doggfan7

Yesterday's dailies.

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I wonder if they will be running this shuttle on Sunday, when we arrive in Boston?

Most definitely.

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We are boarding the Summit as you are leaving. The one question I have it this: It will be warm on Friday so we would like to wear shorts. Do you know if they allow shorts in the MDR the first night if you don't get your luggage in time to change. We have the early seating. Thanks so much. Judy[/quote

 

I've been on the Summit many many many times(last time was May 2016, next time will be this coming September), and while things change depending on who is in charge of the MDR, the "no shorts" dress code is relaxed for the first night for both traditional and late seating. They understand that many run the risk of not getting their luggage delivered on time to change into long pants so yes, if the temps are hot and you happen to be wearing shorts to dinner on your first night this coming Friday, you won't get turned away. Can't vouch for any other night though.

 

Can confirm. Many had shorts on the first dinner (myself included) as luggage did not arrive until after dinner. Dress is very casual. On the first evening chic night, I saw women wearing t-shirts and capris in the Cosmopolitan and nobody stopped them.

We decided to have room service for dinner, DD was having an off night (read: terrible twos) and felt it better to keep her away from a dining room full of passengers trying to enjoy dinner.

Room service was an absolute fiasco. It took 3 different trips and 5 (FIVE!!) phone calls to get our order straight, which was completely standard. Aside from the veal cordon bleu that was on tonight's dinner menu, everything else was inedible to bad.

Tonight, I walked up to Deck 10 to check out the Independence Day "party". Unfortunately, most of the ship is probably out in Boston as there was almost no turnout whatsoever. Felt bad for the band playing to an empty deck. As far as what they had, I was expecting some special deck buffet, but unfortunately it was just the pool grill serving burgers, hot dogs and chicken wings on American flag paper plates. Hopefully it heats up.

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Tomorrow's dailies.

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Came up to the buffet this evening to get our daughter some dinner before our 8:30 reservation and we were met with a nice surprise! The grill at the back of the buffet was offering the leftover lobster cooked to order!

We also took a stroll on the Sunset Bar, which rewarded us with the beginning of a beautiful Boston sunset. Pictures can never do it justice.

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We greatly enjoyed our day today in Boston with our friends Dave and Liz. We had sandwiches for lunch from a great deli in the North End and brought them to the waterfront for a great picnic in the grass. We walked around the Quincy Market and Fanuel Hall area which was really special for Independence Day. We are now on the shuttle back to the ship. It was a beautiful day!!

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On the morning of July 3, 2017, the Celebrity Summit arrived to Portland, Maine, with four injured passengers on-board. Each incident was reportedly unrelated. The emergencies included a broken leg, two cardiac cases, and one case of pneumonia.

The Celebrity Summit originally reported a “mass casualty” at 9:30 AM on Monday. Multiple rescue crews were dispatched to transport the four injured to the nearest hospital.

It is reported that pneumonia case is an 86 year-old woman, and the broken leg is a 70 year old woman. The details about the two heart cases are still currently not available.

The Summit was carrying 2,038 passengers, and 997 crew at the time of this incident. The ship continued on with it’s ten night Independence Day New England Cruise from Bayonne, New Jersey, with the ship leaving Portland at the scheduled time of 6:00 PM

Interesting. We heard nothing about it.

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Today's dailies. We opted to take the Celebrity shuttle round trip to Quincy Market for $15. Uber would be cheaper but it is an extra $10 for a car seat each way so this worked out best for us. We will be meeting up with friends today. Captain Kate announced that we docked aft-first today for the purpose of allowing the rooftop terrace and aft of the ship the best chance of seeing the fireworks. It is a beautiful clear day.

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I'm curious. I'll be on the Sep 10 New England/Canada cruise. Did you each receive a whole lobster? How was it prepared? It looks as though it was baked but may have paprika all over it? Looks like an odd color.

It was a whole lobster, but it was small, no bigger than 1 lb. Not sure about the seasoning, the color did confuse me, but it tasted like lobster and butter. The menu said it was broiled. The lobster was served warm to us, but after dinner in the casino a lot of people were complaining that they received it iced cold. I think it's tough to cook 2,000 whole lobsters, declaw them and serve them at a proper temperature in one dinner service if you ask me.

