MikeyA53

13 hours ago, nicstress said:

We boarded the MSC Seaside in Miami in October. How did you get on in Fort Lauderdale? I think you must have gone to Miami for Seaside and Equinox. 🤔 We had an aft South Beach Condo suite on the Seaside. Highly recommend!

You are right, stupid mistake. Too bad I can't go back and correct it.

19 hours ago, Jokare said:

Keep it coming, excellent job.  I didn't realize MSC had so much going on.

Thank you

21 hours ago, hcat said:

Enjoying the review and photos.Thank you for doing it.  Hope to hear about the gyms,  spas and pools.

 

So far however,  it confirms  we will stick with Celebrity as it best fits our style  and we have good loyalty perks The ..new EDGE may be  very different but we  look forward to Celebrity's newest !

Glad you are enjoying it.

Celebrity Equinox

Compared to Royal Princess and especially Seaside, the production shows on Equinox were boring. We saw two of them throughout the week, during the first one I was falling asleep and I couldn’t wait for the second show to end, vowing I would not return. However the comedians were good and we also attended the game show Majority Rules and several trivia games which was fun.

One new form of entertainment recommended by our friends who came with us on this cruise was ‘Silent Disco’. Everyone was given a pair of headphones and you can switch between 4 different channels for your music preference. As a consequence not everybody in the crowd is grooving and dancing to the same songs. It’s fun to see other people moving to a different beat than yourself and others. We also took part in Karaoke since Tracy and her friend love to sing.

The headphone glow different colours depending on what channel you have it on.

Karaoke 

We found that the ship did not have much in term of activities. They did have Bocce Ball and Lawn Bowling on deck 15 which was mostly covered with real grass and a basketball court also on deck 15. One unusual activity was the Hot Glass Show where one passenger at a time could make their own glass art piece for a fee. I believe the prices started at $45. Our cabin had a good size TV and we had 6 free recently released movies at our disposal, all other movies cost $15. 

17 hours ago, shukapaw said:

We've sailed all three of those ships. Last summer we did a B2B on Seaside and Equinox.

 

This was our first (and last) sailing with Celebrity. We did not care for the product... it really left us feeling unimpressed. The shows were terrible. As many others have stated, "there really is no such thing as a bad cruise". However, we will be spending our hard-earned dollars on something other that Celebrity in the future. I guess that certain people are just a better "fit" for certain cruise lines. We'll be back on the Seaside for a B2B again this summer. 

 

Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences. 

 

~Brian

You are right there is no such thing as a bad cruise in my experience. 

19 hours ago, Captain Canuck said:

Mikey...glad to see you are back.  We did the Royal Princess from Quebec to Ft Lauderdale in the fall.  Had been on it once before. They decorated it with photos from a contest they ran prior to launch.  Winner got a free cruise.  Runner ups got to provide free photos for the ship..and like me would probably book a cruise to check out their prints.  My best friend on that ship was the girl at the ice cream booth by the pool.  

Hi Captain, nice to hear from you again. 

23 hours ago, Krickett said:

Thank you, great review so far, we are going on Seaside in a few weeks and did Equinox last fall, so am really looking forward to the rest of your review from a fellow Canuck!

One question please, did you require tie up shoes for the zip line? I have looked but cannot seem to find the answer any where.

Thank you. In regards to the zip line, I don't know since we did not try it. Sorry

Celebrity Equinox

Compared to Royal Princess and especially Seaside, the production shows on Equinox were boring. We saw two of them throughout the week, during the first one I was falling asleep and I couldn’t wait for the second show to end, vowing I would not return. However the comedians were good and we also attended the game show Majority Rules and several trivia games which was fun. 

One new form of entertainment recommended by our friends who came with us on this cruise was ‘Silent Disco’. Everyone is given a pair of headphones and you can switch between 4 different channels for your music preference. As a consequence not everybody in the crowd is grooving and dancing to the same songs. It’s fun to see other people moving to a different beat than yourself and others. We also took part in Karaoke since Tracy and her friend love to sing.

The headphone glow different colours depending on what channel you have it on. 

Karaoke 

We found that the ship did not have much in term of activities. They did have Bocce Ball and Lawn Bowling on deck 15 which was mostly covered with real grass and a basketball court also on deck 15 . One unusual activity was the Hot Glass Show where one passenger at a time could make their own glass art piece for a fee. I believe the prices started at $45. Our cabin had a good size TV and we had 6 free recently released movies at our disposal, all other movies cost $15.

On ‎1‎/‎15‎/‎2019 at 3:23 PM, Jim_Iain said:

Enjoying your informative comparison.   Keep up the good work.

 

Thank you

The International Café was also a great spot for specialty coffees, gourmet sandwiches and sweets. They had different sandwiches each day and you could get it grilled. Across from the International Café was Gelato which served ice cream and gelato. I indulged myself several times during the week with ice cream sundaes made to my specifications (lots of different topping and sauces to choose from) for only $3. The only places we didn’t try was Alfredo’s Pizzeria and Trident Grill.

International Café 

Morning menu, the sandwiches are display starting at lunch

Gelato

Alfredo’s 

Trident Grill

Sabatini’s

Super Tuscan Wine Dinner at Sabatini’s 

We dined at the Crown Grill twice and once at Sabatini’s. The cover charge was $29 per person and well worth it. The cost is the same if you pre-book before the cruise or wait until you are on the cruise. In addition we did the Super Tuscan Wine Dinner in Sabatini’s. Cover charge was $60 per person. Overall it was a good experience with nice wines and delicious food. We wanted to do the Chef’s Table Lumière but could not get reservations. The only thing missing on Royal Princess was an Asian restaurant.

