argyllsock

Hi,

are you able to exchange larger bills for ones and fives onboard?  Perhaps at the casino?
 

thanks,

Hi All,

I heard that Phoenix is the rock band on Oasis right now.  Does anyone know how long they will be on board?  Cruising on 10/23/22 and hoping to catch them.

thanks!

26 minutes ago, Ourusualbeach said:

Yes.  You will receive an e mail sbout a week before your sailing from the suite concierge and you can ask them to make your dining and show reservations. Space is held back for this booking on board so nothing is ever truly sold out in advance. 

10 minutes ago, HicksRA said:

Did this on Harmony in January. After getting the email from the Concierge, I sent her a list of the restaurants and times I wanted reservations.  She took care of it and even booked all show reservations to coincide with the eating times without me asking. 

Thank you both!  Really appreciate this.

Hi,

I have a cruise in October on Oasis (first time on this class) and was able to get a very good deal on a suite (first time for that).

We also purchased the Unlimited Dining Plan.  Now, I’ve heard that getting reservations can be difficult as you have to reserve on board.  Is it possible to have the suite concierge do the bookings and are they able to get reservations in restaurants that appear to be fully booked?

thanks!

Thanks!

we had some similar challenges in Blu on Celebrity and the waiters did the same.

appreciate the info!

Hi All,

Heading out on a cruise on Oasis in the fall in a suite.  Very excited about that.  We get access to Coastal Kitchen as part of the suite experience.  One of our party members is a vegetarian - looking at the menus I have been able to find the vegetarian options are quite limited.  Any suggestions?  Will the kitchen make up something different if what's on the menu isn't appealing?

Thanks!

8 hours ago, Mikew0805 said:

Deck 15 port side. Roughly between the Lime & Coconut and the exit to the slides just aft of the Solarium. I didn't see any smoking on 16, I thought that went away when the ship was Amp'd.

 

I don't think you should be affected by smoke from the area all the way back at 1710.

Thanks!!!

Hi All,

I am looking at booking a Crown Loft cabin on Oasis and was wondering if the smoking areas are near the aft of the ship where the suites are.  I understand that they are on deck 15/16 port side but would appreciate any suggestions. We were thinking of cabin 1710.

thanks!

4 hours ago, Aquahound said:

For atmosphere and a great grouper sandwich, I recommend Conch Republic Seafood Co.  

Thank you for the suggestions!  I have some choices now...

12 hours ago, peter_krynicki said:

Grouper, prepared any way you want it, is one of the fish listed on the Half Shells catch-of-the-way menu.  The menu never changes but the fish available do. They only serve catch-of-the-day if it is just that, so you know it's fresh. My favorite way it's prepared is blackened.

 

https://www.halfshellrawbar.com/

 

Pjk

Thank you!

Hi All,

Spending a day next week in Key West on our Equinox cruise.  I've been many times and usually make a beeline to BO's Fish Wagon for a Grouper Sandwich.  Reading more recent reviews, it appears that it's gotten quite a bit pricier and the quality has dropped a bit - $20 for a grouper sandwich...and that's without any sides!

So, I'm ready to try something different and would appreciate hearing everyone's suggestions.

Thanks!

5 hours ago, c-leg5 said:

Are you just looking for beach, food and drinks or do you need activities and water toys?

Beach, drinks, and food...in that order!  Just want a stop where we can dip our feet into the water.

3 hours ago, JohninDC said:

Great if you have a toddler - they have a popular kiddie splash area. Otherwise I think you can do better  Food there gets poor reviews, especially the buffet option. Mitsugirly has a photo intensive review linked in her signature - check it out.

 

Besides this board I would also look at trip advisor reviews. Good luck!

@JohninDC thank you.  No kids so that wouldn't be a plus for us.  Food is an issue.  I'll check out Mitsugirly's review and dive deeper into tripadvisor.

Hi All, 

We are looking at doing a beach resort during our upcoming stop in Cozumel.  Right now, our cruise line as a sail on excursions to Playa Mia and its actually cheaper than booking independently.  Any thoughts on Playa Mia?  I hear about Mr Sanchos all the time but can't find much information about Playa Mia.

I'm sailing on Equinox at the end of the month.  Does anyone have a full price list for the on board duty free liquor shop on any of the Celebrity ships?

@notamermaid, @FuelScience, @jpalbny, @G.M.T.

Thank you for the great suggestions!  Very excited about spending a day in Mainz.  Appreciate all of the train travel tips!

