islandtime87

Thank you for your review, enjoyed the pictures and the dailies. We are on Solstice in July. Did you by chance participate in the Seattle Luggage Valet service to Seattle SEATAC upon return?

We did not. But one important thing that I guess I need to share with everyone. My in-laws got off the ship around 8:30 AM and had a almost 1-1.5 hour wait to get a cab to the airport and we got off at 9:30 AM and the line was just as big. We decided to Uber and the uber pick up area was a good 5-7 walk away from the exit point. The taxi was flat fare of $40 to the airport and our uber cost $64. I’m not exaggerating this part but we pulled in right in front of my in-laws at the airport. So def was worth getting an uber if you see the taxi line is big and overall if it’s just two of you then worth doing the Celebrity provided airport transfer. Now it might have been because it was 1st cruise of the season into Seattle and we had a Royal Caribbean cruise ship also in port that day but the cruise port people def needed to organize things much better as far as traffic flow pattern.

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Ending the review without completing it due to laziness and no traffic.

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Well, I have loved your review, but the last picture really did it for me! We are Beagle people . See my avatar, she is our sixth and we love her as we did all the rest. Bailey is lovely and I bet you'll make his day when you return home.

Thanks, we are Beagle people as well. She is our first and have a feeling will always be Beagle people. Love your Beagle as well :)

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We have arrived in Seattle. Really enjoyed doing this review and it will likely be a tradition moving forward on future Celebrity cruises. Next one is in April 2019 on Celebrity Edge. Wishing everyone happy cruising on their future Alaska Cruises.

In a way happy to be going back to Atlanta to be reunited with our furbaby Bailey :)

Signing off the Live Review, thanks to everyone for following along.

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Thanks so much for the reviews! We are here in Seattle, ready to start our cruise tomorrow! BTW, you and your husband are darling.

Thanks :)

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A very happy accident that turned out to be amazing.

Went to Luminae for our last dinner but both Derick and I did not find anything interesting or unique on the menu so at the last minute decided to go eat in Silk Harvest.

Well let me tell you we were both pleasantly surprised and really enjoyed the service, the view and the food. We had always been hesitant to try it out from all the negative reviews we had read in the past but for us it did turn out to be a great experience. It really was not busy and that does tell you a little bit about the popularity and I am sure they fluctuate in their overall satisfaction, but I guess we got lucky and had a great experience.

Our server Josephine from Philippines was amazing and we found out that she will be joining Celebrity Edge and that is our next Celebrity Cruise in April 2019 so looking forward to having her as our server in one of their dining venues :)

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Thank you for the update live. Our first cruise is around the corner and all you live updates allowed us to gain some background knowledge of our future ports.

 

Just a few questions...

 

If we have booked a non-cruise kayak tour in Ketchikan, are we allowed to disembark with everyone else or do we have to wait until the cruise excursions people have left the ship.

 

A few posts ago, you had a picture of the ship and you can see the lifeboats all lit up. In the evening, if your room is near the lifeboats, do you think your room would be bright?

 

One more special request and I realize that is could be way above and beyond, but I thought I would ask. If you have still have the dailies, could you scan them and post them? I am not a spring chicken and I had a hard time reading some of them. However, I do appreciate what you already have done.

Yes usually you can disembark right away as soon as the ship is cleared for disembarkation. They usually line up the people with ship excursions but usually never more than a 10-15 min wait to get off.

The lifeboats do light up but the curtains in the room can block out the lights completely.

Only have the pictures of the dailies and upload on cruise critic was easy to do with medium resolution.

Wishing you a happy vacation!

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Thank you Islandtime, appreciate all the info and time you put into your reviews. Makes me want to start packing today and I don’t leave for a week. :) Did you pre-purchase a specialty dining package? Do you know if there is a dinner menu preview for Luminae? I was on Infinity last summer and loved Q’sine. Bummer they don’t have it on Solstice.

Anyway, I’ve taken my notes! Thanks again!

We did not pre-purchase a specialty dining but had planned to once on board. Royal Suite has a perk of unlimited specialty dining so we got lucky that way. You can request a print out copy of Luminae dinner menus and your Butler will leave them in your room on Day 2

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Last of the daily pics. Cruise is coming to an end sadly but overall this has been a great journey and thank you to all those that followed along.

Just a quick review of my overall experience.

Ship - very well kept and no complaints.

Stateroom - By far the best of all our cruises since we got lucky with the royal suite upgrade at the last minute.

Suite perks - We had done Celebrity Reflection in May 2016 and May 2017, overall the suite experience in Michaels Club, Our great concierge - Calli, Luminae Dining with our great waiter Bayu. Our Butler Stevo - this ship far exceeded our expectations and overall felt the service and suite experience goes was way better than our May 2017 Celebrity Reflection Cruise.