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Dinner tonight was very good. As we had hoped, Celebrity purchased three pallets of local Maine lobster for our dinner tonight (caught off the coast of Cape Elizabeth, Maine this past weekend). We started with the tomato bisque soup (I liked it, wife didn't), the scallop Rockefeller (awesome) and the bleu cheese soufflé (good but heavy). For our entrees, we had the lobster of course (delicious) and we also shared the beef Wellington (ehh). For dessert, we had the apple pie a la mode (warm and delicious) and the baked Alaska (good).

On a funny note, when searching the sugar packets on the table, I came across a sugar packet that seemed a bit off. Our waiter filled us in that two or three cruises back, they received a box of sugars with Wendy's logo on them (same factory that makes Celebrity's sugar apparently also makes Wendy's). The waiters thought it was funny and they put one Wendy's packet on each table to see which guests find it.

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I forgot to post today's dailies.

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WINNER WINNER LOBSTER DINNER!

The Portland Lobster Company was awesome. It was packed, but well worth the wait. You first order your food and pay for it to receive a lobster buzzer. You then bring that to the hostess to get a table outside on the dock. The wait for a table was about 25-30 minutes and the food came about 20 minutes after we sat. There is a bar and a great band was playing making it a really enjoyable summer afternoon on the water.

As for the food...this was the lobster roll we have been waiting for. No mayo salad, just chunks of cold, tasty Maine lobster on a toasted buttered roll with melted butter drizzled on top. I could have had ten, but I would have had to take out a second mortgage to do so (kidding...maybe).

We also ordered a crab cake which was awesome as well, and the little monster had chicken fingers.

We are back on the ship enjoying the hot weather at the pool now.

We also loved walking around Portland. What a charming little city!

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We finally got a BEAUTIFUL day in Portland! After proceeding through immigration which was took all of three minutes (after the twenty minute line), we walked the 25 minutes or so uphill to the Children's Museum. What a workout. I'm sitting in a Dad chair in the museum now as DD runs around playing with tons of things to hearts content. For families on this itinerary, this is a nice break from the tours for the little ones.

We will be heading to the Portland Lobster Company after this and will report back.

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Thank you for your posts! I am sailing on the summit 7/16 for the third time, but wasn't aware that you can get the menus online. May I ask where? I like to see the choices in the main dining room so I know if I'd rather book a specialty restaurant for that evening. Thanks in advance!

I'm sure somebody can link them to you here as it is tough for me to search on my phone with the slow internet. If you don't find it by the time we return, I'll find them and link them for you.

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That's a very interesting observation because we just got off the Bermuda cruise(right before yours)Jun 17th to the 26th and encountered the same phenomenon. The food was better than what we experienced on our last NCL cruise for the first 3 days, but dive bombed for the rest of the trip. I'm not sure what caused the quality drop, but we found ourselves ordering multiple meals just to ensure we would find one that was average. This is a rather large issue for a "Premium" cruise line since consistency is king in my mind.

 

 

 

Curious - are you doing select dining as well?

Yes we did select dining but have made reservations each night.

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Can you tell me what side of the ship your on. Planning on this cruise next year.

 

Thanks, Bob

Port side, cabin 2055

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I am so enjoying this thread, and your photos are fantastic. DH and I are on the next cruise (this Friday) on Summit. We have a Sky Suite and so are hoping that the food in Luminae is worth writing about. Last year we were in Aqua Class, and while the food in Blu was pretty good, the cabin was so small it was claustrophobic. However we love the Summit because it is not a HUGE ship, and for the most part the staff seems to be happy, and caring. We will only be in New England for two days, but I am loving the photos you shared of your ports so far, and the ones we are not going to this time give me ideas for cruises in the future. How have the shows been? Have you participated in any activities? Or used the gym or spa? How is your little one enjoying the trip so far?

The food the last few nights has been very disappointing, but earlier in the cruise was very good to excellent, so I'm hopeful the last two nights were a fluke.

We have attended 4 out of the 6 shows so far. There have been no production numbers, all guest entertainers. The iMagic show was good, there was a female impressionist named Karen Granger that was very good, there was a singer names Jesse Hamilton, Jr. that was not my cup of tea but the audience really enjoyed (we are about 40 years younger than the average age on this ship remember!) and then there was a floutist who did lots of songs from movies and Irish folk songs. He was very cool. The two shows we missed were a comedian and a second night of Jesse Hamilton. Tonight is another comedian. I am not sure when or if there will be any production shows on this cruise.

