Mimosa09

My review of the Great Lakes Cruise we took in July has been posted for those interested in that kind of cruise. Vantage leases the ship, Victory I, from the Victory Cruise Lines in order to offer this cruise to their customers. Here is the link:

https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/getreviews.cfm?action=ship&ShipID=1215

Hi deec,

Thanks for posting! We had a drink in the Tavern after dinner as we passed thru this lovely area. Beautiful homes on the Michigan side as that was where we were facing. Now cruising Lake Huron & will be in Little Current tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing the beauty of the place.

- Rose

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New luxury small ship line, Haimark

Here we are on Day 2 of the Great Lakes cruise on the M/V Victory I. There are 115 passengers on board. 93 of us are Vantage passengers. The ship holds 205 so there was room for more. Anyway, today's excursion was to see Niagara Falls, lunch at a beautiful vineyard & a visit to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Full day topped off with the Captain's Welcome day dinner.

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http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=53480028

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Here we are on Day 2 of the Great Lakes cruise on the M/V Victory I. There are 115 passengers on board. 93 of us are Vantage passengers. The ship holds 205 so there was room for more. Anyway, today's excursion was to see Niagara Falls, lunch at a beautiful vineyard & a visit to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Full day topped off with the Captain's Welcome day dinner.

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Great! Thanks for posting this! Again, I wish this company luck with the season. We are booked for the Great Lakes in July 2017.

 

-Rose

Well here it is! July 2017. We are leaving tomorrow for this cruise. We've down loaded the documents from Vantage, they sent us luggage tags and we got several e-mails our "Vantage Adventure Leader". Seems like we are going on this Great Lakes cruise.

-Rose

We just got back from the Solstice Friday the 9th. Yes, they have a Beatles tribute show. The group is called "Hard Day's Night". I thought the guy who does Paul did a good job. The other two shows we saw were "Rock City" & "Broken Strings". There was 2 comedians. We missed the first since he performed the first night. The second one we saw - his name was Darrell Joyce. We missed the aerial acrobatic show - it was in the afternoon before we arrived in Victoria. As to the Champagne tea at Murano - we didn't see anything about it & I don't see it listed in any of the "Celebrity Today" newsletters. Hope this helps.

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We got off of the Solstice last week. We had only packed one long sleeve shirt (besides the ones for chic nights) for DH. We didn't know about this policy until we boarded. He had 2 other shirts both short sleeve - a polo shirt & a cotton short sleeve. We talked to our butler about the policy & she told us he would be fine with those shirts, which he did wear 3 of the he 7 nights. Hope this helps.

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We are just finishing a 2 week Caribbean cruise that stopped at in Santa Marta & Cartagena, Columbia and Colon, Panama before going to Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. We received an e-mail from the cruise line that would not need the Yellow fever vaccine before we left for this cruise (waiver for cruise passengers). The cruise line let us onboard January 5th & we were able to go ashore in Costa Rica on January 14th (after the Columbia & Panama ports). We will be arriving in Ft. Lauderdale on January 19th.

Seems to me that Celebrity should make themselves clear about whether you need this vaccine before boarding rather than leave you guessing or deny you boarding when you show up.

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Another option - we flew to Honolulu, spent the night, then took the 9 hr Hawaiian Air flight to Sydney. You leave at 1pm, Hawaiian time & arrive 9pm Sydney time (a different day). The flights from SFO & LAX are over 14 hours plus they leave at night thinking you can sleep during the flight. For those of us that don't sleep well on planes, this works.

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Dear Norris,

It took me over 2 weeks to read both the Silhouette review and then the comparison review of Princess and Celebrity, but I followed CC's rules and now I am posting. Thanks for doing both reviews. It confirms our choice for June 2017 (Solstice) and also confirms what a great ship experience we missed this past July (Princess Crown - 1st aft suite, sniff, sniff, UBD, sniff, Sabatini's, wah!). Anyway, due to an illness, we literally had to cancel last minute (someone got a nice upgrade), but you can bet we are going to find a way to have a suite experience on Princess.

