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Thrifty cruiser and I thought a germaphobe goes on Celebrity Constellation Feb 4 to Feb 14

cgolf1

By cgolf1,
in Celebrity Cruises

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raudacruise

raudacruise

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cgolf1, thank you for your review and pictures. I’ll keep your “improvised veranda shade” techniques in mind. The last one is my favorite. Will be useful for my usual cruise “activity”: relaxing while reading and watching the ocean go by. Port cancellations won’t bother me one bit.

 

Cruising March 7 & 18 on Silhouette. Woohoo! 🚢🍾🥂🌴

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cgolf1

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33 minutes ago, cruisinsusin said:

We will be back on the Constellation next month- its been years since we sailed her and really looking forward to it!

Were there any announcements re: Covid?  I know that one of the earlier cruises had >3%+. 

 

23 minutes ago, cruisinsusin said:

Did you have the chance to go into the gym? We also have tried to maintain some distance from others to avoid the dreaded contact tracing and walked the outside track on our recent Reflection cruise but may need to use the gym if there is not a good outside track on Connie

 

Oddly I had to ask about the Covid numbers when I was at guest services the next to last days. We heard most of the captains announcements and we never heard heard him mention anything related to Covid.

 

We didn't go into the gym at all, so don't know how busy it was. 

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cruisinsusin

cruisinsusin

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25 minutes ago, cgolf1 said:

 

 

Oddly I had to ask about the Covid numbers when I was at guest services the next to last days. 

 

We didn't go into the gym at all, so don't know how busy it was. 

Thanks- I guess we'll just have to check the gym out the days we may want to use it.

What were the Covid numbers?

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cgolf1

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18 minutes ago, cruisinsusin said:

Thanks- I guess we'll just have to check the gym out the days we may want to use it.

What were the Covid numbers?

 

They said under 2% on the next to last day. On the last sea day the opposite hallway of deck 6 was blocked off at one point so 1 or 2 more people may have been added. That would be a bummer on the last sea day.

 

We did improvise the walking track by walking up in the back to deck 12 to extend the loop and until late in the cruise up to deck 12 in the front. We stopped the up front addition late in the cruise because it looked like they put one of those tall ashtray type things up on deck 12 forward and looked like staff was using it for smoke breaks, but kept the back loop around the rooftop garden. So we added a stair climber to the walk.

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cgolf1

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1 hour ago, raudacruise said:

cgolf1, thank you for your review and pictures. I’ll keep your “improvised veranda shade” techniques in mind. The last one is my favorite. Will be useful for my usual cruise “activity”: relaxing while reading and watching the ocean go by. Port cancellations won’t bother me one bit.

 

Cruising March 7 & 18 on Silhouette. Woohoo! 🚢🍾🥂🌴

 

We had an improvised veranda shade? Yeh Puerto Rico being cancelled and replaced pre cruise didn't bother us at all.

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4 minutes ago, cruisinsusin said:

We have usually been pleased with MDR choices so glad to hear that this continues with Constellation!

Would love to hear more and see photos- it has been >5 years since we have sailed Connie so good to see how it is doing

 

I will try to remember to add some food pictures too.

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Day 2 Key West

 

This was one of many low key days to come. We watched the Coast Guard escort us in and listen to the protesters yell 'No big ships, and I swear I heard, but hope not, sink that ship. They dispersed quite quickly. We attempted some trivia and failed as usual. At least some of the questions were hard enough that we didn't fail miserably.

 

We did see Lou Gazzara perform that night and he was technically a very good singer, but for me he didn't emotionally connect to the music, so it was a good show, just not great. My wife wasn't a fan of the songs he sang so she didn't like the show that much but stayed for the whole show.

 

We did really like the seats in the theater though. The way they have them as benches instead of seats. Other ships really need to do this, it was really nice.

 

The food pic I believe is the Beef Ragout appetizer, and deck 4, if it only was a full loop we would have spent more time there. Also if it was less windy too, open the doors was an adventure.

 

I wonder how many times the boat police stop the floating bar;)

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CTSandy

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 Enjoyed your comments, thanks for sharing.  Sailing Constellation for the first time on March 28 and looking forward to it. Love the Summit and I remember when the interior looked like this before it was “Revolutionized” - I actually like the old look so guessing I will find Constellation comfortable!

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DingoMom

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Thank you for the entertaining, informative, and interesting review!

I have 2 questions, if you have time. Why did you need armed escorts into Key West 😳?

And, what is your hunch about the ‘listing to port’ experience?

Many thanks!

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cgolf1

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21 minutes ago, DingoMom said:

Thank you for the entertaining, informative, and interesting review!

I have 2 questions, if you have time. Why did you need armed escorts into Key West 😳?

And, what is your hunch about the ‘listing to port’ experience?

