MOcruiserman

One trade-off could be accepting a couple of extra sea days if they replace having to fly to a port - with the cost, hassle and wasted days of flights and the necessity of one or more hotel stays.

Excellent point and definitely something to consider.

This is an excellent question, one that my wife and I discuss often.

We've decided that while we love cruising we don't particularly care for sea days. The things we love about cruising are not having to constantly pack and unpack, a nice clean room and bathroom all the time, great meals that you don't have to prepare yourself, fun entertainment in the evenings and interesting ports. What we don't particularly like are the sea-day activities (with a few exceptions).

So when we decided that our next cruise would be the Caribbean we opted to fly to San Juan and cruise from there, rather than leave from Baltimore, our close-by port. The San Juan cruise includes one sea day, the Baltimore cruise six, which would be a plus for some but not us.

Good to hear from everyone. Welcome carabop. Good luck retiring soon. Shootr, I feel for you - my "procedure" was a colonoscopy and I'm glad it's over.

I'm not sure where to ask this question but here goes.

 

We really wanted to sail on Celebrity & are booked on the Equinox in March 2017.

However I just read a Celebrity Today from February 2016 on the Equinox posted on someones blog. It says: "guests are asked to follow the Smart Casual & above dress code in the Equinox Theater for all evening performances". I don't know if this applies to the bars & lounges too. We (especially DH) usually change into more comfortable clothes after dinner. I'm looking for opinions as to whether we should change our cruise to Royal (we've sailed on them before) or stick this one out and just change after attending the first performance. :confused:

We were just on the Summit. Most people attending the performances in the theater were dressed the way you would to go to the theater at home. In other words, for men, nice pants and a shirt with a collar (no tee shirts). For women, nice pants or skirt with a top or a dress. I didn't see any shorts.

Hi Belle - rising and shining!

Overate a couple of times this week but had to fast yesterday for a medical procedure. As a result, lost 2.5 lbs - broke 200 for the first time in many, many years - 199.5 lbs!

Onward and downward.

I hope everyone had success this past week.

Sad, especially when you realize it was almost certainly accidental. A person doesn't intentionally go over the railing backwards.

No one has mentioned the obvious.

That the only way to prevent someone from doing something dangerous like sitting on a railing (let's face it, we've all done something similar in our lives) is to increase the height of the railing.

But that would require ships to invest a considerable amount of money and, further, it would result in passenger complaints that their view was being interfered with. And still, a determined (or drunk) person could probably find a way to climb over even a high railing.

Joined Planet Fitness today!! Great place and perhaps it will inspire me to stick to my eating plan.

What kind of shampoo is in the bathroom?

I remember having the dispenser in the wall that had shampoo, conditioner, and body wash.

Do they now have little bottles like hotels? That would create an insane amount of trash even if recycled.

You might be thinking of Holland America, where they have the wall dispensers. On the Summit they give you individual tubes of Clinique products. Our shampoo ran out after two days and we asked for more. That evening we found 5 new tubes of shampoo in our bathroom.

My TA spoke to Celebrity today. He was upset that they forgot the birthday cake for my husband's big birthday. He was annoyed that Celebrity didn't pay attention to his booking request for a cake. Celebrity said that they cannot guarantee a cake. We should not expect it. That fired up my TA to make several phonecalls. Celebrity said that they were sorry. Next time I want to celebrate a birthday on a ship, you can be sure that I will bring my own cake, candles, etc. ..and it probably won't be on Celebrity. Celebrity does a nice cruise. It's a shame that it isn't a good place for celebrating a birthday.

Sorry that you had such poor service. A weird thing happened to us. The waiter brought out a fancy cake for our anniversary - lovely but we never asked for it. In fact our anniversary is in June! We shared the cake with the folks at our table - it was tasty!

Good morning Belle.

After indulging myself on a week's cruise to Bermuda I decided not to step on the scale until today. And I was pleasantly surprised to see it stop at 202 - no weight gain (maybe even the loss of a pound). Now I'm thinking I should have had that delicious-looking Gelato.

I hope everyone lost but, more importantly, was able to resist the temptation of falling back into unhealthy eating habits.

Excellent review!

I was on the same cruise. For my take on it, see my review:

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=532882

Thanks to everyone for their useful suggestions.