Anyway, your wonderful pictures and thorough review has DH very happy with our choice for June 2017 and it also helps us to remember to look for certain things once onboard.

I have to say, when I ran across your Silhouette review and saw you were from Northern Ireland, I thought, now here is a review worth reading - a chap from Ireland! He will give a fair review and has the smarts to do it! :-) We did a 2 week tour in September of Ireland, which included Northern Ireland - loved Belfast, the Titanic museum and the Giant's Causeway. And the people! All so friendly and intelligent! We wish to visit Ireland again.

So thanks for posting your reviews (I will now go through the others and look forward to new ones).

Rose

I thought we would be on the same coach to the ship. If we can find a CruiseCritic sign or something we had made for a cruise some time ago, I will have it visible so you can recognize us both in Philly and in Lyon.

 

pbnjrockette - thanks for the info on our stops. I was going to ask a question about the Village of Perouges optional excursion.

 

Anyone else want to share their thoughts on the Village of Perouges excursion or any of the other excursions or choice points?

 

Stan

We went in May of 2014 on Vantage & loved the Village of Perouges. Lots of opportunities for photos, at least we thought so.

- Rose

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We've done it twice.

 

 

We are celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary on the Ruby, this October. I can, pretty much, guarantee that we will be enjoying the UBD that day.

 

:)

How perfect! You are spending your ruby anniversary on the Ruby!

-Rose

By far the easiest and most economical way I found was renting a car. Pick up is right in the terminal when you disembark. I went with Alamo booked directly on their website with a Costco code (if you use the Costco site they require entering a membership number). The drive was super easy - even on a busy marathon weekend. It ran around $50 in US for a mid-size (quotes will be in CDN).

And when you rent a car through Costco - you reserve it and keep checking back on the prices. When the prices get lower, you reserve again with the lower price and cancel the earlier one. We do this all the time when we rent in Tucson and Kona. Sometimes several times before we actual arrive to pick up the car. It's easy to do since they are not charging your credit card until you show up.

We have used the Princess transfer between Seattle-Vancouver many times in both directions.

 

Here is another reliable option...

 

http://www.quickcoach.com/

Yep - that is what we have taken. I put in Quickshuttle and it took me to the Quickshuttle website, but the url was quickcoach:confused::rolleyes:

-Rose

Can you elaborate on bus between Seattle and Vancouver? I tried researching it and buses I found did not allow luggage. Train was an option but times inconvenient as morning train too early for disembarkation and afternoon (late) train put you in Seattle late night. Our cruise ends in Vancouver and we are considering a few days in Seattle post cruise.

Chris

There is a service called Quick Shuttle. It provides shuttle service between the Seattle area to Vancouver & vice versa for cruise passengers. We have used them in the past several times.

http://www.quickcoach.com/schedule.htm

-Rose

The Victory is docked in Sault Ste Marie Ontario today. I just saw it unfortunately I did not have a camera with me

Great! Thanks for posting this! Again, I wish this company luck with the season. We are booked for the Great Lakes in July 2017.

-Rose

I found when I wanted to look at the deck plans for the Crown, it wanted to know if I am sailing before or after April 8, 2017. That seems to indicate there is some kind of refurbishing going on in April 2017 - enough to affect what is where on the deck plans.

Would like to book the 2017 North Cape & Norwegian Fjords cruise in mid-August. Princess has a great special now so wanted to take advantage.

I also see that you are sailing in August 2017. When you look at the deck plans for the Crown, they want to know if you are sailing before or after April 8, 2017. So there may be some refurbishing before you sail. Don't know how extensive the refurbishing is and if it will affect the aft suites. Highly doubtful I think.

-Rose

Plus the rooms (E and D 732/33) are small compared to C749 or C751 - C751 has the beam (which does not bother us) and the room is huge - we had both C749 and C751 on a recent cruise (have been in all the aft suites) and C751 (Vista) is still our favorite because of the size - it's bigger then C749 (PH)

This is sounding wonderful as we have C750 in a few weeks! And we are aware of the "dreaded" beam. Still sounds like the balcony will be quite large.

