Live Trip Report - Celebrity Equinox - Jan 27 thru Feb 3

I have been stalking cruise critic for several years now and appreciate all the trip reports I have read. I am awful about completing them once I get home, so I am going to try and do a live trip report since we have the unlimited wireless. This is our second cruise and our first on Celebrity. Our 1st one was on the Carnival Liberty out of San Juan. This time we wanted to do a Western Caribbean to see different ports of calls. After a ton of research and lessons learned from the first trip we settled on Celebrity and I picked the Equinox over Silhouette because I wanted to see the hot glass show.

About us - I am a 36 year old Industrial Engineer - meaning I am a planner and very analytical - you have been warned. I am traveling with my mom (dad hates traveling) who retired a couple years ago. I am the planner in the family and handle everything - until I had mom download the Celebrity App over the weekend I am not sure she even knew what cruise line we were on and when I asked yesterday she didn’t know the name of the ship.

When I booked I went with go Best so I am using some of the OBC for specialty dining and we have the premium beverage package so it will be fun to try various foods/drinks.

My hobby is photography - for this trip report my iPhone 7 Plus and a Sony a6000 will be my Cameras. I didn’t need all the gear I brought last time so packing light this time. The Sony has built in WiFi - so any editing will be one on my phone using Snapseed (FYI - free and my favorite editing tool). Here are my images from my last cruise - I defiantly want more ship pictures this times.

let’s start the trip report (one picture in this one, but I promise more later - O’hare isn’t that exciting)

After a chaotic day at work yesterday and a meeting until 4 I finally got out of work and headed to my parents house. I got to my moms house a bit before 5, loaded her car and headed to the hotel. It took about two hours to get from her house to the hotel. This time we are at Loews O’hare - we normally stay here or the Hilton Rosemont because they have a parking garage attached to the hotel - this means coming home to a dry car and not cleaning off snow or ice. I discovered when we got to the hotel I forgot my camera charging cable and my watch charger. The camera charger is the same as moms so we can share - but the watch charger I will have to deal with when we get to Miami - I found a Garmin store <1 mile from the hotel, so after food that is priority #2. We headed down to grab dinner in the hotel restaurant which is a pretty standard hotel restaurant then up to bed since we had an early morning.

We got up at 3:45 AM this morning to catch the 4:40 am shuttle. With TSA pre-check we had cleared security at 5:05 AM…now just sitting here waiting for our flight. At least tomorrow I can sleep in!

O’hare - not to much happening at 6 AM.

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Very cool that you will be documenting our cruise. Now I can leave my camera home. See you onboard!

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Snapseed is an awesome app! Have a great cruise!!

Nice start, looking forward to this.:)

I am really looking forward to this. We are on right after you. I will be reading with much anticipation. Thanks for doing this.

Karen

Following along with great interest. Doing the Equinox in Feb. :D

Also following along, but just one question. If you are not sailing until tomorrow, why did you select such an early flight out of Chicago? Enjoy your cruise.

Hi, hope you have a great cruise and I’m looking forward to reading along with you,

we are on the Equinox in May and reading you’re live blog will be a great way to start a little more planning,

We did Equinox last year and had a great time so I’m sure you will have fun, it consistently gets great reviews for everything onboard with a great crew,

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On the Equinox in March...cant wait for your review. Cheers

Very much looking forward to following your exploits and pictures. We are on the Feb 17th Equinox Eastern Itinerary.

Bon Voyage

Yay! Equinox is our favorite Celebrity ship. Looking forward to traveling along with you. Thanks for taking the time to do this. Bon Voyage!

Excited about your review. I will be on the Equinox in June and looking forward to hearing about the on board activities. I did not pick this ship or itinerary, but am going because it's a great group I'm going with. I'm a planner too and have heard often that Celebrity, although having excellent service, is for a much older laid back crowd.

So excited for your live reports. We are on Equinox in March. Can you please try to take a picture of the MDR menu's each night so I can see the order of the food rotation? We like to use these to decide which nights to do our Specialty restaurants. PS my 32 year old daughter in an Industrial Engineer so we are both planners:) Half of the fun of traveling!! I hope you and your mom have a great trip!!!!

We have arrived in Miami! Our flight got in about 11 and about 11:40 we had luggage. In figuring out how to get to Miami Beach I researched the options - I decided to go with Lyft since I had a 10% off code. It worked well - at arrivals I selected my terminal / door and crossed the street to the waiting area - within 5 minutes my driver arrived. Total cost with tip was $20. We got to the hotel at 12:15

We…or should I say I booked the Washington Park Hotel - trying to find a hotel on Miami Beach that looked decent but was expensive was hard - I ended up paying $220 + $25 resort fee. Our rooms weren’t ready so we checked our bags and headed to find food.

This old post office just amused me. Now it’s time to eat!

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Can't wait to follow along with you. We'll be on the Equinox in April.

Also following along, but just one question. If you are not sailing until tomorrow, why did you select such an early flight out of Chicago? Enjoy your cruise.

My mom just said she wants to know the same thing...I always take the 1st flight to maximize my vacation time! Also - if there is an issues I have plenty of additional flight options - ORD in January can be questionable.

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My mom just said she wants to know the same thing...I always take the 1st flight to maximize my vacation time! Also - if there is an issues I have plenty of additional flight options - ORD in January can be questionable.

 

 

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ORD can be questionable Jan thru Dec, haha.

We are on the Feb 10th trip, can't wait to see your report.

We are on the Feb 10th trip, can't wait to see your report.

We are on the Feb 10 cruise as well. I'm really looking forward to following along and getting a head start on my vacation! I'm a huge planner too, but I think that's half the fun of a vacation!

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My mom just said she wants to know the same thing...I always take the 1st flight to maximize my vacation time! Also - if there is an issues I have plenty of additional flight options - ORD in January can be questionable.

 

 

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Agree. We also like to be on the ship early. Enjoy your cruise.

My mom just said she wants to know the same thing...I always take the 1st flight to maximize my vacation time! Also - if there is an issues I have plenty of additional flight options - ORD in January can be questionable.

 

 

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We do the same thing. For our cruise in three weeks, we are flying down on Thursday morning (two days prior) on the first flight out. Primarily because it’s February, and secondarily because we’d like two full days in Miami.

Cheers

Your photos are amazing. We were on Equinox in October. Enjoy your cruise. I hope you like Celebrity as well as we do.

Following. We'll be on Equinox March 31 with a different itinerary. Looking forward to your play by play. Enjoy your vacation!

We’ll be on the Equinox February 3 for our annual Super Bowl cruise. Then, in another year, we’ll be on the Equinox again for the 2019 Super Bowl. Please make sure to keep those Martini Bar stools in great operating order because we plan to wear them out beginning February 3[emoji483][emoji483][emoji483][emoji483]

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My mom just said she wants to know the same thing...I always take the 1st flight to maximize my vacation time! Also - if there is an issues I have plenty of additional flight options - ORD in January can be questionable.

 

 

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Thanks, I'm glad you made it to Miami without any problems. It sounds like your mother and I might think alike. We'd suggest taking the second flight and getting a little more sleep and only sacrificing 1 possible option if things go bad.

Looking forward to more pictures. Enjoy your trip.