Part I - Review of Zenith Sailing - 12/12 to 12/17/05

[kryos]

I love reading reviews of everyone's cruise experiences, so I thought I would return the favor with a review of my one and only Celebrity cruise to date. I will break this up to try and make it easier to read. I apologize in advance for the length.

 

Overview:

I am a 49-year-old female who travels as a solo on most of her vacations. I scheduled this cruise at the last minute, as part of a “Cruise University” educational program for new home-based travel agents. Because of this fact, I spent much of my time onboard with the group, in class and various networking sessions. Thus, there are certain parts of the cruise experience aboard ship that I could not take advantage of since I was busy with our group’s own activities.

 

Getting to Miami:

Uneventful flight on U.S. Air from Philadelphia. Flight was on time and I arrived in Miami at about 1:00 p.m. Since I booked my cruise through the outfit hosting the Cruise University, and since a very low price was specially negotiated for our group of travel agent professionals, no transfers to and from the ship were included. So my plan was to grab a cab at the Miami Airport. I must have chosen the dumbest cab driver because what should have been about a 15 minute ride wound up taking over an hour. He somehow got into the truck lane and we were in a bottleneck until he was finally able to get out of it. Total cost of the cab was $24 flat rate. There is also a $2 toll they can charge you if they have to pay tolls.

 

Embarkation:

Smoother than silk. Since I arrived so late at the pier (after 2:00) there was hardly any traffic inside the terminal. They even let me carry not only my carry-on, but my large duffle bag through security screening so that I didn’t have to wait for my luggage to be delivered to my stateroom. Went right through all the stations in the terminal with hardly any wait, and then it was onto the ship. Once there, Celebrity had people serving champaign and some other orange juice-type drink. A helpful steward immediately relieved me of my large duffle bag and escorted me to my stateroom.

 

Strange thing … at least on the Zenith, which is the oldest ship in Celebrity’s fleet, you have both a Seapass card for making onboard purchases, as well as a room key. Shame these can’t be combined into one, like on Holland America and many other lines. Why carry around two cards when you can carry just one?

 

Stateroom:

 

I got what I paid for, put it that way. Very small inside stateroom located on deck 4 … the lowest passenger deck. But, it was more than adequate for my needs. What I found incredible about it, though, was that it technically was a quad stateroom as there were two beds that folded down from the ceiling. How four people could possibly live in that tiny room for four or five days is beyond me. The bed was set up as a double since I was occupying the stateroom myself. One side of the bed was flush with the wall, while the other side had a night table up near the headboard, and then maybe about a foot and a half of clearance from the bed to the other wall. Two more beds could be dropped down from the ceiling. Warning, don’t put your shoes on by sitting on that side of the bed. If you aren’t careful, you could bang your head against the upper bunk which is recessed from the ceiling. Sit at the foot of the bed for this purpose. I learned the hard way.

 

There was more than enough storage in this stateroom, even for four people. Two large closets, with a six-drawer unit in one of them for the storage of stuff like socks and undies. The safe was on top of this unit, as well as space for shoes. The other closet had a wide shelf at the bottom on which more shoes could be stored.

 

There was a small writing desk with a TV on top as well.

 

The bathroom was on the small side, as was to be expected, but plenty large enough for me. Not much room for storage of stuff on the vanity, though. Shower was a decent size, at least for my needs. There was a hand crème dispenser on the wall of the bathroom, and a shampoo dispenser in the shower. This way the cabin stewards didn’t have to be bothered replenishing those items. Two bars of soap were provided, and while I opened both of these on the first day … one for the vanity and one for the shower, no replacement bars were brought for the duration of the cruise. I guess Celebrity feels that in the “cheap seats” two bars of soap should be plenty for a five night cruise.

 

One major negative … no refrigerator in the stateroom. This surprised me because it’s the first time that I didn’t at least have something in which I could store my ice bucket and a can of Coke or two. But this stateroom had none. Problem was that even though the cabin steward replenished the ice both during his morning clean-up and then again in the evening, it would rarely last until his next cleaning. I couldn’t understand why a small refrigerator unit couldn’t be provided … at least large enough for the ice bucket.

 

Ship:

 

In a word, the ship was beautiful. I couldn’t help thinking several times during the cruise that if this is Celebrity’s oldest ship and she is so elegant, what must the newer ships look like?

 

We had late seating (8:30) for dinner and the Caravelle dining room was absolutely stunning. Every bar and lounge I walked into was also beautiful. Smoking and non-smoking sections were clearly marked (the ashtrays on the tables are your first clue) and smoking areas were plentiful. The Windsurf Café was always clean and neat and the sections carefully separated so that one didn’t have to walk through a long serving line if they didn’t want something being offered there.

 

Tables in the Windsurf were never hard to get … even during breakfast on sea days. Stewards kept up with cleaning tables as people left, so there was always somewhere to sit. There was even a nice outside area to eat if you chose, and on the one side of the ship, you could even smoke out there while you enjoyed your breakfast.

 

Plenty of service staff was available in the Windsurf to carry your tray to your table and would even bring you refills of coffee if you asked.

 

The ship had a casino and a spa, but I didn’t visit either so can’t comment on them. Others in our group, though, said both were very nice, though the slots were “tight.”

 

To be continued ...