Roll Call: Nov. 14, 2021 Chesapeake Bay

[Joanandjoe]

On our ocean cruises, we've always participated in roll calls for our cruise.  We've connected with some great people that way. CC does not seem to have a roll call board for American Cruise Lines.  Does that mean we should start our roll call on this board.

 

Our cruise is a 7 night Chesapeake Bay cruise, Baltimore to Baltimore, on 11/14/21.  If this board is the right place for roll calls, we'll start one.

[Host Jazzbeau]

The only other place for ACL roll calls would be All Other Ocean Cruise Lines Roll Calls, where it would be lost.  So we've leave it here.  Bon voyage!

[Joanandjoe]

Thanks.  Let

s see if anyone joins the roll call.

[Joanandjoe]

We've just made our final payment and gotten our trip insurance.  We hope there will be other CC members on our cruise. J & J

[Joanandjoe]

One month to go before we sail.  Will anyone on CC be joining us?

[Shami]

Hi Joanandjoe

I tried to reply to your post 4 times and it wouldn't go through. We are sailing on American Cruise line this spring for the east coast passage. What did you think of your Chesapeake Bay cruise? Would you sail with ACL again?

 

Thanks

[Joanandjoe]

We haven't yet written our (mostly) favorable review yet. but:

 

Yes we had a terrific cruise.  We had experienced some service problems on our prior two ACL cruises, but not on this one.  The food, entertainment and service were excellent.

 

Yes, we not only would we book ALC again, we have done so:  an Upper Mississippi cruise in 2023.

[Shami]

Thank you so much for your reply. I will keep an eye out for your review.

I'm so glad you had a great time!

[Joanandjoe]

We have submitted our review, and will post a link (probably in a new thread) when CC has posted it.  Overall rating:  5 on a scale of 1 to 5.  Cabin, food, and entertainment were a 5, and service would have been a 5 if CC had that category.  Entertainment, public rooms and fitness/recreation (shore excursions in our rating) were a 4.  J & J

[Joanandjoe]

Believe it or not, our review still hasn't been posted.

[DaveinCharlotte]

On 12/27/2021 at 5:55 PM, Joanandjoe said:

Believe it or not, our review still hasn't been posted.

Hmmm.  Staff shortages, maybe?  If you still have the text you submitted, you could try posting the whole review right here.

[Joanandjoe]

3 minutes ago, DaveinCharlotte said:

Hmmm.  Staff shortages, maybe?  If you still have the text you submitted, you could try posting the whole review right here.

We will if necessary; but it's rather long.  J & J

[DaveinCharlotte]

22 hours ago, Joanandjoe said:

We will if necessary; but it's rather long.  J & J

There have been a number of lengthy reviews posted in this forum, and they don't bother me at all.  (The only thing that bothers me is when somebody responds with a two-word response, and they first quote the entire thing.)  Maybe some verbiage could be trimmed off?

 

(I just submitted a lengthy review on the Star a couple of days ago.  I noticed a requirement that the review not be "a letter of complaint or about a single negative issue," which my review comes close to doing.  So given that, and your experience, I don't expect to see my review for some time, if ever.  If it doesn't get posted, I plan to edit it a bit and re-post it here.)

 

 

[Joanandjoe]

I guess a 15 day wait with the review not up yet is enough.  My next post will be the review.  BTW, in shortening the review a bit, I discovered a few typos and misstatements,  I hope I will be allowed to correct these before the review is finalized.

[Joanandjoe]

Review of American Constitution Chesapeake Bay Cruise 11/14/21

 

Embarkation was well managed.  We stood on a line for a few minutes to take our (negative) Covid tests, then went right onboard.  Our luggage was waiting in our room.  Easy!

 

Our AAC cabin was a good size at 300 square feet plus balcony, although we didn’t need a balcony in Chesapeake Bay in mid-November. 

