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Delayed review of Celebrity Infinity - Alaska


paulajj
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My husband and I are 44. This is our 4th cruise. 2 in the Caribbean with celebrity and 1 in the Caribbean with Carnival. We travelled with another couple and their 17 and 20 year old children.

 

This was a 12 day cruise leaving August 23 Vancouver to San Francisco.

 

We left from Toronto a couple of days before because we got a great deal on a late flight. We stayed at the Accent inn that night and then the next day stayed at The Hyatt. We got a great deal at Hotwire for this hotel ($233 Cdn) It was a very short walk down to the pier. Maybe 10 minutes. And the room was lovely.

 

Vancouver was quite nice. We walked from our hotel to Stanley Park and went into the Aquarium. Then walked back down to the pier. Next time I would probably rent bikes and ride around the entire park as they have a great bike path.

 

Embarkation

 

We decided to walk down to the pier with our luggage rather than take a cab. This worked out great. We were on board with a martini in hand by 11am. We were in aquaClass so had priority boarding our friends did not. However they were onboard within 15 minutes of us. This was the quickest boarding we've ever had. Heads up: this was the first time we've ever had to leave our passports with the ship. This made us feel very uncomfortable but we didn't have any problems.

 

Where we did have a problem was with the constant nagging to upsell/get a drink package. It was crazy annoying. My husband doesn't drink alcohol but drinks a fair amount of Diet Coke so he has a pop card. I may have 1 or 2 (or none) alcohol drinks a day. That's it. We don't drink coffee we don't buy bottled water. But on embarkation day I tend to have a few drinks. And each time we got something we got bugged. A lot. I know it's not the staffs fault. But it sure made for some serious tongue biting! It was the worst on the first day and slowly dwindled as the days went on.

 

Cabin:

 

We were very lucky to be offered an upgrade from our booked inside cabin to an aquaClass A2 cabin for a very small fee. We ended up with cabin #9085.

 

Pros: Very large cabin. Lots of closet space. Lots of cupboards. Fair size balcony. 2 free bottles of water a day. Blu! Our friends we traveled with were not aquaClass so they couldn't eat in Blu. So my husband and I only ate there once but it was wonderful. Great food and service. (tables to close together)

 

Cons: bathroom shower leaks water EVERYWHERE! It makes a terrible mess.

 

While it's nice to have some cover over the balcony for the rain this one is huge. It blocks some of the view. And I wouldn't like that you wouldn't get any sun in the Caribbean.

 

We originally had an inside so any balcony was a definite bonus for us :)

 

We were directly under the pool area. This was fine on an Alaska cruise but I think you would get an awful lot of noise from moving chairs in the Caribbean.

 

We didn't have the best cabin Steward. I asked for an extra towel twice and didn't get it. I also ended up cleaning the bathroom counter top when it wasn't getting done. This is not a big deal but is annoying.

 

I'm glad that I had the opportunity to try AquaClass, however for us, it would not be worth the extra $. We don't drink wine/champagne so we gave back the bottle. We didn't bother with the canapés. The free bottled water was nice but I bring a reusable water bottle. The priority boarding didn't make a difference. The only reason to book AquaClass for us would be Blu. And you could pay for a lot of specialty restaurants with the difference and still have $ left over.

 

Infinity:

 

We found the ship to be in good shape (except the shower in our room). Everything was well maintained and clean.

 

Activities:

 

I have a preference for Solstice class ships for looks and activities. We found there wasn't a ton to do on board. I'm not sure if it was the itinerary or the ship. There was a lot of trivia games. A lot of lectures. And not much else. We had rain almost everyday so we were inside a lot. It got a little boring at times.

 

The shows weren't good. I ended up skipping a few.

 

The gym was bad. According to my husband, very bad. It is small and not enough room between the benches. He is a big guy who works out hard but normally makes out fine at the onboard gyms. I've never heard him complain as much as he did this time. There were quite a few treadmills though.

 

Spa: my husband had a deep tissue massage which he said was great. They did try to sell him after product but weren't too pushy.

 

Service:

 

I'm not a big drinker. So I love it when there are different bar menus at each bar. i didnt find this on this ship. And when I overheard on a couple of occasions people asking bartenders for recommendations, they got blank looks. It was very strange. Especially on the back of the ship at the ocean view cafe. It seemed like the waiters were subbing in for the bartenders. This can make a great difference in service.

 

We had select dining this time so we had a number of different servers. All were good. A few were great.

 

Food:

 

The one night we ate in Blu the food was awesome. The buffet breakfast was great. The one night we ate dinner at the buffet we all really struggled to find something we enjoyed.

 

This was the first time we have had select dining. This was a great option for us. We didn't wait more than 2 minutes for a table. However, we feel that the ship was not fully booked so wait times may increase if the ship was busier.

 

We only did 2 excursions. One through the ship and one booked independently.

 

Skagway: Laughton glacier hike and white pass railway. $250 Cnd each.

 

This was a great excursion. You do about an hour on the train. You make sandwiches and gather snacks. You then walk through the woods until you hit a field of rocks that eventually becomes the glacier. We had horrible weather but terrific guides.