One day to go!

5 hours ago, FuelScience said:

It's a 20 minute train ride, and they leave every 30 minutes. You can find scheduled trains on the bahn.de web site. The trains are a local carrier (RNN), and it looks like a ticket good for travel all day is 12 Euro.

Thank you!  That will work for us!

We are on the Avalon Panorama on the 05 October Sailing from Mainz to Amsterdam.  Just received an email from Avalon:

"There has been a change of your Cruise embarkation plan. Your ship AVALON PANORAMA will be in Nierstein instead of Mainz."

I expect that it's due to the embankment in Mainz not being deep enough - the channels are fine but docking is a problem.  I'm hoping we can get a shuttle into Mainz as we arrive very early on embarkation day and we were hoping to visit the Dom and the Gutenberg museum.

10 hours ago, deladane said:

Our flight to New York was on July 2, so we needed to decide how to split up our 12 days in Europe between Paris and London.  We wanted to keep things pretty even, but since it seemed like there was more to do in Paris than London, we picked Thursday, June 27 as our travel day between the two cities.  That gave us 5 full days in Paris, plus the evening of the night our plane arrived, and 4 full days in London, plus the afternoon after the train ride from Paris, and the morning on our last day because our flight to New York didn’t leave until 5pm. 

 

There are 2 main ways to travel from Paris to London.  If we chose to fly there, the flight itself is not very long, but we would need to get from central Paris to either CDG or Orly airport, and we would need to arrive early enough to allow time to check our bags and go through security.  When the plane landed in London, we would need time to wait for our bags to arrive, and then we would need to travel from Gatwick or Heathrow into central London, so the door to door time would probably be much longer and it would definitely cost more money than our second option. 

 

The second option was to take the Eurostar train through the Chunnel (although apparently only Americans call it the Chunnel haha).  The Eurostar train leaves from Gare du Nord train station, towards the northern side of central Paris, and arrives into St. Pancras station, towards the northern side of central London, saving us a lot of travel time and avoiding the logistics of going through the airport.  The train ride itself is 2 and a half hours long, but thanks to the time zone difference, it would only feel like 1 and a half hours!  Eurostar has several tiers for their seats, but we would be fine with the cheapest option, which allows you to pick your seat and includes 2 checked bags plus one carry on bag.  They do recommend that you arrive at the station one hour prior to departure, but overall it would still be way faster than flying.  The ticket prices fluctuate just like airline tickets, and they go on sale 6 months in advance.  We were in Puerto Vallarta the day our train tickets went on sale, so the night we returned home, I immediately logged onto the website to book our tickets.  The Paris to London route operates about once an hour, so we opted for the 10am train, which arrived in London at 11:30am.  That seemed like a perfect train time because it wasn’t too early in the morning, knowing we would need to finish packing and eat breakfast before going to the train, and it arrived before lunchtime in London, giving us most of the day left for touring.  The nonrefundable tickets cost $68 each, and I made sure to pick seats facing forwards on the train.

 

With our dates in each city finalized, the next step was to find hotels.  At that point, I knew absolutely nothing about how either city was laid out and it felt very overwhelming to pick which part of town would be best for us to stay in, let alone picking a specific hotel!  I decided to slow things down and tackle one city at a time.  For each city, I created a map on Google Maps and plotted out all of the touristy landmarks that I wanted to visit.  That gave me a good idea of where we’d be spending most of our time, so I tried to look at hotels in those neighborhoods.  Of course, hotels located very close to the major attractions also tend to be the most expensive, so I looked at options slightly further away, but with good access to public transportation.  When we travel domestically, especially for just two or three days over a long weekend, we often book vacation rentals on AirBNB and VRBO.  When we travel internationally, I prefer to book real hotels because they are more reliable (ie: less likely to cancel our booking at the last minute, leaving us without a place to stay in a foreign country!).  I have had a lot of success using Booking.com as they tend to offer good rates on a huge number of hotels in any given city, with a convenient way to search that inventory to select the amenities that matter most to me.  We did have one major problem with a hotel in Mexico that cancelled our Christmas/New Years week hotel just 2 months in advance (even though we booked a year ahead!), and all of the other hotels in our budget were sold out.  Booking.com totally took care of us and found us a new hotel in the same area where we wanted to stay, and they paid for the difference in price!  After that experience, I was happy to try their site for hotels for this trip.

