Live from the Caribbean Princess, Oct 14 - Nov 5, 22-day Canadian and Atlantic Coast Land and Sea Adventure

[Ken the cruiser]

Hi all! I know it's a little early, but I can't help but start getting excited about our upcoming 22-day Princess adventure which begins October 14 flying to Toronto for a 5-day land excursion, to include seeing the Niagara Falls, before boarding the Caribbean Princess in Quebec for a 12-day cruise to Ft Lauderdale. We are also booked on the ensuing 5-day Caribbean cruise RT out of Ft Lauderdale which will finally get us to Elite. Yay!!

 

As one might imagine, we'll be watching for any potential hurricanes and/or tropical storms forming in the Atlantic which will hopefully either disappear or become irrelevant once we start cruising down the Atlantic coast. On the brighter side the Northern Lights are expected to be stronger than they have been for at least a decade over the next few months, which hopefully means we will have a good chance to see them when we're cruising up the St. Lawence River or maybe as we make the turn and start to head south once we reach the Atlantic.

 

My plan for this Live From thread is to share some of our experiences while on this adventure, with the usual one exception. As with my other Live From threads, I have no plans to post any pictures of food or drinks. Sorry. But if you would enjoy seeing photos of the various wildlife and other attractions we’ll see along the way, please come along and I'll try my best to make it interesting. Of course, if you have any questions about the itinerary or the ship, please feel free to ask and will try my best to find the answers.

 

Our 5-day land excursion portion of the cruise.

 

 

 

Our 12-day cruise from Quebec to Ft Lauderdale

  

 

  

Our 5-day Caribbean cruise RT out of Ft Lauderdale

  

 

 

[voljeep]

see you on board on Halloween

[chrysalis]

Chateau Montebello.....fantastic place! Enjoy....

 

Your other hotels are wonderful, also.

[CruseKrazy]

Hi Ken, I miss read the date of this trip on the Celebrity board.  Our friends board the CB today in Quebec City for a b2b return back to Quebec.  We are booked on Celebrity Edge for the Apr 24 sailing to Honolulu like you the one did this past April.  Enjoy your cruise!
 

Dave

[dickinson]

Looking forward to your adventure!

[Ken the cruiser]

2 minutes ago, CruseKrazy said:

Hi Ken, I miss read the date of this trip on the Celebrity board.  Our friends board the CB today in Quebec City for a b2b return back to Quebec.  We are booked on Celebrity Edge for the Apr 24 sailing to Honolulu like you the one did this past April.  Enjoy your cruise!
 

Dave

That cruise on the Edge I'm sure is going to be an awesome one!! Hope your friends see a bunch of Northen Lights on their cruise and avoid dealing with any aftermath from any potential weather developing in the Atlantic as some recent cruises in that area have had to deal with lately.

[abbydancer2003]

I'll follow.  We were on the Hurricane cruise on the  CB from Quebec to New York earlier this month.  I'll be interested to hear your thoughts, etc.  If you want to see the production shows get there early.  

 

Have a blast.

[Ken the cruiser]

22 minutes ago, abbydancer said:

I'll follow.  We were on the Hurricane cruise on the  CB from Quebec to New York earlier this month.  I'll be interested to hear your thoughts, etc.  If you want to see the production shows get there early.  

 

Have a blast.

Lee must have been quite the storm with plenty of wave action to deal with on your cruise! Hopefully, we'll be cruising in much smoother waters. 

 

Thanks for the heads up! We're in a suite and usually get to the Reserve dining room when it first opens, so we can hopefully get to the theater with our deck of cards in hand 20-30 minutes before the show. Hopefully, our strategy will continue to work on this cruise.

[abbydancer2003]

16 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Lee must have been quite the storm with plenty of wave action to deal with on your cruise! Hopefully, we'll be cruising in much smoother waters. 

 

Thanks for the heads up! We're in a suite and usually get to the Reserve dining room when it first opens, so we can hopefully get to the theater with our deck of cards in hand 20-30 minutes before the show. Hopefully, our strategy will continue to work on this cruise.

We had a very modified itinerary (the resulting FCC just paid for most of our Sun Princess cruise in 2025).  We missed 3 ports and spent a weekend in Boston.  

 

We had great service from the reserve dining team.  You probably need, if the ship is full, to get to the theater no later than 30 minutes before the show.  Note this is for production shows.  I  don't think other shows are a problem.  

[hobo1937]

We did this same trip in 2012. The land portion was fantastic. Saw some beautiful fall colors. Superstorm Sandy caused the cruise portion to be totally different from the original plan but we got to visit some smaller ports in Canada that were wonderful and the weather was not a problem. 

[Ken the cruiser]

Just thought I'd add some website links I'll probably use quite often while on the cruise.

 

1. My two favorite Northern Lights links. The first one provides a 30-minute forecast, and the second one provides a 3-day forecast:

 

Aurora - 30 Minute Forecast | NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center

 

Aurora Forecast - See Northern Lights Today

 

2. My favorite weather forecasting website regardless of where we're at in the world. There is also an app, but I simply use website information.:

 

https://www.windy.com/

 

3. The current location of the Caribbean Princess:

 

CARIBBEAN PRINCESS Current Location (cruisemapper.com)

 

4. Ookla Internet Speed Test

 

Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test

 

Edited September 29, 2023 by Ken the cruiser

[Colorado Coasty]

3 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Hi all! I know it's a little early, but I can't help but start getting excited about our upcoming 22-day Princess adventure which begins October 14 flying to Toronto for a 5-day land excursion, to include seeing the Niagara Falls, before boarding the Caribbean Princess in Quebec for a 12-day cruise to Ft Lauderdale. We are also booked on the ensuing 5-day Caribbean cruise RT out of Ft Lauderdale which will finally get us to Elite. Yay!!