 

Juneau:Harv and Marv's whale watch. Around $200 Cnd each. Again, not great weather. We saw a few whales. We just had bad luck but I would recommend this company. It was nice to only have our party of 6 on the boat. We were going to walk to nugget falls but the trail was closed due to flooding.

 

Sitka:We went on our own hike on the Indian River trail. It's about 5 miles each way. It was beautiful. Just a few tips. The line to get a shuttle into town was crazy. We waited over an hour. Then we walked about 30-40 minutes to get to the trailhead. I would recommend getting a taxi for some or all of this as it really cut into our hiking time.

 

Sitting on the back of the ship while leaving Sitka is amazing. Just beautiful.

 

Icy Straight Point: again it was pouring rain. So we got off the boat first thing in the morning. Used the wifi at the restaurant (landing zone??) (apparently it got crazy busy here later in the day) walked around for about an hour got soaked and went back to the ship.

 

Ketchican: we were going to hike on our own but it was raining on and off so we decided it would be too muddy. And as it was so foggy/cloudy we wouldn't see much at the lookouts.

 

We wondered around and did some shopping for souvenirs.

 

Victoria: we walked from the ship to downtown on the walking path. It was quite nice. Clean and well marked. We then took a city bus for $2.50 each to Buchart Gardens. It couldn't have been easier. I think it cost around $30 each to get in. So it cost us about the same as it would have cost one of us for the ship excursion. The gardens were lovely. We spent about an hour looking around and then hopped on the bus to go back.

 

You can get a shuttle from the ship to downtown.

 

Astoria: We found this town to be very friendly and pretty. We walked the Astoria River Trail which is a paved trail around 2.5 miles long. There are a ton of sea lions hanging out nearing the end of the trail. You can also take the trolley that runs the length of the trail for $7 day pass. We then walked up to the Goonies house (all tarpped up) and walked downtown.

 

Tracy Arm Fjord:we had a nice sunny day for this! It was beautiful. We couldn't get very close to the glacier though because there was too much ice. You could just see it in the far distance. It was a lovely day all the same. But cold! Bring a warm coat, layers and make sure to bring a hat and mitts!

 

Disembarkation: we had no problems getting off the ship.

 

San Francisco: we stayed for 3 days. There is certainly a lot to see and do but it was a smelly city. A lot of homeless people and a lot of garbage everywhere.

 

We bought a transit pass that allowed us to use the trolley and the buses.

 

We rented electric assist bikes and rode across the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito. Had lunch and rode back. Ate dinner one night at a food truck gathering in Fort Mason Centre. Went to Alcaraz (book your tickets months before you go) China Town. The Pier. We saw a lot which is good because I don't think I'd go back;)

 

Summary:

 

We found the excursions to be far too expensive for us to do one in each port. Which would have been fine except we had so much rain that we didn't end up doing a lot we had planned on doing on our own. (It rained hard on 8 or 9 days of our 12 day cruise) We ended up being bored more than we would ever expect. I would suggest going earlier in the season. It would be better to have colder weather with less rain.

 

While it was terrific to get the upgrade to aquaClass, I believe we would have been happy with our original inside cabin. We spent most of our viewing outside on deck. Very little on our balcony. I would spend the money on excursions.

 

I'm glad I did this cruise. I would recommend people to go to Alaska but once was enough for me. I prefer the Caribbean :) Less

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Thanks for your review. What a shame you had such terrible weather, although it doesn't sound as if you had high waves and seasickness. I loved Alaska, but I will admit I had more fun on the sunny days than on the rainy ones.

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We were on the Solstice in September and had a really good time. We had some rain in Juneau but not enough to stop us from taking the local bus to Mendenhall. Nugget Trail was still closed then, which was something we had also wanted to do. In Icy Strait we had booked a whale watch with Glacier Winds which was fantastic...lots of humpbacks and only six on our boat as well as the Captain. Tracy Arm was a beautiful day for us as well, and we got quite close to Sawyer Glacier, even got to see some calving.

 

Weather can be hit or miss anytime of year, so I don't think going earlier in the season would be a guarantee of better conditions as we had really good weather, although maybe cooler than in July? No bugs tho!! Of course, being on the Solstice there were more venues indoors for days that the weather was inclement...even the hot glass show was fun to watch outdoors on a cool day!

 

Did you go up the inside passage between Vancouver Island and the mainland? That's one thing that would be nicer with a smaller ship...the Solstice is too large and has to go around to the West of the Island to go North.

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I believe we boarded this ship as soon as you disembarked. I love the Infinity ... my favorite ship of all times. We went south and the weather was incredibly hot....oh my gosh, was it hot!!

 

Nice review ... experiences were a bit different from ours but still very informative from a different perspective.

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Bunnyrab we did board at Canada Place.

 

Cruise Raider we spent 3 days in San Francisco and the weather was awesome!!

I'm glad it was nice for your cruise:)

 

Well, awesome is not how many passengers described our weather. San Francisco was awesome but San Diego, Ensenada, Santa Barbara and Monterey were over the top hot. San Diego was actually over 100 degrees (rare) and humid ... wow. Us bay area residents think 75 degrees is just right and it is usually not humid out this way - we're cold when it is 40 degrees and dying if it gets to 90 degrees. Anyhow, the cruise was amazing! Glad you enjoyed your time in our city by the bay.

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