Familygoboston

Familygoboston and Rsharp are back with a LIVE report of our 10 day repositioning cruise aboard QOTS (live, for as long as we can count on the newly installed starlink “voom surf and stream” internet package. The answer to that, and many other questions remain, but hope springs eternal as we each timed the purchases of our VS&S packages like day traders in a bear market, waiting fruitlessly for the deals that never came. Eventually we pulled the trigger sometime around the big Labor Day sale (eschewing the nearly identical, but seemingly differently deals, offered for Black Friday, New Years, Fourth of July, Fathers Day, Mothers Day, wave season, and pumpkin spice season) So to get caught up… If you don’t remember these two clowns…here’s your pre class assignments https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/1760026-photo-review-allure-eastern-4142013-the-good-karma-cruise/ And https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/1760369-10-years-in-the-making-first-cruise-on-allure-eastern-4-14-13/ Not required reading, but if you want the easy “A”- we highly recommend doing it! You’ll get the background on how 10 years ago (almost to the DAY!) two people from two very different parts of the country, one with lots of travel and cruising experience, and one on a first time cruise, met and geeked out on travel planning. How we’ve unwittingly loaned each other money, survived a squall, lived to not tell the tale about QUEST and became fast friends who message each other about a new ship launch or the MDR menu and, of course, EVERY SINGLE TIME we book another cruise! 🤣 (or think about booking a cruise, or someone we know books a cruise, etc. You get the picture.) We both have loving and tolerant spouses who accept our addiction to cruise geeking… and low and behold also like each other and in the unlikeliest of scenarios, we’ve all become great friends and travel buds. FGB and RSharp do the planning (Ad Nauseam) and reviewing. Mr FGB and Mrs R Sharp roll their eyes, commiserate a bit, and usually two weeks prior to sailing or travel ask what sort of weather to pack for and in the case of MR FGB, what camera lenses he will require. (Those of you who want extra credit, and oh yes, we will give it, read https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2664869-picture-imperfect-live-on-harmony/page/15/#comment-57664732 The story of our “last cruise” together in June 2019, just before, well, you know what! So once you’ve done the reading what’s on the syllabus for this LIVE review? More words than you ever wanted from FGB, pictures, (as long as Elon’s promises hold, take that FWIW) opinions, inside jokes, (we will let everyone inside because we are inclusive like that) and just general hilarity (we hope!) Join us! We’d love to have you aboard!

Thanks! Next up on Celebrity is Silhouette 10 day S Caribbean later in the year, and Quantum of the seas transpacific this spring. I’m hoping to review both with more photos!

Let us know how it goes! I love that you count your Navy cruises in your signature! 🥰must have inspired the love of the sea! My father in law served and after his tours he had no interest in traveling anymore. 🤣 Maybe ha was afraid they’d make go paint. Thank you for your service!

Yes, I know the “family” 🤣 RC, Celebrity, Azamara and we even have a cruise planned on Silver Seas! Keeping it in the family!!🤣🤣

Also, I would not be surprised if she’s scheduled for a refresh before then! But we found things in good working order and not sure if the captain will be on board (but he’s Greek, so I’m guessing that would be a yes?) I’d be more concerned booking one of the bigger ships and having all those Greek tender ports. I think a smaller ship might be the r better way to go for a Greek island cruise!

A Story About The Difference One Person Can Make I'll end my review with a heartwarming story... I went to HS with a friend who spent a lot of years hiding who she was. Several years ago, she finally married her long time female partner and they often cruise together. My friend still struggles with mental health, especially around the holidays, when families gather and may not fully accept her marriage. When I posted online that I was on board Infinity, she messaged me and asked if I would look for Michele and see if was still working as the "greeter" (washy, washy) at Seaview Cafe on board. She told me when she and her wife had been on board Infinity earlier in the year that Michele was so positive and friendly and especially accepting of them as a couple, which is not always an experience they have. Michele greeted them and chatted with them and my friend felt like she really connected with Michele. When my friend heard I was on board, she made me seek out Michele, and asked if I would take a photo. I was really surprised Michele remembered them at all! When I mentioned my friend was on board with her wife, Michele immediately remembered my friend's wife's name off the top of her head! Thousands of passengers every week, and she remembered them! So I took my selfie and Michele passed along a greeting. I messaged my friend with the greeting and our photo and had this reply from her. "You made my day, I've hit a rough patch with the holidays approaching and this was THE BEST MEDICINE!!! Please give her a hug for me!" I was so happy that Michele has such passion for her work that her warmth made a difference in the life of someone struggling, even months later! That's just a beautiful example of how one person can make the difference in the life of another person, just by being kind! It was the best birthday present on my birthday cruise!!

