Photo Review - Celebrity Summit Oct 24th - Oct 31st, 2015

[Ashclan]

This is a fun review! And, yes, there is so little out there due to the "Bermuda season" just ending for the Summit. We'll be on the opposite week itinerary right after Thanksgiving, but I'm looking forward to hearing about your experiences on the ship and in the Caribbean in general. I love your writing style and I thank you for taking on this task for those of us starving for more details.

 

Looking forward to the rest!

[morbihan]

I like an entertaining review and yours hits the mark. Looking forward to the next episode.

[wendycook22]

Can't wait to hear the rest. We sail this itinerary on the Summit November 21. We also sailed on the Summit last year and was happy with the ship's size and layout.

 

Counting down the days!

[kpkcruiser]

So fun to read about! Keep it up!!!:):):)

[snow bunny]

Do you recall if they had wine at the duty free? Would love to pick up a bottle or two before boarding for our balcony.

 

snow bunny

[Hooked!]

Loving the review...and now working my way through your other delightful reviews. Keep it coming!

[WinksCruises]

I actually don't like viewing the ship's daily "newspaper" ahead of time when reading reviews. We like being surprised! And a lot of this information will not apply to your upcoming Summit cruise as activities change from voyage to voyage.

 

But at the same time, many Cruise Critic members enjoy getting the sneak peak of all the events. So here you go:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cocomvc]

Thank you!!!

Today is my last day at work before vacation starts tomorrow and I leave for PR at 4 am Saturday morning

So this will help me make it through the day

[WinksCruises]

 

 

 

 

 

[WinksCruises]

Do you recall if they had wine at the duty free? Would love to pick up a bottle or two before boarding

Yes, it's a fully stocked duty free liquor store. You should be able to pick-up your legal wine allotment there, assuming its open - but I'm guessing if the ship is letting people embark, its open.

 

Don't know what the prices are like though. Or if Celebrity confiscates what you bring on - but it was PAST the security check in.

[Lonedaddy]

Great job so far looking forward to the rest. Did you happen to notice where the designated smoking areas were?

[rogerp5]

Do you recall if they had wine at the duty free? Would love to pick up a bottle or two before boarding for our balcony.

 

snow bunny

 

My wife bought a bottle of champagne for our daughter and son-in-law for their anniversary so i would assume they also had wine. they did walk right on with it.

 

enjoying the review, thanks

[WinksCruises]

Great job so far looking forward to the rest. Did you happen to notice where the designated smoking areas were?

 

There may be other areas, but port side promenade deck and port side OceanView Cafe bar area (in the very aft) were two places we saw.

 

Note: There was no smoking in the casino.

[SCCAcruiser]

Winks, thanks so much for this review - we're going on the same itinerary on January 2nd. I notice in the Dailies it shows that for formal nights, the dress code for men is: "Tuxedo, suit or jacket with slacks." This differs from Celebrity's "official policy" of "Tuxedo, suit or DINNER jacket with slacks." What did you observe - would a regular sports jacket/blazer, with dress slacks, shirt and tie be a good bet in the MDR on formal nights?

[rogerp5]

Winks, thanks so much for this review - we're going on the same itinerary on January 2nd. I notice in the Dailies it shows that for formal nights, the dress code for men is: "Tuxedo, suit or jacket with slacks." This differs from Celebrity's "official policy" of "Tuxedo, suit or DINNER jacket with slacks." What did you observe - would a regular sports jacket/blazer, with dress slacks, shirt and tie be a good bet in the MDR on formal nights?

 

on the ship last week, with the Winks, who we got to meet, first night the guys in our groups wore suits. Second night went with slacks and sport shirt and had no issues.

[SCCAcruiser]

You're referring to the second formal night? If that's the case, then they're really not enforcing the dress code in the MDR! Yeah, I know there's a dedicated thread for that....

[ElwoodPDowd]

Enjoying the review - thanks for your efforts in putting it all together.

 

DW and I are looking at similar itinerary for spring 2017.

 

Question regarding the muster drill - I wonder how MTD works if the drill is in the middle of your dinner (would also apply to specialty dining). Does everyone leave mid-dining and then return to their table post drill?

 

Thanks!

[WinksCruises]

Question regarding the muster drill - I wonder how MTD works if the drill is in the middle of your dinner (would also apply to specialty dining). Does everyone leave mid-dining and then return to their table post drill?

 

We were late dining, so it didn't affect us... but

 

From what I understand, first seating is timed so that if your wait staff serves dinner at a reasonable pace, you'll be wrapped up in time for muster. But we heard from others, who had slower service, that they had to return after muster for dessert and coffee service - (which actually butts them up against the 8:30 seating - since even muster ran long).

