Detailed Photo Review of 3/14/16 Celebrity Equinox 11 Night Cruise

[deladane]

So, you discovered an unsavory species - hammock hogs.

haha yup! I am well familiar with chogs/chair hogs, and I guess I did have some hammock hogs on the Serenity decks on prior Carnival ships but I didn't walk past the hammocks that often on those cruises so it wasn't as obvious.

 

Love the idea of trying all the drinks, but the size of the list is daunting! I liked your "candy jar countdown" and started one today for my July 1 departure from Amsterdam. I'm going to ask for a footstool as well, because nothing ventured, nothing gained! We have a 1A veranda, level 9 on the hump, so there will be room. Loving your review, and your writing style.

Oh yes, we too found the list daunting, but we were on a mission to get through it as much as possible! A few times, J said he wanted to re-order something he really liked from a prior night, but he didn't because he knew his job was to order something new to check it off the list haha It was a fun game to play throughout the cruise :)

 

Definitely ask for the footstool- why not, right? The worst they can say is no! Hopefully Celebrity won't make a mass ruling forbidding us from requesting foot stools as I plan to do this again on my 2018 cruise! :p

[deladane]

I will join the ranks of those enjoying this review...looking forward to more pics and comments! This is the first time that I've actually heard of anyone getting a footstool on a regular veranda. I've thought to ask many times but never bothered since I've heard so many say it can't be done.

 

Good luck with the drinks! Your list looks different from the one we had on the Summit before drydock so if you really want to try them all you'll have to go on all the other ships at least once :D

 

Enjoy and keep up the good work!!

Cathy

 

haha thank you! I'm not sure how many times I saw it mentioned about getting the foot stools on the veranda, but definitely at least one person said it so that made me add it to my to-do list for when we boarded the ship :)

 

Mission accepted! I already have one cruise booked on the Eclipse, but looks like I need to book lots more cruises to see all the different lists :p

[eurotraveller1]

You're welcome! :D

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be fair, we dropped most of the beers off the list that cost more than $13 because we knew we would never order those. Also, there were a few really low end beers that we have had a million times when we were in college and also didn't plan to order on this cruise. For the sake of getting all the drinks onto one page, the beers suffered some censoring ;)

 

 

 

You should upload a PDF version of the file so we can do it on our cruises, and see who can complete the most.

 

I'm enjoying the review so far. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

[RiotAct]

I count 210 different drinks, total, on that checklist.

 

So, between you and the fiance, that's approximately 9 drinks per day, without any repeats, on an 11-day cruise. Definitely doable

 

:D

[deladane]

I count 210 different drinks, total, on that checklist.

 

So, between you and the fiance, that's approximately 9 drinks per day, without any repeats, on an 11-day cruise. Definitely doable

 

:D

 

haha that's what we thought too! By the end of the cruise, we just handed the list to the sommelier in the MDR and told him to bring us something we hadn't tried yet lol All our regular waiters and bartenders knew about our mission and asked to check on our progress :D

[deladane]

When we booked the cruise, we opted for Select Dining because we thought 6pm would be too early for dinner, but 8:30pm was definitely too late. We wanted to have some time to get cleaned up after long days in port and to have a pre-dinner drink, but also wanted to eat early enough that we could digest and enjoy some evening entertainment on the ship before going to sleep. Select Dining seemed perfect for us, but we had a somewhat bad experience with it on our Carnival cruise last year. To avoid any long wait times, we pre-booked 7pm dinner reservations online for the whole length of our cruise. We loved that Celebrity gave us this option to make reservations, and it felt like we created our own fixed dining time. Each night at 7pm, we were greeted by Gorica at the deck 4 hostess stand for the Silhouette dining room, and she promptly seated us at a table for 2. Tonight, we were seated at table 518- a table next to the window with a beautiful view of the sunset over the southern Florida skyline.

 

 

 

Each night, the bread basket was accompanied by 3 different spreads. We rarely opted for the plain butter as the hummus, cream cheese spread, and other varieties were delicious.