 

In the end, I selected a boutique hotel called Hotel Chopin in Paris’ 9^th arrondissement, located close to a metro station, and around a mile walk to the Louvre going south, and Gare du Nord going north.  For London, I knew we would have an unlimited ride pass for the metro, so being close to a transit hub was very important.  I also wanted to be close to St. Pancras station as that’s where we would arrive via the Eurostar, and we could get a direct ride from there to Gatwick at the end of our stay, so it would mean convenient access when schlepping our luggage.  I decided to book our reservation at Central Hotel, located on a quiet side street directly across from St. Pancras Station (for the Eurostar) and Kings Cross Station (for the Tube).  Central Hotel included a daily free breakfast, but Hotel Chopin did not.  Upon further thought, I realized that was a good thing because it would allow us to sample different French pastries and baked goods from different shops and markets each day!  Both hotels offered free cancellation until a week before the trip, free wifi, a non-smoking room with a private bathroom, and a hair dryer (a must for me, so I could save on precious space and weight in my luggage and to avoid the voltage change possibly destroying my hair dryer from the States!).  The only slight problem was that neither hotel had air conditioning.  Both said they have fans for the rooms, and I just kept my fingers crossed that it would be cool enough at night that we could sleep comfortably because the hotels with air conditioning were much more expensive.

 

This seems like a good place to break up the text with a few pretty photos from London…

 

 

 

Your review is bringing back memories of my year working in London!  The Churchill Arms (middle picture with all of the flowers) was our 'local' on Kensington Church street -- one of the prettiest pubs you will find in London...and great Thai food as well!

Were on Summit week of May 19, 2018 Bermuda Run. IMHO The Summit is a fine Ship. Kept very well. Excellent crew, good food, friendly personnel, and down right homey.

 

Gary

We were on the same cruise - agree completely. The Summit is like my well used leather sofa — a bit rough on the edges but lovingly looked after and extremely comfortable.

Look past the small nits one finds in an older ship and enjoy the wonderful crew!

Thanks for the review.

 

Where was your original suite (with the HVAC noise problem) located? When you moved, apparently you no longer had the issue. Was was your new suite located? Just concerned about the location vis a vis our reserved stateroom.

 

 

Also, by any chance do you have copies of the dailies?

Hi, we were in 7140 and were moved to another Suite. I won’t book a Celebrity Suite again — the bed is located against the interior wall (the only time we’ve had a configuration like this) so your head is right up against the wall where the HVAC is. It’s okay if the HVAC is working fine but if its acting up you will have noise. We passed by the suite a few times after we moved and they had been working on replacing most of the HVAC innards.

Unfortunately no dailies.

For what it’s worth, the crew was fantastic and very responsive to our concerns. They did the utmost that they could do and we were very appreciative for everything. Would definitely do Summit to Bermuda (or anywhere else) again.

Hi everyone, I will be posting a review later but here follows a quick report on the ship and her facilities.

Summary:

A great first time trip to Bermuda (we will be back) on an older but well maintained ship. It was a much more relaxed trip then a typical Caribbean cruise since we only had one port. No rushing. A ship and itinerary geared towards couples; from my perspective not a great choice for families.

We typically go for an Aqua cabin but splurged for a suite this time.

Excellent food in Luminae. Decent offerings in the buffet. Our one specialty dining experience (see below) was an utter disaster.

The ship is approaching 20 years in age but looks very good. I found it clean and well looked after. Some of the furniture is beyond its best by date, especially in the buffet area. Iget the impression they are trying to make it last until they get to the edgification dry dock in February. That said, it’s like the old leather sofa I have: a little worn but very comfortable.

The crew was fantastic. All smiles and always willing to help out.

Embarkation:

We drove to the port. With three cruise ships now home porting out of Bayonne, we found ourselves parking outdoors instead of in the garage. I suspect if this situation continues we’ll see a premium covered parking option along with a basic surface parking option. Never fear – the outdoor parking adds only a 100 yard walk to the terminal entrance!

Security was very fast – we were through the detectors in about two minutes. Check in was a little slower. Celebrity, unlike RCCL, still takes a picture at check in and issues your sea pass at that time. While slower I prefer getting the card immediately (see my RCCL Anthem of the Seas reviews for the issues we had with missing sea pass cards!).

As we were celebrating an anniversary we had a suite. This gets you a separate check in (didn’t seem to save any time) and an escort up toMichael’s club with lunch in Luminae.

The Cabin:

We were booked into a Celebrity suite. It has a quirky layout with the bathroom adjoining the separate bedroom and a combination dining room / living room. After staying in the room I think it would have been better to have the bathroom connected directly to the main area.