 

As one might imagine, we'll be watching for any potential hurricanes and/or tropical storms forming in the Atlantic which will hopefully either disappear or become irrelevant once we start cruising down the Atlantic coast. On the brighter side the Northern Lights are expected to be stronger than they have been for at least a decade over the next few months, which hopefully means we will have a good chance to see them when we're cruising up the St. Lawence River or maybe as we make the turn and start to head south once we reach the Atlantic.

 

My plan for this Live From thread is to share some of our experiences while on this adventure, with the usual one exception. As with my other Live From threads, I have no plans to post any pictures of food or drinks. Sorry. But if you would enjoy seeing photos of the various wildlife and other attractions we’ll see along the way, please come along and I'll try my best to make it interesting. Of course, if you have any questions about the itinerary or the ship, please feel free to ask and will try my best to find the answers.

 

Our 5-day land excursion portion of the cruise.

 

 

 

Our 12-day cruise from Quebec to Ft Lauderdale

  

 

  

Our 5-day Caribbean cruise RT out of Ft Lauderdale

  

 

 

We are on the same cruise/tour. See you in Toronto.

[WisCruiser2]

We had to cancel the cruise (😭) so I will be following along to see what we're missing - hopefully can do it next year!

[phabric]

Following along on your new cruises.

[Ken the cruiser]

44 minutes ago, WisCruiser2 said:

We had to cancel the cruise (😭) so I will be following along to see what we're missing - hopefully can do it next year!

I saw your post on the RC. So sorry to hear that and hopefully your issues will be resolved quickly. I'll try my best to post a variety of pictures so you can get excited about possibly going next year.

[cr8tiv1]

4 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Lee must have been quite the storm with plenty of wave action to deal with on your cruise! Hopefully, we'll be cruising in much smoother waters. 

 

Thanks for the heads up! We're in a suite and usually get to the Reserve dining room when it first opens, so we can hopefully get to the theater with our deck of cards in hand 20-30 minutes before the show. Hopefully, our strategy will continue to work on this cruise.

 

Is Nicholas still the Assistant Manager (Head Waiter) in Reserve Dining?  Did you see Amador, waiter?

 

OOPS...meant for @abbydancer  Quoted wrong post.  

Edited September 29, 2023 by cr8tiv1

[cr8tiv1]

Thanks @Ken the cruiser for starting this thread.  Looking forward to your posts (and meeting you).  

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

8 minutes ago, cr8tiv1 said:

 

Is Nicholas still the Assistant Manager (Head Waiter) in Reserve Dining?  Did you see Amador, waiter?

Unfortunately, I have no idea as we won’t be on the ship until Oct 19.

[abbydancer2003]

50 minutes ago, cr8tiv1 said:

 

Is Nicholas still the Assistant Manager (Head Waiter) in Reserve Dining?  Did you see Amador, waiter?

 

OOPS...meant for @abbydancer  Quoted wrong post.  

The head of Reserve was Christian.  I don't think I saw Amador, but I had the same excellent staff every night except one.  The head of Restaurants was Neville S.  (forget his last name).  He remembered us from the Discovery either because of the pain I was about the Chef's Table (or maybe the commendation on the survey I gave him for working it out).  He did ask us if we wanted the chef's table on the cruise, but we said not so soon.

[cr8tiv1]

1 minute ago, abbydancer said:

The head of Reserve was Christian.  I don't think I saw Amador, but I had the same excellent staff every night except one.  The head of Restaurants was Neville S.  (forget his last name).  He remembered us from the Discovery either because of the pain I was about the Chef's Table (or maybe the commendation on the survey I gave him for working it out).  He did ask us if we wanted the chef's table on the cruise, but we said not so soon.

 

Thanks for the update.  Neville Saldana (from Poland).  Who was your waiter?  Looking forward to being on the Caribbean Princess, again.

[abbydancer2003]

Just now, cr8tiv1 said:

 

Thanks for the update.  Neville Saldana (from Poland).  Who was your waiter?  Looking forward to being on the Caribbean Princess, again.

Our waiter was Deri from Indonesia, and assistant was Dragan from Serbia.  If you see Dragan.  They were a great team and Dragan is one of the friendliest and warmest servers I've ever had.

[abbydancer2003]

One more thing to mention on the reserve dining area.  Most of the tables are in the section on the side of the entrance by the windows.  There are, however, a couple of tables on the main dining side of the room.  You can tell they're reserve because of the tableclothes.

[NavyVeteran]

2 hours ago, abbydancer said:

One more thing to mention on the reserve dining area.  Most of the tables are in the section on the side of the entrance by the windows.  There are, however, a couple of tables on the main dining side of the room.  You can tell they're reserve because of the tableclothes.

They adjust the Reserve Dining tables each cruise based on the passengers booked. For example, I was on a family cruise on the Caribbean Princess with a party of eight. They had a table for eight set up in Club Class for us. I suspect that table disappeared from Club Class when we disembarked.

[LACruiser88]

3 hours ago, cr8tiv1 said:

Thanks for the update.  Neville Saldana (from Poland)

Neville is actually from India.  He married a Polish woman and now calls Poland home.

 

 

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by LACruiser88

[abbydancer2003]

6 minutes ago, NavyVeteran said:

They adjust the Reserve Dining tables each cruise based on the passengers booked. For example, I was on a family cruise on the Caribbean Princess with a party of eight. They had a table for eight set up in Club Class for us. I suspect that table disappeared from Club Class when we disembarked.

I've heard that before, but I didn't think it would change the size of the area, just the tables within the reserve class area.  I could be wrong of course.