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Two weeks in Canada & New England on the revolutionized Summit: my review with photos


Turtles06
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18 hours ago, bunzini said:

Loving this review!  We leave on the same trip on Saturday.  I have written down many of your suggestions so this has been wonderful to follow!

Another option for day 2 of this itin  is an X excursion  to Montmarcy  falls, maple syrup place  and the mountains...great tour esp if the leaves are turning..

Have a great trip..!

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17 minutes ago, JennVT said:

Which restaurant? I'm often up that way for meetings and in need of a good place to eat.

Leunig's on Church Street.......right in the center of the Church Street Marketplace downtown.  

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20 minutes ago, hcat said:

Another option for day 2 of this itin  is an X excursion  to Montmarcy  falls, maple syrup place  and the mountains...great tour esp if the leaves are turning..

Have a great trip..!

 

We spoke with several people who did excursions to the Montmorency Falls.  If you decide to do one, you may want to be sure that it includes time for you to go up and see the Falls from above.   We were told by those who were not able to do this that their excursions were fairly disappointing.    I'm not speaking from any personal experience, just reporting what other cruisers told us.

 

We opted on this first visit to Quebec City not to leave the Old City, because we had decided that it would take our not-quite-two-days in QC to do some justice to the Upper and Lower Towns.   YMMV (as may your interests 😃).

Edited by Turtles06
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Wow.. that,'s a shame,  we saw the fall from all views, not crowded and a lovely day with time for a lite lunch.  Guess things have changed.

 

We  had been to Quebec previously so splitting the 2 days worked for us.  (city and Country)

 

Another time,  I met  up with CC roll call mates for the tea at the hotel Frontenac  while the guys did more military exploration.

 

Your review and photos bring back good memories

Edited by hcat
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 I’m enjoying your review very much we will be on the summit next September 11, 2020 out of Boston! I  haven’t started researching yet so I wrote down a few of your recommendations I love a good lobster roll !!  We are leaving on the equinox in three weeks and trying to just focus on the present Cruise LOL ! Hard to do when you’re reading a good review !! 

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Quebec's Lower Town is fairly small, a handful of streets crammed with shops, cafes, restaurants, and the like.  It was not quite the zoo that it was on Sunday afternoon, but still busy.   We enjoyed our last walk in Quebec before it was soon time to catch a shuttle back to the ship for our sailaway.

 

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(photos by turtles06)

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One thing we did not expect in Quebec was for anyone to miss the all-aboard.  (After all, this was hardly a Caribbean Island, with folks getting drunk at Señor Frogs or on a beach and forgetting the time.)  But two passengers did -- and they came very close to getting left behind.  I posted live from the Summit about this, but can now add some photos to illustrate the pre-sailaway drama, so here's a recap of what happened.

 

Our all-aboard was 2:45 PM. This was of course clearly stated in the Celebrity Today and posted at the gangway. And it was also clearly stated in the Today that the last shuttle buses back from the Lower Town would leave at 2:30 PM; this was also announced in the morning on the buses themselves. 

 

At 3 PM, as the Summit prepared to sail, my wife and I went down to the port side of Deck 4 so we’d have a good view of the sail past Old Quebec. We heard a shipwide announcement asking two passengers to report to Guest Services -- usually a sign that the ship's computers show that those passengers are not on board.  We were standing over the gangway on Deck 3, where several officers and the port agent were on their cell phones, quite animated. The longshoremen were waiting to pull up the gangway. After some minutes, we could hear one officer say to the others “the Captain wants to leave.”  

 

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More cell phone calls, and then an officer appeared with two American passports that he handed over to the port agent. 

 

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The agent walked off the gangway, still on his phone. He came back shortly after, and it sounded like he told the officers “they are at the Chateau."  The Chateau Frontenac was of course some distance from the ship, in the Upper Town no less, and everyone on the gangway looked pretty disturbed. More waiting and phone calls. 

 

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Somehow, a bus must have been arranged for the stragglers, as a few minutes before 3:30 PM, a big bus pulled up with just the two of them on it. They were quickly hustled on board, and the gangway was pulled. One of the longshoremen looked up at us and said that had it been five minutes later, the Captain would have sailed. (There are speed limits in the St. Lawrence River to protect migrating right whales, so we were not in a situation where the ship could have gone full speed ahead to make up for lost time.)  We’d never seen passengers that late before, nor passports handed over to the port agent.  Those two people were very lucky that Captain Matt had waited for them. 

 

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With everyone now on board, we finally sailed away, getting a last look at Quebec City, as well as a glimpse of Montmorency Falls.

 

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(photos by turtles06)

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10 hours ago, Turtles06 said:

We spoke with several people who did excursions to the Montmorency Falls.  If you decide to do one, you may want to be sure that it includes time for you to go up and see the Falls from above.   We were told by those who were not able to do this that their excursions were fairly disappointing.    I'm not speaking from any personal experience, just reporting what other cruisers told us.

We did this by booking a taxi from the port. We hadn’t booked any excursions via our ship, Azamara Quest, as they were so expensive.  The taxi driver took us to the top of the falls and told us that the hotel used to be the residence of Queen Victoria’s father. He also gave us quite a comprehensive tour of Quebec City on our return and dropped us off at the top of the funicular.

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Edited by upwarduk
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A most interesting story about the two stragglers! How did the officials wind up with the missing people's passports though? Does Celebrity collect these at the start of the cruise and then return them at the end? Otherwise, it would seem they would have to search their cabin OR did they track these two people down, get their passports from them, and go ahead to the ship before the bus came with the missing passengers? 