 

So yeah, it's not a perfect situation. But it's only that first night and it wasn't an issue for the majority of first seating guests.

[WinksCruises]

For dinner the first night, we took advantage of a discount rate for Qsine (it’s typically $40 per person). It's a rate the Maitre D tempted us with while we were changing our MDR seating assignment earlier in the day (more on that later). Qsine is a specialty restaurant on Summit that Celebrity says ”offers a culinary journey that delivers elements of surprise and delight.”

 

 

Basically, you sit in funky chairs, are handed an Apple iPad to choose menu items from (don’t worry, the waiter is standing by to guide first-timers and the technically inept - like Windows based me – through the ordering process) and in the end, you find your table filled with wave upon wave of TOO MUCH food! Are you surprised and delighted?

 

For the most part, the small dishes are pretty good. Spring Rolls, Angus Beef Sliders, Disco Shrimp (served in a flashing bowl), a really tasty Persian Chicken that slides off a mini-saber it was skewered on, a Trio of Meatballs (beef, turkey and veal), a tower of munchies - like fries and onion rings, salad, hummus, a 2 oz petite filet mignon; the choices were endless. And that’s before you’re presented a dessert menu designed like a Rubik’s Cube from which you twist-and-turn your choice of sweet delights, like cheesecake, chocolate logs and cherries jubilee.

 

The main dishes were hot and good. But iPad ordering can easily lead to gut-busting gluttony, so be careful if you dine there. It’s just way too much food, even though each dish is essentially an appetizer. In fact, on both occasions when we dined at Qsine, we had our waiter cancel the latter half of our order.

 

While eating at Qsine is unique and exciting (I guess), it also requires a degree of attention on the diner’s part – and that’s work to me. It’s probable more fun when dining in larger group where there are more mouths to pawn the food offerings off on. This amount of food simply overpowers a single couple who feel guilty about leaving food on the plate, and I actually found myself missing the more traditional specialty restaurants like Tuscan Grille - where ordering is easy and you know what you’re getting.

 

After dinner - which was late due to evening muster and sail away - we crashed back in our stateroom, knowing we had a port of call right off the bat the next morning: Tortola.

 

Day 2 – Tortola – Jost Van Dyke Escape Shore Excursion

 

I wish I could say we saw Tortola, but we never glimpsed more than the pier. Turns out Mrs. Winks had booked us on a Celebrity sponsored shore excursion (a rarity for us) after getting a recommendation from a work friend. So right off the ship, we were given wrist-bands and little red #12 circle stickers to adhere to our sweaty shirts (just like first graders on a school field trip) and were whisked off to a waiting catamaran that took us on a picturesque half hour voyage to one of the smaller British Virgin Islands, Jost Van Dyke.

 

 

Our tour leader tried to convince us the island was named after a female pirate, who was a lesbian, and hence the genesis of the slang term “dyke”. But a little Googling (when we found a free wi-fi hotspot, that is) revealed it was more likely named after a male Dutch privateer who used the small island as a base camp.

 

Our catamaran came to anchor about 30 yards off a narrow strip of beach and we had a choice of jumping off and swimming in or piling into pontoon boat tenders. No matter which option you chose, you were sure to get wet at least up to your knees, which led to the apt name of one of the beach bars, The Soggy Dollar.

 

Mrs. Winks swam in, leaving me responsible for getting our two bags of excursion gear ashore via tender. Our outing included a free chair/umbrella setup, one rum drink and a bbq lunch. In the picture above, you can see Winks receiving his drink ticket “communion” from our tour guide, Big Daddy. A humorous ritual he performed with everyone on the charter.

 

 

Once ashore, I looked over the sea of cruise mates laid out on their loungers, I realized once again, I could be doing the same thing, half an hour away, poolside on Summit. Without having to lug around excursion gear and getting my shorts wet. This is an endless bone of contention between Mrs. Winks and I…. this waste of time and money perpetually spent for a day sitting in the sun in a beach chair and having a cocktail - which equates to nothing more than being on the ship on a port day. But sadly, it’s an argument I always lose.

 

 

We were free to wander off our little section of the beach (though Big Daddy insisted on us using the Buddy System), and we were warned lunch and drinks would be at our own expense “out there” and he’d not be responsible for our safety. Brave first graders, we wandered away from the cruise crowd and discovered some of the more isolated sections of the shore line. Along the way, we passed several bars including Gertrude’s, The aforementioned Soggy Dollar and One Love, each with its own style, beer prices and gift shop offerings.

