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Photo Review: Solstice 12 Night Great Barrier Reef Jan 2 2018


mahdnc
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"ROLL CALL PRE-CRUISE PARTY--5:30 PM AT THE OPERA BAR"

 

We were running a bit late so we took a taxi from our hotel for the short ride to the Opera Bar. It was a very picturesque venue for having the pre-cruise get together. However the bar was very crowded because of the holiday. Furthermore the bar is very large and you cannot reserve a table in advance. So needless to say, it took a while to get everyone together because we had to find each other and then we had to find a table large enough for all of us. I estimate about 12-16 people showed up. Once we got settled in, we had a great time. Conversation centered around last night's fireworks show and the plans we each had for the cruise. Anticipation filled the air as we were going to board tomorrow!

Edited by mahdnc
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This nice photo of our ship on embarkation day was taken by Cruise Critic member Silver Spectre!

 

 

"EMBARKATION DAY: ALL ABOARD!"

 

Finally, Jan 2 arrived--some 748 days after I booked the cruise! During my last 4 cruises (Valparaiso, Miami x2, Ft Lauderdale), I have had the pleasure of being able to wake up in my hotel room and immediately see my cruise ship from the window or balcony. It really gets my blood flowing! But other considerations (mainly money) prevented me from booking a hotel that overlooked the harbor this time.

 

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This hotel was just awesome for my family of 4. We stayed one large room. It is well appointed inside and conveniently located near many retail stores.

 

 

Checkout time at the Westin Sydney was 11am. As usual, our family was running late. Although initially denied, I was able to get the front desk to extend our check out to noon time. I asked the doorman for a mini-van taxi for the 4 of us (and all of our luggage). He said that one just left the hotel and that he called for it 1.5 hr ahead of time. Wow. We thought about getting an uber, but decided against it. I told the doorman that we would wait for one that we had plenty of time. I'll be you we waited over 30 minutes without any luck. At that point, it wasn't worth occupying the doorman's time to look for a mini-van taxi. I told him that we could take two regular taxis to the pier. It wasn't going to be that expensive--I think it was $21 AUD for each taxi.

 

It took well under an hour between the time that we left our hotel and were in our cabin (2:15 pm). Check in was a breeze. The Overseas Passenger Terminal is a very nice facility and it was not crowded. An x-ray of our bags that we had with us found a powercube extension cord which got seized (I love using the word "seized" in print). I was given a receipt and told that it could be picked it up after the cruise. Fair enough.

 

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"Bad extension cord! Very bad extension cord! No cruise for you!"

 

One of the things that I detest is having to fill out the health questionnaire. I realize that it is important and has to be done on the spot. But with all the excitement of the check-in process and with 4 of us crowded around the check-in desk trying to fill out our forms, it's a bit time consuming and and I get very impatient about it! It's also where I keep thinking to myself, "kids, there's only one right answer to those questions if you want to get on the ship".

 

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Looking northward at the Overseas Passenger Terminal from our starboard side cabin balcony.

 

 

We were given our SeaPass cards. The Celebrity rep behind the check-in counter handed out each card to us individually--they were not given to me as a set inside a little cardboard holder like we usually get them in (another quintessential Celebrity experience victimized by cost cutting? Or perhaps a Save the Waves initiative? ugh!).

 

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Looking southward at the Overseas Passenger Terminal from our starboard side cabin balcony.

 

 

This was the first time that we did not see the embarkation photo station on the way into the ship.

 

We got to our cabin, 8108, which is right at the front of the ship on the starboard side. We dropped our things, I took a few shots of our empty cabin, met our room steward (Charles), and then headed off to the buffet. The photo below is the port side view we had from the buffet. Life is good!

 

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Edited by mahdnc
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Excellent photos.... we have got 2 power adaptors so we can charge our phones / fit-bits in our stateroom. i hope they don't confiscate them otherwise we will be stuffed!

The only adapters they’ll confiscate are those that are surge protected.

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Day 1, Embarkation Day: "MUSTER DRILL: THE MOVIE!"

 

Celebrity Today

MDR Dinner Menu page 1

MDR Dinner Menu page 2

 

After we came back from eating our late lunch at the buffet, all of our luggage was there to greet us by our cabin door. This was our 4th time in a Solstice class FV cabin and we pretty much have it down to a science in terms of unpacking and doing our room setup.