Crown Grill 

Lounge where you can sit and relax with a drink before your reservation.

Our meal at Crown Grill 

Our second meal. No photos of our entrees, we love our deserts and many times throughout our three cruises we would share 3 and a couple of times 4 desserts.

Our third meal time 

Second lobster 

He was preparing cherry jubilee and it was fun to watch him. He would leave at times to get ingredients and someone else would come along and add something to the bowl. When he would return he would get annoyed with them for messing with his recipe.

We ate at the Symphony Anytime Dining room 3 times during the week. The food was very good overall. 

Our first meal

In addition they had cake fest, 10 different cakes of which we tried 5 of them. Yummy!

They did have a chocolate buffet toward the end of the week which we unfortunately missed and on the last sea day they had all you can eat lobster tails, shrimps and mussels.

Dining 

Royal Princess

The buffet food was good overall, we usually had breakfast and lunch at the Horizon Court. Many of the selections were repeated each day but we always found new dishes to try out. It was easy to get a table and I liked that they had the utensils at the table rather than collecting them at the food stations.

Pastry area which includes a speciality coffee bar

The plates have been decorated but the desserts are not on the plates yet.

On ‎1‎/‎15‎/‎2019 at 1:38 PM, BarbinMich said:

We were on the Eclipse a few years ago and was surprised to see the glass blowing facility because of the extremely high temps needed for that; seemed like a potential fire hazard.  It's being on the top deck probably keeps the danger down.  I did enjoy the lawn area, primarily when they had entertainment there in late afternoon/early evening.  Don't know of any other cruise line that has those two things!  What kind of activities did you wish they had?  As I remember they had the usual trivia, bingo, etc.

Trivia is fine however we are very active so activities such as climbing wall (Norwegian) Mini Golf, Imax Theater (Carnival), shuttle board, bowling (Norwegian & MSC) rope course (Norwegian & Carnival) etc. Therefore some people will say "why don't you cruise on Norwegian and Carnival if that's what you like" . Well we have but what they may have over Celebrity they also may not measure up in other areas. We can truly say that we have enjoyed all 6 different cruise lines we have sailed on. They all have their pros and cons. I don't think we will ever find one that has everything we love in a cruise.

For other activities the ship had waterslides, a big screen that showed movies on some nights (they were not recently released movies).The size of our cabin TV was adequate and they had recently released movies at a cost of $8 per movie.

Basketball court

Zip line 

Worth mentioning is the Garage Club which is next to the bowling, F1 and cinema on deck 7. It’s a 1950s themed area where you can get drinks and it also becomes a dance club at night with the car as a DJ station.

They also have a billiards room.

Seaside has a Fun Pass for their F1 Simulator, 5D Cinema, Bowling and Zip Line. They have different packages you can buy and the best deal was purchasing a $100 package and getting $60 additional credit. We bought the package but soon regretted it. It was our fault for not looking into it fully before getting it. Each F1 simulator ride, zip line and 5D Movie (4 different interactive movies) uses $10 of your credit and bowling cost $25 for 30 minutes and $45 for an hour.

Full size bowling lanes

Seating for bowling

Cinema 

F1 simulator

Since we had planned on staying onboard for 3 out the 4 ports we thought we would have plenty of time to use our package but they have a very narrow schedule for when it’s open. Reservations can only be done on a daily basis. In addition they didn’t have enough staff working which resulted in long lines. We ended up only using $125 out of the $160 credit available.

Schedule 

Line up goes beyond this photo and it was taken on the morning of the last sea day. We stood in line 35 minutes before they opened and we were first in line just one minute before 4 other persons showed up. All of this to make sure we were able to bowl. 

MSC Seaside

Overall the best entertainment we have ever experienced on a cruise ship. There was a different production show each night of the cruise, plus an additional afternoon show on the second day called ‘Butterfly’. Each show ran about 30 minutes and they were shown at 6:45 pm, 8:00 pm and 9:15 pm. We made reservations on embarkation day for all of the shows and we attended all of them. Even with reservations we usually arrived approximately 20 to 30 minutes before it began because the theater did fill up every night. The shows usually ended with a standing ovation. The cast was made up of approximately 40 singers, dancers and acrobats. The cast had beautiful costumes and it was amazing how many times they changed into different costumes each show. 

In addition we saw a very funny BeerProv comedy show in the theater and played the Quest game in one of the lounges. The 4 member cast of the BeerProv was very talented and we wished we would have seen all three of their shows; however their adult only shows played at 10:15 pm which was a bit late for us early risers who love going to the gym and spa.

Quest 

20 hours ago, Sundiego said:

Excellent review!! We've been on the Seaside, we've also sailed Princess. So it's fun to read your thoughts. Thank you!

 

~Denise

Glad you like it.

21 hours ago, PTC DAWG said:

Sailing Seaside and Equinox this year, albeit not b2b....interesting review.  I have been on neither. 

Thank you.

For other activities the ship had waterslides, a big screen that showed movies on some nights (they were not recently released movies).The size of our cabin TV was adequate and they had recently released movies at a cost of $8 per movie.

Basketball court

Zip line