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Hi, we will be arriving on Summit in November and wanted to see if anyone had recommendation on private boat tour operators? We would like to snorkle and maybe visit a beach. Thanks

Yep, too early to bid. Response i got back on my email. Thank you for your email. Our goal is to open sailings up for bidding at 90 days to sailing. Unfortunately, sailings for November has not yet opened as we haven’t reached that mark yet. Please let us know if you have any other question.

Thanks and tried, get the same bounce back to the look up the reservation page then back to my itinerary. I did book directly with Celebrity. thx

Im having the same issue, but before i email them, does anyone know if you have to be a certain number of days out before you can bid? I made my final payment last week, but it wasnt due until tomorrow, 8/2 for a 11/2 cruise. Should i wait until after the actual payment date or does that matter? thanks

I posted the same question on the snorkel and scuba board and got this excellent response from OMEINV. Just an FYI for anyone else looking for their scuba fix in the southern Caribbean.

That is awesome information, thank you so much. St Lucia and Barbados were the two we were leaning toward and your info confirms those choices. We have dove st maarten and to your point, good not great. we would love to do the wreck, but it looks a little deep for us. we're getting old... Nice shallow reef dives are more our speed these days. Thanks again

Heres the itinerary and we are really ok with diving at any of the islands. I have looked up dive shops on a couple of the islands and there isnt a lot to choose from and the ones i have contacted havent responded so thats the reason i have been looking at shore excursion companies. Thanks

Has anyone used the non cruise line excursion companies to book scuba on your cruise? We are doing a celebrity southern Caribbean cruise this November and there are no scuba excursions at any of the islands. there a couple of companies i found doing a google search, viator, cruise excursion group, but i wanted to see if anyone has had experience with either of those or another one we could use. thanks

Perfect, thank you. Thats the kind of forum i was looking for. DIdnt realize one existed on cruise critic. Thanks again.

Hi, has anyone used one of the non celebrity shore excursion companies? We are on summit in November and want to dive and there are 0 dive excursions at any of the islands and we need our dive fix... Its southern Caribbean and i have to imagine that some of the islands have amazing diving. thx

Has anyone recently stayed at the Hotel Rumbao in old san juan? We are looking at it for a pre cruise stay in november, but its trip advisor reviews are not great. However, there arent many and im assuming its a new renovation from a Sheraton i believe. Just wondering if its getting better or if the negative reviews are overblown. Thanks

Well, we are the week before you, 11/2 so ill let you know... Our arrival time on the 9th says 6am which i believe is the same as the FL port arrival times so i dont know why their boarding times would be any different. Ill poke around our Facebook group and see if anyone has heard a 3pm boarding time. thx

Thanks everyone and glad we are able to try it. Hopefully the concierge can help us get in one night. We are on Summit and Peanut Head mentioned that some ships you can order from Blue in Luminae. Does anyone know if Summit is one of those ships? Thanks again

Hi, ive read two different answers on this so i figured id ask the experts. Can retreat/suite guests eat at the Blue restaurant? Sounds like there were some changes late last year that may have changed that? thanks

Great, thank you. We were hoping we could use Uber in PR. We just got back from Cancun and it definitely wasnt very prevalent down there. Or least not without the possibly of a run in with a taxi driver...

Wow, thats something i didnt catch. The ship doesnt leave until 8:30pm. I just assumed it was the normal 5ish pm like the FL ports. Definitely going to take our time getting on and explore san juan a bit. Thanks

No, we wouldnt book a cruise without a balcony, but we also dont use them that much other than to look out the window. Inside cabins are too small and dark and most windowed cabins are still pretty small. The IV just gave us some more space that we wouldnt otherwise use with regular balconies. That being said, we are on Summit in november in a regular balcony..

Where did i say i didnt like balconies?

We had the IV on Edge about 2 years ago and actually liked it. Now i will say i can count the number of times we went out of our balcony on our princess cruise last month on one hand, mainly when we pulled in and out of port, so we really dont utilize balconies that much anyway. It was nice to be able to sit in the IV sitting area with the window closed with air conditioning vs. sitting in the heat on a regular balcony. If we are back on an Edge class ship we would probably choose it again.

Thank you and it sounds like a pretty easy embarkation process. Looks like the area around the pier is relatively new, or at least i dont remember those hotels and restaurants when we were there years ago. Thanks again and looking forward to a southern carrib cruise on a smaller ship.

We are sailing Summit out of Puerto Rico in November and thats not a port we are very familiar with. We only sailed once from there a loooong time ago. Any advise on how that boarding process is compared to the FL ports in regards to arrival time and if there is a separate boarding process for reserve suites? We are flying in the night before and are trying to get an idea of when to get to the port and what to expect. It doesnt look as big as a miami or ft lauderdale port so hopefully not as chaotic? thanks

Well, this post wast a blast from the past. Someone must have liked something in here because it popped back up in my notifications. Im sure as many of you know from my review, we did end up cruising Enchanted Princess and it one of the best cruises we have had to date, and there have been a lot. We got that nasty MSC taste out of our mouths... Joking aside though, its hard for a cruiseline to regain customers after a bad experience. My wife caught me looking at a MSC yacht club cruise and said that we would never spend another dime with that company. Although most of the goods we buy probably touch some type of MSC cargo ship but i only thought that didnt say it... And dont get me wrong, we have had other cruises that havent been great, but none that would prevent us from ever trying them again.

Curious, when sailing out of the UK, do they have both coffee pots and kettles or do they replace the coffee pots with kettles?

And they are serious about it. We cruised princess last month out of Ft Lauderdale and they made us come down to the security area and open my wifes suitcase. They thought her hair dryer was a Kettle...

I know this point has been beat to death on this post, but suites/retreat is the way to go these days with these ships sailing at 100% capacity. We were on the Enchanted princess last month that was at 100% and the suite made all the difference for us in regards to a great cruise. A place to go that wasnt crowded, easy access to restaurants, easy boarding and disembarkation, etc. We booked a suite on summit in November and hopefully it will be a similar experience. Also as mentioned, NCL Haven is also very nice, but you are getting into way more families with younger kids on those ships which is fine if traveling with your family, but we have been there done that and prefer more of adult cruise.