Activities and Entertainment The Captain was very visible, he performed his guitar in several shows and even got involved with the guest entertainers! It was fun for passengers, but it also seemed like the crew enjoyed a looser happier vibe. The service was not less because of this, it seemed better! One of the things I love to do...Im a Zumba instructor, so whenever there's dancing on board, I get involved! Alejandro was on board as part of the cruise staff and he ran two classes at the pool deck and I had fun joining in!

Here are a couple of Hubbys photos sunsets and rainbows!

Sounds tempting! Usually we are up in Maine in Oct. But someday it would be fun to do one of those cruises that goes right by my deck!

I did sail on Millennium in Feb and I noticed they had refreshed all the linens and furnishings and it did look very nice.

Thank you! Yes, we found ourselves not wanting to book RC because if we couldn’t get the perfect circumstances or cabin, (we like the act cabins but then they required 3 in a cabin to book those) it didn’t feel enjoyable, so we’d just book a resort instead. Generally, we book much smaller ships for destinations intensive cruises, but we do enjoy the bigger ships for the Caribbean and a sun and fun vacation. We were pleasantly surprised by Celebrity. I thought because it was the same corporation it would just be the same stuff - like leasing towels and gelatinous desserts 🤣 But we did see better service, food and they way were treated as guests!

It was the Nov 5 departure! And we remember seeing constellation out there! When I fire the computer back up, I’ll post the photos we got of the ships together in port!

🤣🤣 and proud of it! My screenname is a play on words both a “family” on the “go”, traveling Boston based (NE based now!) but also “go Boston”, as in our sports teams! Go Bs and Cs! 🏒🏀

Thank You! Its a bit of a "mini review" for me! Usually I do day by day, but given the "wing it" nature of the cruise, my review is also like that! Hubby didn't even bring his "big" camera! But I wanted to share our experience, and we are looking forward to the next one!

Thank you!~ Yes, we definitely still enjoy other types of cruises, but we really found we enjoyed this cruise on another level. The Feb 23 cruise was full to capacity and some of what made this one special was how few folks were on board, but even at capacity, this class of ship had plenty of space to get around. On this cruise, the pool and solariums weren't full on sea days, and that made things more enjoyable.

Ports of Call Bimini Costa Maya and Cozumel Bimini: Bimini was a new port for us, part of the Bahamas, I'd read you could take the Jewelry Store free shuttle out to the beach and that's what we did! Costa Maya: Having traveled to CM twice and not being able to dock because of weather this last minute add was ok with us (Hey, we were a last minute add!) Many passengers were disappointed as they'd selected this itinerary especially to go to Belize. But of course everyone's first concern was for the people of Belize and their homes! In CM we selected a ships excursion I'd done with a friend once. Biking to a cenote, having a swim in it, biking back out and then traveling to a beach where we could lounge in chairs and paddle board. The cenote was excellent but the paddle board area was far to shallow and there were not enough loungers in the beach area the concessionaire set aside for us. My earlier experience of this excursion was better than this one. Cozumel: As frequent cruisers, we've been to Cozumel a time or two, enough to write a book on the various options for tours and beach clubs here. We'd done a ships excursion in the past we'd enjoyed with mini speed boats and a stop for snorkeling and some time at a beach club afterwards. We booked that and discovered the morning of our tour that it had been canceled due to high winds. A quick pivot again, left us with few options, and we ended up with an all inclusive at Playa Mia, one of the few beach clubs we hadn't visited before. We'd prefer a beach with a quieter vibe, but it was comfortable, Unfortunately, the included lunch buffet was some of the blandest food I'd ever had in Mexico. While both of our tours left a little to be desired, we still enjoyed them, but with more time to plan, we might have chosen other options

