Review of Celebrity Summit repositioning cruise April 17th-25th

[dalitos]

My husband, 23 month old son and myself cruised on April 17th to 25th on Celebrity Summit repositioning cruise from San Juan, PR to Bayonne, NJ.

This was our 1st Celebrity cruise and 2nd overall, so we are not avid cruisers likes many here but hope some find our review helpful.

We had wanted to cruise Celebrity for a while, after reading many articles and posts about it being a bit more upscale than many of the main cruise lines, the food being better quality, and the relaxed atmosphere of their ships.

We had a great cruise and a wonderful family vacation, with no major complaints whatsoever, although you will read some good things and some not so good.

We would not hesitate to book Celebrity on our next cruise, although would probably prefer another ship mainly for the sake of variation.

 

Precruise/Embarkation/Disembarkation: 5 stars

 

We flew into San Juan one day early, on April 16th, and stayed at the Sheraton San Juan Convention Center, which we found very nice (it is a new hotel) and convenient (right across from the port, had a great view of the Summit from our balcony!), although there isn't much around the hotel except a bar and the hotel's restaurant (very nice). We arrived around 7:00 PM so didn't do much that night except eat dinner and go to sleep.

The next day we took a cab (5 minutes) to Old San Juan, walked around about 2 hrs, bought some stuff at CVS, returned to the hotel around noon to check out, and took a cab to the port. Even though the port seems very close, you have to go around a small airport that's located there, so you can't really walk it (much less with luggage).

Check-in to the ship was a breeze, we were impressed. It was about 1:30, so relatively early for an 8:00 PM departure I guess, still we were expecting it to be much more crowded. We dropped our bags outside (2 minutes), checked in (5 minutes, and probably that much because the agent had to go photocopy our passports or something), and 3 more minutes to get our picture taken and board the ship, seriously.

Debarkation was also quite fast even with immigration; about 20 minutes from the moment we stood in line (still in the ship) to get out. This was about 9:25, and by 9:45 we were waiting outside for our ride to Manhattan with Dial 7 car service (very recommended).

 

The Celebrity Summit: 4.5 stars

 

We thought the ship was beautiful and is in excellent condition. We had read some negative reviews online, but figured it really couldn’t be that bad, Celebrity would not be selling cruises to 2000 people every week on an unkept ship, and it really wasn’t so.

All the common areas were beautiful, we especially loved the Martini Bar, the Rendez-vous lounge, the MDR, the Waterfall café, the pool area, the fitness center, and the shops.

The ship is nice sized for us, although today it may be considered small in comparison to the newer ships. We never felt crowded, quite the opposite, even in the buffet and the pool during sea days.

We absolutely loved the relaxed atmosphere of the ship, no announcements, no very loud music and/or activities.

We absolutely loved eating breakfast in the Waterfall café on the outside part, and the relaxed dinners in the MDR.

 

Our stateroom – Balcony room 8039: 3 stars

 

We loved the location of our stateroom, right by the front elevator, on the port side of the ship. It was very convenient to be close to the elevators especially with a toddler and a stroller.

We booked without much advance and didn’t have a lot of stateroom choice for the category we wanted, so we feared there might be too much noise coming from the elevators and/or the fact that it was a connecting room. Fortunately it wasn’t so, we didn’t hear any noise from the connecting room, and only here and there from the elevators/corridor when someone walked by talking loudly, as would happen with any other room.

The stateroom itself we didn’t particularly like and although it is probably a matter of personal choice, the main issues for us were: 1) the decoration was outdated, we didn’t like the red/orange of the bed and curtains, nor the blue/yellow carpet. 2) There wasn’t nearly enough storage space for even 2 adults, there were 2 closet doors for hanging, which is fine, but just one shelf and 4 (or 3?) small drawers for all other clothes. IMO there should have been some kind of cabinet or more (and larger) drawers somewhere else (maybe under the TV or under the vanity table). 3) The balcony wasn’t very well kept.. we know sea salt, sun and wind do their share and that’s understandable, but I think a bit of paint, a good scrubbing of the side walls, and a good cleaning of the glass would have made it so much nicer.

I will add to this that the cabin had some very nice aspects too, we loved having a balcony, the bed was comfortable, the bathroom although small very nice and with enough space for all our stuff, and the shower was very nice.

 

Service: 3.5 stars

 

We had some really great service and some not so good.

 

Stateroom – our stateroom attendant was very good, the room was spotless at all times, there were always enough towels, ice in the bucket, the bed was always made and/or tidied, etc. We didn’t have any special requests except for laundry/pressing and my son’s pack and play, and he was always very professional and accommodating.