 

Lunch was a choice of grilled hamburger or hotdog (yikes), some condiments and a bag of chips. Glad I checked my vegan penchant at the door! We stayed at this Van Dyke beach for several hours, while I impatiently ripped my hair out, and then by about 1 pm Big Daddy called for the swimmers and pontooners to get back to the catamaran for our return trip home…. Which would end up being an adventure all on its own, as our tiny ship headed directly in to a massive wall of rain!

 

Most of us were hanging out on the bow, enjoying the respite an increasing cloud cover gave us from the sun, when Big Daddy suddenly raced out of the covered section of the craft and pointed at the grey mass in front of us. “That’s rain folks! A big squall. Hurry inside.” Which nearly everybody did. Except for the clueless Winks couple, who are hopeless Jets fans, and some hearty New England Patriot fans they just met who decided this was the moment to prove which of us was made of the heartier stock!

 

 

This picture doesn’t begin do justice in depicting this harrowing scene - as the hail-sized drops of frigid rain pelted us unrelentingly for 15 minutes - while the ship steadily plowed its way through this tireless and evil squall. It was literally like being water boarded - you suddenly realized it was somehow possible to drown, while above water, in the wind, by thrashing rain that was literally displacing all the available oxygen around you.

 

It was one of the most incredible endurance matches we’d ever experienced over the course of our admittedly sheltered lives... But eventually the storm passed over us and we arrived back at the Tortola dock, drenched to the point of having pruned finger tips - and chilled to the core. That’s when Mrs. Winks laughingly reminded me that tonight was formal night!

 

It was our first night in the main dining room. Second Seating. An option we had chosen so we could experience a consistent wait staff – something we had missed over the past few cruises when we’d chosen anytime dining. We arrived to find our table-for-two was butt-up against another table-for-two (okay, to be fair to Celeb, maybe there was an inch of separation) which in turn was butt up against round for 6. This presented the most awkward table layout ever - and we felt sorry for our servers who literally had to negotiate several long aisles, unable to easily slide pass by tables, just to deliver service. And we realized we didn’t really have a private table for two. We had tablemates, inches away, who it was impossible (and rude) not to acknowledge. We were at a table for four, with a table of 6 endcap. Now that’s Modern Luxury!

 

 

More thoughts on this dining situation later, but for now, here’s a tip for all cruisers everywhere… whether you’re anytime dining, formally seated or just slumming it in the buffet… If you ever see the name Andrew J. Rivers show up in your daily activities list as the comedian on ANY ship you sail worldwide. Run. Run for the hills!

 

He’s young, inexperienced and not very talented. He’s got about 5-minutes of passable material which would be acceptable, except for the fact that the ship gave him a 40 minute time slot… and he had NOTHING to fill it with. It was painful. And I’m one of the most forgiving audience members ever when it comes to tolerating comedy acts.

 

The jokes about his inability to get a date were tiresome and sad. And he kept referencing Seattle, his home town, with no real jokes about it - just that he was from there. Then he did a short shtick on how rap music (which he grew up on) is no different than the Beach Boys music his father used to listen to… Both being about trying to get with “bitches” and having cool rides. (Guess he didn’t see the Brian Wilson bio pic we saw on the flight down to Puerto Rico, Love and Mercy, which details the painstaking attention Wilson gave to creating the Beach Boys' sound). This comic's performance was truly one of the worse I’d ever seen… on a ship or not. People were walking out in droves.

 

Fortunately, the second comedian, who played several nights later, was much more competent, talented and funny.

 

Coming up Next: Our only Sea Day, CC Meet & Greet, Cabin Crawl and our aft neighbors host a Steely Dan listening hour at sea… at 2am.

Edited November 5, 2015 by WinksCruises

[SeasideMemories]

Loving your review! We went to the beach on Tortola but there was a whopper storm that blew through in the early afternoon. Most likely the same one. Sometimes the things that don't go exactly as planned make for the best stories...lol.

 

Sadly, have to agree on the 1st comedian. Did not meet one person who had anything good to say. I feel somewhat bad for him.

 

Looking forward to the rest of your review!

[ChelleBee]

For dinner the first night, we took advantage of a discount rate for Qsine (it’s typically $40 per person). It's a rate the Maitre D tempted us with while we were changing our MDR seating assignment earlier in the day (more on that later). Qsine is a specialty restaurant on Summit that Celebrity says ”offers a culinary journey that delivers elements of surprise and delight.”

 

 

Basically, you sit in funky chairs, are handed an Apple iPad to choose menu items from (don’t worry, the waiter is standing by to guide first-timers and the technically inept - like Windows based me – through the ordering process) and in the end, you find your table filled with wave upon wave of TOO MUCH food! Are you surprised and delighted?