We decided to book the cruise. "Only" eight more months to go!

My wife and I are considering a Jan. 15, 2017, cruise to the southern Caribbean and are wondering if this cruise would be right for us. We've never been to the Caribbean but we have been to the Bahamas and Bermuda.

We are both in our late 60's and not beach people. However, we do like to explore new places and get bored when we have too many sea days (as we did on our last cruise).

We were on the Grandeur of the Seas last October and found the passengers to be annoyingly loud and raucous, more so than on any other cruise we've taken. I'm hoping the passengers on the Jewel will be more controlled. We don't mind kids on the cruise - to a degree. 50 kids would be fine, but 500 would be too many.

The ports look interesting - San Juan PR, Charlotte Amalie St. Thomas, Basseterre St. Kitts, St. Johns Antigua, Castries St. Lucia and Bridgetown Barbados. We wouldn't go to any of the beaches but there seems to be enough to do otherwise.

Do you think we'd enjoy this cruise?

Also on this cruise -haven't written review yet.

I wrote mine today. I haven't heard that it's been posted though.

Hello to VA man!

Nice pic, Shootr. I'm glad you're making progress.

One thing about the cruise that was a real disappointment was the new Rooftop Terrace located on the top deck (deck 12). Too windy and too cold to comfortably watch a movie, in my opinion. I don't know why Celebrity installed it - it makes no sense. And worse, there were no movies at all offered in the indoor theater - the first cruise I've been on where I didn't see a movie.

One more thing I forgot to include in my review was our excursion on the Fantasea Glass Bottom Boat. We bought the excursion from Celebrity, and it was one of the best things we did in the short time we were in Bermuda. The guide was a local Bermudian, and he was very knowledgeable and entertaining. The boat took us to two locations for viewing the fish. The first was along the natural reef, and the second was the site of the shipwrecked ironclad Vixen. The fish were amazing, and we, our children and my parents all had a great time.

 

Hope that helps!

We were on your cruise and on the Fantasea boat with you. We really enjoyed the experience too. And the free rum swizzle was an added treat!

There's a cover charge for the movie venue?

 

 

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The area is not blocked off. I didn't see any of the crew but I left after only a couple of minutes so it's possible that a crew member might come by and insist that you pay. I don't see why anyone would pay for such an uncomfortable venue, but that's my opinion.

Belle, I'm so glad you're back! It's tough to deal with an aged parent but it's something that most of us have to do, sooner or later. It was very difficult for me so I empathize with you.

I just returned from a week of pampered indolence aboard the Celebrity Summit, a lovely ship with very good, tempting food. And I overdid it, as I knew I would. I refuse to weigh myself until Thursday morning and we'll see what we see.

Just returned from our 7 day cruise to Bermuda on the Summit. Great ship and crew. Plus Captain Kate!!

My only issue is with the Rooftop Terrace. I tried to watch movies there twice and both times I felt it was too cold and windy.

There were quite a few people watching who I guess weren't bothered by the cold and wind. Three or four movies were shown, including the new Star Wars movie and the Heart of the Sea (both of which I wanted to see), JEM (which I had no interest in) and something else. There were at least two showings of each. I wish they would have also shown these movies in the theater so I could have seen them. On my previous cruise on the Grandeur of the Seas they showed movies on both the inside and outdoor screens.

Thanks, Jo. 3.8 pounds for 16 days of vacation isn't bad. I'm hoping I can limit my gain to 3-4 pounds during my cruise - lots of temptations.

Hi all. Unfortunately, still no word from Belle. I hope she's OK.

I hope everyone had a good week.

This is my last weigh-in before my May 1 cruise. I'd hoped to get to 200 but it was not to be. However, I did make it down to 202 - down three pounds for the week. So I'm pleased. When it comes to losing weight it helps to have a goal even if you don't quite reach it.

Next Thursday I'll be in Bermuda, so you won't hear from me until the following Thursday. I don't intend to follow my diet while on the cruise but I don't want to go wild either. I'm hoping my post-cruise weigh-in doesn't show a drastic weight gain, but we shall see.

Good for you, Isabel.

You have 6 months get to your goal weight for your wedding.

And 5 pounds more to let you enjoy your cruise without guilt.:)

Terrific pics, Shootr. You have a good eye.