Feb 5-19 East-West Caribbean on the Reflection

[terrydtx]

Ken, you do not have to answer this, but what part of Alabama do you reside? We lived in Helena just outside of Brimingham from 2004 to 2014. I owned a drinking water treatment company that I sold in 2014 to move back to San Antonio Texas. I loved Alabama and still have a lot of good friends there, including our TA who has a cruise travel agency in Hoover, Al.

[Ken the cruiser]

40 minutes ago, terrydtx said:

We placed the order the night before on a room service order card and had it delivered between 7:30 and 8am, our butler, Lorenzo would call us when he was leaving the kitchen and show up a few minutes later. We are early risers abut,  we were in our robes a couple of mornings.  Last August the first morning when Lorenzo, delivered and set up the table, he asked how we liked everything, and I remarked that I thought the coffee was a little weak to my liking. The next morning, he brought a pot of coffee that he added several shots of espresso from Cafe El Bacio, and it was perfect, he did this every morning for our coffee. We usually do breakfast in our cabin on our cruises but this was one of the few times breakfast was brought on time and still hot, in fact one morning the eggs benedict was hot and cooked perfectly. Another morning the scrambled eggs were watery and tasted horrible, I mentioned this to Lorenzo and he said to note on the order that we wanted fresh eggs, otherwise the kitchen uses a pre mixed egg solution. He went back to the kitchen and brought back some perfect scrambled eggs made with fresh eggs, he also said if we wanted to order an omelet to also ask for fresh eggs. 

Lorenzo sounds great! Hope you tipped him handsomely for all that wonderful service! 

[Ken the cruiser]

36 minutes ago, terrydtx said:

Ken, you do not have to answer this, but what part of Alabama do you reside? We lived in Helena just outside of Brimingham from 2004 to 2014. I owned a drinking water treatment company that I sold in 2014 to move back to San Antonio Texas. I loved Alabama and still have a lot of good friends there, including our TA who has a cruise travel agency in Hoover, Al.

We live in south central Alabama.

Edited February 9, 2022 by Ken the cruiser

[Ken the cruiser]

We have arrived at St Croix bright and early, but it looks like Adventure of the Seas beat us here.

 

 

 

[remarcm]

Slight correction... Enchantment of the Seas.

[remarcm]

[5:00_Somewhere]

I just wanted to thank Ken and the others who are taking time out of your vacation to share all this very helpful information.

 

Also, I'm sure others know this, but I thought I'd share that I've taken to bringing a European Type E/F electrical outlet converter on cruises (especially on older ships) so that we can take advantage of those plugs, as well as the US style outlets. Never hurts to have one more power point in a cabin. 🙂

 

10 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Here’s a picture of the plug setup on our desk wall. We bring along a power strip, as you can see, that can accommodate up to 3 USB plugs that allow us to charge up our devices, mostly during the overnight hours. 

 

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

32 minutes ago, remarcm said:

Slight correction... Enchantment of the Seas.

Thanks for keeping me honest! I have no idea why I put what I did earlier other than we were booked for a very short time on the Adventure back in July when cruising was just starting back up and it looks very much like the Enchantment - and it was 6:30 in the morning! 😂
 

Edited February 9, 2022 by Ken the cruiser

[Tom-n-Cheryl]

9 hours ago, amc40 said:

I’m on board 2/12. Grand Cayman has been canceled 😔  No replacement, just an extra day at sea.

 

I like sea days as more things on the ship are open, and we're not planning on getting off in GC anyway. So, I'll be a happy camper either way - though I can understand some people really looking forward to that (or any/all of the) stop(s).

 

Tom

[J80crew]

Thanks for the info. I was hoping there would be a substitute port—every other day at sea is a little much—but it’ll still be a lot better than CT in February!

[hartwickds]

If Celebrity is aware they are not going to Grand Cayman it bothers me that they have not advised us. They certainly have a duty to let us know this will not be a stop. 

[jelayne]

6 minutes ago, hartwickds said:

If Celebrity is aware they are not going to Grand Cayman it bothers me that they have not advised us. They certainly have a duty to let us know this will not be a stop. 

It seems it was a very recent decision as the website hadn’t been updated. We are on the ship and heard it from a officer yesterday. You should receive notification from your TA if you booked through one or Celebrity if you booked direct,

 

I have been watching the requirement for ships to enter GC which were difficult to meet.  There was speculation that those would be modified but apparently that hasn’t happened.

[Tom-n-Cheryl]

1 minute ago, jelayne said:

It seems it was a very recent decision as the website hadn’t been updated. We are on the ship and heard it from a officer yesterday. You should receive notification from your TA if you booked through one or Celebrity if you booked direct,

 

I have been watching the requirement for ships to enter GC which were difficult to meet.  There was speculation that those would be modified but apparently that hasn’t happened.