 

For the most part, the small dishes are pretty good. Spring Rolls, Angus Beef Sliders, Disco Shrimp (served in a flashing bowl), a really tasty Persian Chicken that slides off a mini-saber it was skewered on, a Trio of Meatballs (beef, turkey and veal), a tower of munchies - like fries and onion rings, salad, hummus, a 2 oz petite filet mignon; the choices were endless. And that’s before you’re presented a dessert menu designed like a Rubik’s Cube from which you twist-and-turn your choice of sweet delights, like cheesecake, chocolate logs and cherries jubilee.

 

The main dishes were hot and good. But iPad ordering can easily lead to gut-busting gluttony, so be careful if you dine there. It’s just way too much food, even though each dish is essentially an appetizer. In fact, on both occasions when we dined at Qsine, we had our waiter cancel the latter half of our order.

 

While eating at Qsine is unique and exciting (I guess), it also requires a degree of attention on the diner’s part – and that’s work to me. It’s probable more fun when dining in larger group where there are more mouths to pawn the food offerings off on. This amount of food simply overpowers a single couple who feel guilty about leaving food on the plate, and I actually found myself missing the more traditional specialty restaurants like Tuscan Grille - where ordering is easy and you know what you’re getting.

 

After dinner - which was late due to evening muster and sail away - we crashed back in our stateroom, knowing we had a port of call right off the bat the next morning: Tortola.

 

Day 2 – Tortola – Jost Van Dyke Escape Shore Excursion

 

I wish I could say we saw Tortola, but we never glimpsed more than the pier. Turns out Mrs. Winks had booked us on a Celebrity sponsored shore excursion (a rarity for us) after getting a recommendation from a work friend. So right off the ship, we were given wrist-bands and little red #12 circle stickers to adhere to our sweaty shirts (just like first graders on a school field trip) and were whisked off to a waiting catamaran that took us on a picturesque half hour voyage to one of the smaller British Virgin Islands, Jost Van Dyke.

 

 

Our tour leader tried to convince us the island was named after a female pirate, who was a lesbian, and hence the genesis of the slang term “dyke”. But a little Googling (when we found a free wi-fi hotspot, that is) revealed it was more likely named after a male Dutch privateer who used the small island as a base camp.

 

Our catamaran came to anchor about 30 yards off a narrow strip of beach and we had a choice of jumping off and swimming in or piling into pontoon boat tenders. No matter which option you chose, you were sure to get wet at least up to your knees, which led to the apt name of one of the beach bars, The Soggy Dollar.

 

Mrs. Winks swam in, leaving me responsible for getting our two bags of excursion gear ashore via tender. Our outing included a free chair/umbrella setup, one rum drink and a bbq lunch. In the picture above, you can see Winks receiving his drink ticket “communion” from our tour guide, Big Daddy. A humorous ritual he performed with everyone on the charter.

 

 

Once ashore, I looked over the sea of cruise mates laid out on their loungers, I realized once again, I could be doing the same thing, half an hour away, poolside on Summit. Without having to lug around excursion gear and getting my shorts wet. This is an endless bone of contention between Mrs. Winks and I…. this waste of time and money perpetually spent for a day sitting in the sun in a beach chair and having a cocktail - which equates to nothing more than being on the ship on a port day. But sadly, it’s an argument I always lose.

 

 

We were free to wander off our little section of the beach (though Big Daddy insisted on us using the Buddy System), and we were warned lunch and drinks would be at our own expense “out there” and he’d not be responsible for our safety. Brave first graders, we wandered away from the cruise crowd and discovered some of the more isolated sections of the shore line. Along the way, we passed several bars including Gertrude’s, The aforementioned Soggy Dollar and One Love, each with its own style, beer prices and gift shop offerings.

 

Lunch was a choice of grilled hamburger or hotdog (yikes), some condiments and a bag of chips. Glad I checked my vegan penchant at the door! We stayed at this Van Dyke beach for several hours, while I impatiently ripped my hair out, and then by about 1 pm Big Daddy called for the swimmers and pontooners to get back to the catamaran for our return trip home…. Which would end up being an adventure all on its own, as our tiny ship headed directly in to a massive wall of rain!

 

Most of us were hanging out on the bow, enjoying the respite an increasing cloud cover gave us from the sun, when Big Daddy suddenly raced out of the covered section of the craft and pointed at the grey mass in front of us. “That’s rain folks! A big squall. Hurry inside.” Which nearly everybody did. Except for the clueless Winks couple, who are hopeless Jets fans, and some hearty New England Patriot fans they just met who decided this was the moment to prove which of us was made of the heartier stock!

