The Fun Researcher

I appreciate your straightforward comments. 👍🏼

I don't have bias either way regarding Celebrity. I'll "call it like I see it." I gave a ho-hum review of the Equinox on our most recent cruise the 5 nights before Christmas 2023. Our prior 7 night cruise in 2017 on the same ship was great. Here's a Celebrity compliment... On embarkation day, I LOVED that I could drop off our carry-ons into the room before they were fully ready to be occupied.

I'm hoping the new Icon class ships put pressure to lower prices on the other classes. We'll see. Here's to hoping. When I look at the tour of the Icon, it seems more like a reconfigured Oasis class. Despite all the crazy hype for the Icon, the Oasis class was far more revolutionary in it's time IMO. When I watch the tours of the Icon it looks like a tweaked Oasis class.

We love lunch in the MDR on sea days. We did an 8 night on the Allure in June 2022 and we spent every opportunity we could, as a family, having a nice leisurely lunch. I think there were 3-4 sea days on that itinerary. Would SORELY miss it if Royal stops offering this on sea days. A dedicated lunch menu is way more important to us than some sort of brunch mix.

Agreed, no need for a jacket. I had one but 1/2 the guys in our group did not. A button down shirt and slacks are perfectly fine. It’s interesting but Celebrity did away with “formal” nights moreso than Royal. Dress as you like. Happy cruising!

I’m a late night snacker but not a day snacker. We do early MDR seating which has gotten really early on Royal due to how they are handling My Time Dining now. So yeah after a few drinks I’m really looking for some protein and salty snacks before bed around midnight to 1am. It’s just my thing. 👍🏼

I haven’t noticed a shift towards more healthy eating, or more working out, in the past 12 years we’ve been sailing.

No arguing that, ...but please Royal give me more or better late night options, even if it means paying. (within reason...)

Agree. ...and to add, I want to be out and about enjoying the ship not cooped up in my room waiting for food to arrive (with no good spot to eat it.) Yeah, we'll never "have it all" Each person has their own preferences in a cruise ship and you just have to choose the one that has the best mix for you. I will still complain about Royal in this regard, especially when I've seen it done so much better on other lines. ...and I just think they make a poor attempt at it Dinner buffet closed at 9:30pm but Late Night started immediately after until 1am.

YES!!! I'm not a huge eater overall but I "need" a late night snack. I've been harping about this for years about Royal Caribbean. The late night food offerings are terribly limited. Pizza and finger sandwiches get old fast. Thank goodness Playmakers arrived on some ships. I'm willing to pay a little for some good pub fare. The one time we sailed NCL, the biggest positive difference was late night food. Loved having O'Sheehans open 24 hours. The fact that it was full service, with a broad menu, and open 24 hours was amazing. Just got off Celebrity a few weeks ago and they have a limited buffet offering open late (cold cuts, breads, cheeses, desserts and a salad bar) . They also have hand tossed pizza and a pasta bar there. (although the pizza was scarce and the pasta bar was not well run at all). It was still a nice improvement over Royal.

The cost of specialty dining (except for a lunch here or there) is too much for us. I can't justify it versus what I can get in the MDR. Yes, the MDR quality has gone down but not enough to justify the cost of specialty. Of course, this whole topic is completely dependent on what each person desires in a cruise.

Like @gfkcruiser mentioned, they will certainly accommodate special dietary needs. I would contact them beforehand, and also speak with the Maître D and head waiter when you get on the ship.

After the show there was typically a three person band in the main atrium. The lead female singer was very good, but the song choices were more along the lines of "easy listening" in my opinion. I did notice a violinist one evening in the Ensemble lounge as well. Again, very nice but not very lively. Besides the really late night DJ, yes it felt pretty lifeless at night. If you like to belly up to a bar and just chill, there was plenty opportunity for that. There were football games on the TV's in the Craft Social bar as well some evenings. However, the entire pool deck was essentially completely shut down by 9-10pm. The entertainment and activities might perfectly suit some folks, but not us. Again, we had a good cruise but not what we've become accustomed to.

