mashed potatoes and something resembling pie for it to feel right. I will live through this and it will not ruin my cruise, but it seems like the kind of thing onboard staff usually plans and executes better.

We were ready to book Reflection's Med cruise in 5/14 until we discovered that the airfare would have been at least $4,200 for sardine seats.

Not clear where you are getting these airfares. Using kayak dot com to check flights at the height of the season (June-July), IAD-FCO (just as an example), economy was around $1500 per person. I'm assuming by "sardine" you meant economy!

I agree with others who put a per-day differential on the AQ decision. I do like AQ, but not if it's more than about $20 pp per day.

Even though the OP has made what seems like a sound decision, this is a worthwhile discussion. One of the issues in traveling with a person with dementia, in a way similar to traveling with a child on the autusm spectrum, is not knowing exactly when they are going to panic about something.

On an international flight I took last year, a young woman was traveling with her elderly aunt in some stage of dementia. They got through heavy security (London Heathrow), including the interview at the gate (American Airlines). We were all seated in the plane ready for takeoff when it turned out that the woman balked/panicked at the prospect of putting on her seatbelt. Nothing would calm her, and finally the crew made a decision that she could not fly. This meant offloading ALL the luggage in order to retrieve theirs, and an ontime departure turned into a 2 and a half hour delay, causing many people to miss connections in Dallas.

Not only was the woman with dementia put in a terrifying situation, the rest of the passengers were also seriously inconvenienced.

This is offered as an observation that might help someone, not as advice. A year or so ago, I noticed a multi-generational family cruising, with the "older" generation being far more observant in dress and diet than the younger. I noticed them using paper plates and plastic cutlery to eat salads and fruits and vegetables. I suspect that the family brought the plates and cutlery rather than obtaining them from the cruise line (don't remember if it was HAL or Celebrity). I understand that the salads were most likely prepared with non-kosher utensils and were in non-kosher containers, but the family I observed may have been willing to make this compromise in order to have fresh fruits and vegetables.

On a cruise with RCI several years ago, the sign-up for Shabbat services was in a loose-leaf notebook in the library. The challah was baked on board, not kosher. The provided wine was definitely kosher.

And it is absolutely true that ALL of this varies from ship to ship even on the same line. Celebrity, an affiliate of RCI, sometimes does and sometimes does not put Shabbat services times in the daily bulletin. The person on board who is responsible for this is the Activities Director, and for some it is simply off their radar, especially if they are new.

I was just on 1116 on the Summit, and you can see the water just fine. The bit that sticks out from the buffet below doesn't get in the way.

I just checked and the person who started this thread was a first-time poster and has not returned. I'm curious if he/she has perhaps realized that the lost items should not have been in unlocked checked luggage and has retreated from the discussion.

Thanks for the various suggestions! So far, the TSA locks have been adequate deterrence, although I use inexpensive luggage purchased at Ross, so it may not look worth getting into!

I've cruised four times on each of the two lines. HAL Statendam, Rotterdam, Veendam, Zaandam. BEFORE I ever crusied on HAL, I had also cruised on X Infinity (twice) and Solstice, then after HAL, cruised on Silhouette this past summer. Before Silhouette, I'd have told you it was a toss-up, with each line (and ship) offering its pluses and minuses.

Then, to my surprise, I did not enjoy Silhouette. I missed the heart and soul (and libraries) of HAL. Silhouette had plenty of glitz and glam, but no improvement in the entertainment product that has always been middlin' on both HAL and X (for entertainment, you go to RCI). Oddly, its overall feel was far colder than Solstice had been in its first season.

Another issue is that about half of the HAL ships don't have a big crop of regular balcony cabins (just deluxe suite-ish cabins with balconies), so if you'd rather have a large outside, HAL can be great, but not so if what you want/need is a balcony. (In this regard, don't overlook Princess, which offers a very good product and prices their balconies often more reasonably than HAL or X.)

Now I'm looking at cruise options by itinerary, and with price and itinerary being equal, I'd go with HAL. But I cruise for lots of reasons, and find myself preparing for my second RCI cruise and a Celebrity repo on a newly refurbished M-class ship that happens to be going where I want to go. Even so, I'll never stop scanning HAL's next batch of itineraries and prices.

I am eager to see these and to see if they alternate bed by balcony, bed by bath, as on the S class cabins.

We would like to take a taxi from the port of Haifa to Ein Hod and the Druze Village. Do we need to ask the taxi to wait or will taxis be available for the trip back to the port?

Thanks for your help.

Hi Ptater, I think we are on the same cruise. I was in Ein Hod in July, and I believe that you can let the cab go and that Lea or Dan in the Art&Wear gallery will be happy to help you get a cab back to the ship.

Thanks so much. Wow! It's great that they escaped the fire. I hope the upper town did also. I hope to pay a visit in July.

C.