 

Insider tip: While the french bread and bread sticks were good, if you dig to the bottom of the bread basket, there was usually something a little more exciting hiding below (rolls, focaccia, whole wheat bread, etc)

 

 

 

Crispy Thai Beef Spring Rolls

 

Belgian Endive Arugula Salad

[deladane]

Aged Prime Rib of Beef

 

Beef and Veal Spaghetti Bolognese

 

Incredible sunset on our first night at sea

 

Dessert Menu

 

Chocolate Cake

 

Our wait staff was thorough and served our meals correctly and promptly, but they were not very talkative. We finished dinner by 8:30pm, then headed over to the theater for the 9pm show. Tonight's show was a comedian named Dean Austin. He had some great jokes for the first 15 minutes, but then spent the next half hour making fun of people in the audience. We nearly walked out several times, but did stay for the whole show. It just seemed like he didn't have enough material prepared for a 40 minute show, and everyone we spoke to about him throughout the week said he was the worst show of the entire cruise! I understand that comedy is subjective and maybe some people did enjoy it, but needless to say, I would not see him again if he performs on another one of my cruises.

 

 

When we were finally released from that torture, we made our first visit to the Martini bar. We knew that the $12 martinis sold at this bar would not qualify for our classic beverage package, but we asked if they could make us a smaller version of any of the drinks for a lower cost. Unfortunately, they said this was not possible (we also asked the following night to a different bartender and were again denied the smaller martinis). Perhaps they don't stock smaller martini glasses? We instead opted for 2 glasses of wine, and took them up to the Sky Lounge to see if anything exciting was happening up there. The DJ was playing fun dance music for about 50 guests, so we stayed for a few songs before retiring to our cabin for the night.

 

Up Next: the first of four sea days!

[Bimmer09]

Dana-great food pics! Everything looks good.

 

Norris,

hungry

[deladane]

Dana-great food pics! Everything looks good.

 

Norris,

hungry

 

haha thanks! One of the reason I always take food pics on my vacations is that it makes me feel like I'm still there when I look at those photos. I can still taste the delicious food and it brings back great memories!

[Lovely_Star]

Thanks for sharing...where can I get that classic beverage package list on the ship? We're on the equinox this July and could use the reference during our sail

[scorchestra]

Immensely enjoying your review, thank you!

[deladane]

Thanks for sharing...where can I get that classic beverage package list on the ship? We're on the equinox this July and could use the reference during our sail

We got copies of both the classic and premium beverage package lists at guest services the day we boarded the ship. It was all pre-printed and easily available for us :)

 

Immensely enjoying your review, thank you!

Thank you! :)

[deladane]

Tuesday, March 15 ~ Sea Day

 

Last night, we had to set our clocks back one hour to align with the local time in Mexico. The good news was that we got an extra hour to sleep in on our first sea day... the bad news was that we woke up at 7am when our bodies thought it was an hour later. At least this view made waking up early a bit easier...

 

 

The MDR doesn't start serving breakfast until 8am on sea days, so we went to the Oceanview Buffet instead. I knew I wanted one of those yummy Belgian waffles, and the sticky bun was really good too. My favorite treat was the smoked salmon- I really liked that they served smoked salmon every day at the buffet, as I am used to only seeing it from room service or the MDR on Carnival cruises.

 

 

J loves his morning cup of coffee, so we went up to Cafe al Bacio so he could get something a little nicer than what is served at the buffet. This became a frequent morning stop for us on both port days and sea days, and it was rarely crowded.

 

 

I don't care for coffee (hence the reason I brought those cans of energy drinks in my carry-on bag yesterday!), but I did treat myself to the pastries or cakes in the display case. These are better quality than what is offered at the buffet, and they are complimentary even if you don't order a drink.

 

 

Bistro on 5 is located right across the hall, so we walked over to look at the menu. It looked yummy, but we never made it here to eat. Guess I'll add that to my to-do list for my next Celebrity cruise!