 

MDR – service was very good and professional, although a bit less personal than we would have liked. He did what was expected: told us the recommendations of the day, took our orders, brought the food. We had a small table with 4 adults and 2 toddlers, so I guess a bit more friendliness especially towards the kids would have been nice.

 

Waterfall café (buffet) – We found the service here, unfortunately, lacking for the most part. We saw tables with trays/dishes that weren’t picked up in a while (empty tables), we saw tables w/o dishes and free for use that hadn’t been cleaned properly, the floor was dirty with things that fell and weren’t picked up. We understand when you are serving food to a large group of people it is hard to keep up but I am sure a much better job could have been done.

The buffet still had staff serving you some items (bagels, eggs, meats) and some items were self serve.. not sure why the differentiation as we thought it would be due to Noro.. but then wouldn’t everything be served by staff? We found this system uncomfortable as there wasn’t always someone in the station and people were just gathering around waiting. We usually ate not at the busiest times so maybe that’s why the staff was more relaxed?

 

Around ship – most of the staff we encountered around the ship (bars, pool, shops, etc) were very friendly and professional.

 

The food: 4 stars

 

MDR – We had dinner every day except one in the MDR, lunch on both sea days, and a branch on the 1st Bermuda day since we arrived at Bermuda only at 1:00 PM. Food in the MDR was very good, we enjoyed every dish ordered, although we weren’t blown away by any of them either, which I personally have been at some of the good restaurants at home. Still, very enjoyable, good portions, not small by any means, not too large that you leave feeling too heavy.

 

Buffet – there was very good quantity and variation of food, although the quality ranged from very good to not good in my opinion, some things were quite good (the salmon, which we saw available at breakfast only twice), and some just rubbery (pizza, waffles). Overall we enjoyed breakfast, always found a nice bagel, eggs or muffin, lunch food was not as tasty.

 

Entertainment/Activities:

 

We can’t comment much on the entertainment as we didn’t go to any of the evening shows, we had early sitting so could have gone to the 9 PM show, but this seemed too late for us with a 2 year old.

We did enjoy very much the bands playing especially the Latin Beat and the Elk Island Trio, we went to see/hear them every day, and some of the activities on board, although were limited in which we could do with a toddler.

 

The Itinerary: 5 stars

 

We loved the itinerary mainly because it combined Caribbean and Bermuda, and felt the ratio of 5 port days to 2 sea days was perfect for us. We really enjoyed each one of the islands we went to, and would gladly return to any.

We had researched the islands beforehand, and toured on our own and not through the ship.

 

Day 2 - St. Thomas:

 

Walked to the Heavensight mall (open mall) right by the pier and took a cab to go to Magen’s Bay as we were too late to get the ferry to Trunk Bay which we had planned to do. The ride to Magen’s Bay was breathtakingly beautiful on the hilly roads, and we enjoyed the tour. The beach was beautiful with clean sand and warm light blue water, and we enjoyed our morning there, wish there were more facilities on the beach though (chairs, . Took a cab back to the port and shopped a little.

 

Day 3 – St. Maarten/St. Martin:

 

We absolutely loved this island and would love to return either with a cruise or independently and stay a few days. We toured with Bernard (many threads about him in the St.M/St.M board), which might have helped how we felt about the island.

The tour started at 9 and finished at about 3. We toured the whole perimeter of the island (on both sides, the Dutch and the French), with relevant stops around the way, either for pictures or to stay for a while. The main stops were on a hill overlooking Phillipsburg and harbor, Simpson Bay marina, the sea creatures (?) man, Orient beach for 2 hours, Marigot (capital of the French side) for ½ hour, Maho beach (Sunset bar) to see the planes land (amazing, never saw a plane fly so close to me, and I work at an airport) for about 1 hour, and a large souvenir shop.

While touring we heard about the history of the island and the life there (education, family, economy, tourism, etc) and we found it very interesting.

 

Day 4 – Tortola, BVI:

 

The weather was overcast but we went ahead with our plan to go to the Baths in Virgen Gorda. We took the 9:00 ferry and were at the beach a bit before 10:00. We loved the beach, the water, and the big rocks. We were a little disappointed that we couldn’t do the caves to Devil’s bay as it didn’t seem safe with a small child (we had read otherwise), but we still enjoyed the beach. We took the ferry back to Tortola at 12:30 and walked back to the ship through the open market and some stores.

 

Day 6-7 – Bermuda:

 

We arrived to Bermuda at 1:00 PM, and departed the next day at 5:00 PM, so we had more time than in other ports, still not enough to tour this relatively big island, with so much to offer.