The Reasons We Loved Celebrity Generally, we love to travel and find the wonderful things about wherever we go...avoid making comparisons especially between countries and cultures, because it's been our experience that there are things to celebrate and things that could be improved for all places (or in this case cruise companies) And I can't say we'll never cruise RC again (we have a transpacific planned with a group of cruising friends soon, and I will likely be posting "live" reviews from Quantum of the Seas) but, boy of boy, did we find a lot to like on Celebrity! Captain And Crew: My TA warned me this was one of Celebrity's oldest ships, and yet, we still found a lot to love (and it was in excellent condition) The Captain and crew was terrific! Maybe the light passenger load lightened the mood, but I think a lot of it is the leadership, and the captain of this ship was engaged with passengers (often turning up to perform in the shows!) and the crew was relaxed and attentive and just made things fun! There Was Plenty to Do: We've cruised Azamara a couple of times on very port intensive cruises. And thank goodness they were busy days, because there was literally one thing going on each evening and when it was over at 8:30 PM there was nothing to do but sit a bar and drink. I worried about this because on RC, we love the shows and multiple venues with live entertainment and dancing. We were so pleased to discover there was more than enough to do on even the older Celebrity ships at night. Activities with the cruise staff, live acts in the lounges, theme parties and lots and lots of places to dance! No Need to Lease a Pool Towel: We loved the idea that we were treated like grownups, grown ups who wouldn't steal pool towels. Grown ups who maybe already had better towels in our own homes. On other cruises the idea of checking out pool towels and having to keep a careful eye on them so other people don't steal your (they've just added value to pool towels literally no one cares about!) I loved that my cabin attendant kindly left a pair on the bed the night before port days Cruising Without OPK: We love kids, we had them and loved traveling with ours! Weve rejected 55+ housing because we enjoy living with a mix of people, But it's really nice to be on a ship with mainly adults. Celebrity is obviously not an adult only cruise, but while the kids are in school, we noticed that our cruise didn't include more than a handful of children. And of course, there aren't as many of the fun diversions, likes water slides that the kids love to attract them. Food I Wanted to Eat: With our last few RC cruises, we simply passed on the Main Dining room entirely, the quality of the food wasn't worth the time it took to dine or the calories. Instead we fueled up at Wind Jammer Cafe and didn't have high expectations We were so happy that the food on Celebrity was very good. We particularly liked healthier and smaller portions in Blu which was included with Aquaclass and even when we ate in the main dining room or Seaview Cafe we found the food consistently good, with good flavors and well prepared. My hubby has a running gag about RC desserts- he describes them as "gelatinous" and we mostly gave them a pass because they weren't worth the calories. So when hubby had his first cake on Infinity he declared " There are CRUMBS!" and for the desserts alone, I may not get him to cruise anywhere else! My TA was teasing me when we returned that it would be hard to not choose Celebrity again, and I did in fact book another last minute cruise 5 day cruise aboard Summit with a friend in Feb 2023 and Hubby and I are already planning next years BD cruise aboard Celebrity Silhouette!

Celebrity Infinity Western Caribbean 6 Night Room 1136 Our Itinerary looked pretty appealing! Bimini Belize Cozumel. Bimini was new to us, but because we booked literally 5 days before sailing, we had a pretty good idea we wouldn't be headed to Belize, because hurricane Lisa was headed there just ahead of us and we didn't expect her to leave much for us to see after she left. Sadly, Lisa did do damage and the people of Belize were focused on clean up and as we boarded we were handed a notice regarding an itinerary change, Costa Maya was swapped in for Belize. We were pretty flexible, obviously we hadn't invested a lot of time into planning and two previous attempts to get to Costa Maya, hubby had been thwarted by windy conditions. I had been there twice on cruises with friends and relatives on other RC cruises, so I knew he's enjoy a ships excursion I had enjoyed there. Boarding at FLL (we always fly in the night before and stayed at the Fairfield near the airport) was easy peasy, largely because we learned later that the ship was only 60% full (which explains the last minute deal) We have transferable "status" between Celebrity and RC loyalty programs, so we had a special lane for Elite Captains Club (= Diamond Crown and Anchor), but we hardly needed it. Our cabin was located on Deck 11, the very last cabin in the line on the starboard side. Generally, we love a sunset verandah, (aft cabin) on cruises, but this was not looking straight out the back. I'm glad it wasn't because the Sunset Bar is directly under the aft cabins in this class of cabins which means they don't have quite the privacy on this class of ship as other aft cabins on other ships we've sailed. The location of this cabin was ideal for us because there is public ships ladder at the end of the hall which directly accesses the lawn and movie screen above and is an easy walk across the upper pool deck to Constellation Lounge forward. Going down the ladder led directly to the Sunset Cafe and Bar, where we ate primarily when we weren't having dinner at Blu. The cabin was quiet except when a movie was playing above, and then we heard the music and dialog, but it was not bothersome and we didn't hear anything inside the cabin.