 

Then it was time to do the Muster Drill. Ugh. It began around 4:30 pm. When we first started cruising with Celebrity in 1996 (aboard the brand new Century), the muster drill was a lot more involved. You had to wear your life jacket around your neck and have it fully strapped around your body. Then you to congregate at your Assembly Station staging area to hear a training lecture. THEN you had to walk out to the lifeboat area and stand underneath your assigned lifeboat. AND they had the women and children separated from the men (I think). It was all quite elaborate back then.

 

It's been years since they removed the requirement to walk out to the lifeboat area. And for the last few years you don't even have to bring your life jacket. BUT this was our first cruise that we received the training through a motion picture called:

which is a 007 type movie set on Celebrity Eclipse. Our Assembly Station is A1 which is in the Celebrity Theater on Deck 5. So we got to comfortably watch the movie from there--I am not sure how it is handled in some of the other areas. I give Celebrity credit for trying something novel although I hope they don't try to make a series of them like the Rocky movies.

 

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During the drill, Captain Tasos Kafetzis addressed the passengers for the first time over the PA system. During his little speech he goes thru the part about who replaces him if he is incapacitated during an emergency (the Staff Captain). But he went further and described the succession order in more detail. At some point he stopped going thru the full succession lineup by remarking that the ship would be in big trouble if it got that far.

 

Has anyone ever looked at the back of their cabin door to review the route to their Assembly Station? One of the things I found interesting when I looked at the back of our FV door is that there are two escape routes--a primary one and a secondary one. The primary route to get to our Assembly Station in the Celebrity Theater involves taking a shortcut using a special stairway that is concealed behind a door in the corridor. We get to bypass the public forward staircase that the masses use! How cool is that?? It's like an Elite perk--Priority Lifeboating! All joking aside, its worth looking at the back of your door because these special evacuation primary/secondary routes are not something that you practice or are necessarily aware of during the muster drill.

 

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This is a photo of the muster information on the back of our door for cabin 8107 aboard Eclipse. The cabin is located all the way forward on the port side. The primary escape route to our Assembly Station in the Celebrity Theater is thru a stairway hidden behind a door in the hallway just outside our cabin. Jan 2014

Edited by mahdnc
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"SOMEONE CALL SECURITY! OUR CABIN FURNITURE HAS BEEN STOLEN!! (A tale of exceptional customer service)

 

As I keep saying, this was the 4th time that we had been in a Solstice Class Family Veranda (FV) cabin. The prior 3 times were aboard Eclipse. We love it for the enormous amount of space that it gives my family of 4 (618 sq ft interior + 112 sq ft balcony for the ones on Deck 8). It has two separate bedrooms as well as a very large living area (just one standard bathroom though). Now that our kids are fully grown, being able to spend extended time together as a family in one cabin is something that my wife and I truly treasure. I like to joke to others that we have our kids trapped on board with us as we hardly see them any other way! As a result, our cruising profile is very different from most people on Cruise Critic (I think). We spend a great deal of our waking time in the cabin during a cruise when we are on board the ship. There is enough space that we each can do our own thing or we can do things together. We seem to only emerge from our lair for food. And Elite Happy Hour. Well, and maybe the casino.

 

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A very spacious living area. The master bedroom is behind the closed door. Aboard Eclipse, there is a dining room table with chairs put in the area near the window. As each newer Solstice class ship was built, the FV cabins received more furniture. Silhouette and I believe Reflection have an additional full length desk against the wall with the window that is not in the Eclipse FV that we are so familiar with.

 

 

Ok, having said all of the above, when we arrived in our FV aboard the Solstice, we were very disappointed to see that a lot of the furniture that we had in our prior FV cabins was missing. No dining room table and chairs to eat breakfast, etc. No chest of drawers by the balcony door. The closet was missing a side dresser in the master bedroom. My wife--who is very tolerant--was not happy with the lack of furniture. It impacted our ability to put away all our clothing and stuff like our scuba diving gear. We mentioned it to our room steward, Charles. By the time we came back from dinner he had put in a circular dining room table in our cabin. It wasn't the exact table we were expecting, but it would do just fine. It was obvious that he scrounged it up from somewhere. I was impressed with his effort.

 

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The master bedroom is ridiculously huge. The FV cabin comes with two windows that look out over the front of the ship. One window is in the bedroom while the other window is in the living area. In our Eclipse FV cabin, there is a shorter wooden dresser installed in the empty space between the tall closet and the wall. Besides providing a nice table top surface to put our things on, there were shelves below to store our folded clothes.