Great question. You know, I do not remember seeing that on the menu. Maybe @RedIguana will remember? I am used to seeing extra paid for options on Royal Caribbean’s menu, but I do not recall seeing it on Celebrity ETA: I don’t see it on the menu in their app either

We don't even look at luggage tags anymore when they show up in our rooms. We always just bring our luggage with us as we leave. Much easier and we don't have the trouble of having search through a sea of luggage in the terminal. (also the risk of someone accidentally grabbing yours). A couple of weeks ago on the Equinox we all gathered in a small lounge by our rooms (Team earth deck 7) and I watched all the luggage while others grabbed breakfast. We were in no hurry to get off the ship since we were staying another day in the Fort Lauderdale area before flying home the next day. I think we walked off the ship at 9:15am and most of the ship had cleared out by then. They had just begun calling for all luggage tag numbers to leave so that was our cue. We literally walked straight through the terminal and through customs without stopping. Like others have said you can self disembark pretty early, say 7:30am or so. Just be aware that it will be a fairly busy time then and elevators will be a struggle with your luggage. If you can take the stairs with your luggage it may save a wait and struggle. Depends on how heavy and bulky your luggage is. I loathe disembarkation day. 🤣

Yeah, agree it just felt off... maybe the best word I can think of is "lifeless". Very few surprise Wows. In my opinion we are pretty easy to please people and organically make our own fun wherever we go, but it was just more of a challenge on this cruise. Overall, we love cruising and they have all been wonderful. This one was just our least wonderful by a noticeable margin. Maybe it was the timing. I'm sure a lot more planning was going into the Christmas and New Years cruise and maybe ours got overlooked a tad. Bummer about your food experience. With the number of cruises you've done, having such a high percentage of strikeouts is disappointing. We lucked out with the branzino. A couple of us (including me) at our table had it and enjoyed it. Can't comment on the drum though. I don't remember anyone having that. Loved having the escargot available each night, and there were those at our table that had the French onion soup every evening. Lots of shrimp cocktail ordered too. My problem is that I love trying so many of the appetizers. Normally I would get the escargot every meal if it's offered, but there were so many new apps on the Celebrity menu that I tended to get 2-3 of those and then I felt like a pig also ordering escargot so I dropped it from my order a couple of times. Agree completely about the lower quality of beef cuts. Not having tenderloin in the steak Diane is just wrong. Not having tenderloin offered at all was disappointing. There were no truly WOW dishes in the MDR for us either, but fortunately ours were consistently very good. Would love to hear about the wine class wanna be commando. 🙂

Elite drinks themselves were good. Bar service was fine/good overall. The gripe our friends had with the Elite drinks were with the 5-7pm hours and the lack of ability to order while in the MDR. This was our choice/fault, but with our fixed 5:30 MDR time it severely limited this perk to the point of making it almost unusable. Sounds like for you that will not be an issue starting dining at 7pm. That's a good call. I'm also o.k. with medium rare burgers, but I think ours were more in the medium to medium well range. Having said that they were still juicy, tender and fresh. I think the key is the timing. If what they have on hand on the flat top look overdone I would just ask if they can cook yours to order. Re. entertainment, I would go in with low expectations and hopefully be pleasantly surprised. Maybe you'll luck out with better headliners which could make a big difference as well. However, I don't think the onboard crew will be that much better than what we experienced. Their talent was pretty good, it's just that the cast and sets felt limited/cut. Happy cruising!

Depends on what you like to do in ports. Rather than just staying in the local port areas, personally, we like to get a better appreciation for the islands we visit. Having said that, we've done this tour twice and have really enjoyed it both times. It takes you around a good portion of the island of Curacao. Irie tours... All west beach hopping. https://www.irietours.com/all-west-beach-hopping/ It's a guided open air bus tour with bottled water, and some beers if desired. It takes you to some amazing beaches as well as the rustic north coast. If you are beach people, or would like to swim with sea turtles, this is a great excursion. The last beach you go to does have a bar, and some food options. The second to last beach typically has a woman selling a few items that are like soft tacos/burritos but food options are limited on the tour fyi.