Our Frist Cruise On Celebrity Like most of us, I was deleting travel dates off the calendar, hanging on hold with airlines and providing micro loans to travel companies there for a while. As the primary travel planner in the family I carefully planned and subsequently scuttled- a Freedom of the Seas cruise to the ABC islands, a fjords cruise in Norway, a land trip to New Zealand, a safari to trek with gorillas in Rwanda, a cruise on the Amazon and trek to Machu Picchu in Peru and a river cruise on the Danube to see Christmas Markets. We had pushed off a few trips that were non refundable and added some US travel, but overall, I was weary to plan anything more. So Mr FamilyGoBoston decided to pick up the mantle and plan a trip for November 2022 for my birthday. He planned a week at a resort in the DR. A resort that was not yet open. (The price was good) He booked the month they expected to open. There was a hurricane the month before the "Grand Opening". Those of you who travel frequently in the Caribbean can probably already see this ship wreck about to happen! I really didn't want to micromanage, but... On the Monday before our Friday trip, I casually ask "Did they send any documents about the included airport transfer? Any vouchers?" "Nope"...He makes a quick call to the resort and after a while he reaches a reservationist (still taking bookings!) who confirms "We aren't open yet" Poor Mr FGB- he doesn't really know the sting of making all the plans, booking the flights and selecting the excursions just to have it all dashed at the last minute. I'm not mocking him, but I think he finally realized what my life was like when our planned travel crumbled in a rolling wave of cancellations. Fortunately, my terrific TA came through. Hubby was able to cancel and use flight credits to get flights to Florida at the end of the week. I called my guy and he found a last minute deal aboard Celebrity Infinity 6 night Western Caribbean. We usually cruise Royal Caribbean when we book Caribbean cruises, but the price was good. Even better was the fact that last minute, ( I mean I printed my set sail pass the day we booked!) we could upgrade to Aquaclass all inclusive with internet, Blu dining and drinks package for essentially the same price as Concierge class. I know the dealer often gives a little taste for free ...I just never expected to get hooked so easily!😂

Summit Nov 2022 CABIN #: 1136 DECK #: 11 CLASS: Aqua AREA: Aft BED NEAR: bathroom QUIET?: Yes overall, occasional sound from the “back door” in the hall that ends at the aft and leads to the ladder up to the lawn (12) and down to sunset veranda bar and cafe (10) and some noise on the balcony if the movie was playing on deck 12. BALCONY VIEW: the very last cabin in the hall looking starboard, but you can glimpse aft from this location BALCONY SIZE: standard had 2 chairs and small table. WIND A PROBLEM?: No SOOT A PROBLEM?: No PROBLEMS/COMMENTS: This cabin was on the very end of the hall, so it was very quiet, no cabin or balcony next to it on the right side (facing the ocean) only another cabin on the left side. The “back door” at the end of the hallway is so close and convenient to the cafe and bar on deck 10 and the movie area with cabanas and upper pool deck on 12, but it is a steep ships ladder which may not be accessible to all. Inside the cabin and on the balcony, I did not hear any noise from the bar/cafe below, but we could hear the sounds from the movie playing above on the balcony, but not in the cabin with the door closed.

Summit Feb 2023 CABIN #: 1130 DECK #: 11 CLASS: Aqua AREA: Aft BED NEAR: bathroom QUIET?: Yes overall, occasional sound from the “back door” in the hall that ends at the aft and leads to the ladder up to the lawn (12) and down to sunset veranda bar and cafe (10) BALCONY VIEW: Balcony aft BALCONY SIZE: oversized compared to standard had a lounger and 2 chairs and small table. WIND A PROBLEM?: No SOOT A PROBLEM?: No PROBLEMS/COMMENTS: This cabin has an amazing veiw, but unlike other aft cabins on other ships, it over looks the veranda bar/cafe on deck 10 which is one of the busiest spots on the ship. It’s not “private” on the balcony itself, standing at the rail, people in the cafe can see up to you, but because it’s deeper than other balconies, they can not see you if you are sitting in the chairs. You can hear people dining and conversations rather than the ocean sounds. Sometimes you can hear music from the movie screen on the lawn on 12. Inside the cabin I did not hear any noise from the bar/cafe. The “back door” is so close and convenient to the cafe and the upper pool deck, but it is a steep ships ladder which not be accessible to all. (My photos show views over the back stairs and over the outdoor bar and dining.) 1130 is one deck above the canopy (flag) on the right side of this photo. veiw of the ladder from the balcony deeper balcony Bed by the bathroom couch by the balcony veiw of the infrastructure/canopy above the Sunset Verandah Cafe/bar