 

 

But we were still missing a lot of furniture to store our things. So we went down to Guest Relations to acknowledge the great work that Charles did, but to tell them that we were still lacking other furniture. The Guest Relations Officer that we talked to was Fabio. A very nice man. If he was thinking "oh geeze, missing furniture? Why do I have to deal with this?" he concealed it very well as he was very attentive and concerned for us. He asked to accompany us back to our cabin to see what we were talking about. We showed him our cabin. I then whipped out my trusty iPhone X and showed him the furniture that we had in our Eclipse FV that was missing.

 

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In addition to having two windows looking out over the bow, this FV cabin has a large balcony on the side of the ship.

 

 

He treated it as if this was the most important problem on the entire ship. He gave us his business card and promised to look into it and to keep us up to date. Soon the Assistant Housekeeper visited our cabin and we received follow up calls for the next couple of days. I told my wife that they must be making the furniture. Again, even though no furniture had arrived, the excellent communication that we received still made us feel that it was a high priority problem and that we were not being ignored (and we knew darn well that there are much more important problems than this on the ship).

 

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Our son loved laying on that couch day and night mainly because of the television on the wall to the right of the photo. His favorite activity was ordering room service--spaghetti bolognese was his fave.

 

 

And then it hit me. I pulled out my trusty iPhone X , did a google search and I looked at some photos for the FV cabins aboard Solstice/Equinox. It looks like most of the "missing" furniture that we had in our Eclipse FV was never on the Solstice FVs. Oops--we have the whole ship running around trying to solve a problem that technically didn't exist except for the fact that we complained. The next day two small cabinets with tiny drawers were brought up to our stateroom. There was a checkerboard on top of each piece of furniture. I got the distinct feeling that the crew was missing some furniture in their living quarters.

 

 

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Our daughter slept in this room and since her younger brother like sleeping on the living room couch, she had it all to herself.

 

 

We later talked to the Chief Housekeeper at one of the Elite Happy Hour functions. I thanked him for the great effort that his staff went through to take care of our concerns. And yes, this was mentioned (along with names) in our post-cruise customer survey that I filled out. And we at the end of the cruise, we thanked Charles and gave him some extra cash on top of the gratuity that he would later receive.

Edited by mahdnc
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For comparison here is Eclipse FV 8108 taken on Jan 2105:

 

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Eclipse FV 8108 taken in Jan 2015. Dining room table in chairs are seen in the back. In the master bedroom you can see the chest of drawers against the window.

 

 

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Eclipse FV 8108 taken on Jan 2015. The small dresser next to the tall closet was missing in our Solstice FV cabin. The low chest of drawers against the window was also not in our Solstice FV.

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The above photo was taken from the front page of the first issue of Celebrity Today. Evening dress, when the ship's clocks are changed, as well as which ports are tendered are noted.

 

One thing not shown is the time of the Cruise Critic Connections Party which was 9:30 am Thu Jan 4

 

The itinerary is well designed. There are four days devoted to getting to the Great Barrier Reef, four days at the GBR, and three days afterward to recover.

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Day 2, Wed Jan 3: Newcastle Port Information

 

Celebrity Today

Dinner Menu page 1 and page 2

Dessert Menu page 1 and page 2

Shore Excursion: Quad Biking on the Stockton Sand Dunes (set up independently)

 

Our 1st port of call! The ship's clocks were set back an hour during our first night which meant we got an extra hour of sleep which was nice.

 

Solstice arrived pretty much on time--maybe a tad early. The port itself is very industrial and set up to handle containers and not pedestrians. There is nothing immediately outside of the port for tourists. As such, Celebrity runs free motor coach shuttles between the pier and the Queens Wharf Tower in downtown Newcastle which takes about 15 minutes. See the two map photos for the exact locations of the pier and bus drop-off point.

 

Other than the motor coaches used for excursions and for shuttling to the downtown area, I did not see any taxis and or other vehicles at the pier when we got off the ship. There were plenty of taxis at Queens Wharf Tower. However we got an Uber instead. At the end of our day, we took a taxi which was able to pass the gate at the port and drop us off right at the ship which was great.

 

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Jan 3 2018 7:33 am: Solstice is preparing to dock at Newcastle. The large tent building (with "NEWCASTLE" printed on it) is for the passengers to go thru as they get on and off the ship. Motor coach shuttles are seen in the background. They file in to the other side of the tent building to load up passengers for the 15 minute ride to Queens Wharf Tower in downtown Newcastle.

 

 

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Queens Wharf Tower. This is where the motor coach shuttles drop you off at. It is also the pick up point for being taken back to the ship.

 

 

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Solstice is visible from Queens Wharf Tower.

 

 

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The square symbol marks the docked location of Solstice.

 

 

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The square symbol marks the location of Queens Wharf Tower.