-Rose

We sailed on the Diamond Princess from Alaska to China a couple of years ago, on the Caribe deck, suite 423. The space and suite / perks were awesome! Loved our experience and because this will be our second cruise on a larger Princess ship wanted to reach out to those who are familiar with location.

 

Would like to book the 2017 North Cape & Norwegian Fjords cruise in mid-August. Princess has a great special now so wanted to take advantage. The available suites which we think we might be interested in are:

 

Deck 14 Midship: PH Suite R406, 408,410 412 (port) or R 401,405, 417 (starboard)

 

Deck 8 Aft: Vista E732 & E733 (port / starboard)

 

Deck 10 Aft: PH C749

 

Deck 12 Aft: PH A751 and Owners Suite A752

 

It looks like the verandas on the mid-ship PH suites are smaller than what we had on C423 / Diamond, but I think they get smaller the higher the deck?

 

Thanks much in advance for any input and suggestion. We appreciate it!

 

Happy Sailing!!

I see you list Vista E732 or E733 as an option. Be aware that you would be above Club Fusion which might be noisy.

We took a North Cape cruise on NCL last June. It was awesome! Enjoy!

I see from another thread that the MS St. Laurent now known as Victory I is on the move. It isn't docked in Green Cove Springs, FL any more. It is cruising up to Montreal. Waiting to see if it does the first scheduled cruise on the Great Lakes - July 8th.

-Rose

With relief, I see that the St Laurent/Victory I has at long last moved from Green Cove Springs. MarineTraffic.com appears to show the ship in Mayport. The new Victory Cruise Line website says first cruise is to occur on Great Lakes July 8. Can't find any prices on the website, however.

Finally! So glad to see the ship has moved. Wishing the new company luck. And where is the "Like" button? :)

-Rose

From what they told me at Vantage, someone else owns the ship now and the name is going to be changed to Victory. That name change isn't reflected on the Vantage website yet.

 

-Rose

As I was told by Vantage back in May, another company purchased the St. Laurent and renamed it the Victory. Vantage offered us passage on the August cruises, but it didn't work in our schedule so we opted to go on one of the cruises in July 2017.

As for the Great Lakes, according to our host, Jazzbeau, who is always on top of things, apparently a new company has formed, based in Miami, and has taken possession of the St. Laurent, renaming her Victory and will be sailing the Great Lakes starting this summer, and Cuba in the Fall. I am now off to Vantage and Victory Cruises to find out more.

And now I read on another thread that the name of the new company is called Victory Cruise Lines and the ship's name is M/V Victory l. Here is the website:

http://www.victorycruiselines.com

Their first cruise is July 8th on the Great Lakes. I see that they are doing the original cruise we were booked on July 26th. I am assuming with the change in management and reorganization, Vantage couldn't have their team available until the August dates.

I hope all goes well this year as we are looking forward to cruising the Great Lakes in July 2017.

And I see they are going to start the cruises to Cuba October 30th this year.

-Rose

The St Laurent is now under the management of Victory Cruises. Here's the new website:

 

http://www.victorycruiselines.com

 

Their first Cuba cruise is scheduled to depart from Pt. Canaveral this fall.

We were booked originally on a Great Lakes cruise through Vantage for July 26th. Vantage cancelled that cruise and offered us passage on one of the August dates. That didn't work for us this year due to family plans. So we are booked on one in July 2017.

I see that the ship is cruising on our original date - July 26, 2016. I am thinking with all the change in management and reorganization, Vantage probably couldn't have their team available for the Great Lake cruises until August.

Here's hoping that all goes well with the new company. We are still looking forward to cruising the Great Lakes.

-Rose

This year we decided to try Holland America. They still allow smoking on balconies, so it is back to inside cabins for us! I did manage to book under a promo to get the free drinks package, so that will be a fun experience. We will splurge on the Taku Lodge excursion in Juneau with the money we saved.

Hey! Maybe we will see you there. We booked that excursion too! We may not be on the same ship, but both our ships will be there the same day.

-Rose