Dining - Our overall dining in Luminae from breakfast, Lunch and Dinner was great. Food was great and so was the service, really no complaints there.

Specialty dining - This is where I have couple small complaints. Still don’t know why the Solstice has Silk Harvest - ready for explosive comments from Silk Harvest fans...lol. But I just have loved Qsine so much and wish this restaurant was changed to that.

Murano - we did not have a great experience overall. Food was just ok and the service compared to most of our prior experience in Murano I would give a 2/5.

Tuscan - no real complaints. Food was great, along with great service from Darko. Views were amazing.

Ports of call - Tracy Arm Fjord not really port of call but was a great 4 hours of cruising experience. Ketchikan was our favorite port. Skagway would be very close second - minus the incident of almost being left behind.

Juneau was our least favorite and to hear a comment about from now on there will be 6 ships in the port is just crazy!!!! We thought 5 was an obnoxious amount. I guess there will always be people that do not care about the crazy crowds but it just ruins the great Alaskan experience. I hope enough people comment negatively across all cruise reviews regarding this and hopefully 5 years from now there is a restriction in number of ships that are allowed to be there at a time, but I’m sure that is just wishful thinking. My overall reason for the long rant on this port is to warn people about those that are wanting to do Mendenhall Glacier since that is a popular excursion, my in-laws did that one and said it was jam packed at the site almost felt like cattle call. Try and seek out a small group excursion that is unique if you are not a fan of huge crowds, doesn’t bother a lot of people I guess but this comment is for people like me and my husband that are super glad we did not go to Mendenhall this time.

Victoria - during our last cruise we had gotten off and walked 35 minute into town ourselves and it was def nice to explore the town on our own. Due to the weird timing of when the ship is there we have decided to stay on board and enjoy it as a sea day.

Entertainment on the ship - we only went to two events. The Liars Club which Captain Tasos participates in. We laughed so much it hurt to laugh more. Best show we have been in a while. The hot glass show was amazing as well.

Hope the review help, let me know if you have any other specific questions about the cruise :)

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Dinner in Tuscan was absolutely amazing. From the amazing and personable service by Darko, the food and the gorgeous sunset we saw was just the perfect dinner we had on this lazy sea day. The entire family enjoyed the whole experience. So glad we decided on Tuscan over Murano.

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Dinner is in Tuscan Grill again tonight, we initially had Murano repeat but changed our mind as a family for the better views, service and the type of food we were in the mood for. Will ask for Darko again who was awesome.

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Dinner for Skagway Night was in Luminae and was pretty good. Didn’t do a whole lot after dinner and passed out at 10pm [emoji43] . My husband on the other hand stayed up till 11pm and saw this gorgeous sunset from the balcony.

 

 

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Dinner for Skagway Night was in Luminae and was pretty good. Didn’t do a whole lot after dinner and passed out at 10pm [emoji43] . My husband on the other hand stayed up till 11pm and saw this gorgeous sunset from the balcony.

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Glad you made it back. Enjoyed having my "daily fix" of your adventures and will soon start our count down to 7 September.

Your photographs are awesome.

Thanks :)

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Your Skagway hike is in the midst of such stunning scenery!! I had read of others doing this hike and was interested, but we are sailing on the Millennium and she isn't in port long enough to offer this excursion. Sounds like quite a fortunate turn of events in getting you back to the ship on time...a stressful time to what looks to be an amazing day, hopefully you can let that go, focusing on the beauty of the day earlier and having a bit of drama in the midst of your future storytelling that ends well.

 

 

 

Your weather looks perfect...how was your temps?

Yes def agree. I tried my best to include the fact that up until the delay, the day was absolutely gorgeous, but def important to let people know how close we came to missing the ship. We will def laugh about it when we tell the story in the future but right now still upset at how it all played out.

Weather we got very lucky with

Ketchikan - no rain, high temp was about 60. Very nice day and our favorite port of call.

Juneau - mild to moderate rain, high 50’s, very crowded port, 5 ships! The port will be loosing my business next time if there are that many ships, will likely stay on board.

Skagway - no rain, was predicted to be very cold but turned out to be a nice weather day with high temp is mid to high 50’s.

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Put a review into Trip Advisor with your concerns on how Packer Expeditions handled this problem. I’m sure their office in Skagway could have got in touch with the ship regarding the situation with the train and how it might affect your return. Packer Expeditions has excellent reviews on Trip Advisor so I’m sure they would take your concerns onboard. Also companies don’t want bad reviews, bad for business.

 

Awesome photos. How hard was the hike?

 

Sandra

The hike was moderate intensity. They can tailor it to be slightly easier than what we did.

