Thoughts & reflections from the 11/26/04 Mercury cruise to Mexico

[JJPNYC]

Hi-

I'm just back fromt he 11/26-12/06 10-day cruise to Mexico. While Rosie did a great job giving a review of the cruise, I thought that I'd post a few of my thoughts & reflections on the overall trip & experience.

 

Background: My wife & I are in our late late 20's and have sailed on Celebrity once before. We sailed on this to celebrate our honeymoon.

We chose this itinerary because 1.) it originated from San Diego which is her hometown & we were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family and

2.) Mexico is an itinerary we wanted to do.

 

With that, here's my thoughts on Celebrity/Mercury (hard to distinguish as I coudln't always tell what were things with Celebrity & what were things with Mercury), & the itinerary itself.

 

Celebrity/Mercury

-felt that in the Manhattan Restaurant that they are cutting corners on their food budget. Many of the cuts of beef I had were of average quality. Also I found that the inspiration & quality in presentation was lacking. These are the little things, but the little thinigs that make the difference.

- the lunch time wait staff looked like that they had plans elsewhere. We got there @ noon on one sea day & while it was not busy at all, had long waits for our dishes, for our water glasses to be refilled, etc. Also the waiters had the attitude & look that they would rather be anywhere but there at that particular moment. As I always say, service costs nothing to improve if you have good managers and I think that this is a direct reflection on the dining room's managers.

- we did casual dining one night up in the Palm Springs Cafe. I hate to say it, but I was blown away by the whole experience and would happily do this again. Our waiter was always doing as much as he could (even more commendable since he didn't have an assistant) & always had a smile on his face. Also the sommelier went waaaay beyond his call of duty. My wife & I decided to just have soda's that night via our soda sticker. Instead of getting the roll of eyes as we did once in the Manhattan dining room (I'm guessing because the bar servers realized that they weren't going to get a tip off of us), this somellier happily got us refill after refill of Diet Cokes, even appologizing once because it took him a bit longer since he had to run to the Navigator Club for one round since they had to replenish the tanks at the soda gun in the Palm Springs cafe.

-Also we found in the Casual Dining that the food was prepared with much more thought. care, & inspiration than downstairs. When I got my entree, it was the first time in the curise that I went "wow!" with what I was presented. The same could be said about my wife's entree.

- If I could have my druthers, I'd wish to have physically eaten in the Manhattan dining room which is a great room but with the service & food from Casual Dining because it was just better (and yes, I know the differences between serving 1000 peopole at once vs. 30 & all, but in my book, that's no excuse).

- The new internet cafe has bumped out the cardroom from where it used to be to half of Michael's Club. With that, there's a bit of a war going on between the card players & cigar smokers now sharing the same space divided only by a cheap Chinese screen divider.

- Speaking of Micahel's Club, you can tell that Celebrity ran out of money when decorating it. Compared to the one on Century (another room that made me go "wow"), the one on Mercury was just very ulitarian and plain. I only went there once and never had a desire to go back as opposed to the one on Century where I couldn't wait to go back each night (and I'm not even a smoker!).

- the officers on Mercury seemed very aloof. I barely ever saw one around and when I did and said "good morning", I barely got a nod & smile back.

-The Palm Springs Pool area....ahhhhhh This is what I am looking for. The pool was great and the rattan deck chairs were super comfortable. This easily was the part of the ship that I spent the most time in over all 10 days.

-Dress code. Or should I say "what dress code?" One thing I noticed on this itinerary was that a lot of the people disregarded the dress code at night. Casual night was not a problem, but on informal where a jacket & tie were requested of the men, I'd say about 33% were still stuck on Casual night. For Formal night, I'd guess about 50% were in tuxes, 25% were in dark suits, and the other 25% were in light colored suits or a sports coat/tie/slacks. Please Celebrity, please, ENFORCE THE DRESS CODE!!!!!!! I feel that not doing so takes away from the experience that you pretend to be providing.

- the enrichment lectures were really appreciated. We had a Mexican society/history professor from Oregon on board giving 3 different sessions. I thought that this greatly enhanced my trip and was a true Celebrity offering. I applaud Celebrity for this

- one last thing, Please Celebrity, Please....Have enough cold towels at the gang way for everyone, regardless if you're the first one back or the last one. The only port where i got a cold towell coming back on board was at.....well, I never did get one. If you're going to advertise having them, make sure you have enough regardless of when people decided to get back on board.

 

The itinerary:

Cabo is a great first stop. Very laid back, tourist friendly, and a nice burst of warm air.