We will be using the spa on Wednesday, but we have visited the fitness center and spa and it looks in top shape.

The little one is enjoying the trip. Admittedly, she would probably have had a better time if she could enjoy the Fun Factory with the other kids, but work schedules being what they are, this is the cruise we could take and she is still a month shy of 3 years old. We LOVE that they make the Solarium family friendly from 4pm to 7pm everyday. I am not sure if this is normal or just because this cruise has been so cold that nobody is using the outside pools, but she loves the solarium pool. And truthfully, all of the kids that are in the solarium everyday during family time has been incredibly well-behaved! I will say it does break our hearts when we pass by the Fun Factory and she turns to us and say "Can I go play with my friends Daddy?" and we have to say no...

We do the trivias most days and have enjoyed them. As mentioned, we did the SAFE archery event. Other than that, we haven't participated much. The music on the ship has been really good. Jessica Lajner and the Underground's Soul (acoustic duo) are our favorites and seek them out whenever they are playing.

We did play Bingo yesterday and will not play again. I know this is probably old news but I cannot get over how little the prizes were for what they charge for Bingo. I remember years ago it used to be much different. For example, there must have been over 100 people playing Bingo yesterday with boards ranging from $49 to $69 (at least a $6,000 - $7,000 prize pool). The prizes for the four games ranged from $140 to $230 (and that was for the final game!). They paid out maybe 15% of the money collected. That's insane. I actually won the first game along with one other man. After splitting it we each barely got our money back.

Dinner tonight was very disappointing. We couldn't request the team we liked thus far as we did not want to wait, and we got the same team from night two that was more aloof and disengaged than you could ever imagine. We had to ask them to clean up our plates and to give us dessert menus, to refill our glasses. So amazing for a line like Celebrity.

As far as the food, very unimpressive. The beef gnocchi my wife sent back, calling it Nutrisystem quality. Ouch. The tuna carpaccio and garden salad were good. The veal and the Mediterranean seafood orzo were average but cold. The lava cake was not a lava cake. It was a small brownie. But it was delicious, I'll say that.

Hopefully by this point in the review, you guys know that I am not overly critical. That should tell you about how we felt about dinner tonight.

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Did they let you bring on the case of water? We're flying to New Jersey and shuttle to the port, but I'm hoping to pack some water.

Yup, saw plenty of people carrying a case on.

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This afternoon after we re-boarded we played the archery game on the third floor. It was fun, but we stunk!

We had food at the Pool Grill, the celebrity burger is so damn good! Sad that it will probably be redesigned as a for-pay burger place like the Constellation. That would really annoy me on this ship if that was the case.

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Have you checked out Persian Gardens yet? My husband loves "steams". I hope there is one.

Yes I've been in it on our last Summit cruise, but it's tough to do with a little one on board as well. I too am a fan of the steams though. On the M-Class ships, it is very dungeon-like. It's all interior and you can in this narrow door to get to the Persian "chamber". Still cool.

Having said that, we are both getting spa treatments on Wednesday, taking turns to watch the baby. I'll report back how I enjoyed it.

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The titanic cemetery was very moving. While the tombstones were interesting, what really made the tour was our guide who told fascinating tales of a handful of those buried, including the the burial of the "unknown child" who was finally identified in 2007. The last picture is of Joseph Dawson, who was a coal hauler on Titanic, however since 1997, his tombstone is the most visited in the cemetery. You can figure out why!

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This morning we took Celebrity's Peggy's Cove and Titanic tour. The weather was, predictably, pouring rain and foggy, but we are making the best of it. The tour guide is absolutely fantastic. His storytelling was great, he handed out plenty of photographs and news clippings to go along with his stories and at Peggy's Cove, he borrowed two lobsters - a male and female - from the restaurant and performed a demonstration on the mating of lobsters - the old lobster birds and the bees story!

Visibility was poor but Peggy's Cove was still beautiful and we could see why it is such a must do for visitors to Halifax.

We bought a lobster roll from the restaurant at Peggy's Cove to further our quest to find the best lobster roll this trip. This was not it. It was not until after we paid that we realized that it was pre-made and stored in the refrigerator. A very expensive grab and go sandwich! It was ok but not what we were looking for. The quest continues!