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So long update from our crazy day yesterday in Skagway.

I’ll start from the beginning, we had done this exact same cruise in May 2015 and in Skagway we had done an excursion through Celebrity called Laughton Glacier Snowshoe Hike, it was an awesome experience, the white pass railway takes you to around mile marker 16, if you are on the excursion you get off and then do a 5-6 mile round trip hike with amazing views of a glacier. We had an awesome time with that excursion in 2015 and wanted to do it again this time.

So this time initially Celebrity offered the exact same excursion and we signed up through them, 4 weeks before the cruise, we got an email from Celebrity stating the excursion had been cancelled. They never said why but it was because not enough people signed up for it. We really had our mind set on doing this particular excursion so we found out who celebrity contracted out the excursion to and it was a company called “Packer Expeditions” so we called them and directly booked the excursion through them. The day started off just like our experience 3 years ago and hike and the views were amazing. We did a 5.5 mile round trip hike with amazing views just like last time. The place where the train had dropped us off we made it there at 3pm and our pickup time was supposed to be around 3:20 PM, and with that timeframe we would have been back in Skagway at 4:20 PM with the all aboard time being 5:30 PM. Well that did not happen and this is where everything that could go wrong started to...

The White Pass Railroad company that operates the train is the major culprit at fault here, they had a train that had engine troubles and it delayed everything. We were told it was only a 30-45 minute delay and not to worry, then it turned into oh it might be another 30 minutes and that another 30 minutes turned into a total of 2 hour delay in getting back on the train. While we were waiting to hop back on a train two trains passed us. This is where I blame both packer expeditions and the railroad company, they knew we were cruise ship passengers and needed to co-ordinate our pickup to make sure we made it back on the ship on time. This was a delay because of them and packer expeditions works closely with the train to do multiple other hikes and excursions and could have made things happen. Our guide had a radio that they use to communicate with the train personnel. Three trains passed us on the way down with plenty of empty spots and did not stop to pick us up. The fourth one did stop to pick us up around 4:55 PM and only had passengers from the Ruby Princess cruise ship which was scheduled to leave Skagway Port an hour after our ships departure time.

Our saving grace was the third train that had passed our train 10 minutes before had Celebrity passengers on it and they had excursions through celebrity so the ship wasn’t leaving them behind. We got to the Ruby Princess dock which is far away from where our ship was docked, as soon as we got there we were the first passengers off and the train company had an SUV waiting to quickly take us to our ship, about 5 minute drive away. It was 6PM, the ships departure time and we were freaking out...

We made it to the gangway and there was a bus that was loading passengers to the ship, these were the people from train 3 that had excursions booked trough Celebrity and of course Celebrity waited for them. The car we were in pulled in right behind the bus and we ran onto the gangway, all the people on the port side of the ship are clapping at this point, we made it on at 6:05 PM, as soon as my husband got on, within a minute the gangway was pulled back and we started our departure from the port, we had a whirlwind of emotions going through our minds at that time but the biggest was a sigh of relief and happiness about having made it back on board. The ship would have left us had it not been for that third train that had Celebrity passengers, we made it back with not even a minute to spare.

Moral of the story - In Skagway never book any excursion that involves the train unless you go through Celebrity directly. Never book an excursion directly through Packer Expeditions as they did not go above and beyond to make sure you get back onboard in a timely way.

Now to end on a positive note...pictures from the excursion itself...it truly was an awesome experience up until 3pm and all the delays that started happening.

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Long update coming soon but in the 15+ cruises we have taken, this was the first cruise where me and my husband were the last two people back on the ship. We saw them pull back the gangway as we stepped on, not a good feeling but also an amazing one knowing that we made it back on board. All aboard was 5:30pm and we got back on right at 6:05PM. We are so grateful and will never book an excursion through an outside company.

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The tickets for the Glacier Garden Adventure was $25 per person and you get to go up to 580 feet above sea level and get a nice view. We enjoyed the view but I forgot to take a picture...lol

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Yesterday we had lunch and dinner in Luminae and both were great. In Juneau we ended up going to Glacier Garden Adventure, it was pretty cool and a last minute thing. We got an uber and it cost about $25 each way, it was nice since we controlled the timing. If you don’t have anything scheduled and have already seen Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau then I def recommend the Glacier Garden Adventure.

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If Nenad wasn’t your server last night I can heartily recommend him on your next visit. He was our server on our first visit to Murano and I requested him for our other two visits. He’s on the ship until August. Not only a great waiter, but very warm and personable. Here he is....

 

 

 

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Thanks for the recommendation, will ask for him on our next dinner in Murano. We are great with names, we do not remember the name of our waitress that we had during our first dinner and usually that’s because it wasn’t personable/good service experience.

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