 

Food and service were much improved from prior ACL cruises, and we didn’t miss having buffets at breakfast and lunch.   The menus for breakfast included daily specials such as lobster hash and crab Benedict.  At breakfast, you placed a tentative order for lunch and dinner, with three choices for each.  There was always at least one good choice for dinner, and usually a good choice for lunch.  If we didn’t like the lunch choices, we could get hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza and wraps at the Back Porch Café on deck four.  The café serves fantastic coleslaw.  We were comfortable with this arrangement, and enjoyed the food and wine.  BTW, wine and beer were readily available in several places most of the day and evening, while cocktails were available during the 5:30 to 7 pm cocktail hour.  Since dinner also started at 5:30, dining was staggered, and there never was an overcrowded dinner rush.

 

Shore excursions were mostly very good, but there were exceptions.  Our first stop, Yorktown, featured ARMY, the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown.  ARMY was an amazing mixture of films, displays, interactive exhibits and an outdoor re-enactment area.  A bargain at any price, we spent 3 hours there.  Only fatigue and the lure of lunch on the ship made us leave.  The same trolley that took us to the museum made a loop around the battlefield.  A more dedicated student of the American Revolution could have biked or taken a car through the battlefield. 

 

Our second stop, Crisfield, MD, was the biggest disappointment of the trip.  The ferry to Tangier Island should have been the highlight of the trip:  an Island where the people still spoke an 18^th century Cornish dialect, and many of the people still made a living fishing in the Bay.  Instead, the excursion was a dud.  The ship’s talk on Crisfield didn’t mention the island, the promised all you can eat meal at a restaurant turned out to be lukewarm crab cakes eaten outdoors, and the golf cart tours of the island were poorly organized (just three 6 person carts for 100 people, so there were long waits) and superficial.  The only saving grace was a film on island life at the local museum.  All in all, a tour that should have been a 10 was no better than a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10.

 

We were in Cambridge, MD for parts of two days, and had very different excursions.  On day 1, our excursion took about 20 minutes:  a short walk to a lighthouse, a short talk by a docent, and a self-guided tour.  Not worth the effort.  Day 2 was a follow-up on a stop in Baltimore at the Civil War Museum.  They convinced us the Harriet Tubman sites were not to be missed.  We signed up on the ship, and saw three sites.  The National Park site featured multimedia presentations of her life and work.  The general store where she was wounded featured a guide who loved her subject.  The storefront site in town was also interesting.   A standout excursion, well worth the extra $$.

 

We also enjoyed the Chesapeake Maritime Museum in St. Michael’s, MD.   All 14 buildings helped us explore the bay and its history.  I enjoyed the Art Gallery;  Joe liked the boat buildings.  There was something for everyone on the grounds.  We set out as soon as the ship docked, and returned after lunch.  The ship docked right next to the museum.    

 

Our last stop was at Annapolis, where we did two tours:  a city bus tour and an extra cost walking tour of the US Naval Academy.  Both tours were excellent.

 

Entertainment was fine.  Ron and Stephanie Yonskie provided a variety of fun.  They sang, ran games and Ron even did a “Mad King George” skit worth remembering.   The Cruise Director was friendly and fun.  The ship even had a woman come in and teach us to “pick” crabs:  delicious and fun.  We enjoyed her warm personality and the piles of crabs she brought with her.  Everyone emerged with sticky hands and smiles. 

 

Disembarkation was easy.  Joe brought our car to the pier. Ship employees helped us load our luggage, and we were on our way.  We reached home in New Jersey well before noon, after a terrific trip.

[DaveinCharlotte]

We will be going on a Constitution Chesapeake Bay cruise next December, and we will keep your excursion experiences in mind.   We skipped the ARMY museum the last time we were in Yorktown, but we'll be sure to go there next time.  And we probably would have skipped the Harriet Tubman excursions, but if they are still offered, we'll do those too.  Thanks for the great review.

[Joanandjoe]

Our review is now up (finally), and I'll start a new thread for it.  It's only slightly longer than post # 15 above.  https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=683820&et_cid=3500453&et_rid=48187025&et_referrer=Boards_Million_Member_Newsub