Yeah, it was worth a try. Now we found out. There was a silent disco in the sky lounge a night or two but we've all done them numerous times and the novelty has worn off and we weren't interested. There was a DJ in the sky lounge but I think that was really late like 12am and later. Before that I think it may have been karaoke and the house carib band in the Sky lounge.

True, but the "older" ships vary quite a bit when comparing Carnival to Royal. Carnival has 17 of it's 27 ships in it's fleet that date 2010 or older, with the average passenger count of those ships at 2800. On average the ships have less venues and activities to offer. Royal has 18 of it's 26 ships in it's fleet that date 2010 or older, but the average passenger count of those ships at 3800. Even going back to 1999, the Voyager class was 4000 guests and 138,000 gross tons, and included the innovative Royal Promenade, ice skating rinks, expansive venues and activities. I just think Royal's fleet as a whole is more innovative, with more to do, and better maintained. Not knocking Carnival, just looking at them objectively and why Royal maybe can demand a higher price on average.

I think it was/is moreso the old, dated, smaller ships.

Funny you say that. I agree. I was thinking the same thing partway through the cruise. 👍🏼 I’ll have to look up some YouTube videos of the newest ships. There is a lot we like about Celebrity, we just need more activities, better shows, and if possible an open hot tub or two later in the evening. I’m guessing Celebrity has something for us. This cruise just fell short unfortunately.

The ABC's are our favorite ports and itinerary bar none! That alone should make for a great cruise. Being your first time on the Equinox you'll have a few days, at least, just getting to know the ship. That will be fun in and of itself. Sounds like your evening style will work well for this ship. I wouldn't let my negatives worry you, we had a lot of positives too. Happy cruising!!

