Mercury Short Cruise Review

[Leela]

It was a short cruise, and I suppose this will be a short review.

 

My husband and I sailed Mercury for a 4-night Pacific Northwest cruise. There were some great things about it, and a few things that weren't so wonderful. I'll start with the good!

 

So there's an old joke that passengers blame the Captain for the weather. Well, our Captain must be a miracle-worker then because he turned a weather report full of showers into occaisional rain with periods of gorgeous blue skies. Not bad for Seattle/Vancouver/Nanaimo/Victoria in early October!

 

This was our first trip on Mercury, and I think she is the prettiest of the X ships I've sailed on thus far. I like the positioning of the Martini Bar by the restaurant, and I liked the over all decoration and color scheme. We sailed in a Sky Suite for the first time and I was amazed at how much storage there was. The stateroom was very nice, although the beds could use new mattresses. They weren't bad (and were far better than what mom & I had in our Horizon Suite this past April), just not up to the level of the pillow-top mattresses in the Concierge Class stateroom that we had last year on Century. Why they can't put pillow-top mattresses in the suites as well as CC is beyond me, but perhaps they'll get to it some year. Our balcony was wonderful, and I followed the advice of some posters here and pulled our chairs in under the awning to keep them dry. I spent one lovely afternoon wrapped in a blanket reading books and nibbling on tea snacks out there, it was very relaxing although our butler thought I was a little crazy because it was a bit chilly.

 

Stateroom service was top-notch, as I've come to expect. I was, however, a little disappointed with the dining room service this time around. It wasn't bad, it's just after having two waiter teams in the past of whom "excellent" was not great enough to describe them, we ended up with a team who was merely "good." That shows you how spoiled we can get on Celebrity, when a waiter who would be judged perfectly fine elsewhere seems lacking. It did seem that our wait team had more tables than I recall them having on other cruises I've taken, so that could have been part of it. Tiny details were lost, like always making sure the X logo was positioned at the top when the plates were put down, and never having a water glass go more than half empty. I know I'm picky, but in the past all these details were magically attended to, so I'm just used to seeing them that way. The sommelier seemed over-busy, too, and one night it took quite a long time to get a glass of wine. A passing sommelier stepped in to take a wine order from my husband who had come in late, and he got his wine quite before the rest of us saw ours. Again, this is nothing to be upset about, but I've become so used to perfection on Celebrity cruises that tiny flaws like this become that much more apparant.

 

My only real disappointment on this trip was with the food, and again that was on the minor side. My last cruise was on Horizon, which is much smaller and so has fewer people to cook for at each seating. The food on Horizon was simply wonderful, it was San Francisco restaurant quality. On Mercury, not so much...it was good, but it had that kind of held warm banquet quality to it. The salads were a bit wilted, the sauces were a bit flat. It was all good tasting, but it lacked that extra punch of wonderfulness that it had on my last cruise.

 

We did some things on this trip that I've never done before. We used the Thalassotherapy Pool, which was just wonderful. We joked about building one in our dream house (which will probably always be a dream, but that's why we imagine things in it like T-pools). We also had a late dinner in the pasta bar, and I was very happy with the pizza and pasta. We ordered snacks from room service late one night, and they arrived promptly and the double chocolate seduction was to die for.

 

As far as ports went, I Loved Vancouver. It was my first time there and I'm planning on going back and spending a few days in a hotel there. Nanaimo was cute but extremely quiet for a city of 77,000 people. It was a Saturday and there was simply no one about, it was kind of eerie. Victoria was nice and interesting but it didn't have the impact of Vancouver. I'm just a big-city kind of person. All port arrivals/departures and tendering (in Nanaimo) were perfectly smooth and easy. We just walked on and off the ship, and the tenders were quick and plentiful -- we never had to wait for one of them, either. It was fun riding the tender out to the Mercury, too.