We loved the different atmosphere of Bermuda (compared to the Caribbean), the beaches, the towns, and the people (the few we came in contact with).

The first afternoon we toured downtown Hamilton (capital) and enjoyed the shops, the streets, the parks.

The second day we went to Horseshoe beach and to St. George’s, both very nice.

For transportation we used the ferry/bus pass, which we found very convenient and public transportation easy to use.

 

Family travel:

 

Just a few notes about cruising as a family, even though we had taken vacations before with our son this was our first cruise together.

Most things were much easier than we expected. We were concerned especially about being in port all day with our son without a set schedule and facilities (food availability, naps), but he did great. We had brought some closed snacks from home that we could take to the port, always bought plenty of water at the first store we saw, and tried to plan lunch and return to ship accordingly so he could keep some kind of schedule.

We took a big stroller with us and ended up using it much less than we expected, we only used it in Bermuda. It was still worth to take it even for just a couple of days, and it came in handy at the airport and pre/post cruise.

We were also concerned about the long dinners in the MDR but even though he didn’t sit in his chair for the most part (really can’t expect him to sit for 2 hrs), he was very well behaved and just kind of played next to us.

Our son is too young to go into the X program for children but we did use the toddler room with him a few times which was well stacked, we also took a case with toys to our stateroom on the first day and returned on the last day, really very nice of X to let us do this so we didn’t carry toys from home.

Of course a vacation with a toddler is different than just adults, but we are used to this new style (previous vacations, weekends at home) and love it.

We used the ship’s pack and play for our son to sleep but had to have it exchanged twice, the first time it wouldn’t stay open (trust me our stateroom attendant tried) and had a hole in the next, the second time it just collapsed one day, luckily it was morning and our son wasn’t sleeping in it. Needless to say, we feel X needs to buy new cribs/p&p.

The staff was extremely friendly and accommodating with us and our son, which we appreciated immensely.

[shipshape sam]

My husband, 23 month old son and myself cruised on April 17th to 25th on Celebrity Summit repositioning cruise from San Juan, PR to Bayonne, NJ.

 

This was our 1st Celebrity cruise and 2nd overall, so we are not avid cruisers likes many here but hope some find our review helpful.

We had wanted to cruise Celebrity for a while, after reading many articles and posts about it being a bit more upscale than many of the main cruise lines, the food being better quality, and the relaxed atmosphere of their ships.

We had a great cruise and a wonderful family vacation, with no major complaints whatsoever, although you will read some good things and some not so good.

We would not hesitate to book Celebrity on our next cruise, although would probably prefer another ship mainly for the sake of variation.

 

Precruise/Embarkation/Disembarkation: 5 stars

 

We flew into San Juan one day early, on April 16th, and stayed at the Sheraton San Juan Convention Center, which we found very nice (it is a new hotel) and convenient (right across from the port, had a great view of the Summit from our balcony!), although there isn't much around the hotel except a bar and the hotel's restaurant (very nice). We arrived around 7:00 PM so didn't do much that night except eat dinner and go to sleep.

The next day we took a cab (5 minutes) to Old San Juan, walked around about 2 hrs, bought some stuff at CVS, returned to the hotel around noon to check out, and took a cab to the port. Even though the port seems very close, you have to go around a small airport that's located there, so you can't really walk it (much less with luggage).

Check-in to the ship was a breeze, we were impressed. It was about 1:30, so relatively early for an 8:00 PM departure I guess, still we were expecting it to be much more crowded. We dropped our bags outside (2 minutes), checked in (5 minutes, and probably that much because the agent had to go photocopy our passports or something), and 3 more minutes to get our picture taken and board the ship, seriously.

Debarkation was also quite fast even with immigration; about 20 minutes from the moment we stood in line (still in the ship) to get out. This was about 9:25, and by 9:45 we were waiting outside for our ride to Manhattan with Dial 7 car service (very recommended).

 

The Celebrity Summit: 4.5 stars

 

We thought the ship was beautiful and is in excellent condition. We had read some negative reviews online, but figured it really couldn’t be that bad, Celebrity would not be selling cruises to 2000 people every week on an unkept ship, and it really wasn’t so.

All the common areas were beautiful, we especially loved the Martini Bar, the Rendez-vous lounge, the MDR, the Waterfall café, the pool area, the fitness center, and the shops.

The ship is nice sized for us, although today it may be considered small in comparison to the newer ships. We never felt crowded, quite the opposite, even in the buffet and the pool during sea days.

