mahdnc

Today, Christmas Eve, we have not done that much with our new found time since today's port was cancelled. We had lunch at the MDR today and I finally realized how loud it was compared to Blu. We had a table for two on the upper floor and the noise from the surrounding tables made it difficult to converse with the couple that was seated in the 2 top beside us. Maybe in the prior years when we were seated at the MDR with our 2 kids, we were the ones making the noise, but now my wife and I are the victims of it. Afterwards we strolled around the shops and the casino. My Summit tee shirt resulted in a conversation with some of the crew that worked on her in the past. A worker at the liquor store--who was from Zimbabwe--spoke very favorably about his time aboard Summit and preferred that size ship over Solstice. The casino was pretty busy today and I went by mainly to checkout the blackjack tables while my wife surveyed the slots. Lowest minimum blackjack table was $10 and there were several of them up and operating (with the lousy 6:5 blackjack payout of course). The $25 table was opening up and that is where you have to go if you want the traditional 3:2 blackjack payout. My wife and I will be hitting the casino but we wait until the latter half of the sailing because if we lose our money (and we always assume that we do), we don't want it to happen at the beginning of the cruise! There were two roulette tables open (one table had a player who liked to scream) and even the craps table had a lively group going. I brought my DSLR camera with me to take some photos around the ship. While I was in the casino, I was greeted by several young kids (escorted by an adult) that were doing a scavenger hunt and needed to find a passenger with a Nikon camera. I am now immortalized in one of their selfies that was taken as proof of their successful find. I hope they won. Video is not allowed in the casino, but non-flash photography is permitted. Here are some photos from the table games this afternoon: Cards. This table did get loud and lively a couple of times. Good for them. Dice. The gentleman on the left, throwing the dice, was on a good roll. He threw at least 10 times after I began watching before he sevened out. Craps is a fast moving game with lots of activity simultaneously going on. It took several shots before I could get one where all the players and dealers were paying attention to the roll. Wheel. It appears that not everyone was happy with this spin.

Here is a screenshot of the schedule that we had for sailing by the glaciers to give you an idea (I guess there were more than 3 glaciers to see): This was for the Chile to Argentina itinerary where we sailed from Punta Arenas, Chile (Day 7) and sailed eastward on the Beagle Channel to Ushuaia, Argentina on Day 8. Here is a link to the Celebrity Today in its entirety and a link to the entire folder of Celebrity Todays.

Have a nice cruise! My family of 4's first Christmas/NYE cruise was on your itinerary but back in 2016. We boarded Infinity at Valparaiso on Christmas Eve and we spent New Years Day at Cape Horn. 15 nights later we would disembark at Buenos Aires. It was an awesome cruise, you will love it! Be sure to note the times (from Celebrity Today) for when Eclipse will pass by the three visible glaciers as you sail down the Beagle Channel (I believe towards Ushuaia for you). For us it was very early in the morning (like 5 am) and that was the only time we saw any that close during the whole cruise. Infinity docked at Ushuaia, Dec 31 2016.

Ah, the ship we both were supposed to be on for the cancelled Christmas 2020 sailing. So in the end for our replacement sailings, I re-booked the itinerary while you re-booked the ship.

We spent a little time up in the Sky Lounge which was also a popular place this morning. Most of the window seating was filled. Closer to the Sky Lounge dance floor, Celebrity ran stretching exercises followed by a trivia game (Hg is a symbol for which element?). On the starboard side of the lounge, we saw whales:

The conference room area on the port side of the ship next to the Sky Lounge was set up as a parent-supervised play area for kids that are too young to be enrolled in the kids program, aka Camp at Sea. To be in the kids program, the kids have to be at least 3 years old and pottie trained. This looks like a Toy Story set:

Here is: Celebrity Today for Day 1 (Singapore) Celebrity Today for Day 2 (Sea Day #1 of 3) Celebrity Today for Day 3, Christmas Eve (Koh Samui, which was cancelled) Celebrity Today folder

The Captain announced at 9:45 am that we will be arriving Laem Chabang at 7 am instead of our originally scheduled time of 9 am tomorrow. I emailed our private tour guide to let him know this but I asked to keep our meet up time at 9 am as my wife and I were not that interested in getting up super early--and on Christmas Day for that matter. A matinee show is being put together for the afternoon in the Celebrity Theatre. The pool deck is open and is a popular place to be now.

Have a super nice cruise. Too bad the Christmas sailing from Hong Kong didn’t happen in 2020 because we would have met….

We are on the other side of the ship and so we didn’t even see the island!

The Captain is back on the public address system telling us again that Ko Samui has been canceled. He also said that he was talking to the captain of the Diamond Princess and they are canceling their stop there, too (translation: don’t get mad at me!).