 

All in all, it was a good cruise. I'm glad I went and my husband had a nice time. He's not really into cruising, though. Part of it is because he doesn't like dressing up for dinner -- and he even considers putting on a pair of Dockers and a decent sweater as dressing up. Meanwhile, I'm a clothes diva and love to dress up, and even wore a silk dress on casual night. I think if I'm going to get him to cruise again, it will have to be on something with no dress code whatsoever. Even Oceania with no formal nights and "country club casual" would be too dressy for him. I'm looking into small ship adventure/eco tours to see if there's something he'd like better for our next trip together. Thank goodness I have my mom to cruise X with...we like the whole playing princess thing, and look forward to doing things like getting our nails done, dressing up, going to tea, etc. when we cruise. Different strokes for different folks and all that: I always say there are so many lines to choose from that everyone should be able to find the one right for them. Celebrity is definitely right for me & Mom, but not quite right for Hubby. (Oh, and suggestions for Hubby are appreciated...small ship, as informal a dress code as possible, good food and decent service is what he's after.)

 

Anyway, embarcation was a little rough. We got stopped three times to have our passports and tickets looked atl. The the final person directing us looked at our ticket and then made us go stand on a really long line. After a few minutes I realized that he had put us in the wrong place and that we should go to the suite line which had only one other couple in it. Once we changed lines, things went the same as they always do. I thought the Xpress pass would speed things up even further, but when we got to the check-in booth we still had to do all the things that I used to have to do before they started the Xpress pass service. It's not just "scan and go" yet.

 

Debarcation was very very smooth, though. We went to the lounge at the time given on our letter, waited less than five minutes, and were called to leave the ship. We found our luggage instantly, got a cab instantly, and were at the airport in Seattle by 8:45am. And then we got a great bonus bit of luck: we were originally scheduled for a 1:17pm flight, but we were early enough to get wait listed for a 9:55am flight. We made the 9:55, and were back in our house in San Francisco by about 12:30 that afternoon. It all went very smoothly, and so we didn't lose one iota of relaxation. I'll very happily cruise out of Seattle (or Vancouver) again, that's for sure.

 

Overall? A very good trip, but not stellar like my two previous Celebrity experiences. I would definitely cruise Mercury again, and I would definitely sail out of Seattle again. I'm already thinking of taking Mom to Alaska in 2008.

[senior lady]

Great review...........

 

We're sailing on the Mercury on Nov 11th for a 10 day Mexican cruise from San Diego.

We've never cruised on Celebrity before, so we're really looking forward to it.

 

Most of our cruising has been on Princess (10) so this will be new to us.

I'm very lucky that my DH loves to dress up on cruises. In fact that's the only time I can get him to dress up!!!! Every cruise we take he will go shopping to buy something new. He even bought his own tux many yrs ago.

We did a 11 day Hawaii cruise out of Vancouver last fall, and he took his tux,suit,and sports jacket. He was way overdressed except on the formal nights. I still tease him about taking way more clothes then me;)

[Leela]

Have a great time on your trip! I can't imagine that you wouldn't.

 

Oh yes, I forgot one more good thing about our trip...I told the Assitant Maitre d'Hotel that it was our 10th anniversary. Not only did we get a special little anniversary cake, but a bottle of champagne magically appeared in our suite the next afternoon. Really, they do treat you famously -- if complaining about the positioning of the logo on the plate at dinner is the worst I can do, then you just know you're in for a treat.

 

Other things I loved...

 

Since we tie up next to office buildings in Seattle, we manged to find an open wireless connection for our laptop and were able to download our email for free up until sailing time, and the again upon arrival. In Vancouver, we sat in a gelato cafe on Robson St. and used their wireless (free with purchase) to get our email again. We weren't about to pay 75 cents a minute for the service onboard Mercury. With the amount of email my husband gets per day, it would cost us about $25 per day just to download it all, let alone upload the answers and let me use the web, too!

 

We had cell phone coverage the whole time, due to always sailing very near shore between the British Colombia mainland and Vancouver Island. (We both have T-Mobile quad-band GSM phones.)

 

The decks on the Sky Suite balconies were teak. I love the smell of wet teak as it's drying.

 

The hot tubs on the pool deck were great, although they did close them down at 9pm.

 

We liked the little movie theater on Mercury, and saw "Finding Neverland" in it. Johnny Depp is great in it. I don't recall Century having a theater like this, but I could be wrong. On Mercury, they showed a different film every day, several times a day.

 

The lobby by Guest Services on Deck 5 is really pretty. I also like how Mercury lights the stairwells at night.

[tbelian]

I don't recall Century having a theater like this, but I could be wrong.

 

Just for informational purposes, Century does have a movie theater.