 

 

[deladane]

We continued our tour of deck 5 up to the photo gallery to see our boarding photo from yesterday. It was still so early that they weren't open yet, but they had a machine where you can insert your sea pass card and it will pull up all of your photos. It uses facial recognition software so it automatically finds all the photos taken of you, and you can view them, order prints, or even make a photobook on the machine! This was way more convenient than searching through multiple walls of thousands of other photos to find ours (although I did like that they organized the printed photos by the deck of your cabin so it made it slightly easier to find ours once the photos were put on display later in the day).

 

 

 

The next stop on our tour of deck 5 brought us outside to check out the view. Looks like the Constellation was sailing along with us towards Cozumel.

 

 

The Cruise Critic meet and greet was scheduled for 10:15am today at the Sky Lounge. Luckily a few people mentioned it at the informal gathering yesterday as we never got an invitation sent to our cabin. We mentioned that to someone at guest services this morning, and she insisted that it must have been in our cabin but we didn't see it. Not only did we know for sure that we did not get our invitation, we also never got yesterday's daily schedule or our Captain's Club coupons. Well by the time we got back to our cabin a few minutes later, all our embarkation day documents magically appeared on our bed. We were fairly sure that Rhonda forgot to give us the papers yesterday and just placed them on our bed when she made up the cabin this morning.

 

 

 

[deladane]

Well over 100 people attended the Cruise Critic meet and greet. They had a self-serve table set up with coffee, water, and juice, so we took a glass and found a seat on one of the couches. Once everyone was seated, the cruise director John briefly introduced himself, and then handed the floor over to the hotel director Jamie for a Q&A. He answered lots of questions about the upcoming Edge class ships, TV stations available on board, and a few other topics. Unfortunately, we had to duck out a few minutes early as we had a scheduling conflict today. We felt badly about not staying until the end to chat more with our roll call members, but the Galley tour started at 10:45am and we did not want to be late.

 

I really appreciated that Celebrity offered this free Galley tour as it was a rare glimpse at the behind-the-scenes action. We arrived at the MDR promptly at 10:45am and it was PACKED! I wonder what time people arrived to be seated up front?? The hostess gave us each a mimosa and a sticker for group number 18, and escorted us to a table at the back of the room.

 

 

 

A few minutes later, the Executive Chef Josh Becker came out to introduce himself and all the other head chefs from around the ship (one for the buffet, one for the specialty restaurants, one for the pastries, etc).

 

 

They called 2 groups at a time to start their tours of the galley, while Josh answered our questions about food services onboard. At first, I was annoyed about having to wait a long time for our galley tour to start, but I actually found this Q&A session to be extremely interesting and a valuable use of our time.

 

Our group was called in for the tour at around 11:15am, and our guide was another chef named Sam. The tour was very brief, maybe 10-15 minutes max, but it was interesting to see the lay out and flow of the galley, and to watch as they prepared for today's lunch and dinners.

 

 

 

[Texed]

DD,

 

Thank you soooooooo much for posting. :)

[shipshape sam]

DD,

 

Thank you soooooooo much for posting. :)

 

 

Was it the waffle?

[deladane]

We finished our tour by 11:30 and went up to deck 4 to check out the specialty restaurants on display. It looked like they had sample dishes from all 3 restaurants available to look at, but the event was winding down when we got there so I'm not sure if there was anything else to see/do earlier in the morning. The staff were being extremely pushy to make dinner reservations- it felt like we were being attacked by locals to buy their souvenirs on a Caribbean beach! Luckily for us, we already had a plan in mind, or else we might have just run away screaming from all that pressure!! Sam told us that if we booked a specialty restaurant for dinner tonight, we should mention his name for a 20% discount. We knew we wanted to go to the Tuscan Grill for my birthday dinner next Monday, and luckily they were willing to honor that 20% discount for a future date. We requested a 7pm reservation, but they said they only had 6:30pm available so we agreed to that and finalized our booking.

 

All this talk about food was making us hungry, so we went back up to deck 14 for the day's second round at the buffet. I loved the antipasto salad with fresh artichokes, mushrooms, and sundried tomatoes. Only in the buffet on a cruise ship is it acceptable to pair that with macaroni salad and battered fish! haha Probably not the most logical combination of foods, but it hit the spot!