It had been 6 years since we last sailed Celebrity, on the same ship, the Equinox. On that prior cruise we noted the slight bump up in food quality, as well as excellent service all around. (This is compared to Royal Caribbean which is our primary cruise line.) If you just want the executive summary, we had a good time, but not great. We’ve realized that Celebrity is probably too sleepy for us, and the bump up in food offerings and quality didn’t really exist any longer. I think we’ve been spoiled by Royal’s newer and bigger ships with so much to do, excellent ship layout, and decent food. This cruise was a 5 night just before Christmas (19th – 24th), stopping in Cozumel and Nassau. We were two family groups totaling 11 of us, five of which were our kids and one boyfriend (ages 16, 16, 19, 19, and 22). Overall ages ranged from 16 - 70. Embarkation: We arrived around 11 am (for 11:30 check in) and had a very smooth and quick embarkation. Our daughters 19 yo boyfriend is from China going to college here in the states. This was his first cruise. Despite all my concern of having the required documentation, it was a breeze. A quick review of his passport and F1 visa documentation and we were good to go! One thing that was super nice was the ability to immediately go to our cabins and drop off our carry on bags. That is something I wish all cruise lines would copy. There were notes saying that the rooms weren’t completely ready, but you could drop bags off and carry on with having fun on the ship! Awesome! Food and drink: MDR was fantastic. No complaints at all. They were able to get us one large table for 11. I had emailed about this before the cruise. I’m not sure if that is what worked, or what, but they nailed it perfectly. Our servers, Mark and Salih were excellent. Can’t say enough about how great the MDR experience was. Food was consistently very good. However, there was nothing on the menus that were standouts versus what we’re used to on Royal. Don’t get me wrong though, everyone thoroughly enjoyed the MDR experience. We did Sushi on 5 for two of our lunches, using up some of our OBC. Everyone loved it. Very good sushi, sake, etc… The Kobe beef ramen slider was a particular hit as well. The buffet was o.k. We only had two lunches in the buffet, so I don’t have a lot to comment on here, but it was good overall. We found food to satisfy our appetites. No real complaints. The burgers and fries at the Mast Grill were fantastic, better than I remembered. Loved the sauteed onions, mushrooms, and all the toppings. We only ate there once but it was great. Late night offerings in the buffet were disappointing. The hand tossed pizza was tasty, but it went fast so it was hard to get some. The big problem was the pasta station. It was not manned well, disorganized, and the pasta was way undercooked. This was something we remembered being a hit on our prior cruise on the Equinox. Not so at all on this sailing. I did appreciate the other stations, like the bread, cold cuts and salad. Drink service was good. Two of the adults had the classic drink package and two (my wife and I) had the premium package. We upgraded for $6.99 per person per day during pre cruise sales. Our family had $350 of OBC between our 3 cabins. It only cost my wife and I $480 combined to upgrade to the “all in” package that included gratuities, wifi and the classic drink package, and then later another $6.99 per day to upgrade to premium. Upping to the premium package was well worth it even if it was only for the ability to get $6.50 Red Bulls included. It was nice to ask for top shelf liquor for our drinks. We don’t typically purchase the drink package on Royal because it is so expensive and we get 4 free drinks daily due to being Diamond. …so having the package was a nice perk on this cruise. Speaking of this, our friends were really disappointed in the 5-7pm happy hour. They did not purchase a drink package. They are Diamond on Royal, so Elite on Celebrity, and didn’t like how happy hour directly conflicted with our 5:30pm dining time. You couldn’t order drinks for happy hour in the MDR, so instead you would need to walk out and find a bar and go get them yourselves. Royal’s system is far superior for guests (maybe not the bottom line of Celebrity though) Entertainment: This was a fail. It really felt like there were significant budget cuts. The cast was small, show sets were minimal. Nothing grand about the shows or headliners. The theater just didn’t seem like a popular spot like we are used to. I would say it was 1/3 full at best each evening (9:30 shows). They had a special holiday show the last evening, but had not one Christmas song or carol. There were the nice secular songs, and even a Jewish Hannukah song for which they learned Hebrew to sing. It was disappointing to not have ONE single song that dealt with the Christian Christmas. Live music was present around the ship and was nice, but there are limited venues. This is due to the ship design and layout, which I’ll discuss later. The “game shows” held in the Centrums were mildly entertaining, but mostly cheesy and certainly passable. Overall it felt like the ship mostly went to bed after dinner. Maybe they did. 😊 We can easily keep going to midnight or 1am, but we quickly ran out of options in the evening. Activities: Very limited. Granted, we knew this would be the case going into this cruise, but we didn’t realize just how it would impact us all. The big highlight was the glass blowing class. 6 in our groups did it and it will be a special memory for everyone. Items ranged from a jellyfish paperweight, vases, bowls and even a pumpkin. We were very disappointed to have ALL of the hot tubs and pools close by 9 or 10 pm. We sorely missed the ability to have a late night soak in a hot tub with an adult beverage or two. This might seem trivial to some, but was a major bummer for us. Also, the hot tubs overall were pretty small. The Solarium was chilly inside, which made it less inviting. Many guests in loungers were covered head to toe in towels to keep them warm. Ship layout and condition: I do like the good connection to the sea that you have on the Equinox. Besides that, we just don’t care for ships that have the two centrums rather than a central long royal promenade. Ships with centrums just feel chopped up inside. It makes for lots of small venues and shops, but just makes the overall layout complicated, less grand and less inviting (to us). The pool deck is very nice, but again hot tubs were pretty small. Like the lawn area, sunset bar, and the outdoor seating out back of the buffet. I thought the ship felt in good condition. Nothing I would complain about. It does need a refresh though. The new ships have surpassed it now, and decor is starting to feel dated. The refurb coming this year will be a welcome freshening. Cabins: Three of our cabins were prime balconies on deck 7 starboard. All three cabins were next to each other. This allowed us to remove the balcony dividers between the three cabins which made for an amazingly large balcony. That was awesome. The inside of the cabins were laid out well enough and accommodated us nicely, and our room steward (I Made) was excellent. Summary: So… while we had a good time with family and friends, there were enough misses to keep it from being a truly great time (which is what we’re used to on our cruises). This was the first time I’ve questioned if it was worth the money we spent on the cruise. Knowing now, I very well may have saved the money and used it for another vacation option. Again, it's hard to complain about a cruise, but this one just didn't hit like all of our others. It is something we're thankful to have done though. Thanks for following along if you made it this far. 😊 Feel free to fire away with any questions or comments.

Is there anything you did like about the equinox?