Nice photo.

Here is the benefits chart for Amethyst and the other tiers in Celebrity's Blue Chip Club.

Hello Ko Samui, good bye Ko Samui. We have arrived at Ko Samui just now on this Christmas Eve morning. However the Captain just announced that this port has been cancelled because of weather. I am surprised because it doesn't look that bad from our balcony, but I am assume the Captain knows better than me. Following the Captain's PA announcement, the Cruise Director said that they were going to try to get to Laem Chabang a little earlier than scheduled. In the mean time they are planning more onboard activities for us. For now, I am going to go back to watching Rudolph (the quarterback, not the reindeer) lead the Steelers to an unexpected Christmas Eve victory over the hated Bengals. It's going to be a Merry Christmas after all as I just got my present.

While the time change presents its challenges, I can watch my Pittsburgh Steelers live on our stateroom television at 4:30 am ship time. At least the game had a late afternoon kickoff. If it were a early afternoon game, it would have started at about 1 am here. I was shocked to even see it on our television when I turned it on as I was really secretly hoping to go back to sleep. The Steelers are a train wreck this year, but I can watch them. It is an NBC television feed and being broadcasted in our stateroom on Channel 18 which is for ESPN1. I may be a bit sleepy and tired when I see the elephants later today at Ko Samui.

Wow. That is pretty awesome.

I miss the bread sticks in the MDR. They don't serve them in Blu. Our waiter told me he would have them for me tomorrow! I may be developing a reputation as "that" guy amongst the Blu staff. Oh, breadsticks! Where art thou?

That is interesting and funny. No Japan cruise scheduled, but maybe I need to rethink that!

Inside the Cool House at the Botanical Gardens, some of the orchids came in big slabs. I have never seen that. The length and linearity of the blooms were also impressive. Ready-made leis!

Tomorrow (Christmas Eve) we stop at Ko Samui which is a resort island in the Gulf of Thailand. It will be my first time in Thailand as my wife has been to this country on business some 25 years ago. My wife and I are certified divers and originally I was planning on independently booking a dive trip with a local outfitter. However after studying it for a while, it appeared difficult to make that work schedule-wise and logistic-wise partly because Ko Samui is one of our two tender ports. So the next best thing is snorkeling and I had booked a snorkel trip through Celebrity that was cancelled yesterday because of anticipated high waves at the marine park that we were supposed to visit. So this morning, I booked a Celebrity tour to see elephants tomorrow. So we will see elephants--on an island The seas are much more calm now than they were this morning and any concerns about missing the port entirely due to weather conditions have gone away. Good night from Solstice.

Out of our 16 Celebrity Cruises so far this is the first time that we are not eating in the Main Dining Room for dinner as we are also first time AquaClass passengers. This means we are having a Blu Christmas. We have only eaten in Blu twice. I think I am still partial to the MDR dining experience which puts me in the minority as far as this forum is concerned. But that opinion could change by the time the cruise is over. On the other hand, my wife definitely favors Blu as she likes the smaller venue and the quiet that comes with it. More importantly she likes the menu better whereas I have ordered at least one item off the MDR menu for both meals so far. I figured that my wife would like Blu and that was the main reason that I decided to put in for a move up bid from our V1 cabin. On the other hand, I find the service in Blu to be much more attentive than what the service in the MDR has become today. Because we have always had fixed seating (except for our Galapagos cruise last month), I am not accustom to watching the waiters change a table while I am eating. They are remarkably and quietly efficient at it. We have been eating at Blu at approximately 7 pm on both evenings and I have been pleasantly surprised that there is no line to get a seat and no waiting either to get a table for 2. In fact Blu's dining room seems to be only half full or less. I also think that Blu doesn't really have a bad seat location-wise in the dining room whereas that is not true for the MDR.

thats-a-lot-of-money

I had to wait 11 months to post this: My wife and I also purchased the premium wi-fi upgrade voucher for only $9.99 for the entire Dec 22 2023 Solstice 12 night sailing. Well we finally boarded the ship in Singapore two days ago and when we established our internet account, we had the premium wi-fi already set up for us and ready to go (top box) with no additional charges. Once on board, the upgrade from basic to premium wi-fi is being offered to All Included guests for $7.99/day. So we saved $172.

Solstice's house band for this sailing is The Cardinals. They were not on Solstice the last time we were on her (Jan 2020) but they have been on other Celebrity ships. The play a nice mixture of rock and roll songs. People were dancing in the Grand Foyer and there were many folks at the rail in the atrium decks above.

Thank you, Julie. Marcia and I wish for you and your mom a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. And may Ohio State have better luck next year!