We absolutely loved the relaxed atmosphere of the ship, no announcements, no very loud music and/or activities.

We absolutely loved eating breakfast in the Waterfall café on the outside part, and the relaxed dinners in the MDR.

 

Our stateroom – Balcony room 8039: 3 stars

 

We loved the location of our stateroom, right by the front elevator, on the port side of the ship. It was very convenient to be close to the elevators especially with a toddler and a stroller.

We booked without much advance and didn’t have a lot of stateroom choice for the category we wanted, so we feared there might be too much noise coming from the elevators and/or the fact that it was a connecting room. Fortunately it wasn’t so, we didn’t hear any noise from the connecting room, and only here and there from the elevators/corridor when someone walked by talking loudly, as would happen with any other room.

The stateroom itself we didn’t particularly like and although it is probably a matter of personal choice, the main issues for us were: 1) the decoration was outdated, we didn’t like the red/orange of the bed and curtains, nor the blue/yellow carpet. 2) There wasn’t nearly enough storage space for even 2 adults, there were 2 closet doors for hanging, which is fine, but just one shelf and 4 (or 3?) small drawers for all other clothes. IMO there should have been some kind of cabinet or more (and larger) drawers somewhere else (maybe under the TV or under the vanity table). 3) The balcony wasn’t very well kept.. we know sea salt, sun and wind do their share and that’s understandable, but I think a bit of paint, a good scrubbing of the side walls, and a good cleaning of the glass would have made it so much nicer.

I will add to this that the cabin had some very nice aspects too, we loved having a balcony, the bed was comfortable, the bathroom although small very nice and with enough space for all our stuff, and the shower was very nice.

 

Service: 3.5 stars

 

We had some really great service and some not so good.

 

Stateroom – our stateroom attendant was very good, the room was spotless at all times, there were always enough towels, ice in the bucket, the bed was always made and/or tidied, etc. We didn’t have any special requests except for laundry/pressing and my son’s pack and play, and he was always very professional and accommodating.

 

MDR – service was very good and professional, although a bit less personal than we would have liked. He did what was expected: told us the recommendations of the day, took our orders, brought the food. We had a small table with 4 adults and 2 toddlers, so I guess a bit more friendliness especially towards the kids would have been nice.

 

Waterfall café (buffet) – We found the service here, unfortunately, lacking for the most part. We saw tables with trays/dishes that weren’t picked up in a while (empty tables), we saw tables w/o dishes and free for use that hadn’t been cleaned properly, the floor was dirty with things that fell and weren’t picked up. We understand when you are serving food to a large group of people it is hard to keep up but I am sure a much better job could have been done.

The buffet still had staff serving you some items (bagels, eggs, meats) and some items were self serve.. not sure why the differentiation as we thought it would be due to Noro.. but then wouldn’t everything be served by staff? We found this system uncomfortable as there wasn’t always someone in the station and people were just gathering around waiting. We usually ate not at the busiest times so maybe that’s why the staff was more relaxed?

 

Around ship – most of the staff we encountered around the ship (bars, pool, shops, etc) were very friendly and professional.

 

The food: 4 stars

 

MDR – We had dinner every day except one in the MDR, lunch on both sea days, and a branch on the 1st Bermuda day since we arrived at Bermuda only at 1:00 PM. Food in the MDR was very good, we enjoyed every dish ordered, although we weren’t blown away by any of them either, which I personally have been at some of the good restaurants at home. Still, very enjoyable, good portions, not small by any means, not too large that you leave feeling too heavy.

 

Buffet – there was very good quantity and variation of food, although the quality ranged from very good to not good in my opinion, some things were quite good (the salmon, which we saw available at breakfast only twice), and some just rubbery (pizza, waffles). Overall we enjoyed breakfast, always found a nice bagel, eggs or muffin, lunch food was not as tasty.

 

Entertainment/Activities:

 

We can’t comment much on the entertainment as we didn’t go to any of the evening shows, we had early sitting so could have gone to the 9 PM show, but this seemed too late for us with a 2 year old.

We did enjoy very much the bands playing especially the Latin Beat and the Elk Island Trio, we went to see/hear them every day, and some of the activities on board, although were limited in which we could do with a toddler.

 

The Itinerary: 5 stars

 

We loved the itinerary mainly because it combined Caribbean and Bermuda, and felt the ratio of 5 port days to 2 sea days was perfect for us. We really enjoyed each one of the islands we went to, and would gladly return to any.

We had researched the islands beforehand, and toured on our own and not through the ship.