We had a substantial HVAC issue the first night of the cruise. The HVAC compressor was starting to breakdown, resulting in a large thumping sound. Compounding this, the bed in the Celebrity Suite is situated against the corridor wall where the HVAC is located.

We raised the issue with the Suite manager. Unfortunately, there was no available space (the ship was full) but, once we got to Bermuda, another suite opened up and we were promptly moved to the new location.

The suite manager and team were great about it, doing everything possible to try and resolve the problem and were able to provide a solution to us.

Dining

Luminae

Luminae was delightful, with great dining options every night and also able to provide a vegetarian option for my DW. The service was outstanding and the meals were always well prepared. We typically skip breakfast but found ourselves getting up most days to get breakfast as it was very well done.

Waitstaffquickly got to know your preferences and drinks were typically set down as youarrived.

If you can afford a suite – go for it for Luminae alone!

Buffet:

We ended up in the buffet on port days usually to grab a late lunch or snack after a day inBermuda. The buffet is smaller than on the larger ships and lacks some of the variety we’ve expected. However, there is a grill at one end of the buffet that will prepare to order steak, fish, chicken, and pork along with fresh made paninis – excellent.

Food was generally good and if you avoided peak lunch hour you didn’t have an issue getting a table.

Specialty Dining – Tuscan Grille:

Awful. Simply awful. We’ve eaten at Tuscan Grille on all of our Celebrity cruises over the past few years and we’ve found the dining to be fantastic. Until this cruise. I asked if they could prepare a steak ‘black and blue’ (also called Pittsburgh style, I believe) to which the waiter responded ‘absolutely.’

What I received was a burnt steak (note: not fully burnt; rather, spotted burnt) with a taste of burnt pan. Not sure how I can describe it other than a burnt metallic taste. So, I get the waiter over, explain the issues, and ask for a rare ribeye (not black and blue). No problem, he grabs my plate along with all of my cutlery and rushes away. So, I’m now sitting with a bunch of sides, no main, no cutlery, watching my table mates enjoy their meals!

About 10 minutes later, when everyone is finishing up their mains, a new steak is provided along with cutlery. Unfortunately, I received a thin minute steak (at least, it looked just like the steaks you can get in the buffet grill area) doused in some sort of salty sauce. Not a good steak at all. At this point I gave up, still dealing with the metallic burnt pan taste in my mouth, and waited for my table mates to finish up their dessert (yes, they were on dessert) before heading up to the buffet to have something to eat. I raised my issues and concerns both with the suite manager and on the post cruise survey. I hope that they will do something to improve the poor quality of the food and the service or that this was a one off experience.

Entertainment:

We didn’t expect much on this front. I’ve found that this has never been Celebrity’s strong suite. We did attend a couple of the production shows offered (can’t remember the names) and while it was a typical mashup of songs for a change the cast had very strong voices. The special entertainers were quite good – excellent singers and comedians. I really wish Celebrity would have a magician. I’ve never had a magician on celebrity unlike other cruise lines.

Debarkation:

Being in a suite we were able to exit the ship with our luggage almost immediately after the ship was cleared.

While the debarkation was fast (great) the port area left a lot to be desired. The ship arrived in a downpour and the outdoor parking lot had drainage issues. The entire space was a small lake that we had no choice but to slog through. I hope that they correct this at some point.

Hi,

There are a couple of forums you should have a look at:

Bermuda Port Forum

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=196

The port forum has a lot of great information.

May 20 Roll Call

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2457359

You will find some additional information on this forum and will be able to interact with your fellow cruisers who are on board.

I share your pain...

But I think it may be a simple case of supply and demand. Have a look at what ships are in port the days that you are. We are heading to Bermuda late May with X (1950 pax) and have seen similar prices...but NCL Escape (4200) and HAL Veendam (1266 pax) are in port the same time -- all in there's over 7000 cruisers on the island! I'm guessing with that number of cruisers the tour operators are able to command more for their offerings.

Bermuda is probably one of the best ports to book your own tour outside of Celebrity. With three days in port you've got two days were you can be late getting back and not have to worry about the ship leaving without you!

Good luck with your excursions

Hope you have a safe flight and a great trip!

Would really appreciate your thoughts on the suite embarkation process. We have a suite on Summit in May and are wondering.

How did you get the upgrade deal to the Royal? We are booked in a Celebrity Suite but the cost to upgrade is a little steep right now.

Safe journeys!