Many thanks!


My hunch is that a stabilizers had a glitch or lost power in a position that caused the list. They stayed at slightly reduced speeds for a few hours until they were confident it was fixed. Besides the larger list, it stayed just a little bit listed to port for quite a while, up to 30 minutes after before normalizing. So it could have been a sea current, but not going back to normal right away and the reduced speed makes me wonder. I am no expert, it is just a logical guess. It was very windy so they likely had the stabilizers out. 

 

14 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

My experience is that cruise ships arriving and departing US ports of call always have a Coast Guard ship or two around to keep small craft from getting run over.  


That may be, but we have never seen them out on the guns before. I believe the added security was because of the protests over larger cruise ships coming into port. This is our third time sailing into key west and we have never seen this before. The coast guard boat on the port side probably got no further than 200 yards away and was much closer most of the time. 

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cgolf1

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18 hours ago, songbird1329 said:

We’ll be on the Constellation in December.  I want to hear more about the food and the entertainment, if you care to share

 

As far as the food goes, the main dining room has the best food we have had on a cruise ship beating out Disney and Royal. They are also very good at accommodating food allergies. If a dish wasn't gluten free they would do their best to make it work for me, very similar to Disney. Royal unfortunately didn't try very hard on the gluten free stuff for me. For us the buffet food was above average. Oddly the lamb curry, best bite of food I have ever had, came from the buffet. Now that I think about it all of the Indian food was incredible from the buffet.

 

Food is so subjective and we are definitely not foodies, so not sure how much weight you should put on our reviews. I will say most of my meals I fully cleaned the plate which isn't like me.

 

I will talk about each nightly performance, but will say to us the general live music was a huge step down in quality from the Edge. They were adequate background noise, but not must see performers. I don't think that we saw all of the live performers though so maybe we missed a gem.

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cgolf1

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Day 2 at sea

 

First I do want to comment about the Effy store. There was a person there that was coughing a lot and always pulling there mask down to talk. They also held some event in the store that put a lot of people in a small space with said person doing the talking. Due to the close contact ramifications they should not hold large gatherings in small spaces.

 

Then there is them ignoring me because I was in a t shirt and my typical sports shorts made of like lightweight sweatshirt material maybe. They are super comfortable clothes and work well in warm weather. I like Bulova watches and wear mine as everyday watches. Even if the store was empty they never asked if I wanted to see a watch. This is so different from going onshore where we have bought jewelry along with a watch to get a better price since they don't deal on watches too much. It just bothered me they would judge me based on how I was dressed, and the kicker is I had one of my Bulovas on lol. Rant over but man that made me mad.

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Now the fun stuff. We just relaxed and enjoyed a couple of beverages and lot of water. The bottled water in a can is nice actually, but the twist caps can be a PIA to open bordering on impossible. They are also filled to the top so you always spill some too.

 

We did day 1 of the progressive putting and both of us did well. We did the afternoon trivia and visual trivia and really sucked at those. One of these years we will win one again. Dinner was very good, I had a portabella mushroom entrée and my wife had Cobia but didn't like it. To be fair it wasn't the fish. She has a small range of foods she like and for the first cruise ever she ordered from the part of the menu that changed each night. We knew there would be good and bad surprises for her.

 

The nightly show was Hayden Smith who is a muti instrumentalist and singer. His specialty was the saxophone. Early on in the show I thought his Sax playing early was a little choppy but still very good. he was an excellent performer and decent vocalist and we were enjoying the music. Then he sung you raise me up by Josh Grobin and he mentioned a personnel connection to the song and just wow was it powerful and he connected to the song. It was an emotional performance that we were experiencing and not just listening to. Not sure how to explain it, but when a singer connects to a song they can grab you and drag you along for the ride. He did the same on a song from Les Misérables that I had never heard but really enjoyed and the same with a beautiful version of amazing grace on the sax. It was flowing and just amazing to listen to. So this was a great performance and we even picked up his cd later in the cruise.

 

With my music critiques, I will say for one I can't sing, but have listened to all kinds of music over the years. I can get lost on you tube some nights finding great music I enjoy listening too. As long as the singer has a great voice and stays within their range and sings with emotion and/or puts on a good show I am into it. My pet peeve on the singing competitions we used to watch was people love singers with range. Zac Brown is a perfect example of a dude with a small range that has an incredible singing voice and puts on a great show.

 

Back to the cruise.

 

That pretty much did it for the day. We are just so happy to be back cruising and away from stressful jobs that this slow paced cruise is just what we needed. Of course we spent a lot of time on the rooftop terrace.

 

Added a picture of the solarium pool because we were in that pool 2-3 times a day, always after breakfast. Every cruise ship should have a pool like this. Just the warm water alone was great. The only minor complaint was it could be a half foot or foot deeper.

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