 

I wonder how far out this recent decision applies to.

 

Tom

[PaulS]

Thanks for replying to my question about possibly booking a Silverseas cruise onboard. I know that you can book Royal Caribbean cruises onboard Celebrity and thought that since Royal also owns Silverseas, you could book one of their’s too. 
thanks for checking.

[spiritkat090909]

13 hours ago, CruisnDeb said:

Interesting. I may have to try this since I have never liked wine much except moscato! Maybe Jam Jar will have a red I will actually enjoy 😊 

Sweet, fizzy red... Rosa Regale Banfi Brachetta D'Acqui.  Also.. Landry's vinyard in Louisiana makes several sweet wines that are unusual and delicious. Redneck Red is a sweet muscadine wine. They also have a sweet white peach wine.  Since OP has access to muscadine grapes... how about that jelly? My mom makes the best  muscadine jelly. Nothing quite matches muscadine grapes. 

[Ken the cruiser]

Went on a walking tour of the town this morning. Here are a few pictures, which include a couple of “dungeon” crabs, not sure if alive or dead, we saw at Fort Frederiksted National Park just at the end of the pier along with a cute little lizard we saw at the cemetery that was started I believe back in the 1700s. I didn’t quite hear the whole lecture because I got squirreled by watching some honey bees coming in and out of a raised grave enclosure. 😂

 

 

 

 

 

[Tom-n-Cheryl]

3 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

...

 

She's a beauty!

 

Tom

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

28 minutes ago, spiritkat090909 said:

Sweet, fizzy red... Rosa Regale Banfi Brachetta D'Acqui.  Also.. Landry's vinyard in Louisiana makes several sweet wines that are unusual and delicious. Redneck Red is a sweet muscadine wine. They also have a sweet white peach wine.  Since OP has access to muscadine grapes... how about that jelly? My mom makes the best  muscadine jelly. Nothing quite matches muscadine grapes. 

OK, I realize there are plenty of sweet wines out there, but let’s keep this focused on moscato wines you can get on a Celebrity ship. 😁

[WestLakeGirl]

15 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

No. Unfortunately, you can only book Celebrity cruises.

I don’t think that’s correct. I have booked Royal cruises while being on Celebrity, and vice versa. 

[graphicguy]

16 hours ago, terrydtx said:

Ken, we had breakfast every morning in our larger aft Sky Suite balcony and our Butler brought it to us every morning and set up the balcony table with a table cloth and  silverware, he even pored the first cup of coffee. That is about as far as we go for room service.

For good or ill, I'm a coffee snob.  Did you find the Retreat Room Service coffee to be good?  I know I never tried it on the Edge and ended up going to Al Biccio every day for coffee (which was quite good).

[Ken the cruiser]

13 minutes ago, WestLakeGirl said:

I don’t think that’s correct. I have booked Royal cruises while being on Celebrity, and vice versa. 

Just to verify, I’ll stop by the Future Cruise Desk when they open again after 3 pm and ask the question with regards to both RCI and Silversea cruises.

[terrydtx]

35 minutes ago, graphicguy said:

For good or ill, I'm a coffee snob.  Did you find the Retreat Room Service coffee to be good?  I know I never tried it on the Edge and ended up going to Al Biccio every day for coffee (which was quite good).

After out Butler added several shots of espresso from Cafe Al Bacio to the pot, the coffee was actually very good, IMHO. By itself the coffee was not very good.

[larry_s_taco]

I'm not sure if this has been asked before but are passengers allowed to tour on their own in Nassau? 

Thanks

[Ken the cruiser]

11 minutes ago, larry_s_taco said:

I'm not sure if this has been asked before but are passengers allowed to tour on their own in Nassau? 

Thanks

According to the notice I posted on page 2, post 37, they are allowed to roam independently unless you have an unvaccinated child. If that’s the case, then they can only take Celebrity excursions if they want to leave the ship.

Edited February 9, 2022 by Ken the cruiser

[kirtihk]

32 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

According to the notice I posted on page 2, post 37, they are allowed to roam independently unless you have an unvaccinated child. If that’s the case, then they can only take Celebrity excursions if they want to leave the ship.

Are mask required now?  I got an email from the Regent cruise line dropping it starting March 1 and read about Norwegian to do the same.  My 10-day Celebrity cruise start on February 25; so, I wonder how the potential mask drop might work.  Will it be for those embarking on March 1 no mask and for any prior March 1 start day still no drop to mask even on March 1, or like in my cruise Feb 25-28 masks are required, and then on March 1 they would announce on the ship that now you may remove it?  That would be so funny!