 

Mazatlan: we did Randi's there. 'nuff said. Their port area was pretty festive though with a festive bar right in the terminal area which is a good place to have a beer or margarita before getting back on the ship. There's also a good shopping pavillion at the pier, though the locals were a bit stingy in their prices & bargaining I thought

 

Puerto Vallarta: Surburan Mexico at it's best. You get off the boat and what's the first thing you see, a Wal-Mart. And wait, going in to town you pass a Staple, a Blockbuster, and Outback, another Blockbuster, a Dominos, you get the picture. The boardwalk & downtown area are nice though.

 

Acapulco. A teeming metropolis of 2 million. It is what you make of it here as there's just about anything you want. Do check out the cliff divers thought.

 

Zihua. A nice little fishing village and probably the most "authentic" of the ports we called on. A half-day here was just enough.

 

All in all, I'm happy that we did this itinerary on Merucry. Would I do it again, probably not, but I am happy that I did do it.

 

But the bigger picture coming out of this, would I do Celebrity again (this was my 2nd cruise with them)? Probably not either. I can't peg it exactly, but it just feels that they are not quite the "taste of luxury" that they extoll them to be. When all was said & done, we probably spent the same amount of money had we done Silversea, Windstar, or Raddisson, and with that, we'll probably be considering one of the luxury lines for our next cruise.

 

Jeff

[JNLROSE]

Wow! Jeff, interesting! Have to tell you, we had cold towels every time we boarded from a port & we had them every sea day! They came around the pool more than once with them! I agree with the Salmon on the alternative dining night because we were seated next to y'all! Their food was fabulous! I would have been happy to eat there every night!

 

Never ate in the dining room for breakfast or lunch, never do! :rolleyes: Sorry you had a bad experience! We always use the butler, room srevice or do the buffet! ;) The burgs, dogs & puzza are GREAT at the pool, why bother???:D

We sure had a good time in Acapulco though, right?????

[JJPNYC]

Hi Rosie-

Maybe you were the cuprits taking all of the cold towels for us stragglers on the last tender back. ;-)

 

This was simmering within me for a few days. I didn't want to put it out right away to make sure it was what I was feeling, but a week after we disembarked, I'm still having the same thoughts/feelings. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the cruise, but it was not up to the standards that I personally thought Celebrity had marketed themselves to be about nor what I experienced on Century just last summer (August '03). For me though, the small things are what makes the difference and I just thought that too many of the little things were missing whenever I happened to be passing on by.

 

On the food front at the pool, I have to say that the french fries were really yummy. I also loved & enjoyed the Indian buffet they had on one of the first days at the Palm Springs Grill. I wished that they had it again during the cruise because whomever they had making the dishes sure knew how to make Indian food (And this is coming from my wife & I who do Indian about once a week here in NYC).

 

I do agree though, Acapulco was a blast and great fun. Actually I'm enjoying rubbing in the fact to people at work that it was in the mid 90's in Acapulco while we are dipping in to the low 30's right now in NYC.

 

One thing though I did not mention, while waiting to disembark (we were one of the last ones off @ 10:30), I went snooping about to the Penthouse deck and found that the Royal & Penthouse suites were open & awaiting their next guests. Wow!!! Whoever gets those rooms sure do live the good life. I saw the pictures on line, but taking it in with my own 2 eyes sure gives them a different perspective and don't do the picutres justice.. I think that if I had the Penthouse that I would never leave except for when we were in port.

 

jeff

[JNLROSE]

Jeff, all I CAN say here is, differnt strokes for diferent folks! :D Somehow we each garnered diferent things from the same trip! ;)

[Cruisin Rick]

Isn't that always the case? On a Panama Canal cruise my wife and took, we were having lunch in Costa Rica and the couple seated with us at the table was complaining about how awful their cruise has been. If it wasn't the food, it was the entertainment or it was seating arraingments. We were floored, as for us, it had been a wonderful cruise in all ways. Sometimes though, one bad episode can fester and sort of take away from the whole experiance.

I'll be sailing on Mercury in March and it'll be my first with Celebrity. I'm anxious to see how it compares to RCCL and Princess.

[JNLROSE]

I hope you enjoy your experience on Mercury! I cannot say enough about the crew & their overwhelming friendliness! They were the best I have sailed with so far.

If you're doing the same itinerary as we did, take some warm clothes for SD!!! This is NOT the Caribbean climate.

Since we have sailed Celebrity several times before, we pretty much knew what to expect in terms of food, however, the entertainment was so good on Summit, we were disappointed in it on Mercury because we raised our expectations in that respect.

 

We don't go on a cruise expecting 5* food (we can't expect them to feed that many in that amount of time & make it all 5*) all the time, we DO expect 5* service, accomodations and overall experience. I think the Mercury delivered those 3 things even though we would not sail her again or do this itinerary. That is mainly because of the weather & the fact we prefer the larger ships which offer more venues in dining, shopping & things to see & do.