Edited by OnTheJourney
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2 minutes ago, OnTheJourney said:

A most interesting story about the two stragglers! How did the officials wind up with the missing people's passports though? Does Celebrity collect these at the start of the cruise and then return them at the end? Otherwise, it would seem they would have to search their cabin OR did they track these two people down, get their passports from them, and go ahead to the ship before the bus came with the missing passengers? 

 

I have read many times here on CC that if passengers are going to miss the ship, the protocol is for security officers to search their cabin safe for their passports (maybe also the cabin itself) and, if found, turn the passports over to the port agent so that he or she can give them to the passengers.   From what we observed, that seems to be exactly what happened.

 

Our passports were not collected on this cruise by Celebrity (I've only seen that done on certain itineraries in the Med).  We were watching the whole thing unfold; the security officer on the gangway went back on board and subsequently emerged with two passports, which he handed to the port agent.  The port agent left the gangway, still on his cell phone.  After the stragglers had been located and the ship was waiting for them, the port agent returned the passports to the security officer.  

 

The people waiting on the gangway trying to locate and get the stragglers back were not happy campers.

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Turtles...that was one lightning fast response!!  Thanks for filling in additional info. I sort of presumed that a cabin safe search was what happened. We experienced a similar sort of thing during our Baltic cruise where 2 people were late. Ship was ready to leave. Turned out they were on a really long excursion - think it was to Berlin while we were in Warrnemunde. I don't recall seeing the sort of thing you did, but there were lots of people on the decks cheering them on as they arrived (by shuttle or bus, can't remember). I'm sure there was less cheer taking place on the bridge though (and probably with the same sort of officials you refer to!). I always sort of worry about getting back to the ship on time especially if on some sort of independently or privately operated excursion. For that reason, and perhaps worrying needlessly, we typically only use the cruise line for excursions. 

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8 minutes ago, Turtles06 said:

 

I have read many times here on CC that if passengers are going to miss the ship, the protocol is for security officers to search their cabin safe for their passports (maybe also the cabin itself) and, if found, turn the passports over to the port agent so that he or she can give them to the passengers.   From what we observed, that seems to be exactly what happened.

 

Our passports were not collected on this cruise by Celebrity (I've only seen that done on certain itineraries in the Med).  We were watching the whole thing unfold; the security officer on the gangway went back on board and subsequently emerged with two passports, which he handed to the port agent.  The port agent left the gangway, still on his cell phone.  After the stragglers had been located and the ship was waiting for them, the port agent returned the passports to the security officer.  

 

The people waiting on the gangway trying to locate and get the stragglers back were not happy campers.

 

LOL..they were probably enjoying a Moosehead ale at the Chateau

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We have so enjoyed your review and photos. You have done an amazing job! What a great service to your fellow cruisers. Keep them coming as we leave on Sunday on the Summit for the same itinerary and would love to hear your comments on PEI and Nova Scotia. 

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On 10/1/2019 at 1:32 PM, hurwitz5 said:

........The one negative was that there is no indoor movie theater.  The weather was too cool for outdoor viewing - especially at night. 

 

The saddest  thing about it is that the Summit used to have a wonderful indoor movie theater with comfortable tiered seating, but they tore it out to add more cabins.

 

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7 hours ago, OnTheJourney said:

A most interesting story about the two stragglers! How did the officials wind up with the missing people's passports though? Does Celebrity collect these at the start of the cruise and then return them at the end? Otherwise, it would seem they would have to search their cabin OR did they track these two people down, get their passports from them, and go ahead to the ship before the bus came with the missing passengers? 

 

If passengers are not back when the ship is ready to depart, it is standard practice to retrieve their passports from the safe in their cabin and leave them with the port agent.

 

We have heard many times that is the reason why it is important to leave your passports in the safe when you go ashore at ports as they will not search the entire cabin to look for them, but will only look in the safe.  (The exceptions being the ports where you are required to take your passport off the ship with you.)

If they find a wallet in the safe, we have heard that they also leave the wallet with the port agent,  but I don't know whether or not that is standard practice as well.

 

 

Turtles06, thanks for the great review.

 

 

     

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5 hours ago, coolhandluke said:

We have so enjoyed your review and photos. You have done an amazing job! What a great service to your fellow cruisers. Keep them coming as we leave on Sunday on the Summit for the same itinerary and would love to hear your comments on PEI and Nova Scotia. 

 

4 hours ago, mikkirm said:

I've really been enjoying your review. We leave tonight for New Jersey, to board Summit on Sunday for this itinerary. I look forward to reading more as you continue to report!

 

 

Thank you both for reading along and for your kind words!  I hope you have a wonderful cruise; I think the foliage should be glorious for you!

 

(PEI coming soon!  😁)

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1 minute ago, maggie.1008 said:

We are on this trip out of Boston next August. 

I wonder how they knew how to find the two passengers at the Chateau ? They could have been anywhere. Did they call their cell phones ?

 

I have no idea.  Perhaps the port agent (or ship security) reached them on their cell phones, or perhaps they finally realized they had missed the all-aboard and called the port agent.  (It's always a good idea to take the port agent's contact info off the ship with you; it's of course printed in the Celebrity Today.)   The port agent was definitely having animated cell phone conversations with someone as this all played out. 

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