 

 

After lunch, we went outside to the pool area to check out the action (how did we manage to spend nearly all of our first 5 hours today indoors??). The pool was quite crowded, and nearly all the loungers were occupied.

 

We noticed the Slush bar was open so we each asked for a virgin version of a drink to stay within our classic beverage package.

 

 

I loved that the Slush drinks were served in these plastic cups so we could take them in the pool or walk with them around the ship.

 

 

Insider tip: While it would have been above the price maximum price allowance of our package to order the Slush drinks with alcohol, there was nothing to stop us from ordering a virgin drink, then walking around the corner and ordering a shot of rum at the pool bar, and dumping that in our slushie!

 

With such beautiful clear skies, we wanted to spend some time outdoors, but didn't want to bother with the crowds near the pool. We wandered upstairs to deck 15 and found that the lawn was nearly deserted! Having a live grass lawn on a cruise ship was so unique, and it was so beautiful to see the bright green grass contrast against the cobalt blue ocean and light turquoise skies. We felt like we were having a picnic in a park, while drifting out to sea.

 

[deladane]

While we did want to be outdoors, we did not want to burn in the bright Caribbean sun, so we sat under the shade of the overhead canvas. We spent a few hours laying out on a towel and enjoying some more drinks from the Sunset Bar.

 

 

Just playing around with a fun photo editing app!

 

At 3pm, we shifted over to the seating for the Hot Glass Show. This is another unique feature of the Equinox. They have a contract with the Corning Museum of Glass where they have 3 gaffers on board who perform 2-hour shows and make 3-4 pieces each show. It seems kind of random as an activity on a cruise ship, but I really enjoyed watching the process of making each project. We only stayed for an hour because it was getting hot sitting so close to the ovens, but in that time they made one vase and one cup. Unfortunately, we never made it back to observe any other shows during the cruise, but I wish we would have because it must be a different experience each time. They even had shows at night and I imagine the glass glowing brightly against the dark night sky would make for an unforgettable evening.

 

 

 

I'm sorry it's so hard to see the gaffers with the reflection on the window! She is blowing through the pipe to inflate the glass...

[deladane]

The gaffers worked together really well as a team. Each time they made a piece, one person was the lead and designed what they want the piece to look like, one person was an assistant who brought over new glass and acted as a second set of hands, and the third person narrated over the microphone so we'd know what was happening!

 

 

Now onto a new project! Here she is widening the mouth of the cup...

 

Attaching the wings to the swan

 

Finishing off the top of the cup

 

By the time we left, it was standing room only!

[Jeremiah1212]

Great review so far!

 

I hope there is a Slush bar on Reflection because that Golden Coconut drink sounds amazing!

[deladane]

Great review so far!

 

I hope there is a Slush bar on Reflection because that Golden Coconut drink sounds amazing!

 

Don't quote me on this, but I am fairly sure all of the Solstice class ships have a Slush bar. We both loved the Golden Coconut... actually, we loved all of the Slush drinks except Cool Hand Cuke as that wasn't sweet enough. My favorite was the Mint Cookie!!!

[Cindy]

had 6:30pm available so we agreed to that and finalized our booking.

 

We noticed the Slush bar was open so we each asked for a virgin version of a drink to stay within our classic beverage package.

 

 

 

How did I miss this place?:confused: Those all look so good!

[deladane]

How did I miss this place?:confused: Those all look so good!

 

OMG u missed it??? I knew about it before the cruise and it was one of the two main reasons I wanted to upgrade to eventually the premium package (the other being the martini bar of course haha)! I looooove slushie drinks! This was located on the starboard side of the pool deck, next to the pool bar but kind of hidden under the stairs up to deck 14 so I might have missed it too if I didn't know to look for it.

[IrishLassie]

Loving your review & your pictures are great. :)

 

It's a shame you couldn't get the small Martini's at the Martini Bar, when we were on Silhouette this past Jan. I had no trouble getting them there. Now can't wait to go back on Silhouette next March so I can have more!! :D

 

Looking forward to more of your review & pictures. Keep up the good work.