 

Day 2 - St. Thomas:

 

Walked to the Heavensight mall (open mall) right by the pier and took a cab to go to Magen’s Bay as we were too late to get the ferry to Trunk Bay which we had planned to do. The ride to Magen’s Bay was breathtakingly beautiful on the hilly roads, and we enjoyed the tour. The beach was beautiful with clean sand and warm light blue water, and we enjoyed our morning there, wish there were more facilities on the beach though (chairs, . Took a cab back to the port and shopped a little.

 

Day 3 – St. Maarten/St. Martin:

 

We absolutely loved this island and would love to return either with a cruise or independently and stay a few days. We toured with Bernard (many threads about him in the St.M/St.M board), which might have helped how we felt about the island.

The tour started at 9 and finished at about 3. We toured the whole perimeter of the island (on both sides, the Dutch and the French), with relevant stops around the way, either for pictures or to stay for a while. The main stops were on a hill overlooking Phillipsburg and harbor, Simpson Bay marina, the sea creatures (?) man, Orient beach for 2 hours, Marigot (capital of the French side) for ½ hour, Maho beach (Sunset bar) to see the planes land (amazing, never saw a plane fly so close to me, and I work at an airport) for about 1 hour, and a large souvenir shop.

While touring we heard about the history of the island and the life there (education, family, economy, tourism, etc) and we found it very interesting.

 

Day 4 – Tortola, BVI:

 

The weather was overcast but we went ahead with our plan to go to the Baths in Virgen Gorda. We took the 9:00 ferry and were at the beach a bit before 10:00. We loved the beach, the water, and the big rocks. We were a little disappointed that we couldn’t do the caves to Devil’s bay as it didn’t seem safe with a small child (we had read otherwise), but we still enjoyed the beach. We took the ferry back to Tortola at 12:30 and walked back to the ship through the open market and some stores.

 

Day 6-7 – Bermuda:

 

We arrived to Bermuda at 1:00 PM, and departed the next day at 5:00 PM, so we had more time than in other ports, still not enough to tour this relatively big island, with so much to offer.

We loved the different atmosphere of Bermuda (compared to the Caribbean), the beaches, the towns, and the people (the few we came in contact with).

The first afternoon we toured downtown Hamilton (capital) and enjoyed the shops, the streets, the parks.

The second day we went to Horseshoe beach and to St. George’s, both very nice.

For transportation we used the ferry/bus pass, which we found very convenient and public transportation easy to use.

 

Family travel:

 

Just a few notes about cruising as a family, even though we had taken vacations before with our son this was our first cruise together.

Most things were much easier than we expected. We were concerned especially about being in port all day with our son without a set schedule and facilities (food availability, naps), but he did great. We had brought some closed snacks from home that we could take to the port, always bought plenty of water at the first store we saw, and tried to plan lunch and return to ship accordingly so he could keep some kind of schedule.

We took a big stroller with us and ended up using it much less than we expected, we only used it in Bermuda. It was still worth to take it even for just a couple of days, and it came in handy at the airport and pre/post cruise.

We were also concerned about the long dinners in the MDR but even though he didn’t sit in his chair for the most part (really can’t expect him to sit for 2 hrs), he was very well behaved and just kind of played next to us.

Our son is too young to go into the X program for children but we did use the toddler room with him a few times which was well stacked, we also took a case with toys to our stateroom on the first day and returned on the last day, really very nice of X to let us do this so we didn’t carry toys from home.

Of course a vacation with a toddler is different than just adults, but we are used to this new style (previous vacations, weekends at home) and love it.

We used the ship’s pack and play for our son to sleep but had to have it exchanged twice, the first time it wouldn’t stay open (trust me our stateroom attendant tried) and had a hole in the next, the second time it just collapsed one day, luckily it was morning and our son wasn’t sleeping in it. Needless to say, we feel X needs to buy new cribs/p&p.

The staff was extremely friendly and accommodating with us and our son, which we appreciated immensely.

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to write the review! Hopefully Celebrity will take up your suggestion about the cribs.

 

We recently booked cruise to go to St Thomas and St Maarten as we love those Eastern Caribbean ports.

[portofrome]

Thanks for the review.

[Woobstr112G]

Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts. We sailed two in a row on the Summit some years back and loved the ship. Glad to see she is holding up well as she gets older.....:):):)

 

Bob

[gigmann1]

Excellent review...very detailed. Thanks for taking the time to report on your cruise.:)

[dalitos]

Excellent review...very detailed. Thanks for taking the time to report on your cruise.:)

 

Glad you enjoyed it! Are you going on the Summit soon?