Edited by mahdnc
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Day 2, Wed Jan 3: Newcastle Shore Excursion

 

Originally, I had hoped to book a whale watching trip at this port. But the whale watching season runs from May to Nov. So then I was planning a lazy day wandering around Newcaste--saving up our energy for the scuba diving that was later to come. However my wife thought that the kids would really enjoy riding on ATVs on the sand dune beach just north of where the ship docks. Celebrity offered this for $189 USD per person including transportation. The transportation is not trivial as the sand dunes are located at Stockton Beach which takes like 30-40 minutes to get to. I believe that Celebrity uses Sand Dune Adventures for this activity.

 

When I looked on line, I found companies offering the same thing for $110 AUD. One offered a 20% discount but I couldn't get the exact tour times I wanted that made me feel comfortable that we could get there on time or get back to the ship on time. Both companies required full payment at the time of booking with a 50% refund if you cancel which is a lot for me since we were a party of 4.

 

 

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The $110 AUD does not include transportation to and from the ship. You are on your own for that. It is possible to use public transportation. The bus schedules are very easy to figure out on line, but what I figured out was that it would take too long for me and wasn't worth the savings. We ended up using Uber to take us from Queens Wharf Tower to the biking company's office near the sand dunes. We couldn't get an Uber to take us back so we got a taxi which took us all the way back to the ship ($69 AUD including an extra tip because I really liked the driver).

 

 

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You first check in at the bike company's office and sign some forms. A 4x4 hauls you from the office to the sand dunes itself which takes about 15 minutes each way and wasn't all that comfortable. At the sand dunes you are assigned your riding helmet and quad bike. We were in group of about 15 people or so with several guides assigned to us. A little training is given by the guides and away we went! The ride was about an hour long including a 10 minute break to admire the ocean. We had a lot of fun following each other in single file around the sand dunes. You got to go at a pretty good speed but it never felt dangerous. In the end, I would recommend this tour.

 

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Jan 3 2018 5:15 pm We left Newcastle promptly at our scheduled time of 5pm! Bye bye, Newcastle! See you in 2020!

Edited by mahdnc
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xxxx

 

Day 2, Wed Jan 3: Newcastle Shore Excursion

 

Originally, I had hoped to book a whale watching trip at this port. But the whale watching season runs from May to Nov. So then I was planning a lazy day wandering around Newcaste--saving up our energy for the scuba diving that was later to come. However my wife thought that the kids would really enjoy riding on ATVs on the sand dune beach just north of where the ship docks. Celebrity offered this for $189 USD per person including transportation. The transportation is not trivial as the sand dunes are located at Stockton Beach which takes like 30-40 minutes to get to. I believe that Celebrity uses Sand Dune Adventures for this activity.

 

When I looked on line, I found companies offering the same thing for $110 AUD. One offered a 20% discount but I couldn't get the exact tour times I wanted that made me feel comfortable that we could get there on time or get back to the ship on time. Both companies required full payment at the time of booking with a 50% refund if you cancel which is a lot for me since we were a party of 4.

 

The $110 AUD does not include transportation to and from the ship. You are on your own for that. It is possible to use public transportation. The bus schedules are very easy to figure out on line, but what I figured out was that it would take too long for me and wasn't worth the savings. We ended up using Uber to take us from Queens Wharf Tower to the biking company's office near the sand dunes. We couldn't get an Uber to take us back so we got a taxi which took us all the way back to the ship ($69 AUD including an extra tip because I really liked the driver).

 

You first check in at the bike company's office and sign some forms. A 4x4 hauls you from the office to the sand dunes itself which takes about 15 minutes each way and wasn't all that comfortable. At the sand dunes you are assigned your riding helmet and quad bike. We were in group of about 15 people or so with several guides assigned to us. A little training is given by the guides and away we went! The ride was about an hour long including a 10 minute break to admire the ocean. We had a lot of fun following each other in single file around the sand dunes. You got to go at a pretty good speed but it never felt dangerous. In the end, I would recommend this tour.

 

 

No way I’d book any excursion on a cruise that didn’t offer refund. If the ship doesn’t get there and public transport wouldn’t be a great option to where you needed to be.

 

We did a fun quad bike tour in qld one cruise.

 

I hope you weren’t too disappointed with your wander around Newcastle, the city centre isn’t a shadow of its former self, I am hoping that they are heading the right direction.

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Cabin 8108 which is all the way forward on the starboard side. At each port you could either hear the thrusters if we were docking or the anchor being lower or raised if we were anchoring. It didn't bother us. Vibrations were minimal.

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