 

 

This picture doesn’t begin do justice in depicting this harrowing scene - as the hail-sized drops of frigid rain pelted us unrelentingly for 15 minutes - while the ship steadily plowed its way through this tireless and evil squall. It was literally like being water boarded - you suddenly realized it was somehow possible to drown, while above water, in the wind, by thrashing rain that was literally displacing all the available oxygen around you.

 

It was one of the most incredible endurance matches we’d ever experienced over the course of our admittedly sheltered lives... But eventually the storm passed over us and we arrived back at the Tortola dock, drenched to the point of having pruned finger tips - and chilled to the core. That’s when Mrs. Winks laughingly reminded me that tonight was formal night!

 

It was our first night in the main dining room. Second Seating. An option we had chosen so we could experience a consistent wait staff – something we had missed over the past few cruises when we’d chosen anytime dining. We arrived to find our table-for-two was butt-up against another table-for-two (okay, to be fair to Celeb, maybe there was an inch of separation) which in turn was butt up against round for 6. This presented the most awkward table layout ever - and we felt sorry for our servers who literally had to negotiate several long aisles, unable to easily slide pass by tables, just to deliver service. And we realized we didn’t really have a private table for two. We had tablemates, inches away, who it was impossible (and rude) not to acknowledge. We were at a table for four, with a table of 6 endcap. Now that’s Modern Luxury!

 

 

More thoughts on this dining situation later, but for now, here’s a tip for all cruisers everywhere… whether you’re anytime dining, formally seated or just slumming it in the buffet… If you ever see the name Andrew J. Rivers show up in your daily activities list as the comedian on ANY ship you sail worldwide. Run. Run for the hills!

 

He’s young, inexperienced and not very talented. He’s got about 5-minutes of passable material which would be acceptable, except for the fact that the ship gave him a 40 minute time slot… and he had NOTHING to fill it with. It was painful. And I’m one of the most forgiving audience members ever when it comes to tolerating comedy acts.

 

The jokes about his inability to get a date were tiresome and sad. And he kept referencing Seattle, his home town, with no real jokes about it - just that he was from there. Then he did a short shtick on how rap music (which he grew up on) is no different than the Beach Boys music his father used to listen to… Both being about trying to get with “bitches” and having cool rides. (Guess he didn’t see the Brian Wilson bio pic we saw on the flight down to Puerto Rico, Love and Mercy, which details the painstaking attention Wilson gave to creating the Beach Boys' sound). This comic's performance was truly one of the worse I’d ever seen… on a ship or not. People were walking out in droves.

 

Fortunately, the second comedian, who played several nights later, was much more competent, talented and funny.

 

Coming up Next: Our only Sea Day, CC Meet & Greet, Cabin Crawl and our aft neighbors host a Steely Dan listening hour at sea… at 2am.

 

Great review. I can hardly wait for the rest. Ken and I are in the picture with the lovely and talented Mrs. Winks on the boat in the rain. Alas, we weren't as hardy and brave and you. Once the rain started stinging really hard we gave up. It certainly was an adventure though.

[WinksCruises]

 

 

 

 

Here are the Elite Coupon offers:

 

 

And here's an odd paper item; a short 4-page newspaper that Celebrity prints. Covers news headlines, finance and sports. You can pick it up at a rack by Guest Services each day...

 

[WinksCruises]

Ken and I are in the picture with the lovely and talented Mrs. Winks on the boat in the rain.

Ah, nice to hear from you. So, it's okay you got in from the rain... but please, Mrs. Winks' head is big enough. Please stop with the platitudes, thank you. It just encourages her bad behaviour! :)

[Ashclan]

Still loving this. I'm curious why, since you didn't seem to love it, you went to Qsine twice? was it due to not loving your MDR set up or was it so you could try a wider variety of the Qsine selections (I could see us doing something like that....)?

 

Great photos! Oh....and, GO PATS!!! ; )

[WinksCruises]

I'm curious why, since you didn't seem to love it, you went to Qsine twice? was it due to not loving your MDR set up or was it so you could try a wider variety of the Qsine selections (I could see us doing something like that....)

 

The second time we went to Qsine, it was the second formal night. We were hopelessly late for our MDR seating, we weren't dressed up yet, and yes, we were tired of the odd MDR table configuration. On the way over to the buffet, we stopped by Qsine and the host was like, we can take you now and you don't need to dress up. Voila... easy peasy.

 

I have to say,the second time around we were much more at ease with menu and the whole Qsine process - but we still ended up ordering too much! But yes, tried a few other things. (Also, since we had remaining On Board Credit we'd gotten from our TA and Celebrity promotion, this meal worked as a convenient, late cruise, spend down. Use it or lose it!)